Fall Nonsense

It's been very cold in the mornings here the past week or so.  I like to keep the thermostat set very low all the time, but first thing in the morning I get up and turn the heat up to luxurious, extravagant heights - soccer team and organic food heights, and then I sit around in my pajamas and feel the air temperature rise up to what I imagine other people's houses feel like.  This only really works if I get up before everyone else does which fortunately hasn't been much of a problem lately because I've been up before five most days.  Was it Simcha Fisher who wrote the 'early morning worries' post?  The one about lying in bed thinking "Oh Lord, there's so much rhubarb".  Hahaha.  Yes.  Oh, Lord, there is indeed flowing from your merciful hands a wealth of rhubarb.  Please reign in the rhubarb slightly.  Sincerely, your humble servant.

Anyway, I apparently also wrote a post about this, looking back, although I can't find it.

We're in the thick of fall insanity over here - especially in regards to David going to school.  He's off to New York State soon to do some courses towards ordination and then back and then two more via a distance program and then a bit of a break and then two more through the same program, another through a different program, and then rounding of the school year with the final two in Michigan State.  New York State is first, though - I have to get through that without dying.  I deeply, deeply dislike the times I solo parent.

We're about halfway through running the Alpha program at the church, and I have stepped away from Bible study because the children are attending Awana on the same night, so we're pretty busy.  Once Alpha is done, the first rush of courses should also be done, and it will be Christmas.  Mustn't let the stress overtake the season of Advent, I tell myself, heaping yet more pressure on my head.  Mustn't flail about.

Homeschooling Update

So homeschool, I have figured out, is like everything else in life; it never looks like what you think it will before you start.  I don't know what exactly I imagined it would be like to homeschool but knowing myself I think I probably had perfection as my goal.  Wonderfully behaved children and the perfect curriculum and so forth.  Obviously that isn't reality and our school looks nothing like that (although I'm still searching for the perfect curriculum).  And I think I'm okay with this.  Sometimes I get all worked up about it and what we aren't doing and the things we aren't learning and the field trips we aren't taking, but you can't do it all and you can't join it all and eventually choices are made.

We're learning phonics, albeit at the slowest pace known to man.  We aren't intentionally doing math because we're living math all the time.  We're reading a lot and playing a lot and going to playgroup and also Awana.  We're doing puzzles and games and art.  It's pretty relaxed but I think it's just enough for us right now and I'm trying to keep track of what we accomplish every day and when I look back I'm actually pleased.

Mini-break

We took a little impromptu rest break this week - just getting away overnight to a relative's quiet place, where the children caught fish out of the pond and helped pick the last of the beans from the garden and ran around without shoes on and slept in bunk beds.  When we got into ministry I thought that we'd probably need frequent breaks but in the back of my head I was more likely humming and thinking 'yeah yeah, we likely will not because we are fantastic'.  Except we did, and it came as a huge shock to me that every few  months David was overwhelmed with exhaustion and we had to go away somewhere and rest.  And then it came as an equally big shock to me that I also got exhausted and needed to get away.  And finally the lead up to this trip has shown me that the time lapsing between breaks has gone on too long, in fact a friend in ministry told me she and her husband go away every month, and perhaps we need to start looking at more frequent breaks as well.

Of course, these are our people, and it is surprisingly hard to leave them.  When God gives you a congregational family he really...well, he puts them on your heart.  Your mind is filled with 'how is so and so's dog doing I wonder, did she get him to that vet appointment?  Did that guy ever fix his truck?  Is she okay?'

Our last 'vacation' consisted of driving for a whole day, attending denominational meetings, driving a lot more, doing course work, driving, driving, and then running around after the children at camp and coming home.  That was almost three months ago.  So, obviously, not enough for us at this point.  Anyway, the overnight break was a pick me up, and hopefully it will last us a little bit until we can do it again.  We live so far away from everything really that the only way to truly 'get away' is to drive for hours and hours and hours with three little kids in the car.  Not really a possibility on a frequent basis.  We're going to have to look at renting a cabin or something.

Life Margins

Quite a few years ago I heard about the idea of incorporating 'margins' into your life and the idea stuck with me so well that I think I do that automatically now, build in a space around the edges of my days that is.  In fact, when I don't do it, such as the past two weeks, I can feel it, feel the edges pushing in.  I get uncomfortable.

Wait, maybe you haven't heard about margins.  Okay, let me back up and explain for a minute then; everyone should know about this.  Margins on a piece of paper are those spaces around the edges that you aren't supposed to write on, and the author of the 'life with margins' concept argued that your days, your life in general, should have built in spaces of time; you shouldn't have things planned for every last moment you have available.  I don't remember exactly what the reasons were that the inventor gave but personally I can say that having a margin of time around and throughout my day allows me to have 'emergency room' in case I'm needed somewhere.  It lets me breathe deeply as an introvert, knowing I don't have to be 'on' all the time.  It gives me a break.  It lets me enjoy life rather than hurriedly moving from one task or location to another.  It saves me.

