Home Spun comic strip #642

We came home from our anniversary trip and we were up until 1:30 in the morning talking with our kids. They claim we are too interesting and keep them up. We say the same of them. Our bed becomes a roundtable for conversation about any point of interest and several comedy sketches. It's amazing my husband ever gets to work on time, they always have so much to tell us at bedtime. These are moments I will never forget.

Hiking in Liberty

Here are pictures from our hike at Walnut Mountain Park in Liberty, New York. Any picture can be clicked on to enlarge it. (I wanted to keep them small since there are so many.) This is not the park's real name, at least, it isn't on the map. But it's at the end of Walnut Mountain Road off of route 55. It's amazing we could find anything in this area, since nothing is clearly marked. We did have a wonderful time exploring the trails.

You do need to hear the story of this black beetle. As I was taking pictures I noticed a scratchy feeling on my calf. I felt a lump under my jeans and thought a burr or thistle must have worked its way up under my pants, so I rolled up the leg and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw this 1.25 inch long beetle! (My husband thought he was looking at the head of a snake, so he jumped too.) Hubby carefully used a rock to lift it away and put it on the ground, but the darned thing decided to fly back at me and began climbing up my leg toward my shirt. We took a picture (Why yes, I'm a blogger) and then my husband knocked it to the ground again. I figured I would take more pictures, but it wouldn't stay still. It kept crawling toward me. At one point, it climbed onto my sneaker and wouldn't let go. I decided extra pictures weren't worth being stalked by a beetle, so I stepped around it and we headed off down the path. It's probably still looking for me.

Twenty

My husband took me away for two days. He wanted a little time alone. So we went upstate and went hiking and exploring. But first we got lost. This always happens. I should always make a point of buying a map first thing. The tourist maps are good for nothing. Especially when you explore an area that doesn't really believe in posting road signs. You can go for miles in some places upstate without any indication of what road or route you are on. City girl that I am, I'm spoiled. I like signs posted at every intersection.

Did I mention it rained? A lot? Luckily, we had half a day to walk some trails before the sky blackened and opened up. I'll have pictures up soon. Maybe tomorrow. They will involve many butterflies, a dragonfly, rock formations and a giant beetle that was out to get me. Tune in tomorrow.

Today we celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. Here is a list of twenty reasons we are still together, in no particular order.

1. He laughs at my jokes. Even if they aren't funny. I do the same for him.
2. We like to read. Often we share books with each other. And then discuss what we read.
3. We can be quiet together, just sit relaxed, and know the other is there.
4. We touch each other when we pass. Even if there was plenty of room to get by.
5. He is one of the only people I feel comfortable talking politics with.
6. I know I can be truthful with him about everything.
7. I trust him. He trusts me.
8. We discuss, but we don't argue much.
9. He catches the bugs that would crunch if you step on them.
10. We are both nature lovers.
11. We are both romantics.
12. He steps in when I don't feel like being the responsible one.
13. I pay the bills so he doesn't have to worry about forgetting to do it.
14. We both read the comics first.
15. He edits and critiques my work.
16. We can finish each other's thoughts.
17. When I ask for the "thing", he knows what I'm talking about.
18. He is protective of our family.
19. We respect each other.
20. There is no one we would rather spend the next twenty years with!
    

Carnival at MrsMamaHen and Next Week...Here!

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling is at Mrs.MamaHen! Please stop by and support the carnival!

Next week, I will be hosting the carnival here at Home Spun Juggling! Please consider submitting a post to my carnival using the blog carnival submission form. The deadline for submissions is Monday, August 1st at 9PM EST. I hope to hear from you!

Home Spun comic strip #641

Most days I am oblivious of the school calendar. I am as guilty of the "No school today?" line as the passersby we come across in the course of our busy days. Often it's the movable dates I'm unaware of. School conferences, administrative days, first day of summer vacation, and do school kids still get off for Election Day and Veteran's Day? It's hard to keep track. It's all I can do to remember to turn in my quarterly reports on time.

Home Spun comic strip #640

Home Spun comic strip #639

Some day I will hide a camcorder and show my online friends just how funny my kids can be. Usually jokes happen so spontaneously, I've never caught it on film. If they see the camera, they become deer in the headlights.

I hope you are enjoying this series. I've come up with some more for next week. And please let me know in the comments, when do YOU know you're a homeschooler?

A Supportive Family

For several months (half a year) now, I've been trying to get myself back into shape. I'm doing this for many reasons, but one of the most important is that I want to continue to be able to lift my three kids. They aren't getting lighter. That's me at the end, by the way. And you can make any photo bigger by clicking on it. Pictures courtesy of my husband. He managed to stay off my back. This time.




