My Ebenezer

The only way I know of to ingrain the alto part of a choir arrangement into my thick skull is to practice it over and over again. This means sitting at the piano for what accumulates to hours, beating out just the alto line repeatedly until it becomes my own song and I can't hear it any other way. I pity my poor family who has to listen to this process, for the alto line is typically a very boring part all by itself. Still, it adds such depth to the soprano part that I love singing it. The extra benefit of all this repetition is that I get to dwell on the words of the song, as that's what I'm singing as I attempt to get the notes right. The other day I was browning ground beef for tacos as the alto line I had been practicing marched through my thoughts, punctuating each push of my spatula. Before I knew it, my spirits were lifting out of the murky quagmire that had been my grueling homeschool day. "You who wove me into being in Your likeness, jeweled with worth; Y...

We don't often visit the skate park at our local park. There are several reasons, none of which sound good or reasonable to my 11-year-old.  So when Noah asked me last week for the twelfth time if we could go to the skate park, I made an appointment to take him and Seth at 8:30 the following Saturday. (I figured that was before it got too hot, and also before the tattooed, pierced, smoking, and usually foul-mouthed crowd that usually hangs out there would show up.) We wrote it on the calendar for all to see. In the interest of honesty, I'm going to tell you that I dreaded this event all week long. No lingering over coffee in my nightgown over here! Well, as strongly as I dreaded it, my boys looked forward to it. Noah kept checking with me every evening to remind me that I had promised to take them to the skate park on Saturday. And this morning he couldn't wait.  We arrived at 8:29, and there was just one group of people there: a family with boys their ages. Must ha...

I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't want a repeat of the last 26 days of school. Get up. Attempt to exercise (it's HARD to work out when you haven't done it in 3 years! Everything jiggles. But I digress). Make breakfast, chug my coffee (wouldn't it be nice to linger over a cup of coffee one day?), shower. Take Eden to the babysitter. And then be pulled 6 directions at once as I blunder to oversee sixth grade, K-5, and a household. Explain things, hold kids accountable, yell a few times. Pick Eden up. Make lunch, another cup of coffee, break up 4 fights in an hour, and go on multiple tirades until every last math problem is answered correctly. Don't you wish I was your teacher? * Ahem .* (I freely admit I'm going to need to fix some things!) So last night, I decided we'd take a field trip to the zoo today. And we did. I homeschool, and it's good to take off the tunnel-vision-blinders every once in a while and remember that we can go places...

Flabbergast: verb , to surprise someone greatly; astonish That was me today. I have been patiently painfully trying to teach Seth how to read. To put it mildly, it hasn't been going well.  If you are familiar with the BJU press K5 curriculum, you are aware of Service Words.  These are words that are commonly used that are very difficult to "sound out" and so they must simply be memorized; words like the, here, come, said , and so on. Recognizing letters (and so therefore reading in general) does not come easily for Seth. We have been beating our heads against the wall over here a little bit. Until today! I was quizzing him on the words for this week, and after some pretty discouraging sessions, he suddenly quit confusing the words the and here . He was actually getting them right ! I was thrilled. YAY! We were finally getting somewhere. Or so I thought... As a final round victory lap, I held up the card which said the .  Seth gave me a blank stare. "Come on, Set...

My whole body just released a sigh of relief as I watched my trusty blog template open up a fresh page for me to write on. Can you believe I've been writing in here for 10 years? Josh took the kids to Academy to buy some soccer cleats for the boys, and so I am sitting in my favorite IKEA chair by my bed. I've turned on classical music, and I'm just soaking it in. My soul needs some soothing today. For reasons I can't fully explain, I have been really depressed lately. God is good; I intellectually assent to that fact, but in the details comprising each long day you wouldn't be able to tell that from my life or attitude. I am trying to home school Noah (6th grade) and Seth (Kindergarten) and still manage Eden. I think back to the year Noah and I began home schooling. He was in 2nd grade, my gap-toothed little academic sponge. We loved it. Four years later, home schooling has disintegrated into a flimsy imitation of what it used to be. If I'm going to be hones...