Elena 
1.
“I am in the fiftieth year of my life: therefore a mature man on the road to old age: perhaps death is near. I have achieved very little in the half a century of life and of following the priestly vocation. I feel humble and ashamed before the Lord, and ask his pardon `for my countless sins,’ but I look to the future with imperturbable and confident serenity.” – Pope John XXIII Journal of a Soul (1931 entry)
2. Last weekend, Izzy and I hit a really, really great tag sale. Most of the stuff in it was still priced too high, but the clothes were a real deal! I love buying clothes for my daughter. She’s like my life sized Barbie doll. Here is an instagram shot of Izzy in the new oriental top I bought for $2. Couldn’t touch that in the stores for less than $20!
We only paid $5 for these!
3. The homeschool dance is coming up and we had to get a dress for that too. Found a really nice and modest short dress for only $12 at Gabriel brothers. Looking forward to seeing her in it.
4. In Akron we have these steps near the famous Glendale Cemetery.
Their historical marker reads:
Built over a two-year period, from 1936-1937, by the Federal Glendale StepsWorks Progress Administration, the Glendale Steps survive as a monument to the work of stone craftsmen during the Great Depression. Spanning a 200-foot slope, the purpose of the Glendale Steps was to enable Akron residents to descend from South Walnut Street to a city park along Glendale Avenue. The 242 sandstone steps were dressed on site and hand laid by WPA laborers at a cost of $22,000. Depression-era budget problems prevented the City of Akron from completing planned improvements to the park.
This summer the city is going to have student artists help to make signs and gardens near the steps to beautify them for the summer – and little miss Izzy had an interview for one of the positions!
She has to bring a portfolio of her best artwork and I’m hoping she can bring some of her jewelry too. This will be her first experience with interviewing so we are very excited about it and hoping she can wear some of her new wardrobe to the interview.
5. I have lost 30 pounds and am still losing. It was relatively easy after I gave up wheat and grain and sugar. Who knew!! People are noticing too. I had comments last night and at my aunt’s funeral and people from church.
So why does it make me feel so uncomfortable? I’m happy that I lost weight and I’m happy people notice but I just feel … awkward? I’m going to have to work on a response to that.
6. My homeschool support group meeting attendance has been way off this year. I was talking to one of my long-time friends/ board member about what we could do to get better attendance and make things more interesting for the new moms. And she said something that totally stunned me.
“Why are we keeping something going that no one wants?”
Well… I don’t know. I think it’s because the group helped me so much when I was starting 18 years ago and I have so many good memories of it and I want it to be there to help other moms who were once in my position.
But maybe moms today aren’t really ever in that position since homeschooling is more accepted and there are more options. I’ll have to think about it.
Anyway, with only a handful of us there last night we still had a very good discussion and I felt as if we were a bunch of girlfriends sharing and caring about each other. So maybe even at that, it’s worth it to continue.
7. Last Christmas, Mr. Pete pulled money out of our savings and bought a used Audi. It had low mileage and was in reasonably good shape and he was pretty pleased with himself. I was happy with it too because instead of paying $80 for gas at least once a week to fill up my big van, I was spending $40 every two weeks – very sweet!
But there were things about it that I didn’t like. For example, my keys have to stay in the ignition so that I can open the little door to fill it up – and that door is on the passenger’s side. So basically I have to leave the car unlocked while I pump gas and hope that no one tries to rob the car while I’m doing it. I’m not so happy about that.
The car also refused to start twice. Once when I was in a hurry to go pick up Noah from practice and once when I stopped at a store to shop. Both times were out of the blue and unexpected. Another time, the car turned on but an EPC light came on (whatever that is) and I only had a little power from the engine.
So I explained all of this to Mr. Pete and he said I must be starting it wrong or something, because it never happened to him.
Until it finally did happen to him the day before Easter!!
Since then he has spent countless hours on Youtube trying to figure out what was wrong and changing sensors and wires and tubes and whatnot. As I came out the backdoor last week to see him working under the hood I heard him rant, “I hate this car.”
And I smiled.
I’ve been driving the van. I miss the great gas mileage – but I don’t worry about getting stranded!
My daughter is beginning to homeschool. She is joining two co ops. One co op is for field trips and the other, at the local Catholic Church, is for art, PE , music and Religion once a week.
It really sounds like the families in their area are doing more of a hybrid school rather then homeschool- but it works. She is headed to a convention in two weeks to listen to loads of ideas.
I don't know what your group does- but this seems to be the cutting edge of "taking back schooling" in her area.
I can remember where homeschool was a bad word in the DC area- no longer!
That's good to hear Janette! We may be doing a co-op next year for high school biology. We've done something like that before but I had a bad experience with it. That was language arts though – science might be better!
I would enjoy reading a post on what you would or would not use again starting homeschooling.