I can't believe my kids can do the three high without me now. Chase is finally strong enough to anchor. I'm impressed. Not as much by the three high as I am by my husband. He managed to get a shot of all of them smiling at the same time. They don't even look nervous!

















I haven't been able to hold Marina up on my hands since I was pregnant with Sierra. For some reason, the doctor didn't want me to lift her while I was pregnant. I don't know if it's clear that I'm on my knees. Her feet are in my hands. I'm not ready to do this standing!




I've still got it! I had to reconfigure the pyramid since it's a little scary when you are nine and you have to be at the top of a four high, so I set them up all along my back. This is much more comfortable than it probably appears. My body feels very strong this year, even if I haven't dropped the pounds I was hoping to. I just need to keep telling myself to keep trying. I'm doing great!

Home Spun comic strip #638

Carnival at HomeschoolCPA

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling: One Thousand Gifts is at HomeschoolCPA! Please head on over and take some time to think about the many gifts in your homeschooling life, like the support of an online homeschooling community!

Home Spun comic strip #637

Impressing Learning

My father smoked a lot when I was a kid. Everyone in the family wanted him to quit, and many methods to convince him were employed, but he wouldn't hear of it. Some time after I started dating my husband, he did quit, quietly and on his own. His epiphany came in the form of a PSA. It said that people who smoke are addicted, and if you smoke, you are an addict. He didn't want to be an addict, so he quit.

As the saying goes, when the student is ready, the master appears. As much as we care about others and want the best for them, it is very difficult to tell them what we think they should do and expect them to listen. It's true that we can force them to our will from time to time, but my feeling is that anything forced is not going to be embraced wholeheartedly. And if an action is not embraced, it will not make a lasting impression since the decision is not owned. People are hard to change. Change comes from within. There is a need to be open to a new way of thinking.

This is also true of homeschooling my children. I could force them to learn what the state arbitrarily tells me must be learned at such and such age, but I choose not to. Instead, I try to help them learn the way I would have wanted to learn, through stories, games, and challenges. When Marina was younger, I started teaching her history using the classical model, beginning at the beginning. This made so much sense to me. I had never learned early history, myself. Until high school, I learned American history from Columbus until some point during the Civil War. Suddenly history was not a boring textbook presenting one perspective. I learned as much as she did as I looked up books about the mythology and folklore of other lands. Nonfiction picture books became our favorite mode of learning. We enjoyed learning about history, and this has stuck with her through the years.

When I tried to teach Chase reading, I realized that he had a harder time getting it. Reading was an excruciating task, and usually ended without any retained memory of the book. It wasn't until I allowed him to read graphic novels based on classics that he finally started to warm up to reading. I waited very long to do this because I believed what all the teacher's manuals told me, that comic books were a poor substitute for real books. When I finally followed my intuition and let him read what he was interested in, I was eventually able to convince him to read books without pictures. There is a need to feel confident before you can take on a challenge.

My challenge with Sierra is becoming math. No surprise, as it has been a challenge for each of my children, as well as my own challenge. I try to make math friendlier by pointing it out in our daily lives, by playing Sudoku in front of them, and just by being open to math myself. I want to be an example for my kids. I remember math being painful in school, endless pages of question after question without any reason except that it was practice. My writing hand would hurt and my head would grow tired from figuring one sum after another. I was told there were patterns, but I didn't see them. That wouldn't come until I taught my own kids, more than a decade after I had taken my last math test. I am trying to make Sierra less afraid of math by trying to help her see the patterns while she is young, by explaining the "why" behind showing all work, and by letting math be part of life rather than apart from it. Because I learned all this on my own, when I was ready. It was not something I could be told to do.

Home Spun comic strip #636

I'm embarrassed to say our table is usually covered with at least one layer of newspapers, books, drawings, several pens, the occasional remnants of mail, cups and plates. And because I am usually the one who straightens the clutter into one pile, I know exactly what has been left on the table. I have an uncanny knack for remembering and finding whatever is left out. In fact, I'm usually the one who finds anything missing. My greatest moment was when I found a steel yarn needle Marina dropped on the lawn. You can't get closer to finding a needle in a haystack than that!

By the way, when Chase read this comic and told me, "But you DO have x-ray vision!"

