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The Best Part of Homeschooling
You’re probably thinking I’ll say the best part of homeschooling is spending every day with my child, or watching his eyes light up when he “gets” something. No. It’s the planning I do every year. Whether it’s in the summer when I really, really plan things out, or it’s in the middle of the year and I stop everything to re-plan. My friend Tabitha is hours away from me and we’ve never met, but she’s invaluable to me when it comes to homeschooling since we switched to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy. She helps me decide what we’re going to study and which books to order. Once I have my books, I…
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Homeschooling: Mid-Year Change-Up
I’m in my 12th or 13th year of homeschooling, and it’s been the roughest one yet. We had sold our house and moved into a rental last June. We were planning on buying it, but it didn’t work out. Luckily, at the same time, we came across a house we fell in love with. We got very lucky, considering how most houses are going for over asking price, and our under-asking-price-offer was accepted. I had to pack the house up again. Homeschooling back then was sporadic at best. We were using Gather ‘Round Homeschool and working on the North American Bird unit. We had a great time reading books and…
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The One Where I Almost Sliced My Nose Off
Dermaplaning. Have you heard of it? Yeah, I hadn’t either until last week when it popped up on my Instagram feed. It’s wear a razor blade is used to remove dead skin and small facial hairs to revitalize your skin. You can see from the photo it looks harmless. (insert eyeroll here) The professionals make it look so fun. The slide the razor at an angle and all sorts of stuff comes off your face in a neat little line. It’s mesmerizing for weirdos like me. Obviously I quickly ordered a set of razors to do it on myself with no training whatsoever. I think I was dermaplaning before the…
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Adding to Depression
I’ve suffered with depression on and off for years. For a long time I didn’t know it was depression. I just thought I was “off” for a few days. Now I can easily tell when I’m feeling depressed. I get that sinking, blah, on-the-verge-of-tears, nothing-can-make-me-happy feeling. And even now, after all these years of dealing with it, I sometimes still don’t take care of myself the right way. To be honest, self-care is at the bottom of my list. It wasn’t always. Before we had a million kids I used to take nightly bubble baths, spends hours and hours in my writing room making up stories and connecting with other…
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Raising Future Dads
Every day I get to witness what great big brothers my boys are to their little sister. Today it reminded me of just how many siblings they’ve had. This is our 16th year of being foster parents. Our oldest, 15, was our second baby ever. He’s been a brother to roughly…38 kids. He’s mostly been a big brother, but was a little brother a bunch of times when we did emergency foster care. We’ve always taken in babies, but with emergency care, we took ages newborn-12 years old. Both of my boys know how to feed a baby a bottle or baby food, rock a baby to sleep, and they’re…
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How My Mind Spins (or, Why I Didn’t Rent a Movie)
My 15 year old son is a basketball fanatic. Like playing-outside-in-shorts-and-no-shirt-in-30-degrees-and-snow fanatic. He found out a few days ago his school, which he’s never actually been to, had basketball tryouts yesterday and today. Today was my turn to drive him and his friend there, and my husband would pick them up later. I reeeeeally didn’t want to drive since it’s been blizzardly all day. I hate driving in snow. But I picked up his friend and drove the boys to their last night of tryouts. I drove home like an old lady, white-knuckling the steering wheel. I decided to stop at Wegmans to get groceries and a Red Box movie…
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How Far Would You Go for Free Stuff?
I think I go to Goodwill about four times a week. It’s a problem. Sometimes I sit home and think about the new stuff they’re bringing out to the floor. I’m not looking for anything in particular, but what if they bring out something I’m not looking for and I end up needing it and loving it? That’s a very real possibility. Yesterday I had to drop my oldest off at his cousin’s house to go snow tubing. There’s a Goodwill around the corner. My husband was home with the two younger kids, but I had to stop at the Goodwill. I had to. And lucky for me I did.…
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I’m the Worst
You know how you feel really great when you’re doing something you’re supposed to be doing, like exercising or eating right? Then you completely fall off the salad wagon and eat nothing but junk for months? That’s where I am. I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes back in March. I knew I was pre-diabetic, but didn’t pay much attention to that fact. The day I was diagnosed was days before Covid really hit our area (pre-masks and hand sanitizer everywhere). And, unfortunately, just as I was leaving the house for my doctor’s appointment to find out blood test results, I received some terrible news about a family member. I…
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Jennifer Fulwiler
I keep a notebook by my side when I read books on Catholicism. I have to. I have so many questions about being Catholic, which is funny because I was raised Catholic until I was 10. I should know more. But I’m learning that many Catholics who were born into it sort of just go through the motions, and don’t really know what certain traditions are for. The first book I read was Did Adam & Eve Have Belly Buttons? by Matthew J. Pinto. It asked the simple questions I had at the beginning and provided easy-to-understand answers. I need easy-to-understand. Even though I received the Sacraments of Baptism, Communion,…
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The Journey
In my head, I’m a fantastic blogger. I blog every day and talk about the things I’m going through, that bother me, and that I question. And, lately, there have been a lot of things like that. I’ve been on a journey of sorts; one that I wasn’t expecting or looking for. A few weeks ago, after hanging out with one of his friends, my 14-year-old son ask me about Catholicism. I was Catholic from when I was born until I was about 10, and my mom pulled us out of the church because “we don’t need a middle man to ask God for forgiveness.” I’m sure there were other…
