01/19/2014 family letter

Hi Family,
Wow, two weeks in a row I'm managing a family letter!  It's only because tomorrow is a day off and I don't have seminary.  :-)
Here's what happened this week:
1.  Joseph went to Canyon Vista this week.  He woke up EARLY Monday morning (first time in forever I haven't had to get him up on a school day) and was ready to go even before I got up.  He had a pretty good week, but is pretty sure he doesn't want to go back.  I am trying hard to convince him to go for 4 more days and finish out 2 weeks at the school, but he's pretty adamant that he doesn't want to go back.  His main complaint was that it takes too long.  He doesn't get home until 4:00, and then still has practicing and homework to do, while his brothers are all done.  This is just a fact about going to school, and one that can't be changed, unfortunately.  He didn't give me huge amounts of feedback on what happened each day, but I gather that math was way too easy.  They put him in the accelerated 7th grade math, which is pre-algebra.  He couldn't get into the gifted and talented 7th grade algebra, because he would have had to have tested into it on the STAAR exam last year.  The last couple of days of math, his teacher had him taking the 8th grade STAAR exam from last year to see if they could put him in the 8th grade algebra class.  I think it was great for Joseph to see that yes, indeed, he IS smart at math.  :-)  He liked his science class and liked his history teacher, and didn't really like his English class.  He liked P.E., but didn't really enjoy his band classes.  The piano keyboard he was playing for jazz band was really horrible, so that might have contributed to it.  In the regular band I think it was a little hard for him to jump in the middle of music he didn't know, playing in an ensemble for the very first time.
So, we'll see what he decides to do Tuesday morning.  I have mixed feelings now, as I did when he enrolled.  Part of me is glad that he thinks maybe homeschooling isn't so bad.  :-)  But part of me is really disappointed as well, since I honestly was hoping he would love it and would be excited about school.  But it's very possible this will mark a turning point for him and for me, and we'll figure out a way to make school work better for everyone.
2.  As a result of Joseph going to Canyon Vista, school here at home with only two boys was considerably simpler.  :-)  I have not the slightest idea how moms with multiple children in multiple grades manage homeschooling without going completely crazy.
3.  We had a seminary inservice yesterday morning from 9-12.  It was great, and served to make me feel even more insecure about my teaching.  :-)  I am so excited to have Christian coming this week.  I want him to sub for a few classes so I can see how he does it!  And I have plans for him to be called as an assistant seminary teacher while he's here.  I did get a few ideas-- I'm going to have one day a week in which I split the lesson up among groups of students, and have them teach the lesson entirely.  I'm going to try to incorporate more of the videos (haven't really used many of them at all), and try at least once a week to really mix things up with a totally different kind of class-- acting things out, drawing comic strips, whatever.  I was able to share the scripture mastery mnemonics that I've done (I have 5 left to do).  They are really way too much work for only my class.  :-)
4.  Tomorrow morning we are driving out to Lampasas to look at a little cabin (very little-- less than 1,000 sq ft) on 5 acres of land right on the Colorado River (the Texas Colorado) and across the river from the Colorado Bend State park.  It looks great online, and could be such a great place to drive out to every few weekends and for scout campouts and family reunions.  There are a couple of other people from Ben's work that are also interested, and if we do a 2 or 3 ways purchase, it's very affordable.  I'm excited!  It's just a couple of miles away from Gorman Falls and Spicewood Springs.  Since we will be losing our forest next door sometime in the next year or so, something like this would go a long way in assuaging the pain.  :-)  But we really don't know what it is like-- maybe it won't be at all what we are envisioning.  I'll report back!
5.  I just finished reading/listening to a book called "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage." It is about "the astonishing saga of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's survival for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas."  (Thank you Amazon book summary.)  It is a great book that I recommend to everyone!  But I admit it depressed me about the state of modern literary ability (especially my own).  Much of the book was quotations from the diaries of several of the expedition members.  These were no scholars but explorers and sailors.  And yet, first of all, several of them kept regular personal diaries in the first place, and second of all, the prose they used in these hastily-scrawled entries written amidst the most extreme physical conditions imaginable is of such a higher quality than absolutely anything you would find written by average people today.  What has happened to us?
6.  Christian is coming on Tuesday!!  I'm so excited.
OK, that's it for tonight.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week.

Love,
Gabrielle