Not Another Homeschool Blog

Or rather, how successful was your homeschooling based on their college performance? A parents worth as homeschooling parents one could reason, could be determined by a student's success in further education... i.e. college. It almost feels like confession when I reply that the boy is hanging in there.  Now that I can add that the girl is kicking butt and taking names, the whole homeschooling experience seems more validated. But that's pretty unfair, isn't it. Fortunately for me, I have two kids.  If I only had the son, I might very well be self conscious  about not producing a super student as a result of my homeschooling...  God forbid a homeschooler be an average college student.  If I only had the girl, perhaps, I would be accepted as an homeschooling authority because my under-aged homeschooling daughter was doing an excellent job? Now that I have taken time to balance all my thoughts on the two kids and their experiences, it is clear to me that t...

The kids are packed back off to college for another semester...  My nest isn't exactly empty, but the people who live with me are only here part time to go to school, and are self sufficient... and I got really, really bored... and started noticing all the stuff that needed fixing around the house... So I decided that it is time for me to work. Not like I had been doing, writing articles and such, but if that still paid well, I gather I would still be doing it...  ( Thanks google ... it's been years since I've turned a profit doing the blogging/ web writing gig). So anyway, I have signed up for a real-estate class and expect to be licensed by spring. Wish me luck. I will continue to write about homeschooling and education, whenever the inspiration hits, and am working on finishing my e-books before I get too busy...

The new year has arrived rather quietly for me. All the activity in my house has died down as my extended family that stayed with me since summer got their own place just before Christmas.  I am happy, and I hope they are too. The kids are home, but not too active... they are still recovering from all of the activity of last semester.  They are trudging along through college, the younger one a bit more effortlessly than the older, which tells me that as I relaxed into homeschooling, the kids benefitted more. I.E. I was less stringent with the 2nd child than the first, and she used that extra freedom to her advantage... or.. it could just have nothing at all to do with me.... it could just be a product of their personalities or gender... who knows. As we head into another semester for my kids, I pray the younger one won't get too confident so that she slacks off, and the older will relax into the process of higher education, so that he might enjoy it, and intern find th...

View from my foyer... yes, we have 2 trees. Newsflash.  I'm not a big fan of Christmas.   Hubby thinks it is because my mom died 17 years ago on Christmas morning, but it is not. It is not even because I have lost 4 of 8 siblings at a young age.  Nope.  I was over Christmas in the way it is celebrated sometime around the age 10. I got over the way I found out about Santa... though it was cruel.  There was not enough money to go around, so everyone but the youngest two got a rude awakening... sure I was a little old to be believing, but I had a child's heart.  But that wasn't even the worst part.  The worst part was getting waken up at 3am every year to open gifts for one hour, and then it was over. Christmas was something we waited for all month or even much of the year, and it was over in 1 hour while still in a sleepy stupor. Can you say anti-climactic? So long before my first sibling died when I was 19... long before my mother passed away ...

I have a relative- very glamorous young lady, with two adorable kids, and not too shabby hubby either. Beautiful family.  I am constantly in awe of her and her parenting prowess.  Even when the kids are driving her nuts, she holds it together and comes out looking like a supermom-fairy.  I am fascinated by the little joys she is finding with her small children, posting genuinely funny and insightful things they say and such.  And then there's the elf.  Their elf has a distinctive name, given by their oldest very clever child (no it's not just bias... he's amazing), and they manage to keep up the ruse quite effectively.  I am impressed.  Impressed and so glad my kids are all grown up.  The last thing I want to do is hide the elf. Next to her, I would look like a rank amateur. I was so glad when I woke up this morning to the following post entitled Dear Perfect Elf on the Shelf people, an open letter.  I thought, "Oh Thank God", I'm not the ...

It is tech week.  That means my daughter is in a play, and she has been in dress rehearsals all week, followed by numerous showings from Thursday through Saturday.  Normally during tech week, I fill up my car with gas, and prepare myself to fill it for a second time.  That is followed by buying tons of fast food as she will be "living" at the theatre that week, and also helping out with the productions costumes.  In the past, this also meant that my son was living in the tech room of the theatre, and so they were involved in the same activity. This tech week it is something else entirely, as it has nothing to do with me.  Yes, she is living at the theatre, but I am not driving her anywhere.  I am not buying fast food. I am not working on costumes... at the single most crushing aspect that I am having a hard time to swallow- I am only going to see the show once!  Normally, even if there are 5 or 6 shows in 3 days, I see every single show and make it a...

I am happy to be posting this week's carnival of homeschooling, but since this past week was thanksgiving weekend, alot of our regulars were off giving thanks and didn't submit posts.  But never fear, there's still plenty to share.  We've found a couple of new bloggers to add to our carnival, and I want to introduce you to some of my favorite homeschool vloggers, and encourage you to give that a try too.   I will start with a post of my own from last summer, as you can see, I posted the vlog on Youtube, and then embedded it into my homeschool blog.  Eeasy-Peasy.  You will find Homeschool Vlog Hop at Notes from a Homeschooled Mom , presented by me, Andrea .  As you can see from my post/vlog, I am pretty much done with hands-on homeschooling of my own children.  The next post is from another homeschooling family who have a lot of homeschooling years under their belt with some children graduated, and some in progress.   Read about how Janine ...