It’s the bane of my existence. “It” being housework. Not just the bathroom-cleaning, dusting, sink-scrubbing kind. I don’t like that, either, but it’s the “loading the dishwasher three times a day, folding four loads of clothes a day, picking up ten pairs of shoes a day” kind that really bites. And what is worst of all…trying to get kids to consistently help you do it. I came home Saturday to an empty house. The kids had left with dad – two to go to a basketball game, and three to their grandparents’ house for the afternoon. I was looking forward to a few hours to rest, get some things done, and then maybe pick up the girls for some clearance-sale shopping. And then I walked into their room. Oh. My. Goodness. This was the room that had been “cleaned” before they left. I won’t traumatize you with a detailed description of what I found – it would be too harrowing a scene to recount. Suffice it to say that when I piled everything into the center of the room from on the beds, under the beds, on the walls, and over the curtain rods (yes, you heard right) the resulting teetering mountain was waist-high. And that was just the girls’ room.

Now, you need to know that in my former life I was a clean freak. I drove my roommates and my husband crazy. And when I had just one child, I was still able to feed this OCD tendency (at least until he could walk). I even kept all the books on his bookshelf arranged by height. Every day, he would pull himself up beside his bookshelf and, as fast as he could, throw all the books out. And every day, before his nap and before bedtime, I would arrange them, all one hundred of them, back in height order. Now, I realize that this is a teeny bit compulsive. Fast forward to when the girls were small, and there were five. As I sat amid a roomful of toys, swings, bouncy seats, burp cloths, and sippy cups and talked with my son’s (childless) speech therapist, I laughed and mentioned that I used to be a clean freak. She had the gall to look me in the eye and say, “You have got to be kidding me.” Okay, she really didn’t have to say it like that.

My husband and kids would still say that I am a clean freak. I am on them all the time about cleaning, and I am quite sure that they would consider a messy house to be one of the seven deadly sins according to me. In fact, my girls have even been known to include cleaning in their nightly prayers. Okay, that’s sad. But where is the line? How do you maintain a pleasant home that family and guests alike can enjoy, while not harping on your kids all the time and making life miserable for everyone? Do you use a chore list? Do you use punishments? Rewards? And what priority do you place on a clean home? I would really like to hear a sane, reasonable view of things. And in the meantime, I need to go arrange some books :)

I have always laughed at the idea that what we do at our house is called “homeschooling.” Sure, this year we have actually managed to set aside a corner of our playroom with a table designated for “homeschooling”, freeing us from having to empty the kitchen table before and after every meal. And we did really great with this table for about the first month. But I don’t like that the room has too little natural lighting, so we moved back downstairs to do most of our work. Even with the better lighting. though, I get a little stir crazy at home and want to get out, so we take this show on the road a lot (especially when it gets warm outside). You have no idea how quickly kids get their Easy Grammar done if they are sitting in the parking lot at McDonald’s waiting to go in and eat lunch. Or at the library where they each get to play computer games at their own computer as soon as they get done with their handwriting. Or at the park at a picnic table, where the playground and the woods beckon them to hurry up and finish their math. It’s a little unconventional, to be sure, but I find it a great occasional motivator to park them (literally) in front of their reward and let the longing for it spur them on. I have tried many (many, many) forms of punishments and grounding for work left undone, but nothing works as well as that visible reward. Even the promise of getting to do something later that day doesn’t quite do the trick. I don’t know whether it’s because my kids are visual, or because they maybe just don’t believe that I will follow through with something that is not imminent, or maybe it’s because they have me as a captive audience to answer their questions…I really don’t know. All I know is, the kids who went with me to the bank, the car wash, Walmart, and McDonald’s today - they got their work done. The one who stayed home with Dad? Not so much.
So, how about your home? Do you homeschool, or is it sometimes “car-schooling”? :) Can you grade algebra at a red light? Is your shoulder out of socket from reaching around into the seat behind you to grab that book and read for yourself what in the heck that science question is asking? Have I run into you at McDonald’s?

