I have conquered one homeschool corner of my life. Literally. (Like, "literally" literally.)

If I'm not careful, this may feel like a home design blog, what with this being the second of two whole no-skills-required make-over posts so far. Somebody stop me!

Today's project is our homeschool area. It doubles as our breakfast area and our storing art supplies area. It also attracts crumbs and unsharpened pencils. It's well-rounded that way.

Before I started, it was a jumble of abandoned curriculum, dog-eared writing books, and squelched dreams. Also it was gross and dusty. The kind of dust with hair and bits of colored pencils in it, not the shiny "internet home stylist" dust you see on the other blogs.

WARNING: This is not a before picture. 

A shocking revelation: that pic above is not taken when the project was yet to begin, a perfectly chaotic "before". It was taken when the one tidied corner was all fabulously done. I think this is the problem with reading people's descriptions of how they live as presented to the internet: we curate. As humans, we can't help it: we prefer to carefully select everything others see about us.

So: try not to compare yourself to fake others. I don't have a 5 step plan on how to achieve this because I'm terrible about it myself. I can say it feels nice, though, to show you my messy pit of a dining room table instead of making myself feel fancy. I can tell you that much.

Speaking of fancy, here it is, exciting and new:

Our art teacher at camp had jars for her pencils and I liked the way they looked... 

I didn't know I'd be doing this project until I ran into those pencil-bins at IKEA. I was unprepared to fend them off, and I'm not even sorry. The little s-hooks on the left are perfect for all our memory-work cards. I can already hear myself ordering the boys to grab their cards and practice while I go change a diaper or drink a diet coke or something. The bins lift off the hanging bar and sit level on the table. Isaac in particular will like being in charge of getting those & putting them back. 

The beating heart of our future college applications.

In case an actual homeschooler is reading this, here is the driving philosophy behind my homeschool gear organization: I want it to be really easy for the boys to put their crap BACK where it goes. It may not look like much, but the square one down on the left is the most important one in this entire room, maybe this entire house. It has three cheap cardboard magazine organizers in it- one for each kid and an extra for my worksheets and stuff (dot to dots, letter tracing) to throw at them when I need a few extra minutes with somebody else. 

The boys grab their own books for whatever subject is next, and they can clear the table when they're done. As the school year went on last year, I was surprised to see the boys were pretty good at keeping things in their bins. They ONLY put their own workbooks, writing paper & worksheets in there and it means we (usually) don't have to worry about where the math book went... not a good situation when I'm trying to also make coffee and get the day off to a non-yelling start. 

The hat belonged to Jonathan's grandpa. The jar is full of discarded bee's nests.
The Boba Fett guy is our clock. He shoots me with a laser when we're late for swimming.

This year in our Classical Conversations homeschool group we're on Cycle 3 which means we'll be studying human anatomy, so the body puzzle guy and the brain model guy will get lots of play. We'll also break out our sliding glass door sticker map of the United States, adding the states as we memorize them. I store the supplemental material for each of the cycle years in a bin in the garage until their time comes. Rotating through what you have on display & in use is helpful in townhouse living but flat-out required in townhouse homeschooling.

In case you're curious, how about a quick ramble about how we homeschool? We do 3 to 4 hours of schooling with the boys. Since they're still pretty little (1st and 3rd grade), it's been easy to get our main subjects done in that time. Math, writing, reading, grammar, memory work, Bible, Art, and Science. They do swimming for PE and play instruments. We do all that from about 9-12:30, then get ready for swimming or music lessons. One day a week during the school year we go to our homeschool group.

In the afternoons, they have free play time. They often make up elaborate stories together involving Legos and stuffed animals. Pokemon cards are their newest passion. I like for them to be responsible for entertaining themselves and for them to have unscheduled down time on a regular basis. Lately I've even found them reading books in the wild. I've also found them bickering and manipulating one another, but that's just the cluttered side of the table right there.

Isaac showing Grandpa Mike how to play Pokemon.
Strangely enough, Isaac won every single game that weekend...

They don't watch TV much and almost never during the day. They are easily freaked out or influenced by the stuff they watch, so we limit them on content quite a bit. They do like movies and sometimes watch a show while I teach one night a week. I have a confession about the TV thing. Deep down, I know it would so easily take over our entire lives. Remember that one scene in Lord of the Rings where Cate Blanchette and her excellent hair explain that she can't have the ring or all the world will love her and despair? That could be my family, planted in front of the TV in love and despair as we turn into brainless piles of average goo. It would probably feel quite nice, but I just can't handle the guilt.

So that's our homeschool space, and an outline of our homeschool day.

The tri-annual catch-up post

All of us in Tualatin, Oregon

 Well hello there! In keeping with my blog tradition, it has been years since my last post. I thought I ought to dust off this old thing in order to be able to post about our current big thing: adopting a daughter from Wuhan, Hubei, China.

 Our daughter is beautiful, smiling for her foster family in her pictures like the well loved child she is. We were given a video of her at barely a year trying to sit on a plastic horse, and pictures of her at 1 1/2 walking gleefully outdoors in a thick pink matching outfit. She was born with digestive tract malformations that caused her to need surgeries at the age of just a few days old. We haven't even met her, yet I ache thinking of her family having to relinquish her, whatever the circumstances.

Isaac in Florida

China Special Needs was not the first adoption program we tried. We nearly adopted a relative from foster care about 6 years ago, but the timing fell apart as Isaac made an appearance instead. We also signed on with a domestic agency for a while, then a local attorney, all of which netted us zero and made me feel we were competing with infertile couples, to be honest.

