2008 End of Year Meme

This is my fifth year doing an end-of-the-year meme here!

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? Decided to start an internet business development business! (coming soon!)

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I kept my business resolutions, and those are the only ones I can remember. I definitely have plans for 2009.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? A friend of mine just had her 8th child the other day! Another friend had her 4th baby earlier this month.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit? None.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? I don't know if I'm feeling lack so much, but things I want to have more of in 2009 include:

-more peace

-less clutter

-more felt success in the areas of hearth and home and home education

-earn more money while spending less time in my work

-more positive breakthroughs in relationships

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Just before Thanksgiving our family started to experience something that is difficult, and it has been escalating since then. That will be likely to stick in my memory for a long time. Hopefully a positive resolution in the new year will give me something good to remember for 2009.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Choosing to homeschool five of my children, and having over 150% growth in my business ventures.

9. What was your biggest failure? I've had too many blessings to recall any failures.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Not that I remember.

11. What was the best thing you bought? I "bought" myself some mental peace by hiring an accountant for my business finances. In 2009 I'm going to buy myself some more peace in the form of better legal advisement and protection for the business.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Mine! Saying yes to homeschooling, and being fiercely committed to what I feel is the right thing for my kids, even when difficult, is something I celebrate.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and disgusted? I won't name names here, but I do have two people in mind....

14. Where did most of your money go? A large chunk of money went toward rebuilding two of my web sites when my host pooped out and went AWOL. It all came back to me in short order. :)

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Having five of the greatest kids in the world at home with me every day, and my next great business adventure, which is coming together in exciting ways!

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? overall happier or maybe the same
b) thinner or fatter? probably about the same
c) richer or poorer? richer!

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? gardening maybe. Overall I can't think of any regrets.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Again, no regrets I can think of.

20. How will you be spending New Year's Eve? Probably listening to something inspirational.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?

22. How many one-night stands? What a stupid question.

23. What was your favorite TV program?

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? I don't do hate.

25. What was the best book you read? Change Your Life Without Getting Out of Bed by SARK

26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Just got a CD of The Town Pants for Christmas and it is very fun music.

27. What did you want and get? Windchimes!

28. What did you want and not get? I want to hire a house helper/cook/assistant homeschool tutor. I have been saying this for many, many years, but in 2009 I am going to make it happen. I might not have someone full time by the end of the year, but I am at least going to find the right person to hire for some amount of hours and get started. The time has come. I'm ready.

29. What was your favorite film of this year? Can't even remember a specific movie I've watched this year! I did just discover the Discovery Channel show Deadliest Catch, and that is a pretty cool show! I now have all four seasons on my netflix queue.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 37 this year, and I don't remember what I did.

31.What one thing would have made your year measurably more satisfying? I'm pretty satisfied with the year I've had.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Making the most of what I have, unless it's a day when I just done care, in which case I keep it reasonably clean and don't worry about much else.

33. What kept you sane? Keeping in mind the big picture.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I'm not a fancier, but I was mighty sorry to see Heath Ledger go.

35. What political issue stirred you the most? The FLDS situation. We got an excellent education about the dangerous way that CPS can get away with criminal activities.

36. Who did you miss? Old friends, who are always dear to me though we just don't get to connect much any more.

37. Who was the best new person you met? How about best new being? Our dog Marlee walked into our life in the fall, starving, sick, and suffering. Our decision to care for her, give her a home, and live out our belief that life is valuable has been a very cool journey. She is thriving in many ways and we are learning a lot about sacrificial love. You can read more about that here.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. Not everything is as it appears to be.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

FYI: You Won't Want To Miss This

Hey peeps,

I just wanted to give you guys a heads up. On January 1st I'm going to have a BIG giveaway for my newsletter subscribers. If you like freebies, goodies, and truly valuable stuff, you should get hooked up with at least one of my newsletters:

The Baby Boutique

Supermom's Health and Wellness

Supermom's HomeSchool

Feel free to let other people know. I think that most people are going to be very excited about the freebie they'll receive to start out 2009. :)

Christmas: We're already done

My husband has to work on Christmas day, so we decided to celebrate early. Our original thought was to simply have the kids wake up to Christmas on the 24th. And then as I started thinking about how hard it is to get them to go to sleep on Christmas Eve, how tiring it is to try to outlast them that night, and the early morning we'd be in for, surprising them with Christmas in the middle of the afternoon started looking better and better.

