So I have this idea that I want to try writing in a different way for a bit. I used to take acting classes as a teen and we were given all these short scenes to work on. Some were from plays and other scenes were written for the class. As a culture most of us watch scenes on TV all the time and I realized my life could be like this, right? I mean how many shows with families have you watched throughout the years? So here goes. Feedback on if you like this style is also encouraged. I am playing with the idea of writing several entries like this.
Getting into the Library:
Me: Everyone find a buddy and walk across the parking lot. Remember to look for cars. (I am carrying baby and a giant bag filled with about 25 pounds worth of books).
Ellie: Bria doesn't want to hold my hand.
Me: Take Charis' then.
Dominic: Nobody will hold my hand.
Me: I will.
Ellie: Charis won't hold my hand.
Joel: Charis will hold my hand.
Me: We are going to miss story time if you don't figure this out.
Finally we get to the library and open the door. I stand at the return book station for several minutes while my kids watch for books they want to renew.
Me: Lets walk into story time (Half my kids walk toward the children's library as I direct them to go into the other shortcut door straight into the room we want to be in. We get there and take our seats.)
Lunch Time:
We pull into the driveway and see that Daddy came home for lunch
Me: Let's get out of the car quickly so we can see Daddy.
Dominic: Joel's not letting me out of the car.
Me: Joel, why are you giving Dominic such a hard time?
Dominic: Stupid!
Me: Just get into the house, please. I still need to make the lunch.
I frantically get Isaiah, Bria, and Charis out of the car as the other ones get out on their own. It is time to make sandwiches.
Snack Time Yesterday:
Dominic is trying to share my chair
Dominic: Mommy I am going to tickle you and then tickle myself.
Me: You cannot tickle yourself because you know when you are going to try and tickle.
Dominic: Then I will just tickle you...hehe.
Ellianna: May I please have more.
Me: I just made you homemade crackers to go with almond butter and you already ate half an apple. There is no more.
Joel: But mom I am always so hungry. Sometimes in the night I am hungry too.
Me: You eat more food in one day than Daddy does.
Joel: But I have a bigger stomach than him.
Me: Don't you think Daddy has the bigger stomach.
Joel: I use more energy.
So here goes. I am just warming up. This could get better because kids are very entertaining and I have six of them :) Hope you liked this brief experiment. Any ideas of what you want to know about how things go during a basic day in my life? Let me know and I may write it out for you. :)
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Friday, June 6, 2014
Diet, Exercise, and a Budget
For those of you who read my last blog post on postpartum weight loss, you remember that I have finished my year with Lindsey Brin's workouts and moved on to...I did not mention exactly what I moved on to. To take care of my aching feet I looked into yoga. I found Jillian Michael's "Yoga Meltdown" level one on youtube, so that is where I started.
This workout is great because it is still challenging even though I have been working on really hard workouts for a year. There is a small amount of movement to add in some cardio, but not a lot. I added in the Natalie Portman ballet workout, also on youtube as well. This covered two days a week, Monday and Wednesday. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I either took one of these days off or found a ballet type workout on youtube. I like Ellen Barrett workouts and I used to do some of the Crunch Fitness pilates, so the "Pilates and Yoga Burn" took over one day of the Tuesday or Thursday workouts. Then I just did basic ballet bar work from when I used to take class a couple of times a week. One weekend day I pushed myself to run 3.8 miles and beat my time of 38:50. I accomplished this. I cut one minute off this time the first try in two years and another thirty seconds last weekend. These Lindsey Brin workouts have paid off. The run I do includes four major steep hills and pretty much none of it is exactly flat. If you live in Port Townsend, I am talking about running all the loops in Cape George Colony.
The results of these two weeks have been great as far as some rest, some added lean muscles, and some cardio. I have felt great with lots of energy, but not too tired. With Lean Out (Lindsey Brin) I needed a quick afternoon sleep by choice or not. I would sometimes just fall asleep nursing. I think my body needed a break.
In the weight loss game, I have lost not a pound. I am testing the theory that I might be at a good weight for me while breastfeeding because I have changed a few things to my diet and see little to no change. I am not gaining weight so that is great. I don't depend on super tough workouts to say at one weight. That is encouraging.
