What I Learned on My Vacation

Superman laughed at my title,but I thought that I surely couldn't be the only kid who had to write "summer vacation" essays the couple of years I went to regular school. The title seemed to fit, so there it is. Laugh away, Superman!

Things I Learned on Vacation:

1. I do not "relax" well. It felt so strange to have nothing that *had* to be done and it took most of the trip to get used to that. There was no cleaning of bathrooms or doing of laundry- I didn't even make the bed! While it was nice to have the break it made me realize how much I like the routines of those things and how they give structure and rhythm to my day. . . . well, I won't include doing laundry. I loathe laundry and don't think I will ever be convinced of thinking that there is some kind of peace in folding laundry.

2. I really rely on specific routines during my days. I'm so used to packing my shoulder bag with the snacks, drinks, books, favorite airplane, favorite black doggie, etc. that I didn't realized how streamlined the system had become until I had to pack my little bag for a few hours at the beach and I started looking around for the sippy cups. Packing was as easy as sunscreen, towel and a book and that felt really odd!

3. I have a serious information acquirement problem. We had no internet access and using our phones cost quite a bit per minute so we had to plan our calls accordingly. I didn't realize how often I google things! I was also surprised to discover that it actually felt wrong to not be able to look that information up right away.

I generally keep up on a collection of homeschooling blogs and a message board, sewing and knitting blogs, and a message board for mothers- I missed keeping up on it all, but the time without them made them feel less needful and I know that is for the better. I've struggled with this feeling that if I don't keep up on new ideas and activities that I will miss something that might be important for my kids to learn. What I really need to do for a time is step back, and follow up on the next point without a ton of outside influence.

4. I'm a lot more stressed out about starting "real school" with Ender next year than I thought. That was the primary topic on my mind while we were gone, and I was having a bit of a serious panic. I have a general idea of how I want kindergarten to look, but then I'm having a panic that maybe I'm not including enough, tempered by the educator in me saying- this is Kindergarten. He will be five. You don't have to do everything right now. But then my Mama heart starts worrying that I might be missing something really important- what if he really does need history or more science than I plan to provide or something like that?

The other factor in this is Superman, who has no idea what the possibilities for homeschool include and has a rosy picture of "school at home" where we all happily sit at the table for 3 hours a day doing paper after paper. So, since our ideals are slightly opposite, we're both trying to meet in the middle on this. I need to make some final decisions about whether or not to continue with Montessori math, to buy a text, to make our own plan . . . too many choices! Do we include history yet or wait until he's older? Should I include science? How much?

I'm working on it, and the time without distractions over vacation was tremendously useful, but it was only a start.

Points 3 and 4 are directly related. I just have to figure out how to balance the two parts of my brain, make a plan for Kindergarten and not second-guess it. I'm open to suggestions.

Daybook

 

Outside my window… Frost. Potential for snow. REALLY green grass in my front yard. I don't know how that happened exactly, but it's bright green.

In December.

I am thinking… about our December schedule. Fitting in our family stuff with extended family stuff, work schedules, Superman's finals this week, finding time to really be in the season . . . Hopefully this is the last year of craziness like this. Only 5 months til graduation now!

I am thankful for…  my beautiful boys. And grandparents that love them so much that they kept them for an entire week and still cried when they dropped them off at our house Sunday because they would miss them so much.

Always Learning…  We've all been taking it easy and our plan for the rest of the month is to enjoy Advent books (many from the Serendipity list) and some Christmas-y baking and crafting.

From the kitchen…  Um, my kitchen is bare! I picked up the bare necessities of milk, bread and eggs yesterday to keep us in sandwiches and breakfast for a few days til I could get my brain together to go grocery shopping.

I am wearing… Jeans, knee high Christmas socks, two camis and a long sleeve t-shirt. I'm a cold girl today!

I am creating…  a very cool sweater in a very bright blue. I saw it on Soulemama a few weeks ago, bought the yarn and took it on vacation. Superman may have rolled his eyes at me because I was knitting while sitting out by the pool, but I'm very happy with it so far.

I am going… to get groceries later, for sure! I'm just waiting to see if it really does start sleeting when they say it will. If not, we're going to make a mad dash and hope the weather holds!

I am reading… A TON. If you go look at my booklist you may be a little, um, surprised at how much reading I've done since I last daybooked on Nov. 16th. I'm going to guesstimate low at 3000 pages of fiction. Yes, that's *three* zeros. You know how I said I read Twilight in like 2 days once I actually got going on it? Yeah, turns out my sister had the set so I borrowed them and finished them all by the 3oth. Ahem.

Otherwise, current reads are Storm Front by Jim Butcher (fiction) and The Power of Play by David Elkind (nonfiction).

I am hoping… to finish up Christmas gifts this week.

I am hearing… Christmas music. Steven Curtis Chapman is my favorite voice these days.

Around the house… I'm almost done with all the post-trip laundry and I'm counting that as a giant victory.

One of my favorite things… Ezra's special kisses. He's so sweet and affectionate.

 A few plans for the rest of the week … Catching up, hanging out at home and  celebrating the season.

See You Later!

We're packed and ready to go. The boys are off to their grandparents and Superman and I will soon be on a plane.

We'll see you next week!

Christmas Trees

I finished the stackable Christmas trees last night while watching Twilight. (Yes, yes, I know- just finished the book, so had to see the movie. The book is much better, just like usual.)














I went with reds and greens since these are for the boys and they are still learning all the Christmas tradition stuff. I zig-zagged the edges with the opposite color and hand stitched the edges closed.

About Last Night . . .

 

:: I finished everything on my list except hemming Superman's pants.

 

:: I also made extra stuff and stayed up way too late.

 

I'm a rule breaker.

 

:: I actually took pictures. My apologies that they're dark, but it's a lovely shade of gray outside and looking to be that way until at least March.

 

Gigantic pile of stuff to do:

 

The red skirt with a million pleats:

 

And another skirt I made in late summer, but never photographed:

 

:: I also read about 300 gazillion pages of Twilight. Well, maybe not that much- I'll just put it this way- I started the book (yet again) on Sunday and finished it last night. I've tried to get into that book  no less than four times and this time I had nothing waiting in my to-be-read pile and it was either keep reading that or don't read anything. So I kept reading and didn't stop. The writing itself isn't anything amazing, but the story was certainly compelling. I've got the others on order now. So all you Twilight people that have been harassing me every time I've started the book and put it down again can just stop it. I'll read them as soon as I get back from my trip!