Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Ending just in time to start



What?

Yep.  Homeschooling two, in two different grades turned out to be more challenging than I ever thought.  Add in lost time when 1 is sick, much less when they are both sick but at different times, and, well.  This looks like a math equation, but mostly just = FAIL.  Then the music theatre class sucked out about 6+ hours per week of teaching time, the vacation days, time off for funeral, etc.  Wow.  

This year was an amazing learning experience, it just didn't fit into the "school year" timeline.

I gave up on blogging for a while, trying to stay afloat in everything else.  I didn't 'float' so well, but here we are the last few days before the next school year, and the kids are just finishing their work for last year.  I really need a vacation (October!), but we stagger on.  I think we've worked out the things we need to change to be more successful next year, so I'm optimistic.  The girls both admit they would have forgotten too much, and they "would've been bored" (their words, really), if they hadn't had some school to do over the summer.  We all agree that some school over the summer is a good thing.  Just not as much as we had. 

So, we are almost finished, just the eldest still working away.  She should be done tomorrow, but we'll see.  She's starting to get really lazy, getting in the way of her own success, really.  How often do we all do that each and every day.  My kids are really teaching me some valuable lessons in this process.  Stop getting in my own way.  Who knew?

The new school year starts on Tuesday, 9/6.  We'll have a little down-time as the new materials will be late in coming since the girls were late finishing.  So, some slower days to recover from the mad rush to finish.  Oddly, both are asking me to push them to work this hard from the beginning of the year.  You might think this is so they can finish early and have a longer summer.  What they say they really want?  To move ahead to the next grade faster.  When I've suggested this as a possibility in the past two years, they have rejected the idea as unappealing.  I have no idea what changed, but I hope I can set a good pace that will move them in that direction without burning us all out.

Seriously.  I need a vacation.  NOW.

We will make our scheduled family vacation in October, as per usual.  Florida is on the roster this year, and we are in heated debate regarding the parks we will visit this year.  I'm pretty sure that is all sorted out, but until the tickets are in my hand, I won't believe that any decision is final.  Sadly, the airfare jumped quite a bit in the time we've been kicking around ideas.  We really need to get that sorted soon.  We got all flummoxed when Himself announced a work trip to either London or Frankfurt.  There was a brief flurry of thought along lines of altering the family vacation to Europe, but spur-of-the-moment trips like this are very much out of the budget.  So, no go on that one.

My lovely girls are very sad to miss an opportunity to visit "all those cool places we've studied in history" and have to go to amusement parks instead.  Ah.  They are wonderful girls. :)

It seems a bit much to try to fill in all the blanks since I last posted a million years ago, so I won't try.  But, a highlight from the year was Tour de Fleece.  I managed to reach my goals and had a blast doing it.  I never totaled my yardage, but I was pleased.  I tried spinning from my first batts, managed some heavier weight yarn than my "usual", and spun with some new elements like firestar, faux angora, etc. My new goal is to knit with some handspun before next year.  I was surprised to realize I had never done that!







Oh well, off to finish up more schooling.  We'll see if I can't juggle more things this year. lol

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Welcome back (before you disappear again, right?)! We do some math (and violin lessons/practice) all year; no brain drain and less time to get into trouble. Congrats on the TdF; I haven't knit as much as I would like with my homespun, either.

Jamie said...

Himself is in charge of guitar lessons, and those are during the week before school, MWF. Math is the one that needs to go on year-round, at least math facts. They both struggle with that, but especially the eldest.

I was just really surprised at how much harder two were to manage, and how much time we lost with the music theatre class. It was worth it, but, ouch!