Now diet. How do I even know what to start with. In the past I tried calorie count, but after several months of this, one basically knows that the extra helping of something will put you over your calorie budget. There are several fad diets out there and all kinds of books I could spend money one to try and find the one that might make me shed ten more pounds but our budget does not allow for that. One could search for stuff on the internet...guilty of this. There is way too much information out there. Eat fruit, don't eat fruit. Cut out honey, eat honey. This is good and this is bad. Don't you just want to eat? I know I do. All the pictures of yummy food don't help either.
My conclusions, there are traditions from years and years of eating that are important. Eat lots of veggies. Eat seasonally. Having a farm share helps us focus on eating food that is in season in our climate. Make sure the food you get is grown where the soil is not stripped of it's nutrients. Think about the meat you eat. Buy meat from good sources even if it costs more. We have eight people to feed not and we only get a pound of beef for one meal, half a whole roasted chicken (so I can make the rest into soup, or two pounds of fish. Yes, this is not that much meat, but for quality meat it is all we can afford and I would rather have some than none in a meal. Each meal is mostly veggies, some rice, good quality pasta, homemade pizza dough, or once in awhile potatoes. I cook with coconut oil or butter most of the time. We soak all our grain in yogurt whey. I personally cut bread out of my lunches recently, partly because I am too lazy to cook bread everyday and because I don't know if I need a bread, pasta, or rice with every meal (some would say you don't need this everyday, but I don't know about that theory either). Breakfast is usually steel cut oats because it is cheaper than anything else. One dozen eggs is one meal. We have my freshly milled pancakes on one weekend day and eggs the other. As for snacks, we no longer have crackers unless I make them. I really like making Paleo crackers with almond flour. These are more filling and taste amazing! We have raisins, apple, or some other kind of fruit and nut combination for snacks. Sometime homemade yogurt and honey is great too. Now that I make all that I can for scratch, I don't feel the need to mindlessly eat all the time. I am happy with a few homemade crackers because one batch is only enough for one day. There usually aren't leftovers to munch on later.
There is a jumbled but brief overview of our diet. We are not perfect all the time. I buy bread so my kids can have more bread than I feel like making. I intend to phase this out, just like the crackers. The family food budget is tight, so I think the more I make, the less we should be spending eventually. The next step is to get a garden in our new yard that will actually grow us a decent amount of food. This is a project for next year or later, but I still have a goal to do this one day.
I just started Lindsey Brin's "Weight Loss" again to see if I can get rid of five pounds again like I did the first time I did this program. I am doing the weight loss 10K training, so it is slightly different. So far after four days not change in weight. We'll see. Last time I only lost the weight in the first three weeks.
This workout is great because it is still challenging even though I have been working on really hard workouts for a year. There is a small amount of movement to add in some cardio, but not a lot. I added in the Natalie Portman ballet workout, also on youtube as well. This covered two days a week, Monday and Wednesday. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I either took one of these days off or found a ballet type workout on youtube. I like Ellen Barrett workouts and I used to do some of the Crunch Fitness pilates, so the "Pilates and Yoga Burn" took over one day of the Tuesday or Thursday workouts. Then I just did basic ballet bar work from when I used to take class a couple of times a week. One weekend day I pushed myself to run 3.8 miles and beat my time of 38:50. I accomplished this. I cut one minute off this time the first try in two years and another thirty seconds last weekend. These Lindsey Brin workouts have paid off. The run I do includes four major steep hills and pretty much none of it is exactly flat. If you live in Port Townsend, I am talking about running all the loops in Cape George Colony.
The results of these two weeks have been great as far as some rest, some added lean muscles, and some cardio. I have felt great with lots of energy, but not too tired. With Lean Out (Lindsey Brin) I needed a quick afternoon sleep by choice or not. I would sometimes just fall asleep nursing. I think my body needed a break.
In the weight loss game, I have lost not a pound. I am testing the theory that I might be at a good weight for me while breastfeeding because I have changed a few things to my diet and see little to no change. I am not gaining weight so that is great. I don't depend on super tough workouts to say at one weight. That is encouraging.
Now diet. How do I even know what to start with. In the past I tried calorie count, but after several months of this, one basically knows that the extra helping of something will put you over your calorie budget. There are several fad diets out there and all kinds of books I could spend money one to try and find the one that might make me shed ten more pounds but our budget does not allow for that. One could search for stuff on the internet...guilty of this. There is way too much information out there. Eat fruit, don't eat fruit. Cut out honey, eat honey. This is good and this is bad. Don't you just want to eat? I know I do. All the pictures of yummy food don't help either.