They were busy in another part of the house, watching a movie, and my husband and I got everything set up. Once we were ready we invited them up, and they were so excited! :) They enjoyed opening their gifts, and had the rest of the evening to put together new Lego sets, play new games, and put stuff away. Several of the kids said this was the Best Christmas Ever! Pretty nice to hear that. :)

Once our plans were already underway to pull off the afternoon Christmas surprise, we found out that the Creation Museum is offering free admission tomorrow. We've been wanting to go, and it's only about 2 hours from us. So, now tomorrow is all clear, so as long as the roads are good and the weather decent, that's what we'll be doing for Christmas Eve Day. Even our 16 year old is looking forward to it. (and if you've ever known or had a 16 year old, you know how GOLDEN it is if the kid actually wants to do a family activity. I DON'T want to miss this chance!)

So, enjoy all of your last minute preparations and your family time. I'll be enjoying being all done. :)

My Husband Outed My Blog!

In a moment of Facebook euphoria/insanity, my dear husband decided to tell all of our friends and relatives and everybody else about my personal, super-secret, I-do-not-tell-real-life-people-about-it blog. (he's so used to knowing about it that he forgot it was on the down-low) It was all resolved within 3 hours of his posting it, since I called him at work and had him take it right down. Alas, now I can't help but wonder if I've gained any new readers.

So, um...if you are one of those people.....WELCOME! Welcome to my blog that I never told you about. :) Let me know if you're here, ok?

I hate to shop!

I hate to shop! I hate it the most in person, but also hate it online. Would much rather never need anything for any reason whatsoever.

Today my husband took the kids to their homeschool activities and left me home for a day off. I had so much work to do that I have been going non stop all day and now they will be home in a half hour. Honestly, I'm glad that I had a chance to work on some of the things that have been piling up. Though I was invited to go get a massage or something, things are so crazy here, I don't think it would have been relaxing for me to spend all day elsewhere instead of beating back the tide....

Biggest accomplishments for the day include wrapping most of the already-purchased gifts, and doing almost all of the rest of the shopping. I would love to be ALL DONE with the whole thing today. Don't know if I can pull it off though. My brain has turned to mush and now I am going to go soak in a hot bath. Goodbye!

Take 5 minutes to watch this

Have you seen this clever video to help guys stay out of the doghouse this holiday season? Go! Laugh! Share.

I've GOT GOT GOT GOT no time!

Today is one of those days that makes me think that there is no possible way for me to ever get on top of everything. Not exactly newsworthy in my life, but this is a fresh flare up, so amuse me or click away, ok?

We had the holiday last Thursday, travel last Friday, being out of the house most of the day Sat., a small amount of stuff getting done Sunday, schooling to do Monday and then surprise preparation for a large remodeling project that day, and then today that project was going on while I spent the day homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, and then being a hostess for several hours.

Having several days in a row like this throw off my plate-spinning equilibrium mighty fast. Next thing you know there is laundry all over the family room, construction project stuff and dust everywhere, a torn apart laundry room, and me with about 5 or 6 large plates crashing to the ground and no time to pick 'em up yet.

Tomorrow I have to be out of the house for probably at least 4-5 hours. It's for a fun event, but that just means that even more stuff will be piling up while I'm away.

Ironically (or not) I decided to join a class called How Do I Do It All? And of course, now that I've downloaded all of the classes, I have absolutely NO IDEA when I am going to have time to listen to any of it.

Cheers!

Music To My Ears

Either because of or in spite of the fact that I spent my teenage years dating and being boy crazy, I have always discouraged my kids from this. I'm not interested in jumping on the courtship-betrothal bandwagon with all it's various weirdness, nor am I going to pretend that I can control whether or not my children have extra special warm-and-fuzzy feelings for other people. My approach has been simply to explain my position again and again, let them make their own decisions, and let life teach them whether what I say has merit or not.

