Life, Homeschool, and a Forks Teaser

This is the 5th first sentence I've written for this blog. I do that a lot. I try something; it doesn't work. Then I try another. Fail. Rinse and repeat.

I feel like my writing is a little sub-standard at the moment. I'm pretty exhausted. These past couple weeks have just wiped me out. And I've spent the last 2 days pouring over school books, trying to catch up with my studies (because the 1st week I didn't have the books, the 2nd week I went to Forks, the 3rd week I spent all my spare time packing, and the 4th week we moved in and our car broke down on the way to school). I am a painfully slow reader, but I'm getting there. And I feel pretty confident that once I get caught up, keeping up will be fairly easy.

Hanging out with my favorite people.

Jermaine has been helping out a lot with homeschool. He's such a good teacher. By the time he leaves, I'll be caught up with seminary and have time for homeschool and my school everyday, but right now he's absolutely a lifesaver.

Here are a few Sadie School projects we've been working on:

• She wrote a poem the other day in the car. Rather, she thought one up, recorded it on my phone and then wrote it down when she got home. Next, she'll type it up and share it with you. :)
• We've been reading through the Chronicles of Narnia together. I read a chapter every night - and two nights ago we finished the first book, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. We're reading Prince Caspian now. It's especially great fun because I do all the accents. 
• We have several workbooks going. BrainQuest has a workbook with a bunch of subjects. She did a lot of work with US geography today. We have a couple of Sylvan books - one for math and one for language arts. She's been working on long and short vowels in the one, and basic multiplication in the other.
• I got a Gifted and Talented workbook, too. It's main purpose is to foster critical thinking. She is very smart, but often lacks confidence and asks questions to which she already knows the answers. I had her open the book, and without any instruction from me (there were instructions on her sheet), she was to fill out the first page. It happened to be on synonyms. I was really proud - she easily read the instructions on her own and knew what a synonym was! She got a lot of the answers correct -and what she got wrong was because she didn't know the meanings of the words. 
• We've been practicing handwriting, penmanship and basic grammar. She, like me, tries to write too fast and gets sloppy.
• We are working on a project helping Polaris Project come up with a party guide for people who want to host events to raise awareness about human trafficking. We are going to create a short video together explaining what trafficking is and how people (and kids!) can help (and stay safe!).

Heh. I had planned on writing about day 3 in Forks. That hasn't really panned out yet. I think . . . hmmm. Let's do a teaser instead:

Sunday

We woke up Sunday morning just feeling right. Fully relaxed, the day stretched out wide in front of us. Andrea had gotten up early again. Unfortunately, it was officially raining in Forks (finally). She didn't mind, except that there was, of course, no sunrise. I woke up around 7:30. I then came to the revolutionary conclusion that I was born to be on West Coast time. This explains why I'm happiest waking up here in Maryland at 10am and going to bed around 1am. When I have been on the west coast (the 3 times anyway) I've woken up gloriously early and felt sleepy before midnight!

Anyhoo. We wafted down to breakfast. This particular morning we were greeted with an invitation to enjoy French toast stuffed with apples and walnuts - and we did! I drank deeply my coffee from their pretty handthrown ceramic mugs (the best part of waking up). Bill, our host, informed everyone that high tide at 1st Beach was at 9:30am - and that that was the best time to go. We decided to drop everything and head over there, something neither of us normally have the luxury of doing. We borrowed raincoats from the Inn and headed down the road . . . 

To be continued. ;)

PS. If you think that you might die before I finish the rest of the writings about Forks (and you want to read about it before you do), take heart - Andrea finished all of her blogs! She, as you know, has a tendency to be one (or five) steps ahead of me. Hanging out with her for those few days and then going back and reading her blogs (that were, although they recorded the same events, very different from mine), I realized something. God has given her the gift of details. He's given me the gift of the big picture. I can tell you what it all means; she can tell you everything. Jermaine is a details person, too. But in a much different way, I think. He looks at the specifics for the beauty he might find in the little things. Andrea looks at details (as I look at the big picture) in a more practical way - to discover what it means and what we have to do next. None of these ways are wrong; all three are beautiful. And I feel blessed to have gained this bit of insight (especially about myself - I think it will help guard against certain frustrations that I have commonly faced to know that I am not, by nature, a woman of details (although, as I'm sure you've seen, I use them to get to the big picture)).