My conclusions, there are traditions from years and years of eating that are important. Eat lots of veggies. Eat seasonally. Having a farm share helps us focus on eating food that is in season in our climate. Make sure the food you get is grown where the soil is not stripped of it's nutrients. Think about the meat you eat. Buy meat from good sources even if it costs more. We have eight people to feed not and we only get a pound of beef for one meal, half a whole roasted chicken (so I can make the rest into soup, or two pounds of fish. Yes, this is not that much meat, but for quality meat it is all we can afford and I would rather have some than none in a meal. Each meal is mostly veggies, some rice, good quality pasta, homemade pizza dough, or once in awhile potatoes. I cook with coconut oil or butter most of the time. We soak all our grain in yogurt whey. I personally cut bread out of my lunches recently, partly because I am too lazy to cook bread everyday and because I don't know if I need a bread, pasta, or rice with every meal (some would say you don't need this everyday, but I don't know about that theory either). Breakfast is usually steel cut oats because it is cheaper than anything else. One dozen eggs is one meal. We have my freshly milled pancakes on one weekend day and eggs the other. As for snacks, we no longer have crackers unless I make them. I really like making Paleo crackers with almond flour. These are more filling and taste amazing! We have raisins, apple, or some other kind of fruit and nut combination for snacks. Sometime homemade yogurt and honey is great too. Now that I make all that I can for scratch, I don't feel the need to mindlessly eat all the time. I am happy with a few homemade crackers because one batch is only enough for one day. There usually aren't leftovers to munch on later.
There is a jumbled but brief overview of our diet. We are not perfect all the time. I buy bread so my kids can have more bread than I feel like making. I intend to phase this out, just like the crackers. The family food budget is tight, so I think the more I make, the less we should be spending eventually. The next step is to get a garden in our new yard that will actually grow us a decent amount of food. This is a project for next year or later, but I still have a goal to do this one day.
I just started Lindsey Brin's "Weight Loss" again to see if I can get rid of five pounds again like I did the first time I did this program. I am doing the weight loss 10K training, so it is slightly different. So far after four days not change in weight. We'll see. Last time I only lost the weight in the first three weeks.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Homemade Yogurt is Worth the Wait
Soon after this day I went out and bought some yogurt starter and set out to try my own batch. I had a propane oven that would only go as cold as 170 degrees. I spent a whole day heating up the oven, waiting for it to be 115 degrees and then putting my culture into the oven in a glass jar. It felt like forever before there was something the kind of looked like yogurt. Let me just say, my first batch was not so great. I tried three more times, but gave up.
Then a month ago a friend and I were talking about making yogurt in a crock-pot. This is appealing for so many reasons. One can make more yogurt at once and one doesn't have to devote the oven to a whole day of yogurt making. I also got a special yogurt thermometer, because I know the first times I failed at making yogurt, temperature was a big part of that. ( http://www.amazon.com/Yogourmet-105-LS-9619-Yogurt-Thermometer/dp/B000N23Q1A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1400882785&sr=8-2&keywords=yogurt+thermometer)
The first time I made my own batch of yogurt I used White Mountain Bulgarian yogurt as my start. This stuff costs almost seven dollars at our local food coop. It worked well as a start, but I wanted a texture just slightly less lumpy for my yogurt. Plus, I wanted a slightly sweeter flavor.
I went back to the yogurt start I bought a few years ago, I mean I bought a new packet of course. Yogourmet yogurt start worked really well.
So how do I use a crock-pot to make yogurt anyway? I found this great website http://www.culturesforhealth.com/how-to-make-yogurt-in-crock-pot
Then I tried to modify it to work with raw milk. I only heated the milk to 115 degrees. This takes one hour in the crock-pot on warm. Then I added the starter or 1/2 cup of plain live cultured yogurt. Stir it in well. Then cover the crock-pot and put at towel over the whole thing. In about three hours use the yogurt thermometer to check the temperature of the milk. If it is too cold then put it on warm for about 30 minutes. Watch it closely. Turn it off when it is back to 115 degrees. Then wait. If it is late I night I will just check it when I wake up and warm it up if need be in the morning.
