Back to (Home) School: My "Class"

Like so many others, yesterday was our first day back to school, but for us...we don't need to leave the comfort of our own home! We are among the growing number of home-schoolers, and have been for years. We've been home-schooling since our oldest was two years old, almost 9 years ago now. Wow! I can't believe it's been that long.

Home-schooling is just the everyday normal to me, but I know for those out there who are curiously watching from the side-lines, the more information the better. Some are even trying to determine if this life-style leap is for their family. So...I'm going to spend some time in the next several posts giving a little more detail than normal about our home-schooling life.

If you're one of the curious, stay tuned (or sign up for the e-mail option). I'll be sharing my personal why's, when's, how's, likes and dislikes, etc.

For now, let me just introduce you to my students...my three beautiful children:

My oldest, Abby, is 10 and is definitely our studious one at this point. She learns really well through reading and so we load on the books!! She loves art and science and enjoys learning about civilizations such as the Egyptians and Romans. Abby prefers studying outdoors when the weather permits and can be found most days on the swing or up a tree reading. She reads about 3-4 hours a day, including everything from specific encyclopedias (she studied anatomy last year) to teeny-bopper novels. We limit her workbooks to only what's absolutely needed, since we don't want to take up valuable reading time with busy work. See the stack by her right knee? Out of all the books surrounding her, those are the only workbooks. Happy 5th grade, Abby!

 

 

Abram, my second child, ALL boy, can't sit still to save his life. We're working on it, but he's only 8 so no worries. I can hardly believe my little fire-cracker is starting 3rd grade! He's as smart as a whip, but you would never guess it if he were confined to a table and chair. I learned a long time ago to not worry about where this child was or what he was working on...as long as he was in ear-shot of what was going on. He is EVERYWHERE! During the history reading, for example, he might be spinning on the floor, flipping his legs over the back of the couch, spinning on the breakfast stool, laying on his back swinging his legs in the air, or snuggled next to me with his head in my hip and his feet over the arm of the couch. But...when I'm asking the comprehension questions...he gets them right. I could sit him down and make him do a workbook page in math, but 2 hours later he'd be on the SAME page and in tears. However, when I verbally ask him the questions (such as, "72+33 is?" or "What's 6 x 2?") and only have him sit down to do the problems requiring visual attention, he can get through three lessons in one sitting. Go figure. I DO make him sit down for periods of time to practice sitting still...but I pretty much accept that these stretches of time are our least productive times of his day.

Joshua, or Bubzy, is my spoiled baby. He gets held a lot, talked to even more, and if one person's too busy, no doubt he'll find someone to give attention. He's a big handful but everybody just adores him. "What's that?" is his constant question and he's learned to say quite a bit already. Whether it's something we understand or not, he never stops talking unless he's asleep.

 

My 3 Loves

 

 

Here's to a new year in growing and learning together.

 

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Guess What This Is?!!!

 This is the HOPE of a new home! We put ernest money down on a new house yesterday and I'm beyond excited!!!!

We let the kids get out and roam our saved lot for a little while and took a few pictures. We'll have better ones to come, but the baby was asleep in the van, so we were pretty much stuck to one place taking the pics.

In the picture below, do you see the grey rectangle near the edge of the fence? It's close to Abby's head. Those are the mail boxes for our part of the neighborhood. They'll be super close. We picked a corner lot so that I could sit on our driveway under the port colture and see down the street two directions when the kids ride bikes. That's one of their favorite things to do! For the same reason, we chose a lot near the back of the neighborhood. There will be far less traffic and just beyond our street, the neighborhood ends with the last row of houses. The kids can ride their bikes in a huge rectangle and I can see them for quite a ways before they turn and circle back around.

The kids look so far back, don't they! That's because Cervelle homes are built on bigger lots. We're standing on the front end and they're in what will be our back yard. Abby looks like she might be coming through the back door into the kitchen, lol. The fence behind will be ours, too. Where it changes color is where our property ends and the next one begins. It's just so exciting!!

Please be praying for us! We have to sell our house for a certain amount to make all of this work. Hopefully, we'll be moving between Thanksgiving and Christmas! Whooo!

