Books Lily has Read during 2010

This list is in progress during 2010.
It does not include the unknown uncountable number of picture books she reads. These are also books she is reading mostly for pleasure and not school required books. If I include things she reads for school I will put an asterisk next to it.

These are the books I remember that she has read so far this year:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ~ C.S. Lewis
James and the Giant Peach ~ Roald Dahl
The Mouse and the Motorcycle ~ Beverly Cleary
Runaway Ralph ~ Beverly Cleary
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll
Incredible Animal Adventures ~ Jean Craighead George
No Dogs Allowed ~ Bill Wallace
The Cricket in Times Square ~ George Selden

Reading List 2009

Calling on Dragons ~ Patricia Wrede
The Princess Bride (good parts version) ~ William Goldman
The Time Traveler's Wife ~ Audrey Niffenegger
**** Searching for Dragons ~ Patricia Wrede
**** Dealing with Dragons ~ Patricia Wrede
** The Graveyard Book ~ Neil Gaiman
*****The Mauritius Command ~ Patrick O'Brian
*** Mistborn ~ Brandon Sanderson
*****H.M.S. Surprise ~ Patrick O'Brian
** Dune Messiah ~ Frank Herbert
How to Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledge ~ Glenn Doman
How to Teach Your Baby to Read ~ Glenn Doman
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress ~ Sijie
*****Post Captain ~ Patrick O'Brian
**** The Princess Academy ~ Shannon Hale
**** The Goose Girl ~ Shannon Hale
The Book of a Thousand Days ~ Shannon Hale
*** Marley & Me ~ John Grogan
Commitment ~ V.J. Featherstone
The Mothers of the Prophets
*****Master and Commander ~ Patrick O'Brian
We Were the Mulvaneys ~ Joyce Carol Oates
*****Perfect Health ~ Deepak Chopra
**** Persuasion ~ Jane Austen
*** a rumor of war ~ Philip Caputo
*** The Tale of Despereaux ~ Kate DiCamillo
*****Sense and Sensibility ~ Jane Austen
The Lovely Bones ~ Alice Sebold
**** The Chronicles of Narnia ~ C.S. Lewis
The Road ~ Cormac McCarthy
Just So Stories ~ Rudyard Kipling
Love in the Time of Cholera ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Secret Life of Bees ~ Sue K Monk
Nickel and Dimed ~ Barbara E

That's 38 books, but 14 of those were young adult/children's books.
I did start several that I dropped because they were awful and a couple that I started that I am still reading.
I read a few other large books to my kids but I can't remember them so they weren't added.

I rated the books I had an opinion about but that doesn't mean that the books I didn't rate were necessarily bad, although I'd have to say the majority of the books I read last year I wouldn't recommend to friends. Most of the books I just didn't have a strong enough opinion about to rate them. Obviously the Patrick O'Brian books comes in as my favorites, but I doubt that most people would like them as I have. I like books with technical language about boats and long drawn out descriptions. I really did not like Love in the Time of Cholera AT ALL and I didn't like The Lovely Bones either. I thought they were wretched. The Road was wretched but I found it less reprehensible, perhaps because it was shorter. You can also count me in the group of people NOT a fan of The Time Traveler's Wife. Like We Were the Mulvaneys, it was just a story, nothing special to me about it and often depressing.

Next year I have a goal to read more uplifting books. I do have a list, perhaps for another post.

Changed

I can see now that my life is forever changed. Last year I had a baby to take care of while homeschooling, but believe it or not, it was way easier. Lily was a pretty good student, just needing me to give her a little push or nudge her along every once in awhile and having a baby who was immobile was a snap. Now that I have two students plus a very mobile VERY loud and shrieking one year old plus THAT puppy, I am swamped.

We have completed our fourth day of school and it's going pretty well. Evelyn has struggled with the five year old wiggles, particularly right during reading and violin practice, and I have struggled with the mid-morning attack of sleepiness. Other than that I'm surviving.

I've assembled Evelyn's newly arrived desk, unclogged a very clogged sink with the help of my sister and one and 1/4 bottle of drano, attacked tons of paperwork, made it to Walmart for a science experiment supply run in 110 degree heat, taken the kids swimming, gone to pack meeting for cub scouts, collapsed 20 boxes, whose contents I had recently emptied and organized into plastic bins, and still managed to get everything done with school.

This week's school related hands-on activities include an experiment with hard boiled eggs and vinegar, which we completed, an activity in the yard where we make it look like a nomadic village and act out a nomadic scene (the kids also want to make cave paintings) and then we transform the yard into a farming village and act it out. Then they want to have a mock archaeological dig. Tomorrow we are also going to have a "science" scavenger hunt for the kids.