I am so mad at myself. Every time I do this, I swear I will never let it happen again, and then before I turn around, I have done it …again. No, nothing illegal or immoral, just…well, irresponsible, I guess. I have fallen behind on grading my kids’ schoolwork. Not a couple of days behind…weeks. Like, two weeks with my girls in math and Easy Grammar and (dare I confess it?)…nine weeks with my son in math. There, I said it. My girls had done their work, but when I finally got around to checking it, they had gotten on the wrong track and so had not only missed several things that I should have caught and corrected early on, but this wrong way of doing things was now ingrained in their brains and will take a while to back out. Not to mention the fact that they were then faced with correcting two weeks’ worth of homework, a circumstance which does not make for happy times around our house. All of that is bad enough, and like I said, occurs far too often, but the worst thing was with my son. He is a seventh grader, and a pretty responsible and honest kid. So, in my busy-ness of the past few months, I had just relied on those character traits, and when I would ask him every day if he was done with his schoolwork and he said yes, I took it at face value. I knew that his Science, History, and Language Arts were up-to-date - he does those at co-op and I teach one of those classes, so I knew we were good with those. But I knew there would come a day when I would have to pay the piper and grade weeks’ worth of math homework, and I kept putting it off. So finally this week, the day arrived. I asked for his math homework to grade, and he immediately started hedging “Ummm, I’m a little behind…let me catch up and I’ll bring it to you.” “That’s okay,” I said, “let me grade what you have and you can finish the rest.” “But Mom…”…”Bring. Me. The. Book.” I opened the book to week 18, where he was supposed to be, and started flipping backwards to find where he had stopped. Week 9. ARE YOU SERIOUS????? “Mom, I started getting behind and I needed help, but the further I got behind the madder I knew you would be when you found out so…I just didn’t tell you.” And then I felt ashamed. Angry, yes, because he lied to me. But ashamed because I knew that I had fallen down on the job in a major way. So after a heart-to-heart about honesty and integrity, and an apology from me for my neglect, we sat down with his agenda and came up with a plan to catch him up in two months and keep him current. It will require a lot of extra work on both our parts, but it was a wake-up call to me to not lull myself into neglecting staying on top of my kids’ education, and a clearing of the air between my son and me that I hadn’t even known we needed. So chime in…please tell me that I’m not the only deadbeat mom out there :)How do you keep up with your kids’ schoolwork? How do you transfer that responsibility to them as they get older? How do you strike a balance?

….a long winter’s nap. Ahhhhhh, just the sound of those words is warm and comforting, especially in my part of the country which is currently in a deep freeze with temperatures dropping into the single digits. Somehow, cold lends itself to sleep, hibernating, low energy, staying at home, even getting up late. Who wants to face the agony of getting out from under warm covers and having your feet hit the cold floor (even if it’s carpeted, it’s cold right now). It’s ironic that the coldest weather of the year also hits right about the time of my New Year’s resolution to exercise more. If I am not going to go for a walk when it’s 70 degrees outside, I am for sure not going for a walk when it is 10. The one thing that goes better around our house when it is cold is our homeschooling. Whether it is the complete lack of temptation to go outside, or the fact that we stay warmer all bundled up in the same room with the fireplace, we get on a steady pattern of working that usually hangs around until the first of March. I count on getting some good solid work in during January and February to shore us up for April and May, when neither Mom nor kids want to be inside hitting the books. We even have fewer errands to run (or should I say, we run fewer errands). The errand list is probably the same, but it seems like I can do without groceries a whole lot longer if it means an icy trip to the store to get them :) In addition, only one of our kids has winter sports practice, so we don’t have to shiver our way to (and through) the number of practices we do in the spring. All in all, although it feels like we have only 6 hours of daylight each day, and we will probably have an electricity bill to rival the national debt, I suppose winter is not so bad....
What about you? What does winter do to your routine (and energy)? Anyone want to join me in a long winter’s nap? :)