My oldest is 16 and he's had a few girlfriends so far. Several months ago there was a big break up with his longtime girlfriend, and it was a split that was many months in the making. The situation was especially tough on the girl and it has been a source of concern for our family to know that she is hurting so badly. Since the breakup I've had several little conversations with my son, reiterating that it seems a terrible waste of a good friendship to sacrifice it for a "girlfriend." In the end these kids just get hurt feelings, broken hearts, and a relationship that's usually too strained or broken down to be able to continue.

In a world where good friends are hard to find, it makes no sense to me to toss out good, healthy relationships for these ridiculous, contrived boyfriend-girlfriend situations.

My second child is 12 and at her age the thing we have run into is that the boys and girls that are friends don't feel like it is ok to talk on the phone if they aren't "going out." So, she's had a couple "boyfriends" who were nothing more than friends she could talk to on the phone. Since she doesn't go to school with these kids any more, phone calling is the only social link she's got. So, a pretty important thing in her life.

The recent boyfriend has proven to not be a real positive thing for her. My daughter had come to me several times to talk about it and ask my opinion. My honest advice was to break it off, just be friends, and stop with all of this boyfriend nonsense. (I say it a whole lot more diplomatically to her)

In the car the other day she and I were talking about this again and my 16 year old piped in to tell her, "Honestly, I've been following Mom's advice for quite awhile now, and it's really a good thing."

High praise!! What a thrill!! Definitely blog-worthy!

That night about an hour after tucking my daughter into bed she came out to give me another hug and tell me she loves me. This is not a common event for her. I wondered if she had appreciated what I had told her. (This is a child who will typically fight me on issues that she doesn't want to deal with or hear about, but later on is able to tell me that she is glad I stuck to my guns and kept doing what I felt needed to be done. A wonderful thing for me to know, since I regularly hear her complaints about oh-so-many of the things I am doing "for her own good.")

The next day she broke up with the boyfriend in the kind way I recommended, and so far things seem to be going well.

Tonite she and I were folding laundry together and talking and she shared some of the breakup details with me. Then she said that once she had a chance to let my words sink into her head, she realized that it made perfect sense.

!! Gotta love moments like that!

I don't have any delusions that my two oldest kids are going to forego boyfriends/girlfriends until they are ready to look for a spouse (though I would recommend that!) but it was good to know that they are hearing me, that what I'm saying is helping them and making sense to them on some level, at this time.

Another Rock Star Momma moment for me. I'll take 'em wherever I can get 'em.

Addicted

Last night my sister turned me on to Mexican Train Dominoes. As Pioneer Woman would say, "Lawsie, mercy!" I'm a goner now. How I will ever get a shred of normal stuff done, I do not know. Any member of my family of origin can tell you that I have a mighty strong tendency to get hooked onto games that require ordering and arranging cards, tiles, numbers, and so forth. From approximately 1983-1987 I spent all summer breaks, school breaks, weekends, and spare time holed up in my bedroom playing solitaire (with real cards, people!) over and over again. And I loved it.

Today, I have solitaire and backgammon on my pocket pc, and I usually play one or both of them every single night once I get into bed. (I often play them again first thing in the morning as well) I love games like that, and find it relaxing, I guess.

Mexican Train Dominoes is one more game in this genre that I love. Plus it's speedy (which is an additional thrill for me). What am I gonna do?!?!

Countdown to Christmas Day 1

We just did day 1 of Countdown to Christmas. The story was wonderful (almost made me cry!) and the games were SO fun! Check it out!!

Busy and Busier

Things just keep on a-runnin' around here. Business, homeschooling, taking care of the family and home.....it seems like an ever-running stream of doings and needs. Not in a bad way, mind you. Just in a constant way.

