Sorrows

Found out yesterday that our dear friend David Reese died on Friday of a heart issue (don't know the specifics). He was in his 50's and leaves a beautiful family. I always thought I would be comforting him at his parents funerals. My heart is so heavy for his wife, parents, children and grandchildren and siblings. I rejoice with him that he is with Jesus now. I feel like my own brother died in many ways. Whenever we were in Somerset, we saw their family and every effort of was made to get together. He shared a birthday with Anna and we all talked about that too at every visit. We spent so many wonderful times together. I'm thankful for his modeling of fatherhood, priorities, love of his Lord and faithful attendance to my husband who considered him in the category of dearest friend. Sigh. They modeled to me the meaning of spontaneous hospitality and love for family. What a dear family. David's mother and father, Mary and Floyd, are our second parents. To hear Floyd's dear voice sharing the death of his son. I so want to be there for them. The weather is horrid. It is snowing like crazy and the wind chill is predicted to also be horrid. I will hold down the fort here and Charley is going. I know readers of this here blog don't know this family but prayers for safety of travel and for the comfort of David's family are appreciated. Sigh. Heavy heart.

Three points to Gryfindor

The contest continues. The troops seemed to have stumbled some this week but some showed great improvement. Keeping things up through the week is tricky. They have forgotten that keeping up on things makes it a lot easier. The biggest scandal to me right now is the cow webs. Argh. I am falling behind in the floor washing. But.....over all the contest is going well. Charley made up a point system and has taken to taking away points from dear children who mess up another kids area without cleaning up after themselves. That gives the victim points and takes away points from the offender. The brilliant realization this week is that CHARLEY needs an area and I have designated the back entry way as his as his stuff is what is back there and Cecilia has that area right now and doesn't know what to do with the stuff. So..........perhaps we will need a new judge? I guess I can judge his area and he can judge mine. We lead an interesting life here, we do.

Consistency

Benjamin is showing some improvement in his reading with consistent teaching happening. A few months ago he could barely read and now something seems to be clicking. We started a spelling program (finally) and I am having Benjamin do it with us too. My older boys spelling has needed help for awhile so we have the 7 year old on up to the 18 year old who wants to conquer and divide this spelling struggle. So far so good. Sequential Spelling is a good program. I have Benjamin spell all the words outloud and think through it with him while the others just make sure they have it spelled right. He actually did what the program said and in four days, from not spelling ever in his life, can spell the words beginning and beginner. I'm impressed.

The gist of reading itself seems to finally be clicking too. Consistency is key in this process as with any process in education. Carving out time and routine have always been the key to success here in our house. Kids who do not 'catch on' quickly need daily routine for success and that is most of the battle. I think that homeschoolers have a great tendency to be random and it is not helpful for the struggling learner. We are getting far more done as time has gone by this school year, than we have in a long time. It is the same routine. We are actually prioritizing our read alouds and that too is becoming more and more successful. The kids love it. I am happy the ease of schooling Benjamin is becoming less of a chore. I am happy also to see that they all seem to be catching the desire to learn. Now if only there were a few more hours in the day. Benjamin went to bed jumping up and down saying how much he is looking forward to spelling tomorrow. Yay!

Seeing what they do

Feeling a little zombified this morning, I am seeing how long it takes the kids to realize they have stuff to do. One is practicing the piano right now. A boy just came in and asked if we were doing Catechesis. When do we not? Hymnals are appearing and one boy is on the couch. Okay then. He is turning to shoot the piano player with his Nerf gun to drop a hint. There is a flurry of playing in the other room. So I will begin and see what happens I guess. Piano player here......

Now to stay home

Took Matthew, Ingrid, and Evan to Ft. Wayne today to visit with friends and for Matthew to participate in a book talk. I think I only managed to do or say three stupid things so that is not too bad but I can sort of laugh about it. I will have to send this to the poor souls who had to endure my foot in my mouth. The first thing was that I did not recognize Lora. My brain seems rather foggy as of late but it has been a few years since we last saw each other. ARgh. Sorry Lora. Then I said something stupid about people being 25 and still home..........I meant I hoped said child of mine figured out SOMETHING to do with their life by age 25. Poor Bethany must have found me a little ditzy. There was one other one........I will just forget that......

Needless to say, the day was nice, getting away is sort of nice but it leaves me pretty worn out, people at home seem rather confused when I am not home. I was very glad to get home safely. Snow was pretty blinding on the way home. I stayed at the Scout meeting for time and safety reasons. The Scoutmaster's cat sent me into allergic attack. Yikes. I clearly am not around cats very often as I didn't think it would be that big a deal. One hour shouldn't be that big a deal. No cats!!!

Now I am home and watching another 24 with Charley.

Confusion does reign when I am not home so I should remember to stay there!!!!

"I love my job"

I took Evan for his follow up appointment at the surgeons in Ft. Wayne this morning. We left a little after 6:00 this morning for his 8:15 appointment. When we got there, the receptionist told me the doctor was in surgery. He had been in surgery most of the night for trauma cases. Ugh. Poor him. I mentioned to the nurse that the doctor must run on adrenalin. She said she asked him about that recently and he replied that he didn't care as he loved his job. I can tell he loves his job. He looks lovingly at his little patients and it is obvious they are his chief concern.

