The Kids Asked Me to Blog

You know something is off when the kids ask you why you have stopped blogging and would you please start doing it again? I am still trying to understand why my almost 9 yo son decided this was important but I will give it a more faithful go again. I am thinking I need to get back to just shorter regular bursts. It is not that I do not have anything to write about it is often I think it will take too much time and then I never start, you know the Type A part of my personality that many of you can relate to. If anyone even still reads this blog since I have left it fairly defunct over the past year or two.

In honor of spring here in Minnesota I can try for a new beginning again. The snow has melted and my kids can resume being outdoors for more than a half hour at a time. My sanity and peace of mind return around this time of year as well :) All around I think we feel more inspired, like coming back to life after a long rest. In many ways I really feel like winter here is like a hibernation for everyone. We still get out occasionally but something just is off and all of a sudden the switch gets flipped and everyone has energy again and everyone is outside and together again. Neighbors walking dogs or just visiting in the yard together, kids on bikes, baseballs and basketballs flying around the neighborhood, the smell of bonfires in the air. Life going on around me all the time.

Ciaran turns 9 this week. I started this blog when he was 2 years old, how crazy is that? So much has changed in these past 7 years and in other ways things feel the same. I am amazed we still live in Minnesota, a place I never would have picked off the map and knew only was "the hat" on the map when we moved here. We are still homeschooling which I did not know what to expect at all when we started. We are a family that still shares basically the same values though we have grown and matured during these years. Those of you who wondered many years ago if my kids would ever stop nursing or get out of my bed I can honestly say they do eventually and all have, I told you then it would happen before college :) We still read a ton and I still keep lists though I have not published them in a long time. I keep yearly lists now rather than monthly ones. Maybe I can make that a goal to update by the end of the school year as I still get comments requesting I resume that. Last year I thanked our library and told them how much money that had saved us (over $10,000 had we purchased all the books we read there) according to our book recording software.

Of course the kids are older and many of the lessons and field trips are different but some we keep repeating for our youngest or so the older ones can get different things out of them this time around. I sometimes can not believe I have a 5th, 3rd and 1st grader. I am soon coming to the next great transition where I will have 3 independent readers - it will be interesting to see what that brings into our homeschooling journey. I am going to miss Little Bear, Frog and Toad and Dr Suess, dear old friends in our house. I will even miss Telly the teaching time clock that has gotten under my skin many a days as I listen to the clock say way to loudly what the time on the hands is. Still my kids all loved this toy and learned so much from it.

We now run to baseball and swim team practice, meets and games. We fence, ice skate, ski, bike and many other new things we are trying out together as a family. We still love to travel and sometimes will just up and go for a week loving the freedom homeschooling provides us. Somehow I feel busier now than I ever was when I started blogging with kids aged 4, 2 and newborn thinking those days would never end.

Just today reading Farmer Boy out loud looking at my two girls working on the scarfs they are knitting and my son building something elaborate with lincoln logs I thought the more things change the more they stay the same. I still read aloud and they still play or work in the room with me. I still love this time and wish we had more and more of it. I still seem to have lots of library fees no matter my best intentions to keep track of nearly 100 books at a time.

If you are still around and here reading this blog feel free to ask me a question, maybe if I have accountability I will be more consistent. I once offered a Q and A time here of homeschooling questions or questions about our family life. So here we go again. Feel free to leave a question in the comments or send me an email. Please ask something you think might make an interesting blog post and encourage me to write :)

Kiss and Hug your kids and keep on reading to them always!

Blessings,
Tenniel