Climates change how long this will take. It could take somewhere between 6-24 hours to look like yogurt. There will be some liquid (Whey), but you can save this to ferment oatmeal, bake in bread, or look up other uses. You don't have to do much. You can leave the house, but keep checking it when you think about it. Then when yogurt is done stain it with a cheese cloth. Then put it in glass jars and cool it. I have read, one should put it in the fridge for about 8 hours. There are cultures that can make you sick if you eat yogurt warm in fermenting process. Cooling the yogurt in the fridge stops the fermentation process. Yes, this whole process can take two days. It is not a quick food to make, but worth it.
Walnut Tea Cakes
1/3 cup of coconut oilI have been searching for a filling treat that has more nutrients in it than the standard Russian Tea Cakes I used to make with my best friend Carrie in third grade. This was a Christmas time treat and it was a messy one to make. We would cover ourselves in powdered sugar, but it was a lot of fun and walnuts taste great in cookies.
1/4 cup of raw honey (we got mint honey from the Yakima Valley, it tastes so great!)
1/2 cup of crushed walnuts
1 cup of almond flour
1/4 cup of coconut flour
1 egg
1/4 cup of crushed walnuts for dusting
roll into 2 tbsp balls and then roll in crushed walnuts. Place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for around 12 minutes.
I hope you enjoy these as much as our family does. :)
Monday, May 19, 2014
Thursday, May 8, 2014
The Truth About Reading
The moments I have wanted and dreaded at the same time have happen for me the last few months. Tim and I took a leap of faith and decided to pull our kids out of their small Christian school and homeschool. I thought it was going to tear the world I expected to have apart, but it hasn't. Keep in mind this is the first time in 5 years I have not been pregnant and breastfeed and being a mom to several children. I am just breastfeeding right now.
I mentioned in a previous post that homeschooling was never something I planned for myself. My husband did a lot of research on homeschooling, but I always thought my kids would do just fine in public school. Then I had kids. I knew right away that I did not want my sweet little five year old to be put in a class of seventeen to twenty kids to figure life out. He was very quiet and we even waited until he was six to consider any kind of school. When we really had to decide something we picked a small private school and were blessed with some help paying for it. Joel went to school and opened up a lot socially, but I still questioned if we had picked the right place for him. It was the best school we could find, but by second grade he really was not learning a whole lot.
People started to make faces at me when they realized my son could barely read a sentence in five minutes and math was even worse. We worked on phonetics every summer and simple math to keep him on track, but school seemed to erase all of our work. I felt depressed, but also sad because I did not want to see my child struggle in school the way that I had. So there you go, Tim was right.
We did not make it through second grade. I have been working on second grade with my son and first grade with my daughter. My daughter would probably do well in any school in town, she just has that kind of personality, but my son is different. Not a bad different and certainly not dumb. The boy can figure out all kinds of things if he wants to. As mom I can teach at all levels, but it is also important to me to help my son feel like he is not behind. Plenty of kids don't really start reading until later ages, one just doesn't hear about it. Maybe one hears, X percent of the population is illiterate. Why is that the case? How did this happen? There are so many factors that go into reading. If I had one kid I would blame myself so much more if he was like my first son, but I have a daughter who reads everything she can get her hands on. Our home is filled with books. I read to my children, so does my spouse, and grandparents. These kids know that reading is fun and important.
A friend looked at me one day and said, "The nice thing about homeschool is that he doesn't have to read yet. Most kids pick up reading when they want too." I remember thinking, but are they being hassled like me about my child not reading? Have a failed completely?.. and then it hit me. She is right. We can read history and science together. We can focus on grammar and talking about stories. We can do so much to make books still important, at a level beyond nursery school, and really get to know why reading is worth it.
When I learned to read I was placed in the dumb group called the sparrows or something like that. We knew we were dumb because while all the other kids had long chapter books, we had baby books to look at. Let's face it, maybe I had some trouble reading, but I knew what a real book looked like. I never really grew into a person who loves to read. I can say now that I like to read, but I love to write much more. My husband tells me I must like writing because there was less pressure on me to write. I can say at younger ages that is probably true.
So as I sit with my kids and feel like hopefully they are actually learning, I realize they are getting a lot more help than most kids are. If my son was in school, reading at his level, he might slip through the cracks, but I am not going to let that happen to him. I am more aware of where he is at and I am able to be alright with that. As a homeschool mom my friend is right, he doesn't have to read yet. As
I leave insisting on reading alone I have seen a lot more improvement. My little boy is now interested in books, he wants to have a chance to read to me, and even if every word is not perfect he can get through a sentence in less time than before.