Things on my mind and/or front burner these days include:

Starting an indoor garden using window boxes. I plan to grow lettuce, spinach, and some herbs. The main holdup is that it is mighty difficult to find seeds in the store in november! :) Will have to order some online.....which means this could take me days or weeks to accomplish simply because it's so easy for me to forget.

Christmas shopping.

Business planning for next year. Business continuing for this year.

Continuing with the learning center idea for my kids. (it's going well)

Looking forward to doing some fun Christmas reading, baking, and activities with the kids in December.

Getting ready to start yet another branch (or two) of my business.

Recent discovery of Barbara Sher's encouragement for people who want to do lots of different things and aren't willing to pick just one. I don't know if I'm that way to the extreme, but I sure do want to "do it all." Am in the middle of listening to a radio show where she talks about this and am enjoying it very much. Am also working my way through reading some strategies about this here.

Am enjoying the homeschooling more and have been getting back to my roots as far as my original educational philosophy goes. Have been reading John Holt's book Teach Your Own which is just as inspirational to me today as it was probably 10 years ago when I first read it.

And of course, many other things, widely varied and prone to the whims of the winds of inspiration. I feel like I'm getting the hang of handling schooling five, so it's always a happy thing for me to feel that I've improved in my plate-spinning abilities. :)

Not getting much personal blogging in these days. Sometimes it's for lack of time, sometimes for lack of inspiration, and sometimes because what I would want to say seems to complex to be able to express it. I'm sure that blogging will come back around to a front burner activity sooner or later. In the meantime, I hope you all have a Thanksgiving that lives up to it's name. :)

Countdown to Christmas Activity Book!

When Amy Puetz showed me her Countdown to Christmas book, I was almost in tears within minutes. This book features a wonderful collection of old-fashioned holiday stories, activities, recipes, games, songs, and more---a grouping for every day from December 1-25.

This collection is just the kind of thing I like to do with my children. It's fun. It's interesting. The stories are great, and will also expose my children (and me!) to some old-fashioned language and concepts. The crafts look fun and manageable. Now that I've got this resource I'm looking forward to December 1 so we can get started with it. I really think that this is going to be our most fun December ever!

I strongly encourage you to go check it out for yourself. Amy has her book on sale at a GREAT price right now, PLUS she has an extra freebie book for you as well. You can see sample pages of the book and a list of stories, etc. here. I feel like this is going to be a wonderful thing for my family, and think it will be for your family too! :)

Quick! This offer ends Friday!

So many people have been delighted to find out about Grandpa Read's Quiet Time Tales. This 12-volume DVD collection features classic children's stories read to your children by the friendly Grandpa Read. Each DVD is approximately 60 minutes long and features four stories plus an original song.

From now until Friday I have a special offer for you:
Purchase the 12 DVD collection for the discounted price of $129.99 (regularly $149.99) and you will receive the Quiet Time Tales Music CD FREE!

This is a special offer at my baby boutique.

Heard This Song Today

Driving with my kids today we ran across this song while flipping through the radio stations. The lyrics grabbed me. I had never heard it before, but the social commentary was striking. I don't think I could tell you one other Kid Rock song. Kid Rock has never been on my radar until now. Thought he had some good things to say here, though, so here you go.

2009 Family Dear Calendar

If you are a fan of the sweet, homespun look of Marmee Dear's lovely store, you will loooove her all-new 2009 Family Dear Calendar! Each month features adorable and heartwarming pictures from vintage storybooks. Too cute!

This big 17" x 22" calendar has nice, big spaces to write in and is printed on sturdy paper stock to keep it looking good and holding up all year long.

Right now Marmee is offer a special deal for my readers! Use coupon code EJ2009 and you will get FREE SHIPPING on your calendar (or go ahead and order several for Christmas gifts).

You can check it out and order here.

Enjoy!

My Son is as Tall as Me

I just discovered this.
Still in shock.

That is all.

12 Days of Christmas Giveaway!

Just a little head's up here, in case you don't know....there is a really fun 12 Days of Christmas giveaway going on here. I think today is day 6 or something, so there's still plenty of time for you to check the site every day and see what fun stuff they have. So far I have really enjoyed all of the goodies they have given away!