Home Spun comic strip #635

Home Spun comic strip #634

There are lots of baby birds in our yard right now. We have seen many fledgelings following their parents around in the trees, taking field trips to our feeders, and practicing singing. You can tell they are still babies because they sound like off-key versions of the adults. And yes, I do call them teenagers. They can fly fairly well and eat by themselves, but if mom or dad come near they fluff and scream and beg. It just shows that even if you are physically capable of doing things on your own, it doesn't mean you can't still use some reassurance and assistance from mom and dad.

How to Lose Half a Day or Marina Goes to the DMV

Well, it finally happened. Marina has a learner's permit. I am still a bit dazed by all of this. Not so much because she has reached another milestone on the road to adulthood (ha!), but because I'm still getting over our trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I know what you're thinking. Making fun of the DMV. How cliche! I felt the same way on Thursday. That was the day I went to our local office. We happen to like our local DMV. The employees smile at you, I don't ever have to wait long and they are helpful. That day, they helpfully told me they didn't give the written test there before we waited on line. We had a choice of either driving 30 minutes north or 30 minutes south to take the written test at one of the bigger DMV buildings.

Now you would think I could have checked online before we wasted our time and six quarters in the meter at our local office. I did. I couldn't find anything about the written test on the New York DMV.gov site. Every time I searched the site, it gave me information about making an appointment for the road test. OK, no big deal. Marina had to work that day and I wasn't sure where the other offices were, so we went home to look it up and decided we would go on Friday after she finished work at 1. I looked up the information on a much more useful site, DMV.org, looked at a map, planned my trip, and we left right after Marina finished at the library on Friday.

And we got lost. The half hour trip turned into an hour as we overshot the exit, backtracked through the city streets, and ended up parking several blocks away. I kid you not, the entire street in front of the DMV building was being dug up. Because the building was in the middle of the block, we ended up walking an extra block around, then picked our way through the maze of construction cones and orange tape. I told Marina this was her first test. If she could find her way to the building she was sure to get her learner's permit.

Finally inside at around 2pm, we stand on the first line for a half hour. At the end of the line, she gets a number for the line for the written test. At this point, we're humming Paul Simon's The Afterlife and wondering if Paul was sure he was on his way to heaven. By 3:00, we reach the counter, Marina's application and vision are checked, but only one person can verify her identification. About now I realize the the one person who can do this is the same person who is calling over people who passed, taking their pictures and photocopying their identification. Time seems to slow down. I keep checking the clock. I had two hours in the meter and the building closes at 4pm. It's now 3:05. Once the doors are locked, no one can get back in. No one! Not even the mom with the credit card! I decide to leave Marina so I can add more time to the meter.

Except the meter didn't want to give me more time. I head back and find her taking the test, which she finished quickly. OK, maybe we can get out before the meter runs out. If nothing else, I can leave at 3:40 and try to feed it again. We sit and wait because the security guard is getting nervous by the amount of people standing near the counters waiting for results. At 3:38, I'm getting antsy because it is so crowded and noisy we can't hear if her name is called. We stand closer. 3:40. Should I stay or go? 3:41. I ask the guard if I can just give Marina my credit card if I get locked out. No! I have to be there if it's my card. I decide to take the chance of a parking ticket. At 3:43, her name is called. She passed! Hooray! She hands over her ID to be copied. Her picture is taken. I ask where I pay.

And we get another number. Number 112, to be exact. At the one counter accepting payment, the "Now Serving" sign flashes 096. At this point, I'm certain I'm going to go back to a parking ticket. Now serving 097. Wait a minute. I remember that girl and her father. She had her photo taken when we were waiting for Marina's ID to be verified...an hour ago! In the end, we were at the DMV until 5:00. Three. Hours. Three hours that felt like much longer in the timeless, windowless world of the DMV office. My theory is this was all part of the test. I think they use long waiting periods to weed out potential road ragers. If they can't sit patiently for three hours, they would never be able to withstand NY rush hour traffic.

As we walked through the turnstile, past the point of no return, Marina showed me the temporary learner's permit. The cashier had mistakenly written that she had declined voter registration. She hadn't. Sigh. We left the building to the flash of lightning and thunder rumbled as we raced to reach the car before the downpour. It was an escape worthy of Indiana Jones.

By the way, I didn't get a parking ticket. This was a welcome miracle after the trials we faced!

If it Seems Quiet Around Here...

...We're in the backyard!

















































Then again, not everyone who wants to be outside is outside!

Home Spun reprints #242-244: Fireworks

I hope everyone has the chance to enjoy some fireworks!

Home Spun comic strip #633

I hope everyone has a nice weekend! I will be taking a break next week. I'll try to put up some reprints for your amusement!