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Making Space Mondays, Link Party #5

This Monday is all about Oops decluttering, or Out Of Place Stuff. This is the first month we'll be making our way through the whole set of acronyms, too, so I'm excited. Just a little reminder, here are the acronyms I use and what they stand for:

Oops is Out Of Place Stuff

E.T.'s CUP is Easy Trash and Clean Up Place

PITS is Pass IT Stuff

NAPs and MAPs is Needs A Place or Make A Place

and lastly

TLC is Tedious Longsuffering Care

Each Monday I focus on writing about one of these acronyms and what it means to me, and this is the first Monday of the month so my focus is OOPS or Out Of Place Stuff. This Monday I want to share a little secret with you...more like a confession.

I am a horribly messy mom!! There...I said it. The cat's out of the bag and the truth is, it's a very ugly, dingy cat who claws at people and never purrs. I am a MESS. I've always got something in my hands, whether it be my laptop or a baby on my hip. I'm setting a drink down so that I can switch hips. I'm changing a diaper and jump up to answer the phone, meaning to get back and put it in the trash. The kids are sprawled out on the floor with a half dozen pillows finishing a math lesson and Abby wants to help with lunch, so there ends up being workbooks and pencils everywhere. By the end of the day, we're all wiped out with no energy left and we leave dishes to be done later. By the end of the week things are looking bad and it's a little chaotic. That dish that keeps getting overlooked when we quickly do dishes is stinking up the whole front of the house. We're tripping over toys, weaving our way through an L-shaped hallway and crash on our unmade beds! Oh, and the toilet wasn't cleaned last week. Has it been two? No, we cleaned it when so and so came over. Oh my, that's been like a month ago! Well, at least Josh dropped in one of those Scrubbing Bubbles self-cleaning pucks.

Oh yes! This is my life and my struggle. I'm a mom who can't function in chaos and I fight it daily.

When it comes to decluttering a room or closet or drawer, there are always OOPS things involved at my house, but when I start a project like I'm about to do, I don't actually start with that room. I start with picking up my messes. I start with doing the daily grind stuff like dishes and laundry or tidying the living room. Decluttering a room is actually a bit of fun for me because I just can't wait to see the end result, but in reality it would all fall hopelessly apart if I didn't backtrack and fix the messes that I made before sinking my hands into a project.

OOPS decluttering starts with the boring. It starts with what we have hated doing since we were kids. It starts by picking up your messes. I want to introduce you to my Chaos To Calm In 1 Hour posts. These are some of my favorite posts because this is exactly how my life is. When someone like me chooses to be a homeschooling mom, they are also choosing to live with extra mess! We have more art, more books, more workbooks, more office supplies, more projects, more dress-up clothes, more pencils and erasers, more science projects, and more odd things like a huge white board, than normal moms. Add to that the many, many more hours that all of my kids are home and have the access to this stuff, and you can just imagine.

Chaos To Calm in 1 Hour, The Master Bedroom
Chaos To Calm in 1 Hour, a Child's Room
Chaos To Calm in 1 Hour, The Kitchen
Chaos To Calm in 1 Hour, The Living Room
Chaos To Calm in 2 Hours, The Whole House

OOPS in the Laundry Room, May's Project

I've decided to focus on one room a month to make it a little easier to write about. I usually hop around, doing whichever project demands my attention, but this will make it easier to find my photos and organize my thoughts while still homeschooling full-time and nursing my baby.

I wanted it to be a small room with a big impact, so I chose to start with the laundry room. OOPS decluttering is pretty obvious in this room, isn't it? Catch up on laundry. You think I have a perfect system? With matching baskets and home-made soap?

Think again! (All except the home-made soap. I do have that-surprisingly easy!)

People, all three of you that read this, I need this as much as anyone! So...are you with me? Let's dive in there and clean out those laundry rooms! It'll likely take me all week to catch up on laundry for OOPS, and I'll be back next week for E.T.'s Trash (Easy Trash and Clean Up Place). And who knows, maybe I'll chip out a little time to write more than one post this week!!

Oh, and as soon as I can, I'll be posting a link-up that will be on-going for anyone wanting to show off their laundry room.