This was a good reminder to me that it is true, I love my job too. I was talking later to my sis' about how although we love our jobs, we are all very good at whining about them. That makes me sad of course but maybe for a few days I will remember how much I do love my job. It takes a ton of brain work, although my eldest daughter dear says I think too much. I suppose I do. Perhaps I am afraid of failing my kids or something so it can stress me out and cause me lots of anxiety. We are a bunch of whiners in truth. The poor mes are the trap to fall into which can end up draining the people around us. I can tell my kids not to get the poor mes and then break my own 'rules' by having my own. Of course too when we have the poor mes and want to poor out our troubles to others we most likely rarely think about the poor person listening that they might be stressed too, might have too much on their plates, or have had a yucky week. Sigh. Life is so very interesting.

Sis' and I also talked about how our stressors can make us want to go screaming in the other direction, but these little people, entrusted to our care, need our loving touches and patience. Even little Evan, peering deep into his eyes, I see his little face lighting up with delight or sadness and he really feels that. Too bad we poor miserable sinners can not love our neighbor easily, but I am truly thankful that Jesus forgives me my weaknesses in this department and in repentance or not, I soberly proceed with the little people (and not so little people). The doc exuded Jesus too to me. His office had Jesus all over the place. I thanked him for not being ashamed of Jesus and he told me it was his pleasure. Smile.

See.........I think too much.

10 minutes to call my own

Way back, when Anna was born, I was given a key chain fob with the little saying, "A Mother's prayer is for ten minutes to call her own," or something like that. Well, I got ten minutes and a bit more this evening. I still have the Evans up with me, but Charley took the older kids to church and Stefan, Benjamin and I read together for about an hour. Since I got up a little before seven, I have literally been teaching all day in one form or another. I even taught through lunch in between bites. It blows my mind to think of how much brain processing went on today. I am happy for the brain processing that went on for the kids today. They worked harder and more efficiently than ever today. I have a lot to be thankful for in that regard and the big kicker is that they did it cheerfully and for the most part I was able to concentrate on one kid at a time. Deep sigh. Mentally spent. So, with ten minutes to call my own, before they return from church, I sit stupidly blogging. Evan is now asleep in his adorable sleeper bag (love those things), the clock is quietly ticking, and there is NO OTHER NOISE! Wow. This does not happen very often.

Tomorrow, the middle kids go to the seminary to sing, the older boys go to the library book sale, and I take Stefan to the doctor to see about his asthma. When the kids return from the Sem, someone needs to take Martin shopping for his Scout trip. I think I am going to get Martin and Matthew both a pair of wool socks for the weekend camping trip. Then on Friday morning, I am up before the birds to take Evan to Ft. Wayne for his follow up appointment. See, I am still processing. What is the next thing to do?????

The funniest thing I have come to realize this year, is that the more we concentrate on finally overcoming our grammar deficiencies, the more paranoid I am about making grammatical errors. I suppose the refresher course will do me good. I think having a dad who always corrected my grammar doesn't help me with grammar paranoia. I look at something I have written and then become stumped by whether it is correct. This is EXTREMELY silly!!! So tired head, turn off, go lay Evan down, and perhaps run a load of laundry before collapsing with Charley watching another episode of......24!

Carpe diem

One of the greatest challenges I face, with this large family, is to get them MOVING in the morning. They are kids and either they do not like their mother's irrational need to accomplish something or they do not have any irrational or rational needs to seize the day, themselves. The very best days are the day after I have ranted at them about wasting time. The next day they are such cherubs. Oh, if we all could just merrily plug along, doing what we need to do in a timely fashion, and of course look to the needs of our neighbor with selfless love. Hmmmm......I need to have some sort of pep rally or dad reminder time on Sunday night or something. They would hate it if dad routed them out of bed. I would hate that too. I just long for a consistency of realizing they need to jump at the day to get something accomplished, including cleaning up after themselves. I think this would be better known as the army and a drill sergeant and I don't look too good in fatigues and army boots. They will have to settle with their half drugged looking mother armed with her coffee mug., hoping to catch a shower before ten in the morning, looking at them askance as they loiter around and conveniently disappear.

The timer works

That FlyLady principal of using a timer has really worked with my middle kids and their math. There are 30 problems and I told them several months ago that it should take about a minute a problem. They have me set a timer and every once in a while ask me which problem they should be on. They usually get done before the 30 minutes are up. Math used to be SO painful but now it has become pretty efficient. For once we are clicking along with their lessons. The other odd motivation for my dear Martin is that he heard that he could possibly test out of classes in college if he studied hard in grade school. Well, that boy is definitely motivated by the possibility of getting out of more work. Hey, if that works, great! He told me this morning he better be studying his grammar more. Wow. I will hang onto the bright spots on this dreary winter day.

Giving up

I am giving up my goal to read Harry Potter 1 - 7 once again and replacing it with the goal that the living room floor can be found by Christmas. Reading. What is that? Goals can be so silly. Maybe by 2015 this goal will be reached and by then I might not care. I'm not sure I care now. Evan is trying to escape his little ickle bouncy seat so better go strap him down.