Through Life's Storms

A friend of mine texted me today about how my life has been one storm after another for such a long time and how well she thought I was weathering it. She said she was praying for me.  Words cannot express how grateful I am for all those of you praying us through this time of upheaval. I look back at the past year and see so much loss, best friends moving on everyone in our family experienced a bestie leaving, loss of one of our dogs, a new job for hubby but at the cost of loss of fellowship with so many good friends as our Venn circles no longer overlap, loss of our housing attached to the old job, and the hardest loss of all, the death of my mother the kids grandmother.  

I have been amazed at God's timing how he put me here in New York at just the right time to be a help and companion to my father. I may not be the best of companions but at least I'm here  :-)  We are hoping to close on the new house as soon as possible, please pray for favor with mortgage companies as government entities have lost documents on us... Pray they are found or are not needed. 

I did not want the girls to get to far behind so I did order some of this years curriculum. It arrived yesterday and I started assigning blocks of work. Since we only have pieces I'm having them do about 2 of each assignments per unit. I could not imagine trying to cart all the books we needed back to Texas in the tiny car we just bought for Daddies commuter. It will be a fun trip home! ha ha ha.  

I cannot believe Little Miss Sunshine is starting Algebra she is ready. Yet this week she has discovered the meaning of brain drain. Use it or lose it! She has not done any math over the summer other than looking at price tags and figuring out if she has enough money to buy the article of clothing. She was laughing at herself today that she could not remember 3x3 is 9! I have assigned a few extra math work sheets to warm up her math skills. 

I was so glad Sweet Potato's friend was praying for her today as she absolutely flew though addition of polynomials today. Woo hoo! She was all smiles as she was sifting though the math facts to get the answers. She was really trying today so less frustration for everyone.    My poor father has his dining room table taken over for hours at a time now. The girls are using the tablets for more than just fun and games... My poor candy crush saga is going no where... LOL. I'm glad I have them working on school. It was a good decision as it has been too cold to go swimming. Today it is 66 degrees out and raining. Brr... They had been OD'ing on TV while handy to keep them occupied during the daily hospital runs, how much back to back  "Say Yes To The Dress" can one watch without getting bored?  You know they have watched enough TV when your child says "Mom I have watched every Good Luck Charlie episode." with a hang dog expression in their eyes.  Doing school has normalized the days for the girls which in turn helps them process this nomadic life we are living at the moment. 

I never realized how hard it is for my kids to meet people in a new place.  I'm totally joining the nearest home school co-op when we get back! Never before was it an issue, as we were in a large community of friends who homeschooled.  I am looking forward to moving in, putting down some roots and letting Little Miss Sunshine raise a few rabbits. We may even join 4-H club. What a thought... it meets every other Tuesday night at 7pm and I can go! I'm grateful I have a place to weather the storms, supporting my dad and being supported by him. I am looking forward to traveling home and spending time as a complete family unit again. 

The Dreaded Algebra

Funny how I dread teaching ALGEBRA, but as I was working through how to at least get a start on school while we wait to move in to the new house, and I'm still in NY and not in TX... Oh the ramblings and meanderings of my mind. What to do? What to do?, and who calls but Mike Austin, looking for the web guy, who is not in NY and his old phone number is not forwarding properly. Mike was so helpful, and one email later,  I have a few things headed our way that we can start on that will help us not fall too far behind.

I already had the No-nonsense Algebra here so I got it out and sat down with Little Miss Sunshine... Sweet Potato is doing summer schooling with it... we at least have moved one whole chapter! My sister found an error in the guide.  Lesson 4-6 it's problem 15 or 16 I have forgotten which one but 3 of us all kept coming up with one of the answers but the other one didn't match the answer key. My sister picked it apart for 45 minutes before declaring the key was wrong.  Her father in-law a long time math teacher said "Oh the stories I could tell you about wrong answers in the the answer key."  Oddly he didn't actually tell us any.

So we finally got into the fun part of algebra solving X & Y because we have 2 equations. I told Sweet Potato it was magic math... (insert flying rainbow unicorns here) we don't know the variables but we have enough information that we can *still* solve them.  It was fun.. I can't believe I just said algebra was fun, but there it is on my computer screen. This from the girl who never understood square roots.  So as Sweet Potato and I slog through algebra going at her pace of learning. I'm at that point where Little Miss Sunshine is starting.

What a difference, I wonder if she knows how amazing it is to be introduced to negative numbers and immediately grasp if you have -45 -3 you add them to be -48 or that mental gymnastics of -32+56 =24 even the tough ones 3-4+7-10 =-4 type didn't stump her.

She told me she hated math and algebra was hard... I told her not to be scared and discussed real life negative numbers. You want beef jerky but you didn't bring your money it costs 4$ I buy it for you you now owe me (-4$)  and you give me 5 dollars when we get home how much money do I need to give you back?  It seemed to do the trick... (Think it was the beef jerky example beef jerky always holds her attention.) Suddenly she just understood *boing* like that...  I kept giving her harder and harder problems and she just kept working her way through them.

