school at home

Oh my. I started this post last Friday night. Then I quit. Then I started it again on Saturday and quit. And on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and quit, quit, quit. This can mean only one thing to my readers. You are in for one boring post because if I, the writer, cannot maintain an interest in what I am saying, how in the helk will you? (Helk is the way my sister and me write hell when we are sending emails back and forth. It's one of those typos that ended up sticking.) Anyway, this started out as an end of the summer post and now is turning into a beginning of school post. Enjoy and prepare to be dazzled!

Summer is coming to a close. I brought the kids and a couple of their friends to the beach on Friday for a last hurray. Many pictures were taken but of course none of them will go on this blog because I like to keep things here as boring and visually unappetizing as I possible and also, I'm a little lazy. But trust me, we did go. It was relaxing and beautiful and the water temperature was perfect (and so were the rip currents. Seriously, who doesn't love getting pummeled by waves and gagging on salt water. I'm not kidding. You try doing it without laughing your butt off. It's impossible). Of course I didn't want to leave and come home because being home means thinking about school and chores and the end of summer vacation and then I just get the dry heaves. I'm not afraid to admit that I really only like the side of life that provides for relaxation and entertainment.

Since I've become the person in charge of educating my children, I hang onto summer for as long as I can. We live in a state that has 80 degree heat well into November, sometimes even December, and I've often thought about making our summer vacation last for eight months of the year, but I'm always afraid one of my kids will rat me out. They've somehow turned into responsible people who like learning. A couple of weeks ago they began happily inquiring about school starting back up, and lately my empty threats of printing out math work if they didn't find something productive to do have been met with, "oh, cool! Math work!"

(So here we are, several days after I originally started writing this carp ( another typo that stuck) and school has begun, which is good because now I have something to write about. )

This is our first year home schooling Anthony. (Will someone please tell me if it is homeschooling or home schooling. Public schooling is two words, so why would homeschooling be one word. I never understood this, but I was an English major so really, why would this be easy for me to figure out?) I was worried about bringing Anthony home for school ( see how I got around that), but I can declare after only three days of doing this - TOTAL SUCCESS! Okay, I may be jumping the gun and setting myself up for disaster, but things seem to be going well. Anthony is much more relaxed about participating in school. He's gotten up everyday and requested work and appears to be enjoying himself.

I'm not going to lie. He's still Anthony, which means he has created a touch of chaos to our once quiet days. He made jello on Monday and before it had totally set he dumped it on a big plate. He did this so that it could maintain as much of its jigglyness and still be somewhat molded. Then he put it back in the fridge until he could decide what to do with it. I mentioned maybe he could just eat it, as I think that's what people do with jello, but he said no, jello could be used for so much more than eating. I had no idea!

He kept taking it out of the fridge so that he could walk around with his plate if jiggly jello wowing everyone in his path. Except for not everyone was as fascinated as he was. Like me. I was not at all fascinated. Instead I was nervous. Anthony and a plate of jiggly jello couldn't possibly end well. When I pointed this out to him he said, "mom, I'm not a baby. I can walk around with this and nothing is going to happen." Except for as he was saying that the jello slid off the plate and plopped onto my kitchen floor where it splattered into every corner and then he ran out of the room.

The terrific thing was that I only had two sheets of Bounty left and I figured if I could pick up this mess with two sheets of Bounty I could finally justify my insistence on purchasing these expensive paper towels. Greg has tried, with no success, to get me to buy cheaper paper towels, but he isn't usually the one picking up poop and pee and vomit and jello, so he has no idea the power of the Bounty paper towel. And guess what? Two Bounty paper towels did the trick in this case. (Hey Bounty people - are you catching this? If you are you can fore go the dollar it's costing you to read my post and just send me a year's worth of paper towels.)

Other than the jello incident, it's been a calm week with Anthony. He spent some time talking to Maggie about Greek mythology, wherein he told her, "Now Maggie, the Greeks believed in MANY gods, but we only believe in ONE god. Okay, so don't get messed up. Don't go around telling people you believe in lots of gods, because you don't. We're CATHOLIC Maggie. Can you say that. Say your Catholic and you only believe in one God. Say it. Say it, Maggie, say you're Catholic and you only believe in one god." This went on until Maggie started crying and I had to end the Greek mythology vs. Roman Catholic theology session, but it was cute and it made me smile, which is never a bad thing when you're homeschooling your kids. As a matter of fact, it's half the battle.

I must end this now. I have things to do and children to teach and I'm sure there's a mess somewhere with Anthony's name on it. A mess only Bounty can pick up.