Our Debt Story

My husband and I have been living the debt-free lifestyle from the very start. We got married almost 12 years ago and found Dave Ramsey right from the get-go. We already had about $16,000 in credit cards and loans accumulated, but we didn't have kids yet, so with 2 incomes it wasn't too hard to pay off.

Well, that changed. We lived completely debt-free (no mortgage, no car payment, no debt at all) for 7 years--then WHAM--we were sucked in. We wanted the life everyone else had. We felt uneducated, we felt behind...we felt the pressure. Our lives had been fine, but things just don't move as fast when you're living without borrowed money. We couldn't buy the nice furniture, everyone else gave better gifts (much better), and people seemed to notice that our clothes never changed much.

We bought into the credit cards aren't all bad mentality and 1 card became 2 and then 3. It started slow and then grew into this ugly monster.

All at once the well-he-is-so-I-can, elementary games started. He spent $200 on golf clubs, so why can't I spend $200 on a desk? Mature. Yep-that was us-picture of maturity.

I felt like a queen walking through Walmart putting more than necessities in my grocery cart! A rug for the bathroom. Curtains for the kitchen window would look awesome. Why sure I'll go on a date with you at my favorite restaurant. A movie every week--sounds fun. It truly felt good at first. I think that first couple of months were a bunch of blurred denial!

Then, it was wake up time. The alarm sounded. Our bills were coming in faster then we could pay them. I'm actually thankful for how low our income was at the time because it might've taken longer to notice the change otherwise. But...we ignored the warning signs for a full year. We bought a car, but had nothing else to show for all the debt--about $20,000.

I know it doesn't sound like a lot when so many have a whole lot more, but that was 2/3s of one year's income! And we gathered it in one year!

Next came the scared stage. We could no longer pay everything, even cutting back. We were in a debt cycle, paying the car loan with a credit card, paying one credit card with another and buying groceries on our credit card just to eat. I sat in the kitchen one night with my best friend and told her everything. I sobbed. She had known me for the whole 7 years of financial bliss and didn't ever imagine us being unwise with credit cards. She gently confronted me and advised me to tell my husband how scared it was making me.

I took her advise and to my delight, he had no reservations. We knew we were not handling money the way we should've been. Josh, my hero forever, went straight away and got the two credit cards we owned. He snapped the Master Card in half. I cut both of mine in half, too. We left the Amex alone, but decided to put it away. No more spending for fun--we were done.

We've kept that Amex to this day, but lowered our allowed spending and changed our card to the most conservative we could. We owe nothing on it and keep it that way. (Why we decided on them is another post).

We stood there together...scared. We hadn't looked in our pantry first, we hadn't thought too much about the pain that was soon to come. We just did what we knew was right. I sort-of expected God to reach down and save us--and He did--but not as quickly as I'd imagined.

The following two and a half years were like surfing a tsunami when you hadn't ever seen a surf-board. They were shameful and embarrassing. They were scary and they were hard. There was one two week period of time when we didn't have any money to shop at all and we lived out of our already sparse pantry. People assumed we didn't care because we couldn't make church events because their "cheap" parties still required bringing expensive chips and cokes.

Our salvation came a year and a half after we made the decision to live without any more credit cards. It happened so fast it was dizzying. Josh came home one night and said someone suggested he put in a resume at this oil company. It didn't require a degree, which was unusual for that position. We didn't know if it would be a pay increase, but the possibility set heavy in our minds. We needed more money and fast. On the application we dared to put a number we thought was too high, but it was what we needed. We prayed and prayed for two days. Josh got the interview. I had butterflies. He would know the following week.

I told Josh, "I don't want to bug you by asking every day. If you get it bring me flowers and I'll know". It didn't take a week. He came home two days later with a bouquet of 9 roses. I was so excited I was jumping all over the living room like a kid. Josh was grinning from ear to ear. When I finally settled down he asked me to count the roses. That was how many 1000s of dollars more a year he would be making--it was far above what we had dared to ask! Josh still works for them--they're an incredible company.

It was still another year before we paid everything off and it was still hard, but we had food money and we even went out and had fun. It was such a relief that we could breath that we barely felt the pain. When it was all over and everything was paid for we took a deep breath and said "NEVER AGAIN!!!"

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