Surviving At Home

Homeschooling has interested me off and on during the last five years since my oldest started school. I could not imagine sending my shy, little girl on a bus to a huge school and considered ever so briefly the idea of homeschooling her.

I marvel at the parents who homeschool multiple kids. That seems like an awful lot of work to plan the lessons and I wonder if these parents are brilliant in their own right to teach about all these different subjects. I could probably handle the elementary work but how on earth do you plan and teach about advanced subjects?

Recently I found the website K-12 Free Homeschool which offers a ton of information about homeschooling and their new concept of offering a free core curriculum, complete with 180 days of lessons and activities. I’m all for saving money so the word *free* struck me right away and I also like the idea of having the lessons and activities planned.

Now, since the *free* aspect is part of this new program’s focus, I assume that homeschooling parents currently have to pay other people/companies/schools for curricula and lesson plans. That could become rather costly, especially if you have a limited income. Here’s how it can be tuition-free.

My biggest fear of becoming a homeschool parent was that I wouldn’t know enough about any one subject, especially advanced math and sciences. If I didn’t know the info, how could I possibly teach it well enough to my child? I am also a computer/internet junkie who can get lost surfing the internet so it would take me forever and a day to make just a couple of lesson plans.

If you would like to add some time to your busy homeschooling life while also saving some money, here is the K-12FreeHomeschool.org Course Catalog

*This is a sponsored review*

This is Part 2 of my Week of Giving Thanks series.

For over two years I had been in the midst of a mini mid-life crisis. As my children grew older and more self-sufficient, I was desparate to find something for ME to do. I was tired of being everybody’s maid and short-order cook but I had no idea where to turn.

One Friday afternoon last May I received an email notice from Nell that Kelly McCausey of www.MomsTalkNetwork.com was looking for a podcasting intern to learn the business and work with her. On a total whim and with only 15 minutes to spare before having to pick up my daughter at preschool, I whipped up a resume and cover letter to apply for this unpaid job. What better way for a stay-at-home mom of 11 years to learn a new skill?

I was running out of time so I took a deep breath and pressed the send button. I had heard in various forums how difficult it was to find work to do from home so I really did not think about it another minute, figuring that a million other people were applying for the internship, too.

You can imagine my surprise when Nell responded to my email and wanted to interview me! Holy cow! I hadn’t interviewed for any job in over 13 years and all I knew about was raising kids. What on earth would I say to win this job?

Well, that interview is a blur as is my subsequent conversation with Kelly! I was stunned when Kelly offered me the position during that first phone conversation. Either I hit a home run or she was desperate! LOL!

Fast forward six months and I could not be happier or more grateful for that chance that Kelly took on me, the inexperienced SAHM who didn’t know the first thing about podcasting. After many silly mistakes and some pretty dumb questions, I feel confident in my new skills, I have pretty steady work every week and I learned to try new things rather than always being afraid of failure. Because of this newfound belief in myself, I am doing some ghostwriting and am loving it!

Hope that wasn’t too sappy, Kelly! No need for tissues, just wanted to pay my respect to an awesome role model!!

Wow…I no sooner posted about surviving Halloween and here we are, two days before Thanksgiving! I won’t bore you with my usual, “oh my, where has the last two weeks gone?/I feel so old,” line even though all those thoughts are crashing through my mind right now!

My friend Alyssa started posting what she is grateful for on her blog and I wanted to keep in that theme this week. As much as I love to eat, Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for all that is good in life and to count our many blessings.

This is a fairly obvious blessing to count first but I am blessed by my family. I have an adoring husband who works hard to support us and two daughters who are the lights of my life (even though they can drive me crazy at times!) They are supportive, loving and patient (well, my husband is patient, not the kids so much!) and I hear the words, “I love you,” everyday.

I also have loving and supportive parents who want to take an active role in my daughters’ lives. They take it upon themselves to visit when they need a granchild “fix”, they take the girls for overnight “vacations” during the summers and they are very generous with their gifts and with their time. They are the ones my girls always want to say hello to when I’m trying to have a phone conversation.

My three brothers and their wives treat my children as their own, for which I am thankful. There is no playing favorites between the two girls; if one is playing, the other is invited to play. My brothers are the cool uncles who love to wrestle and play board games for hours on end while my sisters-in-law are the aunts who give the hugs and who will listen as the girls tell tales about their latest school adventures.

I love the saying that is seen on hats and clothing so much lately, “Life is good.” I couldn’t agree more…

Phew!

We survived our Halloween night of trick or treating. Even though I was being a Halloween grouch this year by not decorating until 3 days before the big event, the girls had fun making their “big” plans with their friends of how many houses they would hit up for candy.

Of course, we now have at least 1o pounds of candy in the house and that doesn’t include the left over candy we had purchased to give away. So while the kids are away, momma plays…in the bags of chocolate!

This year I used clothes that we already had for the kids’ costumes. As my oldest said, “Mom’s being thrifty.” They always find the Halloween party catalogs early on to get ideas but then they expect me to fork over $45+ per costume, plus accessories, plus shipping. No thank you!

In the past I’ve been grateful to my mom who has sewn some beautiful costumes but I refuse to pay that kind of money on cheesy, polyester, tissue paper costumes. So this year, with just a few small purchases at the store, we created our own costumes.

My youngest was Hannah Montana, complete with long blonde wig and microphone (and all the lyrics to her CD playing in her head) and my oldest was a pirate. Considering what an argument she gave me over not buying her costume, I think she was the most comfortable of all her friends because she was in regular clothes and sneakers.

The only mistake I made was purchasing fake fingernails for my oldest. We were in the mall store Icing where she found some pretty cool skull earrings for her pirate costume and at the register, just calling her name, were some fake black nails with skulls on them (do you see the theme here?). I almost forgot to put them on Halloween night but once we did, they looked pretty darn cool!

But I forgot just how awful they are to get off your nails! Yikes! She had to soak her hands for quite awhile in nail polish remover, which of course dried her skin and left an unpleasant scent on her hands. It was fun for the night but she realized pretty quickly how impractical they were.

Lucky for me, she’s a self-proclaimed tomboy…