Fun Outing Yesterday

Yesterday the at-home kids and I made the trek out to visit the lovely Amy Scott and her six children. Amy and her family moved from Florida to rural KY in September, and now they have a beautiful 54 acres of woods and farm land. My children got to help feed chickens, hike around in the woods, and in general run around and play together, while Amy and I talked while tending to little ones and put dinner together.

Amy has done an amazing job--you can't even tell that they just moved in less than three months ago! I don't know how she does it. Her two littlest children are just 8 months old, and a two year old. I don't think I would have been able to accomplish half as much as she has in such a short time!

I've met a few "internet" friends in person over the years. It is always interesting and fun to get to put a real-life person and life together with what we learn about someone from their blog, web site, or posts in an egroup. It's so easy for us to imagine the lives of others that we get to know through the narrow lens of the internet (or even the narrow lens of Sunday mornings at church, or homeschool support group meetings, etc.). It's easy to forget that other people (even prolific bloggers) are not telling us everything about their life or their relationships. I used to read a blog where a reader accused the parents of only homeschooling their kids for two weeks out of an entire year, simply because the homeschooling hadn't been documented on the blog! (too bad there isn't some sort of litmus test for weeding out readers of one's blog that have such a perspective on things...) I've had people make up huge portions of my life that they actually knew nothing about--all based on some small snap shots of getting to know me in one setting. I enjoy the reminders that we are all just folks. :) We've all got the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, the things we are good at and the things we are still working on. None of us is so perfect that the rest of us should be struggling with our life and wondering why we don't have it all together like so-and-so from the internet.

Now, none of that is to say that Amy was anything less than gracious, lovely, organized, generous, and kind. She was all of those things and I enjoyed my visit very much! Those are just musings that came to me as I was reflecting on the things I've learned over the years about keeping perspective on reality as opposed to some of the things we like to make up in our minds.

My best friend Sooz has a little thing she says. It's "What I'm making up about this is......" This is a really helpful tool, both for putting into perspective that one's own thoughts may be cobbled together, made-up things that we came up with based on what we know about something, and the realization that it is important to check out the facts of whether or not our imaginings are accurate. I've often experienced people in my life preferring to believe their imaginary version of my life over reality. This sometimes results in people thinking I'm way, way, way better at everything than I could ever hope to be, and other times results in people thinking I'm so far away from being good at what I do that I might as well pack it up and change course altogether. Somewhere in the middle is the truth, but we have to check our imaginings at the door to get to it.

Learning Centers

Despite my lack of recent posts, you can rest assured that my life is plenty full and busy, with lots of stuff going on that might even be blog-worthy, if only I consistently had time to tell you about it! On the days when I'm really, really on top of the most important things, I'm lucky if I have even an hour or two to do the remaining business, blogging, emailing, and all of the other behind-the-scenes things that come up in the life of someone that manages children, Christmas shopping, educational issues, business issues, and keeping some relationships going.

After struggling for months to tutor 4 or 5 kids at the kitchen table simultaneously during school time, I decided to try using some learning centers to help the kids have plenty of educational and enriching things to do during school time, and allow me to only work directly with one or two kids at a time. For close to a week now I have been working on cleaning out some nooks and crannies of our family room so that I could somehow set up these centers/stations to keep the little hands and minds occupied.

For a few days I only had one station set up, and each night after the kids were in bed I placed something on that little table. It was fun to see kids gravitating toward that spot, sitting down and giving their attention to whatever was there. They loved it, and it reminded me of a past wish I had to make my home like one big all-you-can-learn-buffet, where everywhere a child turns is something that will feed their body, mind, or spirit. These little centers seem to do that in a way that nothing else has for us.

Yesterday was day one for going full force with the centers. Although our family room isn't huge, I was able to set up 9 different centers for the kids to use. Why so many? Because I knew they would need plenty of things to do while I worked with the kids that go s-l-o-w at their school work. That's why!

