Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Blah Day

A and I have a stomach virus.  Blah.

We managed to get through Math, handwriting and Chemistry.  We began a new writing assignment this week in our writing curriculum, one that we all found exciting and understandable (last week for whatever reason I was really unclear about the assignment and I don't think it came out the way it was supposed to...and I just couldn't get what the curriculum meant).  We had another sequential spelling test.  We began "The Story of the World" all snuggled in my bed, and I am very optimistic that we will all--myself included--learn A LOT, as I never studied history from the beginning and LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the concept of studying history in chronological order.

I managed to get some on-line Christmas shopping done.  I am normally almost done by now...but having the girls home, researching and getting the hang of homeschooling is completely throwing me off.  It feels good to at least be able to check a few things off my list!

Like most people, I tend to get depressed when anyone in my family is sick.  I am in one of those moods right now... feeling like the people that do the least [work] get the most [praise]. You try to be nice and go out of your way for people and in the end, the one who has not done anything gets the dinner invitation, invited the the ball, while you sit home alone.  I feel like after putting in the effort, I am the one played for the fool.  Again.

I really hate to think like that.  I've been making an effort to avoid people and situations that make me feel that way.  It's just not worth it.

Periodically Jason and I talk about moving out of state, out of the rat race of the Northeast, the high prices, the ridiculous taxes.  His company has branches all over the country and he has been offered positions over the years in several other locations, but I was always hesitant to move and leave my family.  But now my parents are away 6 months out of the year....but there is still my grandmother, aunt and uncle... Tonight I got sucked into Realtor.com and Tulia...our taxes would be 1/6 of what they are now...we could BUILD a new home with the equity we have right now in this house....  We couldn't do this for another few years, after this project that he is working on is over... but it sure is tempting!  If we do move, I want to do it while the girls are still at home, before they head off in their own directions.  I would want them to feel that whatever house we end up in is theirs too.  And I think they are more likely to hopefully stay somewhat close to home if they move with us.  But I wouldn't want to clip their wings either...

My kids are great.  They are relaxed and thriving.  A decided to pick up Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and she is completely enraptured, as I am sure that anyone who has ever read that book would understand.  A struggled to learn to read, so now to see her so wrapped up in a book that she chooses to read over making things with clay, chooses to read over playing Wii or watching TV... it fills my heart!  We had been using Drawn Into the Heart of Reading for the study of our state, but now that that is through and A picked this book, we have decided to begin the Fantasy section of DITHOR and to use the worksheets in the Student Handbook to make sure that she really understands this classical work of children's fiction.

I am slowly feeling the tension of school leave me as well.  When A picked up A Wrinkle in Time, a book that Jason's stepmother had bought her YEARS ago, my initial reaction was to check Leveled Book List and see where it fit in and ... when I saw that it is considered seventh or eighth grade level, my initial reaction was to dissuade her, as she would have been dissuaded in school...but I thought, No, I will let her try it...see where it takes her... I remember that it gets really intense in spots...we'll see how it goes...