What margins in my life look like are blank spaces that don't contain anything.  No plans, no meals, nothing required of me.  And I achieve this by simply not filling up on activities and things to do.  I don't like to rush and feel hurried and scattered.  I often feel rushed and hurried and scattered, but the plan is not to.

Anyway, the past few weeks have been so incredibly full of stuff that I can't remember all of the things I need to do.  I need margins.

Life is overwhelming.

There is a spider outside of my window and I'm envying its relatively stress-free lifestyle at the moment.  This past week we've been without hot water (our water tank died) and it won't be fixed until tonight.  Add to that my husband trying to figure out his next steps for coursework on the road to ordination, and re-painting the church hall, which is not going to get done in time for Back To Church Sunday, I'll tell you that right now, and Alpha starts up at our church this week and there are nine meals and only three are covered and I'm making the first one so preparing food for twenty people can go on the list.  And, you know, trying to homeschool and all.  Blarg.  I woke up at five this morning, tense as a mouse in a cat fight, and have been trying to relax ever since.  I even did yoga.  Which wasn't a pretty sight.

It just cannot almost be fall.  Nothing is DONE.  I have so much to DO.  And I can't do a thing.  Well, yesterday I especially couldn't do a thing because I had managed to book my first day reading stories at the library with the baby's shots, and neither of those things could be cancelled so David took the doctor's appt. and I took the library.  And then of course the rest of the day we expected Fussy Baby to explode at any moment.  She was decent though, and David remembered to buy food while he was out, so I didn't have to rush home and cook and comfort an infant at the same time.  He's a hero.

Ugh.  I think I just need to write everything down on a list.  And I'm not cooking today because there are lots of random leftovers in the fridge so people can just manage with those.  I'm going to paint the coffee area in the church hall and that is ALL I'm setting up for myself before Sunday.  And I'm going to spend the rest of the day catching up with housework - laundry, floors, LAUNDRY, my heavens...

Calm.  Calm.

Pickles

I adore making preserves - pickles and such.  This past summer I must have made dozens of jars.  But I will admit they aren't necessarily the easiest foods to incorporate into a meal when you're just starting out with them.  Here are my suggestions, or at least what we do.

I often serve a pickle tray at supper, and almost always when we have guests.  A plate with a selection of pickled fruits and vegetables on it to pass around seems weird at first but everyone gets used to it and they can pick and choose what they like to eat with their meats or on their own.  And it also makes guests feel honoured, I find, to be presented with something so clearly homemade.  Generally here's how I organize the plate - I include something everyone will like, bread and butter pickles are a good bet, and then I include a newer food if I've tried a new recipe, and I make sure there are a whole bunch of colours so it looks pretty.  It also helps to add cheese.  You can serve this plate if you're having a meal where they seem to fit naturally (salad, sandwiches, etc.) and also just as an accompaniment to a regular meat and vegetable meal.

There you go, pickles.

Learning Notes - Looking Back On August

We've finished our first month of school, more or less, and we've done some wonderful and fun work that we're all happy with and also identified some gaps that need to be considered in the future.  Here's a little re-cap.

We've mostly focused our academic thoughts on phonics and introducing reading into our lives even more than it already is.  To that end David and I bought a lot of interesting books at the store for the children to flip through in an attempt to start 'strewing'.  I reorganized the playroom to facilitate ease of play and also did a massive purging of the children's books - getting rid of anything that didn't look like it was going to physically last much longer or that really wasn't in keeping with what we wanted the children to reach for.  Pretty much all the tv show type tie-in books went, and the Disney-fied versions of classic fairy tales - that sort of thing.

For phonics I've been introducing letter sounds and blending with Abeka's Handbook for Reading and set one of the Bob Books.  Because of the latter, the boy could say he'd read his first book this past month! That boost in confidence was amazing.  We're taking it slowly and as always our goal is mastery of a skill.

Since the last few weeks have had such wonderful weather, and because fall is closing in on us, we've spent the majority of our time out-of-doors.  We've gone to beaches and parks and friends' houses as often as we can, and I organized an 'I'm Not Going Back To School' party at a local beach/playground on an island nearby and invited local homeschooling families to join us for a picnic and swimming.

We also set up a homeschooling cupboard in the house as a central place to put all of our educational games and activities, our resource books, etc.  It's been a huge success because now the children can go to one central place and choose an activity from a large selection.  It's cut down on 'I'm bored' and 'Can I watch a cartoon' requests quite a bit and a lot of our bits and pieces are getting used more often, especially puzzles and board games.

As usual, this is all interspersed with a liberal amount of free play.  The children love to dress up and imagine, to make pretend food in their pretend kitchen, to play in the sandbox and with water outside, etc.  They help around the house with gathering laundry and putting dishes in the sink and spraying water and vinegar on windows and wiping it off...this is all play to them and a good way to introduce skills.

What were reading right now:

The Mouse And The Motorcycle.

Mildred And Sam

The Complete Frog and Toad Stories