So, I'm keeping busy. In other news I called the police today when I saw a car I didn't recognize parked between our two houses. It turned out the owner was there (oops) but she actually likes it when we call the police. I think it gives her some peace of mind that the house is being watched a little. She said that she was "clearing a path" in the house so a buyer could come look at it, one of those people who fix up houses to sell. That should be interesting. I saw it as a tremendous blessing!

A little while later the guy she was with came by and asked if I recognized him from when he used the Escalade to trap burglars in their truck between our two houses a year ago. I think he had some mental troubles and knowing he was an ex con made me quite nervous, but it turned out okay for now. HE insinuated that I should try to get something from Lisa (owner) who was so rich and could afford to give us stuff. I said we didn't want any stuff. I said I wanted our fence that was wrecked by those burglars repaired. Well he said, Okay, and went back and fixed our fence right then! Not quite good as new but hardly noticeable now. Yay!!!!

Really what I want to express most is what this all does to me mentally...and other ways, too. I don't have time. No time to talk to you on the phone (if I was in the habit of doing so before), no time for TV or movies, no time for reading (but I wasn't anyway) and no time for a lot of other things I feel like doing sometimes. It has made me lonely in a new way and suddenly I am needy of my husband and was hurt when he didn't call or text for a whole day, nevermind that he'd had seven admissions and he explains that it's sort of awkward to be taking a call when he's in the room during a code. He has a job where he gets NO breaks, not even meal breaks or bathroom breaks. It's true. All of his meals are taken during meetings and lectures and some days he comes home and goes to the bathroom for the first time all day. How can we compare lives or me expect to be first in his life? It's sad, I know. It makes me feel lonely when I don't have other means of coping. Thank heavens for my sister!

I also have this huge urge to read fiction. I know I just want escape, but what I need is sleep.
Time for bed. I'm out.

Disaster

The word "disaster" just about sums up how I feel about the kids' first day of school. It makes me just about cry to look at other people's photos of their kids going to school on the first day. I should probably do things like that. Throw them a back to school party, buy them new clothes, feed them a special meal, ...something. But I am so overwhelmed that anything requiring extra work at this point is out of the question. They had a super fun summer and that has to be good enough. I did give the kids a couple of stickers and the girls got a little necklace and bracelet set that has proven to be a great distraction today. Kicking myself for that.

After viewing about a hundred blogs showcasing photos of their home school rooms I felt utterly depressed and inspired at the same time. OUr office is a battle zone here. Casey is constantly coming in with loads of papers and stuff and I just never know what the desk is going to look like in the morning. I am just as messy. After spending hours making all of the copies I could at kinkos, with my husband just saying we should buy a nicer printer even though we really can't afford it right now, I brought it all home and went straight to the grocery store and left the office a mess of papers. On Sunday I managed to organize one binder. That was all. (Well, maybe two, but the second one I only had to put two pages in it.)

That left things a great mess on Monday morning. I don't know if that's why we had a "less than perfect" school day, but it definitely contributed. I was so overjoyed to see Lily take up her work right where she had left off and complain very minimally. Evelyn's attention wandered so much, she wouldn't look at me when I talked to her, and she was extremely wiggly and resistent to answering any questions that I realized going back to teaching a 5 year old was going to be hard. I got really frustrated about four times and yelled at them once. I wanted to cry at that moment because I had ruined our first day of school. Why did I have to be so strict and controlling? Well, I sort of know why, but I didn't feel good in that moment when I lost it.

We had to plow through our day to get our work done, BUT I couldn't even stay on schedule because at about 10am I crashed on the couch. I was so tired and trying to push through it and then suddenly I was giving instructions in my sleep. I woke up to realize we had to skip some important things and move on.

We finished school at 2pm and went straight to Leonora's 12 mo. well check where she got shots and then straight to ballet where we spend 2 hours on Monday evening. I wish I could just drop off the girls and go but the timing of the lessons makes it impossible. Lily's class is first and 30 minutes later Ev's starts. I can't just drop off Lily only to come back 30 min later for Ev, and I have to stay during Evelyn's class because if they are under 6 a parent must escort them to the bathroom "if" they have to go. Lily's gets out and she has to wait 15 or 20 minutes until her tap class begins. Evelyn's gets out and Lily goes in. Then I can leave during her 45 min tap class, and last night I did because Leonora was screaming at the top of her lungs. I bet they are so glad to see us out of there when we go.

The kids slept in the hot car so I drove around until picking up Lily. Then it was home where I got dinner made by 7:30. WE finished with FHE by 9, I read to the kids until 9:30 and I went straight to bed.

Up again today at 5:30a. I seriously considered not getting up, but I did. IF my poor husband stayed up until 3am and could still get up and work his job all day then I was going to make myself get up!

