December 20, 2003

We had such a nice day today. DH was home this morning and stayed with the kids while I went to an open house with local vendors selling things such as Usborne books. I used to sell Partylite, and while I absolutely love the products, I'm thinking maybe selling Usborne books would be beneficial for a homeschooling family!

Then this afternoon my Minnesota Twin came by with her three wee ones. I swear each of us have children who by themselves forget about volume. When the kids are together we moms spend a great deal of time reminding them about indoor voices. I hope that gets better as they get older! But for right now all of our kids are still pretty young and we're happy if we can go for an hour without hurt feelings or anyone falling and hurting themselves. We had a great time together, and I got some of my 3 lbs. of fudge eaten by someone other than myself.

So far the best suggestion I've had for what to do to make up for the Winter hs burnout is taking a break. My only fear (at least this year) is that with a baby coming in just a couple of months, we'll get behind. It seems so unfair that as soon as we really get a routine down, we need a break!

One of the things that has been exciting to me recently is the realization that I'm able to teach him so much that he wouldn't be allowed to learn in the public school system. We can cut out saints cards. We can start the day with the Lord's Prayer and a Hail Mary. We can sing songs of praise and worship to our God and I can give him a solid foundation in his faith. I suppose he could do many of these things if I sent him to a Catholic school. But we can't afford it. I was thinking I might ask our local Catholic school if we could work something out where he would be allowed to use their library to check out religious titles. I would also be interested in finding out if there are other homeschooling moms in our parish. I don't know of any, but they could be hiding!

In any case, I'm good and tired after spending the day with five kids. So, I'm going to bury my nose in a book for a bit and then head off to bed.