04/23/2013

1.  My car died yesterday.  It's been having trouble starting for weeks, but I have not had time to take it in, and yesterday afternoon after visiting teaching, it finally would not stop, for reals.  After Ben came home, he managed to get it going with a jump and we left it at the car repair place.  There is never a convenient time to have your car in the shop!  I need it every single day!  Anyway, Joseph had flute lessons this afternoon and was going to ride his bike.  It's not far, but he would have to cross under the freeway.  I didn't know how nervous he was until after he broke down in tears during his practicing.  A quick text to his teacher, and now he has a makeup lesson scheduled for Friday.  I remember loving my bike and riding all over town on it.  But I guess there never was a big freeway to cross under.

2.  The boys have a very sparse school week.  Maybe the curriculum writers sense that these kids are getting tired?  I'm not sure, but I have a lot of anxiety when my kids are not "anxiously engaged" in school work during school hours.  It's hard for me to relax about it.  I have a whole shelf full of books they can read when they are done with schoolwork, and a whole list of other extra credit activities they can do, and they've been pretty good about that.  But I still have anxiety.  I've been thinking Sonlight isn't quite rigorous enough for us. I've been supplementing their reading with some additional books of our own, but I haven't been thrilled with the writing program.  This has been my biggest complaint for all our years of homeschooling-- I haven't found a writing program I really like, and I'm not that comfortable coming up with my own.  So I'm not sure what we'll do next year.  I think we'll probably stick with Sonlight and continue supplementing, but maybe we'll do an entirely different writing program.  Homeschooling is hard because it's all up to you, and there's no one to tell you if you are doing it "right."  When you send your kids away to school, it's easy to have a certain amount of confidence with the teachers and school-- after all, they're "experts," right?  But when it's all up to you, it's easy to be full of self-doubt.  I think my kids are doing just fine, but still I worry.  I guess it's good because I'll never be complacent about their schooling.

3.  I spent about 4.5 hours last night doing chores after dinner.  The floors were in desperate need of sweeping and we were finally out of laundry baskets (we have a lot of them) since they were all filled up with clean clothes that needed to be folded.  I really need another one of me.