It's afternoon on the second day and I'm wondering what the heck I'm doing. I have pictured sending Evelyn off to Kindergarten more than a few times but I just have to remember that I was inspired to do this and it'll have blessings for my family if I just do the best I can. Lily is fine. She has been broken in and does her work okay. As long as she gets a supply of snacks and breaks she does well.

The kids are eating lunch and I just realized I didn't prepare everything I needed for their science lesson so I'll go do that now and we'll have to continue school after Evelyn's violin lesson. I hate dealing with the kids sometimes. I can't stand the whining and the tattling and my one year old shrieking while I'm trying to explain a lesson. The list of things that make me angry is too long. I will probably die from high blood pressure brought on by all of this tension someday. I'm not a person one should look to for an example of how to homeschool surely.


I am so ready for fall break.

Preparation and Persistence

I don't think I want to post all of my narcissitic thoughts about homeschool and other subjects on my family and kids blog so I guess I'll write it here and avoid spreading myself out on any more blogs than these two. I don't know if the subject fits with what i had in mind for this blog, but oh well. Here I am.

I will probably be long winded and overly expressive when it would do me good to practice some minimalism in blogging.

I have been working feverishly for a few weeks to prepare for the school year. This year I thought I would try harder to have everything prepared because I read a book called Commitment by Vaughn J Featherstone and in it he tells a story about a farmer who can't get anything done because he gets distracted by everything he needs to do. He starts by wanting to mow the grass but on his way to the mower he sees something that needs to be fixed, stops to fix it but needs tools and goes to find them, and so on all day long without getting anything done at all. SO the moral being that commitment is preparation with persistence. I have to be prepared in every way I can first and then persistently plow through, not being distracted and being prepared for what there is to do at hand.

So I have all of my books. I have all of the schedules and reading lists. I have a room to have the kids study in and all of their school materials. I have to go make photo copies of all of the papers they will do this year and then file them into notebooks. Then I will have pretty much all of the time sucking work done so far as I can do now. I went to the public library downtown a little while ago. WE did some reorganization in the office where the girls will do their focused work. Tonight I'll work on the copies, book printing, and buy groceries.

It's overwhelming knowing what I have in store for me, but the advice to stay in the moment will help me. The past and the future are imagination. Why let them affect my present physiology or mental well being? All I can do in this moment is make a choice about this blog, or not to blog and do something else. And I know where I'm going. I know what my goals are. I'm not "lost" in the moment, just fully experiencing the moment.

Now I'll go make dinner for my family (I have no idea what, because I do meal planning tomorrow) and then do the rest of the work I have for today, and though it is late, I will be getting a lot more done before I go to sleep. I may be in the moment, but that sense of urgency is there.

The Idea of Perfection

Who has ever thought about being perfect? People are quick to admit, "no one is perfect," but what if our thoughts turned to a love of perfection and not a distancing of the idea in our thinking.

One can only love perfection by doing it. Until then it is not perfection but the idea of it. Some are attracted to the idea of it because of the pain and discomfort involved in the becomming. Only One is and has been perfect and although He was always perfect He also went through stages of becomming. "And Jesus increased in wisdom and sature, and in favour with God and man." Luke 2:52

People on earth are not intended to be perfect in the way that Jesus was perfect, but in a way dependent on Him to reach that perfection. Still, there are ways of being perfect and things that can be done with perfection. Every good and righteous act brings us closer to perfection.

What are the good and righteous acts to pursue in order to reach perfection? One can have the idea of perfection in their minds. This idea of perfection, understanding what kind of perfection is possible for us, comes through experience and this we also call hope. Having hope is essential in order to obey commandments and have charity, doing charitable works. Hope also means that we have an understanding of what that perfection means or looks like and also what we have to do to get it, knowing that through Christ it is possible and will happen.

Perfection, or the attainment of it is a matter of trust and faith and also a matter of stubborn application. Without going through the steps of repentence perfection cannot be reached. Going through repentence means that we are on a path towards greater acts of goodness and obedience. Christ cannot bestow upon us perfection through the atonement if we are unable to live perfection. Repentence is practice in living perfection. What good would it do us to be permitted into a heaven or an eternal life where the laws that govern that existence we are not able to live? If one cannot practice in one's life a choice of following the laws one cannot ever be expected to.

Self-mastery is a choice in the moment based on an outlook towards perfection. If one cannot make a choice delaying gratification that will further subdue desires for instant gratification then one cannot reach the endpoint of perfection. Having the ideal in mind must precede and give reason to the moment. Experienced athletes are often told to live in the moment. The choice in the moment matters and also shapes future desires. If one does not have desires for perfection it is because there is a weakness in making choices.

We are taught of heaven and hell, of the Atonement and repentence so that we will have the basis of the Plan of Salvation in our minds when we envision our futures. Our futures need to be pefection and our perfection depends on the current moment first.

Note: This Essay was not Pefected

2008 Contractor Awards

And the winner is....