I can give him a chance to practice and we will get there. Everyone tells me that by twelve, homeschool kids usually can read. I would not say my son cannot read at this point, but we do have more work to do. In just a few months there has been a lot of progress. Sometimes we are the obstacles in our children's progress. Just because a system tell you that one should read by five years old doesn't mean that kids wake up one day reading. It is our job to nurture a skill, not beat it out of kid. Don't feel bad if you are in my situation. I used to feel ashamed like I had missed one to many library story times or something, but just as kids walk at different ages, they also read at different ages too. I would rather have a son who starts reading at twelve and loves it for life than a kid of reads at five and hates it.
I mentioned in a previous post that homeschooling was never something I planned for myself. My husband did a lot of research on homeschooling, but I always thought my kids would do just fine in public school. Then I had kids. I knew right away that I did not want my sweet little five year old to be put in a class of seventeen to twenty kids to figure life out. He was very quiet and we even waited until he was six to consider any kind of school. When we really had to decide something we picked a small private school and were blessed with some help paying for it. Joel went to school and opened up a lot socially, but I still questioned if we had picked the right place for him. It was the best school we could find, but by second grade he really was not learning a whole lot.
People started to make faces at me when they realized my son could barely read a sentence in five minutes and math was even worse. We worked on phonetics every summer and simple math to keep him on track, but school seemed to erase all of our work. I felt depressed, but also sad because I did not want to see my child struggle in school the way that I had. So there you go, Tim was right.
We did not make it through second grade. I have been working on second grade with my son and first grade with my daughter. My daughter would probably do well in any school in town, she just has that kind of personality, but my son is different. Not a bad different and certainly not dumb. The boy can figure out all kinds of things if he wants to. As mom I can teach at all levels, but it is also important to me to help my son feel like he is not behind. Plenty of kids don't really start reading until later ages, one just doesn't hear about it. Maybe one hears, X percent of the population is illiterate. Why is that the case? How did this happen? There are so many factors that go into reading. If I had one kid I would blame myself so much more if he was like my first son, but I have a daughter who reads everything she can get her hands on. Our home is filled with books. I read to my children, so does my spouse, and grandparents. These kids know that reading is fun and important.
A friend looked at me one day and said, "The nice thing about homeschool is that he doesn't have to read yet. Most kids pick up reading when they want too." I remember thinking, but are they being hassled like me about my child not reading? Have a failed completely?.. and then it hit me. She is right. We can read history and science together. We can focus on grammar and talking about stories. We can do so much to make books still important, at a level beyond nursery school, and really get to know why reading is worth it.
When I learned to read I was placed in the dumb group called the sparrows or something like that. We knew we were dumb because while all the other kids had long chapter books, we had baby books to look at. Let's face it, maybe I had some trouble reading, but I knew what a real book looked like. I never really grew into a person who loves to read. I can say now that I like to read, but I love to write much more. My husband tells me I must like writing because there was less pressure on me to write. I can say at younger ages that is probably true.
So as I sit with my kids and feel like hopefully they are actually learning, I realize they are getting a lot more help than most kids are. If my son was in school, reading at his level, he might slip through the cracks, but I am not going to let that happen to him. I am more aware of where he is at and I am able to be alright with that. As a homeschool mom my friend is right, he doesn't have to read yet. As
I leave insisting on reading alone I have seen a lot more improvement. My little boy is now interested in books, he wants to have a chance to read to me, and even if every word is not perfect he can get through a sentence in less time than before.
I can give him a chance to practice and we will get there. Everyone tells me that by twelve, homeschool kids usually can read. I would not say my son cannot read at this point, but we do have more work to do. In just a few months there has been a lot of progress. Sometimes we are the obstacles in our children's progress. Just because a system tell you that one should read by five years old doesn't mean that kids wake up one day reading. It is our job to nurture a skill, not beat it out of kid. Don't feel bad if you are in my situation. I used to feel ashamed like I had missed one to many library story times or something, but just as kids walk at different ages, they also read at different ages too. I would rather have a son who starts reading at twelve and loves it for life than a kid of reads at five and hates it.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Complete Change
It has been two months since my husband and I decided to homeschool our two oldest children (the other four are not school age yet). In such a small amount of time I have watched our whole family dynamic change and grow. My older kids are very helpful with the little kids and with household tasks. The are begging to learn to cook and I have taught them both to make scrambled eggs so far. Both of them could make mom and dad breakfast with a small amount of help. This is great. Cooking is not the only home based task my kids are learning. We all clean the house together and organize laundry. So when do we find time for school?