I, for one, am glad that Black Friday is over. Not that I ever shop on Black Friday. Shopping is NOT my thing, even on a good day. But throw in getting up before I’ve gone to sleep good; pushing, screaming crowds; and lines circled around the store twice…I’m getting nightmares. Every year, though, I am guilted into considering hauling myself out on the day after a major holiday, with extended family still in town, and subjecting myself to the nightmare. I am tempted to do this because I, like most people, love a bargain. I like to feel that I have gotten the “best price all season”.
Once again this year, I started looking through the sale papers before my turkey digested. Would I find something so attractive, a price so alluring, that I would take the jump, make the dive into the cold waters of camping outside a Toys’R Us in the dark, freezing night? I decided to compromise. Most stores were offering online specials, even percent- off coupons if you made your purchases online. This, I figured, could be the best of both worlds (and I wasn’t even buying Hannah Montana merchandise.)
So, come midnight, I am sitting at my computer, fingers poised over the keyboard, credit card at the ready. When midnight strikes, I order fast and furiously, filling my shopping cart with more speed than I could ever have attained in a crowded store with sleep-deprived customers and staff. And then I come to checkout. The page locks up. OHHHH NOOOOO!!! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!!!!! I wait. I push the enter key 3,192 times. I wonder if I have just charged these things to my credit card that many times. I call customer service and get disconnected from hold four times. I go back and wait some more. Finally, I start over, now typing frantically, sure that my items will already be out of stock. Back to the ordering screen. IT LOCKS UP AGAIN!!! I hurry to log onto facebook, wondering if anyone else is having this problem. I chat with a couple of my friends, who are also frenetically switching from screen to screen., trying to find a site, any site, that will let them check out before it locks up. This gives me an idea, so I switch to another site, armed with another sale paper, and I encounter the same frustrating lock-up. One site had this cutesy message about the elves working to fix the problem…I was not in the mood for cutesy. I post a status about my angst, and one of my diehard friends who is camping out gets my message on her Blackberry and asks me what I am trying to get – she will try and get it in person. I could not reach her after this, however, and after two-and-a-half frustrating hours of lockups, I gave up and went to bed exhausted, turning down the request of another of my facebook friends to just “cowboy up” and meet her at the store at 4 a.m.
When I got up the next morning. I tried again. This time, the site is all up and smiley and friendly, until I get to the point where I click to order and it says “we’re sorry, that item is out of stock.” Everything. Everything. By this time it is me against that store. I put on my coat and head out the door, determined to look someone in the face. I get to the store and head to the back, where the items I want are located. I only have 30 minutes until the “early bird” shopping is over. The shelves are cleaned out. Oh, sure, there is the random microwave that is missing a handle, having fallen victim to an early morning tussle. But nothing…NOTHING…I want. I weave through a line of people, thinking to myself “Well, at least they opened a register in the back to take care of these shoppers back here.” Until I walked, and walked, and realized that “these shoppers back here” were at the back of a line that wound all the way around the store to the front. And this NINE HOURS after the store opened.
I did not have to think twice. I marched myself back up to the front, out to my car, and fought my way out of traffic to head home, having finally learned my lesson. “Peace On Earth” definitely does not start until after Black Friday.

One of the things I am thankful for is the opportunity to volunteer. As a homeschool family, we are particularly blessed because we have the flexibility to participate in volunteer projects as a family. This week my kids and I volunteered at a drop-off center for Operation Christmas Child, a program run by the organization “Samaritan’s Purse.” Organizations or an individual can fill a shoe box with toys, hygiene items, writing utensils, candy and other items, then choose the age and gender of the child they want the box to be sent to, and Samaritan’s Purse will see that it is delivered to a needy child in another country. We have sent boxes for several years, and it is one of my kids’ favorite ways to volunteer, and to celebrate Christmas. They had such a good time picking out gifts, and working on fitting as much as possible into their shoeboxes. We then were able to go to the center and pack shoeboxes that other people had donated, which will be shipped to a distribution center before they are sent overseas.
I think one of the best ways to teach children gratitude for what they have, as well as compassion, it to have them actively volunteer. There are so many opportunities and many areas of need; and as my children get older I would love for them to each choose a volunteer venue that most interests them. During my childhood and teenage years, my mother was the director of nursing for a nursing home, and I spent much time over the course of many years visiting with the patients, talking with them about the lives they had lived, and just getting to know them, or even just holding their hand. I see so many kids, and even adults, who are afraid to go to nursing homes, afraid of the smells, of dying, of patients with physical problems or dementia. I am thankful that, because I grew up around and loved so many older adults, I have never had that fear. My siblings and I have talked many times about how we love the elderly and have a heart to serve them.
I want my kids to have that – not just about elderly people, but about all people in need, who may not look like them or talk like them, or even smell like them, but are nevertheless people worthy of love. They will never get that until they get their hands dirty, until they see the conditions and feel the pain, until they meet a need. So many times I try to shelter my kids from that which is unpleasant, but Jesus spent his life around that which was and those who were unpleasant, either in appearance or in lifestyle or behavior. He had no place to lay His head, he spent time with beggars, with homeless, with prostitutes, with sinners and the downcast and the down-and-out. Life was not warm and pleasant and protected for Him most of the time. At a conference I attended recently, the speaker urged her listeners not to let our comfort keep us from our calling. That really hit home for me – I hold so tightly to my comfort that I let it define and put parameters around my calling. May that challenge my heart as I seek to serve even the least of those among us, not just in this season of Thanksgiving, but in all of life.