Huh. That was quite a long PS. Thank you for reading my blog. ;)

Being 29 on a random Wednesday at midnight

Man, it feels like I haven't blogged in forever. This is definitely not going to be long. Seminary starts tomorrow, but, I wanted to get back on track. This has been a busy couple of days - homeschool starting, training at work and, of course, school tomorrow. We're having so much fun, though! I feel so ridiculously blessed!

Here are some highlights from the first half of our first week of homeschool (ie: Walker School of Witchcraft and Wizardry).

The very beginning of the very first day.

Our tea party in the mall.

Her certificate for completing a Language Tree video.

Our density science experiment!

The results! Oil is less dense than water - so exciting!

We made a video, too, but it's way too long to post on here. I'm going to try to edit it and put it up later.

Okay. That's all folks. Got to get up early tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

361 Days of Being 29 (and 4 Days of Being 30 Because I Started Late)

[I'd like to add captions and frames to these photos but I'm going to have to play around online to figure out how to do it. For now, I'll put their captions up here. Photo #1: Mary Oliver's poetry - way inspiring! Sorry it's kind of hard to read. Photo #2: The irony is that I bought the book. Photo #3: Sadie and the friend she made at a beautiful watery light show at the National Harbor. And yes, that is my mother-in-law's Evo in the corner.]

This year I want to:

• Get published
• Home school my 3rd grader (stay tuned for a When, What, Where and Why blog)
• Learn to skateboard with Sadie
• Find ways to help Jermaine prepare for boot camp and tech school
• Get through my first year of seminary
• Read a bunch
• Lose some weight
• Survive and thrive while living with my in-laws (and hopefully grow closer to them in the process)
• find an outlet for my deep desire to perform
• Go surfing for the first time
• Go snowboarding
• Go to India and learn some Hindi
• Teach my daughter about human trafficking
• Vacation with friends
• Get a handle on our debt and become saving savvy
• Blog about my adventures everyday

I entertained thoughts of combining my blogs and/or creating a whole new one. But it was starting to seem too complicated so I thought I'd just begin with this blog and see what happens. I'm going to attempt to blog 6 days a week - sometimes on here and sometimes on one of my other blogs. And my two main objectives are that it be relatively short and bursting with all the creativity I can muster.

Some interesting tidbits of my day today (and the last few days at the end):

• I woke up and tried to make some coffee and the coffeemaker sort of exploded. I resigned to consisting off instant coffee while I live here. I try to buy fair-trade coffee, but there was no fair-trade instant coffee at Giant. So I did what I do when I'm not sure if the people that made the product I'm purchasing were paid a fair wage - I prayed for them.
• The coffee debacle reminded me yet again that I am addicted to caffeine. I filed it away in the "deal with later" part of my brain.
• I went to Borders to get caffeinated and peruse the shelves. One of my favorite activities. Didn't buy any books. Win!
• Got hit on by a very nice Hispanic man. But got annoyed when he wouldn't leave even after I told him I was married.
• Figured out that the clutter that surrounds me at the moment is depressing me and making me unproductive.
• Found out that Sadie didn't know how to make a sandwich until her Aunt Danielle showed her yesterday. 
• This doesn't pertain to just this day - but I've lost 8 pounds since I had my caloric revelation! Still need to blog about that at some point . . . 
• Sadie and I are going to be doing some volunteer work for Polaris Project by putting together party kits, gathering stuff that survivors need and participating in the DC Stop Modern Slavery Walk. Super stoked!
• Got an email about the India trip 2011. Feels real again!