The mornings are early in our house. I wake up around 5:30 most days and everyone is awake by 6:30. Joel and Ellie need to practice piano first thing. It is hard to make them practice for a long time at these ages, so the often practice twice a day. Dad is involved in as much of this as possible since he know much more about piano playing a music than I do. We eat breakfast and by 7:30 I want us getting ready to do math. The younger kids view this as coloring time. I also will read stories if some of the kid want me too. Next we have to work on Language Arts. We have been focusing on writing about what we read, so this is parent focused. I try to add things like nouns, verbs, etc. and we have workbooks that include this as well. Science is a family favorite, so often we all read about space, animals, or weather together. Our activities are simple at this point, but fun. History is all about the world this year. We started with an intensive study of Bangladesh, but we are moving to brief histories of other countries now. It is fun to see what the kids remember in a week.
In the model where one is tested constantly, I realize that very little information sticks with me today. Learning is such a natural process, but I feel like we forget this sometimes. I used to be so afraid to homeschool because my kids might not learn everything. The truth is, they learned less before. Don't tell them, but they end up doing more work. However it takes less effort because they are so much more involved with what we are working on.
My biggest challenge is my younger four kids. Some of them enjoy just playing on alone, but there are many interruptions. We do not have much time for activities outside the home, but I make a point to take the kids to story time once a week. Sometimes I feel like I should be doing more with them, but then I realize what they gain too. They have older kids around playing with them, guiding them in activities, and they get to learn cool new information right along side the older kids. Our family as a whole is bonding more than we would if the older two kids were still in school.
I never planned to be a homeschool mom and I did not think the role would fit me, but now I can see how it can work. The funny thing is I say I did not want to homeschool, but I used to imagine myself a teacher when I worked on my French Literature degree in college. It has taken me ten years to figure out how to use my degree wisely and I think pouring all my skills into my children is not a bad way to use my liberal arts education. This does not mean I only plan to educate my kids, but I feel like I am finally using my degree in some way.
The mornings are early in our house. I wake up around 5:30 most days and everyone is awake by 6:30. Joel and Ellie need to practice piano first thing. It is hard to make them practice for a long time at these ages, so the often practice twice a day. Dad is involved in as much of this as possible since he know much more about piano playing a music than I do. We eat breakfast and by 7:30 I want us getting ready to do math. The younger kids view this as coloring time. I also will read stories if some of the kid want me too. Next we have to work on Language Arts. We have been focusing on writing about what we read, so this is parent focused. I try to add things like nouns, verbs, etc. and we have workbooks that include this as well. Science is a family favorite, so often we all read about space, animals, or weather together. Our activities are simple at this point, but fun. History is all about the world this year. We started with an intensive study of Bangladesh, but we are moving to brief histories of other countries now. It is fun to see what the kids remember in a week.
In the model where one is tested constantly, I realize that very little information sticks with me today. Learning is such a natural process, but I feel like we forget this sometimes. I used to be so afraid to homeschool because my kids might not learn everything. The truth is, they learned less before. Don't tell them, but they end up doing more work. However it takes less effort because they are so much more involved with what we are working on.
My biggest challenge is my younger four kids. Some of them enjoy just playing on alone, but there are many interruptions. We do not have much time for activities outside the home, but I make a point to take the kids to story time once a week. Sometimes I feel like I should be doing more with them, but then I realize what they gain too. They have older kids around playing with them, guiding them in activities, and they get to learn cool new information right along side the older kids. Our family as a whole is bonding more than we would if the older two kids were still in school.
I never planned to be a homeschool mom and I did not think the role would fit me, but now I can see how it can work. The funny thing is I say I did not want to homeschool, but I used to imagine myself a teacher when I worked on my French Literature degree in college. It has taken me ten years to figure out how to use my degree wisely and I think pouring all my skills into my children is not a bad way to use my liberal arts education. This does not mean I only plan to educate my kids, but I feel like I am finally using my degree in some way.
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