One of my favorite times of the year is coming up next week. Not because we get to eat a lot (although that is definitely a plus) and not even because we get to see our extended family (which is also, for the most part :), a plus). No, it is because this holiday is one that is based solely on what we give, rather than on what we get. And what we are giving is our thanks. Doesn’t cost us any money, doesn’t run up our credit card bill., and it always fits and doesn’t have to be returned. And the thanks is, for the most part, not given to another person – it is given to God. And have you noticed, Thanksgiving is one of the lowest-keyed and least commercialized holidays (heck, the stores and even homes around here have skipped right from Halloween to Christmas). To top all that off, in the giving of thanks, we receive some things for ourselves. Joy. Humbleness. Gratitude. Hope.
Several of my friends on facebook have started posting daily until Thanksgiving the things they are thankful for. Even in reading what other people are thankful for, it makes me more thankful. So with that in mind and in no particular order, here goes…
I am thankful for…
- a husband who has been with me through really good and really bad times, who loves our kids like I do, and who is here to stay.
- my closest friends, who know me well and love me anyway, who support and encourage me, and who have my back always.
- $1.50 movies and Redbox
- the freedom to homeschool my children and the people who fought and suffered far more than I have so that I could have this freedom
- my home and my new low fixed rate!
- hair highlights and pedicures – sometimes they just make life worth livin’ :)
- my autistic son’s long-suffering and loving teachers at school, and how they try really hard not to call me
- my mom, whom I did not call a friend until I was married with kids, but who is now one of the closest friends I have
- my various jobs which, while they are hard, enable me to continue staying home with my kids
- my kids at co-op, who make it a joy to teach
- and their parents, who mostly do, too :)
- sports teams of all flavors, which entertain my family, keep them active, and provide lots of healthy competition and conversation
- my son with special needs, without whom I fear I would judge other parents by their kids’ behaviors, and also without whom I would never hear “are you my baby, mommy?” from a precious 10-year-old boy
- my dad who, although he pushes every button I have, taught me the value of education, hard work, and resourcefulness
- paint…it does wonders for your home and your mood for not much money
- potties you can sit on – I have been camping and have visited other countries - - trust me, this is something to be thankful for
- dollar menus. Sometimes you just really, really don’t want to cook
- my church and all the people in it that I love, who inspire me, encourage me, challenge me, take care of and teach my kids, and have been my family for many years
- cell phones. I don’t think I need to say more.
- my children, who bring me immeasurable pride, immeasurable frustration, and unending joy
- a computer which helps me to organize and manage my life, research everything under the sun, and keep up with my friends…all on my own timetable.
- ibuprofen,,the magic bullet
- a dead-end street to raise kids on
- fall in Tennessee
- Jan Karon books
- God, who has never left me or forsaken me, although I have many times been unfaithful
- good curriculum, without which this homeschool mom could not be homeschooling 
- vans that still run, albeit with over 200,000 miles, fluids leaking from everywhere, and more hang-ups and glitches than I can name
….and more that I will share next time…