Cindy's Life as She Knows It

It's currently February of 2018.  Last I wrote was in August.  Then I blinked and it was Halloween.  And I blinked and it was Thanksgiving.  Half a blink to Christmas.  Blink again, two months into the new year.  Today I am babysitting my three granddaughters and homeschooling my son.  We are having a relaxing morning since my son is finished his homework from his tutorial for the week and watching the first ice skating competition of the 2018 Winter Olympics.  The Olympics are a great learning opportunity for families.  You can take the opportunity to use a map to locate all the countries that are participating.  You can learn about the different sports that are involved.  You can tally the medals won, creating a big wall chart with flags and sticky notes.  I am a little sad because this is the last opportunity I have with my son to make it a part of his lessons.  The next time we have Olympics in two years he will be a h...

I have come to realize August is the beginning and the end.  The beginning of "cram it all in" for anything you failed to do this summer.  The beginning of youth and high school football.  The beginning of all the back to school planning and the beginning of thoughts turning to fall, Halloween and all things pumpkin.  August first is really the end of the lazy days of summer.  June and July are all about "we have all summer" and there's no rush to do much of anything because we have "so much time".  Then August 1st arrives and everyone realizes that in one month summer is over and school starts and where did our summer go?  There's a crazy sort of rush to relax.  Get in the amusement parks, pool days and meetings with friends.  But if you are like us, we have already lost every evening to football starting August 1st and all the planning for homeschool and my classes at Heritage must be done soon and I haven't even begun! So here's to you...

Tuesday is August first and I am waist deep in homeschool planning, which is nothing new.  I am also planning for three classes that I now teach at a homeschool tutorial so that's a bit different, but the biggest change I would say is that this summer not only am I learning what it's like to be off work for a few months and home again every day, but I also do not have any daycare kids in the house.  I think for just about the first time in almost 30 years I do not have any little people coming to spend the day with us for fun in the sun.  The good thing about that is that there is no alarm clock most days, Dakota sleeps in and I get much more work done.  It's quieter.  The hubby isn't on me for daycare chaos and I don't have to plan activities to keep anyone busy.  The bad thing is also that I don't have to plan activities to keep anyone busy.  Gone for now (until my granddaughters are a bit older) are the "summer camp" days of Koda and his friends doi...

Summertime - not my favorite season by far, but the best part is here!  It's almost over!  Seriously, that's how I see it.  The beginning of August means the beginning of the end and that's fine with me!  Bring on September with crisp mornings, cool nights, hoodies, clear skies and NO HUMIDITY!  It's been ridiculous here for the past few weeks with heat indices around 110 degrees and that's just rude.  No one wants to be out in that and my husband's high school football team and my son's youth football team have been practicing and it's hard on them and hard on me to even watch them! So for now I'll sweat and swelter and try to enjoy the days that are free from schedules and demands.  I'll plan for homeschool and cooperative and hide out in my air conditioning, dreaming of fall and all the wonderful things that come with it.

On Tuesday one of the young men on my son's 100lb football team lost his mother suddenly.  She had been sick and had cancer, but had beaten it once.  It came back quickly with a vengence and her death was a shock to all.  I had to tell my 11 year old that his buddy's mom passed away.  This week has been one of my reflection.  He has asked a lot of pointed questions about death and about how his friend will adjust and how his life will change since his mom was a single parent and he had no siblings.  I answered him honestly when I could and we discussed things when I wasn't sure.  It gave me insight into the caring, thoughtful young man I am raising when what I usually get is often a snarky and rude kid.   However, I have really traumatized my son today. We had another long talk about death in the car coming back from Ecoadventures before going to the funeral home. I was explaining the difference in a viewing and a funeral. He wanted to know why...

     Yesterday tanked after lunch time. Dakota was a beast, I felt defeated, Dad came home stressed and it just led to a tumultuous night with lots of grouching and arguments and tears. Yuk. Then to top it all off we learned that one of the kids on our football team lost his mom suddenly last night. Heartbreaking and shocking and of course it brings to light your own mortality.       So today I woke up ready to make this a better day. Dakota and I had a nice eggs and bacon breakfa st and talked about what the problems were in our day yesterday and how we are all going to work to fix them. Neither of us likes when we are all angry at one another. After breakfast we got to work on morning chores, welcomed the girls and started our volcano, putting it together and then using paper mache to do the outside. He worked on a Scholastic News while the paper mache is drying.  While he paints it I am going to make witches brew with the girls.  I am ho...

Today was our first day back to homeschooling since the Christmas break and it went exceptionally well.  I am trying to work with the advice I received from my homeschool reviewer who was a retired 30 year veteran teacher of kids Dakota's age.  He told me ways to incorporate Dakota's strengths with my demands to keep things more peaceful here at home.  I felt like we were never doing enough and he said we were doing plenty and had a great well rounded curriculum. My osn and I started our morning with less grouching since the puppy made waking up much more pleasant.  We got breakfast and morning chores out of the way and then tried my new Amazon Fire Stick to watch Disney's Johnny Tremain from Amazon Prime.  With the Fire Stick we were able to put it right onto the big screen.  We were trying to read the book, but it was going so slowly and Dakota wasn't enjoying it so I went with the advice I received and just allowed him to go ahead and watch the video t...