Much apologies for the light blogging. I am caught in the end-of-summer push to get the house ready, lessons planned and squeezing as much money as I can out of my transcription accounts before I am more restricted in when I can type because of full-time homeschooling!

To complicate matters, three of my kids have sore throats – ranging from “my throat hurts mom – can I go outside and play with my friends,” to a low deep moan from my 13-year-old who couldn’t even tolerate having the light on. I took him and his sister to the doctor yesterday and she suspects (gulp) mono! And since their sore throats are caused by a virus and not a bacteria we are treating them symptomatically but an antibiotic isn’t going to help them much.

So here’s where that stands. Noah has a little sore throat but he was eating and playing like usual and I didn’t even know he had one until I asked him. Izzy has a sore throat and is on a prescription gargle to ease the pain, but she is acting pretty normal other than that. Gabe has a terribly painful sore throat with swollen lymph nodes. I don’t have the results of his stat monospot test back yet, but I’m sort of betting that this is NOT mono. He isn’t THAT lethargic and once the gargling and the Motrin eased his sore throat pain, he downed two hamburgers and stayed up to watch a movie with me! So I think he just has to get over this sore throat.

Unfortunately they have missed two cross country practices. I sure hope its not mono, because if it is, Gabe for sure will be out the rest of the season, as well as soccer. Apparently with mononucleosis the spleen and liver can become enlarged and more prone to bleeding if they are traumatized or stressed…sigh… almost 20 years of parenting and this is the first time we’ve ever dealt with something like this. Being a mom of many sure never gets dull!

Calvin starts his EMT course on Monday. He took his basic life saving course on Wednesday and got to meet some of his classmates and his teachers. He is really getting excited about his new adventure. His girlfriend starts her courses the local college too. I hope this is the end of the late nights, every night at her house for a while and I hope Calvin is putting some “study time” into his schedule.

I am planning Sam’s school year. He is going to do American Literature, American History 2, American Government/Civics, Biology, Geometry, English from the Roots Up, Religion, as well as his organ and piano lessons, and soccer.

I think I lost my mind a little bit with him last year. I was so uptight about making him fit into the high school mold of “you MUST get so many hours in to make a credit hour, you MUST complete this text book to get a credit” blah blah, institutional school blarney, that I forgot that what I want him to do first and foremost is to LOVE LEARNING!!!! and what I have to do as a teacher is show him how to take what he has learned and put it into a documentable form so he can get credibility for what he has learned – like a CLEP test, or the PSAT test. The other thing I really want him to do this year is a lot of writing. I think I will even have him do some journalling.

I have had a really hard time finding a place on line that can give me the support and encouragement I need as we do this high school journey in home school. There’s lots out there for little kids, and beginning homeschoolers, but not so much for those of us doing high school. I have found a LOT of encouragement from reading Doc’s Homeschool Journey. She at least has done the high school thing and I found her story to be comforting.

A lot of my friends do Seton and Abeka and I am just not interested in putting my kids into that type of educational, “grind it out” type of education. I guess I am becoming more Charlotte Masonish in my approach.

That said I am definitely moving that way with language arts and art in general with my other kids. I found out that the teacher at the community center is only going to be there two days a week this year, and my kids will only be able to take her clay and ceramics class. While that’s good for one session, I want them to have more through the year, so I am looking at the Serendipity Art schedule and also this from Sprittibee – maybe both. I love art.

Let’s see…anything else?

Well, I must be premenstrual or something because I have no tolerance today for stupid debates. And there were a slew of them this week.

I am thinking of doing a chronical/journal/series on Fit at Fifty with a Four year Old, which is what I intend to be next time my birthday rolls around. I’ve been trying to figure out, how come it seemed so easy to lose a lot of weight 15 years ago, but not now. Yea I know the age thing but it’s also the time thing. 15 years ago I took my baby and my toddler and went to Jazzercise, whether they wanted to go or not (mostly they did) and I wasn’t homeschooling. Now I have 6 kids, the older ones want to go places but can’t drive, I am homeschooling 4 of them, and I’m working more to keep up our needs. A lot of mornings when I have to decide between walking or working, working has to win out. So I want to blog about the balance of all of that too.

Oh and lastly, as we are getting ready for the school year I decided I want to spend a good part of the first part of the year reading and studying St. Paul, since it is his year! I’ve got Saint Paul the Apostle: The Story of the Apostle to the Gentiles ordered. That with map study of his journeys and I think we’ll have an interesting time this year.

Have a great weekend.

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