In the past I have tried this idea and set up stations that were a little heavy with stuff to do, and it seemed like the kids got a little bored with those after a short while. This time I decided to use some small tables and spaces, and just put out a very slim choice of what to do at that space. The other idea is to not have the same thing there every day.

Probably like a lot of other people, we have collected an awful lot of really neat learning resources that we rarely ever use. I've got tons of games, art books, craft stuff, cards, flash cards, cool learning resources, Leap Pads, Flashmaster, Highlights books with puzzles in them, and lots more. I'm so glad that I have a place to put these things, but the trick is that I am a person that tends to forget what resources we have if they aren't in front of me. So now I am just bringing out a few items from the collection each day, one per center area, and letting the kids enjoy them. After school time that stuff gets put away, and as I got through the day I keep my eyes open for what else is around, and pull some new stuff out to use the next day. Now the kids are grabbing stuff and saying, "Hey! We should use this for centers tomorrow!"

We have one round kid-size table. At a yard sale a couple months ago I bought two coffee tables for $10. One is rectangular, one is a small square. I bought these because I liked the shape of the design, and the price was right. But I didn't really have a need for them or know where they would go. Now they are working out really well for learning center stations. Plus I can mention the tables by their shape (circle, square, or rectangle) to tell where something is or where to suggest someone go next. I also use a small part of one coffee table, a corner of a couch, plus a regular size table down in this room. So far, so good.

When I showed the kids the stations, they were quite excited about it. In the morning I set everything up and then gave them a tour, explained how it would work, what the rules were, etc. One of the main things I stressed was that it was important to be very quiet so that the person working with me at the table could concentrate. As it turned out, we had near silence for several hours as we did school yesterday. Wow! It was really nice.

I also had each child pick out a silent reading book before we got going, so that if they got finished at their center before it was time to switch, they could sit and read on their own. I figured it made more sense to have them get their books before we got going, rather than have them all going back and forth to the book shelf at different times.

I set up the centers to be clutter-free. Here is some of what I had today:

On small round table I had a box with our connectagons in it. Later my daughter decided to add Dominoes to the table.

Another table had a phonics thing we have that's called Instalearn, which is mainly used by my early readers. For older kids at this station there were Mad Libs, and for my five year old there were some little learning cards that he likes to play with and can do on his own.


We had a cozy station on the corner of one couch for listening to audio books. Station included pillows, blanket, CD player with headphones, and two CDs with read-along books, plus our Bible verses CD to choose from.

Computer station with headphones was set up for the younger kids to go to starfall.com to play phonics and reading games, etc.

Art station today had two learn-to-draw books (one geared toward youngers, one geared toward olders) and an assortment of crayons, colored pencils, markers, and paper.

One station had a puzzle.

One area (on the floor--I just put out a plastic tablecloth to create the space) for playing with wooden blocks (they have not played with those for a long time and they loved it):

I didn't really micromanage the timing of switching. Since there was plenty to choose from, and the atmosphere was very calm, the kids seemed to enjoy choosing a spot to go, and they played with it for plenty of time and then cleaned up before going on to the next. Some spots were a little more popular than others, so in those cases sometimes I asked the child if they would like to try another station in two minutes or whatever, to give them a gentle nudge to move on so that someone else could enjoy the station they were on.

Like so many things in my life, this will probably take a lot of mom-power to keep it going, so the chance of it falling to the wayside is pretty decent. I often feel that I'm taking a risk by telling about my latest and greatest idea since I feel like so many of them come and go at high speed. Still, I think this idea has merit as a tool to keep the wheels turning here at our school, and maybe it will give a few of you some ideas too.

Making the Holidays Family Friendly

The Holidays are supposed to be all about celebrating with the folks you love, yet all too often the focus is on the preparations instead of the people and the children especially seem to get lost in the shuffle. If holidays are stressful to you, or you come to the end of the day wondering where and what your children were doing all day, this book is for you. It is a reminder of why we celebrate, and how to celebrate in a more family-friendly way. Memories are made at every holiday, are they good ones or bad ones? Learn how to make them good ones for everyone.

Check out this new release ebook from my friend Penny Raine! It's at a super low price right now, too. :)