Later as Dad and I were driving to the hardware store he said... "You are a good teacher. You praise her so much and encourage her that is the key." Thanks Dad! We had a good discussion on how hard it is for me to find things to encourage Sweet Potato on, and yet how important it is. Her stubbornness has been imprinted in her mind from the time of her birth, it kept her alive in the orphanage, yet now it causes her to not listen.  So often I have to let her figure it out, you can do it your way 15 times and bang your head against the problem your way and when you figure out you need help and are ready then and only then are you teachable, and ready to learn... Maybe some day that persistence will create some new invention. I certainly hope so, but for now I can look forward to a few weeks of light school, that she can choose to make hard or easy.

Sweet Potato's Very Bad Day.

We had family time this weekend and we ate Lebanese food, watched Cultural dances and experienced an "Eastern" form of Christian worship. Not bad for a weekend.  Last week I was just having a rough week and my heart wasn't in my job as teacher. Processing medical stuff, and Life (with a capital L) was too hard. So I let my children off from school for 2 whole days... Why do I do this to myself? It's like setting myself up for failure...

Last night I didn't set up the workboxes, I was tired! So I set my alarm for early this morning and with the help of a thunder storm I dragged my anemic body out of bed. While I'm prepping school Sweet Potato comes in and informs me I'm wrong... You see I bought her leopard print "duct" tape as a treat this weekend, but its actually "wall" tape the fact that it's really a long vinyl sticker which I think would be easier to use, uh darling you can cut it with scissors and it doesn't stick to them... was irrelevant... it wasn't "duct" tape and I was wrong to buy it for her.  Cause I'm always wrong... right... I'm mom... I also secretly know where everyone shoes are too right??? 

Not the way I wanted to start my day, since she was !devastated! that it wasn't duct tape, (oh the horror)  I gave her 2 options:
1. I could put it on the craft shelf and anyone can use it, since she didn't like it.
OR
2. She could try again, but this time say something like "Mom I don't know how to use this tape, can you help me?"

Funny she opted for option 2.
Happily I only had to prod her to eat breakfast. She was 15 minutes late to school... alas this was a foretaste of what was to come.  As I worked through her note book I noticed missing work. As I checked her narrations I discovered a need for more guidance.  As I set up her favorite subject I noticed a distinct lack of answered questions. *sigh*  they were all character issues she struggles with, At her age I would have left them blank as well.

So after reviewing all the incomplete work that needed to be completed in the homework box... she was now a good 45 minutes behind. Yet I still had hope, dictation went quick, then we had a disciplinary issue. *sigh* Time in's take so long!  Moving on to grammar she bombed the oral drill.  I was forced to add review and literature to the homework pile.  That did not bode well for her attitude.  Upon reaching Algebra (with a capital A) and having to find the Least Common Multiple using Prime Optimization, she fell back on to the dumb game and could not tell me what a prime number is, or how to do it... I had a suspicion she was a bit lost as to the "why" tho she had the "how to" down last week.  I was planning on stopping here till she can do it without help.  Following a LSG style I'm having her ask herself a series of questions to prompt herself though the work.  She can now do long division this way so why not LCM? and Prime Factorization??

I called her on  the dumb game and basically she was mad the homework pile is growing (so lets take extra long with math and see if mom gets mad! woohoo!)  This behavior mystifies me
I have lots of work .... ergo
I will not do my work ....ergo
I have more work to do.

This was repeated 3 more times, each time I called her on her behavior, each time she knew the answer but gave the wrong one to see how I would respond. Child give your poor long suffering Mom a break already!  Can you see me banging my head against the wall? She received lunch courtesy of my loving husband, as well as a trip to the principals office for a chat.

Many hugs later I sent her up to do her independent work, and I focused on Little Miss Sunshines teacher led work. One discussion about trusting God, a read aloud on Mozart's family, flash cards and grammar and boom we we're done. I hid in my bed room for 20 more minutes, really it's the teachers lounge.

So I hear lots of foot steps up stairs and I think I better go check. I want to trust but should I? It's not been a good day so far.  I walk up the stairs and get a glimpse of her getting herself back in her seat.  I discover she has yet to complete one of her assignments.  At least she was honest and admitted she was talking out loud to herself about her future.  *sigh*  So were back to trust but verify... setting my timer for every 25 minutes, and walking up the stairs to check on her,  managed to keep her on track. My Knight in Shining Armor helped her with Newtons principal while I made dinner. Her friend with bright eyes visited at 6:30 in hopes she would be done, but alas she was not.  It's 9pm she's actually done and tucked in her bed.

Here's to a better tomorrow. :-) I can still hope right?

And yes I have Sweet Potato's permission to blog about her day. :-) she likes fame and fortune.