rain, rain

its raining outside, and it is awful quiet outside and in here too. with the kids on vacation, the music can blare even with the occasional dirty word. it fills the quiet house but not quite as well as 3 noisy short people . i miss their chaos but its nice to be able to be me for a while, to get things done with out constant interruption, to relax and know that they are in good hands and having a good time. the lucky mutt just got his fill of popcorn when i fumbled my shoebox full of fresh hot off the stove popcorn. i guess thats less calories i will eat, he ended with out 1/2 of the box and he cleaned up every bit, now he is behind me snoring away.  it doesnt feel like it should take hours and hours to buy curriculum but i want to get the best deal so having multiple tabs with multiple shopping carts, comparing prices is a big job. when the boxes start showing up in the mail, it will be so fun to open them up and see what it all looks like but that is when  the job will truly begin... getting through the books, planning the next year. i often wonder if i am doing them any good by teaching them at home. but when Anni asks to take her school books on vacation and jak cries at the idea of going back to "regular" school. it feels better, i know that with a few tweaks we will do okay.

last day of year one

today is the last official day of our first year of homeschooling, overall it was okay. it took alot of adjustment on everyone's part and there were a lot of intense days. days where i wanted to send everyone back to school as quickly as they could get dressed but in the end, it was totally worth it. even up to this week i questioned the sanity of trying this for another year but my next big task is ordering curriculum, so it is in my court if i want to change things. the kids overall seemed to enjoy homeschooling, they were healthy most of the winter, and we got through a lot of work, went on a lot of field trips. pendarvis, the first capitol, the frog exhibit, the harley museum, olbrich gardens, the varsity band concert, homeschool camp, the milwaukee public museum.. a 2nd time for the mummy exhibit and the mining museum/jameson museum in platteville. we read some really good books together, the Education of Little Tree (that one was kind a snooze for mom), The Witches, Al Capone Does My Shirts and the one that i think was the favorite and most likely the longest; Percy Jackson and the Olympians.  we met lots of cool people through a number of homeschool groups and i learned that we cannot do it all, and that it is okay to not do it all. we dropped out of holy family homeschoolers midway through the year, and started spending more time withe the stateline homeschool group. next year we are looking forward to more field trips, a better science curriculum and lots more reading.