A friend recommended in January of 2013 we look again at international, and Holt's programs in particular. Our daughter was actually born right around that time! For those who might be adoption savvy, we now have our i800 approval and are waiting on Article 5 and Travel Approval. If my extensive googling is correct, we might be on a plane in the next 6 to 8 weeks.

 A quick run-down of the rest of our family life:

We are now fully committed homeschooling weirdos. We do Classical Conversations, a homeschool community, once a week during the school year and tons of stuff related to our family's travels and interests. It is great, and Toby who is 8 now loves reading so much we had to make a rule about closing books whenever one is walking about. (He came a bit late to reading and then took it in all at once, so I am still a bit in awe of the development.)

Isaac's Homeschool Group

J is working in law but has experimented with two different jobs since last we spoke, including toying with starting his own firm. His current position seems the perfect balance of freedom and income. He can do the work just about anywhere and it is nice to find a firm that is okay with that.

J and I started running about a year ago and ramped it up when we decided to start scuba diving. We did a 10k in January and the Vancouver USA Half Marathon last month. I thought I didn't like races (I am double-digit-minutes-per-mile slow and am about 30% overweight still) but was surprised how much I liked it. My dad, a long-time Marathon and ultra-Marathon runner, has been a great source of training advice/info and did the half with us. It was on father's day; perfect!

I'm still running a small music academy and performing. Today we're heading to the Oregon coast for a chamber music festival where I get to play Brahms and Schubert. Also Hummel, but I'm not sure yet whether that piece falls in the "get to" or "have to" category... That's all the news that's fit to blog for now. I plan to update with adoption news in particular, but I've made blog promises before...

Toby and Isaac at an old tungsten mine in Montana

Hope to see you around here soon!

Loud and Proud

So about the homeschooling kick I'm on...

Here's my trajectory, laid out so I can remember because I already find myself forgetting how I came to think of it as remotely possible in the first place.

I read Anthony Esolen's Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, which I believe I found by bopping around the "Customers Also Bought" links on Amazon. That raised some good points about education and started me thinking about what I hope for my boys to learn.

Then I read a whole bunch of stuff on teh webz and from the lie-barry. Some useful, some fascinating in a wow that's differnt kind of way.
Somewhere in there, more toward the second category if I'm honest, I read the Duggar's book. Yes, those Duggars. While I don't agree with the quiverfull movement (i.e. having a jillion kids because you believe God commands it) as theology, there's something to the openness with which they live their lives that I find admirable.

There will be things I do in my life which won't find approval from the majority of people. They will think I'm small-minded, provincial, perhaps even a "neanderthal" as one of my colleagues has said about women who stay home. Well, we're adopting. We're Christians. We are looking at homeschooling. There are mistakes to be made, and I'm going to set out and make them without hiding what I think or just plain hiding. I hope I don't swing too far the other way and err toward squashing others in the process, but I'm done with worry silencing me.

Dave Ramsey reminded me of a quote today at a seminar full of great quotes:
"To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. ~Aristotle"

... and of course “The fear of man lays a snare,” the Bible says, “but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe” (Proverbs 29:25).

The fear of man is a somewhat Christianese phrase, but it is such a great concept, and encapsulates one of the primary differences between a Gospel-centered theology and one based falsely on ideas of prosperity, ease and blessing belonging to Christians in their worldly lives. Being driven by prosperity gospels and even bless-perity gospels lead Christians to be all sorts of jerks to their fellow humans. I like how Piper describes our longing to worship the blessings rather than the God giving them:

"We all make a god out of what we take the most pleasure in. Christian Hedonists want to make God their God by seeking after the greatest pleasure—pleasure in him.

By Christian Hedonism, we do not mean that our happiness is the highest good. We mean that pursuing the highest good will always result in our greatest happiness in the end. We should pursue this happiness, and pursue it with all our might. The desire to be happy is a proper motive for every good deed, and if you abandon the pursuit of your own joy you cannot love man or please God."

Totally unrelated to the post, I giggled when I saw that googling "fear of man" gives you an option of googling "fear of
mannequins". Let's face it: they are creepy, creepy indeed.

Tap tap tap...

Is this thing on?

I just read the stale old posts left here, and realized I'd like to get back to this whole blogging schtick.

Updates are: We left that church we were going to after 2 years there. We wish them well, but I am much happier at our new digs. We've been reading the Bible a lot more in the last 18 months or so, and went to the Desiring God conference, and a few other reformed theology conferences. I hope to write more about this stuff, but if you're looking for good podcasts I recommend Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church, Dr. John Piper, and a whole bunch more. Start with Marky D's doctrine series- it's very good. Perfect length for listening on the treadmill, too.

I'm thinking of homeschooling. In related news, we bought some hermit crabs, I'm making a fort out of a huge truck hubcap and curly willow, I like canning vegetables, and if I had a zillion dollars I would buy a small farm slash compound. You'd be invited, but only if you promise to shoot me on sight if you see me wearing floor-length denim skirts with white tennis shoes (my first ever homeschooling joke, you're welcome).


Isn't there a blog around here somewhere?


















Isaac turned 3 and has developed a fascinating array of facial expressions. Many approximate real faces people make. All are more dramatic. Like William Shatner in face form.






















At the end of the summer we plan to adopt. A human, not a habit or a theology or a pet. Though those sound (mostly) simpler.