Journey Journal ~ The Past Two Weeks

Our life right now is all home renovation with homeschooling on the side.

Let's start with the homeschooling. It's going so great! Every single day I tell Eli how proud I am of him and what he is accomplishing in his schooling. He is left on his own the majority of the time with a couple of hours of me in the afternoons with a one year old hanging on my leg. He is ROCKING school! I leave him a list of about four things to accomplish while I am at work in the mornings, and when I get home those things are done and done well! Pre-algebra, grammar, writing, reading. Check, check, check, check. When I ask him how things went he is smiling! He is smiling because he is feeling such a sense of pride in accomplishing hard things.

The last two weeks we have not touched geology just because I have, frankly, been too busy to plan out enriching lessons. Plus I am interested in it, as well, so I want to have the time to learn alongside him. Geography/cartography is a little easier for him to do alone so he is still working through that.

When we drive to speech therapy Eli reads his lesson to me out of Mapping Through Art. This sparks several discussions and usually has him searching the internet for more information or pulling up Youtube videos for him to watch and me to listen to while we drive.

Then Eli spends the rest of the week drawing the corresponding maps and doing the assigned activities. This is a neat program that he is really enjoying. The history of cartography is an interest of  his, and he is not only getting a good education in that but is also learning a whole heap of ancient history and historical geography with the mapping. It's neat.

I did ask him if he is truly okay with our current schedule whereby he works primarily independently, or if he is missing our one-on-one time learning together. He said the he enjoys doing his work alone (hello fellow introvert) (and I don't take offense to that because I get it!) because he has less distractions. I also think he is seeing what he is capable of on his own. In the past everything has been done as a group, and I'm not sure if he really saw what he was doing. Now it's all him, so successes are all his.

Proud mom, right here.

So we will continue what we are doing until we feel that we should be doing something else.

What about Brynne? This is homecoming week at her school so she has gotten her first taste of dress-up days. She has actually dressed up every day, with our favorite outfit being Twins Day with her bestie Rilee. These girls are so fun. Check out the cool shoes I picked up for them on clearance at Rue 21 for $5. Score! And on Friday she found out that their Twinsies outfit tied for winning outfit in the whole school!

Brynne's volleyball team was in the homecoming parade on Friday afternoon. She is really having fun with her friends at school. She also went to the football game Friday night, which is something she has never been interested in doing.

She is continuing to do really well in school. She said she thinks most kids hate her because she is smart. She has found that she loves the German language, enjoys her history teacher and class, and is the fastest typist in all of the school's Keyboarding I classes at about 50 wpm (and it's funny because I made her take keyboarding and she was SO mad at me but she LOVES it!). Brynne is a great student, and I am certain her teachers are happy to have her in their classes.

Look at their cute class shirts ...

Other things going on at home? Well, the big one is that Dawson has moved back home for the next couple of months! Living in Dallas was just not a financial win for him, and I really needed his help on our renovations, so he packed it up and came back home. It's really nice to have him back!

Speaking of renovations, Oi!

This has been a messy week. Last weekend we tore down the eye sore that was our garage. I just do not understand what the previous owners were thinking when they erected that thing taking up the entire back yard and butting it directly up against the covered back deck. It, literally, looks like a tornado hit it right now with piles of lumber everywhere. And both my front porch and back deck are completely covered in building materials to keep them out of the rain.

We also tore down the chain link fence to make way for a new privacy fence.

Then on Tuesday I came home and our only bathroom had been completely gutted. We can still use the toilet and sink but we are now going to my mom's for showers. It's a tad inconvenient, but I just keep imagining the new bathroom we will have soon.

The attic renovations are making some progress as we now have some drywall up. It's taking great shape!

There is still so much more to do, however, and I am hoping that all of it can be done by Thanksgiving. My sanity has been tested, I can assure you. I have never taken so many deep cleansing breaths in my life. Lord help me.