Don't you just love those first day of school photos everyone posts on Facebook?  I sure do!!  I love seeing those smiling faces as kids wait for their bus or have their picture taken with their new teacher or whatever.  Kids in their brand new school clothes with their new backpacks grinning from ear to ear as they excitedly wait to embark on a new year of school proud to be one more grade ahead.  I even have homeschool friends who have their kids also take first day of school pics and it is so fun to see.  I decided to take a first day of school picture of my kids today as it is our first day of school.  My oldest, Sierra, who starts HIGH SCHOOL today refused (we homeschool, our uniforms are pajamas, and bed head...I understand her reluctance) and my son did this above picture (yes, it was staged).  

The first day of school at the Kozlowski Christian School of Excellence was a good one.  Daniel, who started 3rd grade today, is having a light week as we do not yet have all his curriculum (I will get the rest on Wednesday so next week will be a full week).  He got frustrated with handwriting which we are practicing our printing a bit before diving into cursive.  He is  a perfectionist and a lefty, so it is harder for him to follow my directions on how to do certain things when he is a lefty while I am a righty.  I told him he knows how to write the letters, he just needs to let himself not be perfect (he is comparing his letters to the computer generated samples on his practice sheet).  He had to work on letting that go.

School comes very easy for Daniel.  He has a pretty good grasp of his multiplication facts, but summer was long and so this week we are just practicing those facts with fun games.  Today, we did this leprechaun multiplication game I found on the internet.  He was very skeptical about playing math games...he's a facts kind of guy...he loves doing math and so games are not necessary.  In the end, though, he found this game quite fun as he tried collecting as many coins as possible.  As I figured, he got just about every math fact right.

Sierra started high school today.  I told her multiple times throughout these last couple days that this year, school would be tough.  She never really gave it much thought...until today when she realized just how tough it would be.  Unlike Daniel, she is hitting the ground running and there is no room for putting off tasks for tomorrow.  We are locking down on her school as she prepares for the possibility of college.  Already she has been faced with challenges that makes her "brain want to explode" and we are already making changes as necessary.  All in all it has been a good day for her except when....

...a certain cat tries to impede the learning process.  Here she is lying on Sierra's desk while Sierra tries to do her history.  We call her our school mascot...she loves when school is in session because we are all in one place together...her domain...the school room...her favorite room in the house.

This year promises to be a banner year for both kids.  We already have plans for lots of outings outside the home...field trips and social gatherings.  We have positive attitudes.  We are confident in the curriculum choices as well as our game plan for the year.  

Here's to the 2013-2014 school year.  Here's to having lots of good things to report on here...and maybe some bad reports to share as well.  Stay tuned!

The end of the school year...the sound of excited kids as they gain a freedom from schoolwork....the sound of my own sigh as I realize I, too, have gained freedom...You gotta love summer!!  But with all of these great things, there tends to be a loss of balance.  You might find yourself in a whirlwind of activities or you might find yourself with a house full of "bored" kids.  Without a set direction for each day, life can feel off kilter.  At first, it feels great, but by the end of summer, you can almost feel excited to get back on schedule....to get balanced.  The kids will whine and complain.  The daily battle to get school done will commence.  The memories of a fun summer spent doing fun activities like going to the pool, the beach, hanging with friends and (for my daughter at least) a trip to Europe will make for lots of daydreams and a tough road to reality, but somehow all of this works towards a place of balance and peace.

For us, school starts in a week and a half.  Last summer, I had school planned out by mid-summer.  I had the WHOLE year planned.  I learned a lesson then as life steps in and turns things upside down and my year plan went out the window.  This summer, I have done a little planning here and there and even now, things pop up that cause me to need to re-work things.  I am in the unique position this year of planning for my 3rd grader and my 9th grader...I have a kid starting high school...no pressure.

I have organized our school space.  As I look around at what will be my kids and my home for the next several months, I pat myself on the back for a job well done and I can feel the scales tipping more towards a balance.  As I slowly get curriculum in, I work on getting it sorted out for whatever student it is for.  I am in a constant state of planning, making lists, and, as the first day of school draws closer, a constant state of panic.  I panic at the fear that it will not all get done...but I also feel that balance tipping more and more on the other side as it gets more and more balance.  Math planned....scales even out a bit more.....grammar done....a bit more.  

This summer has been a fantastic one filled with great memories for both my kids.  My son got to spend a week with his best friend at the beach.  My daughter went to Europe with our church.  We met up with friends, saw many movies, lots of kids running up and down my stairs, trips for ice cream, frozen yogurt, cheesecake, trips to the pool, etc.  As fun as it has been...I am ready to get back to real life.  I am ready to get back to schedules and order.  In a week and a half, school resumes at the Kozlowski Christian School of Excellence.  BRING.  IT.  ON.

It is so much fun to blog about the successes in life, be it homeschooling or your kid learning to ride a bike.  What about our setbacks?  Writing a blog about a failed venture is not fun.  No one likes to admit when they make a mistake.  It's interesting how difficult it is.  I always tell my kids that the greatest lessons in life are the lessons we learn from our mistakes.  While I tell them this, I also have a very difficult time with my own mistakes.

Now, this particular blog is not about a big mistake.  It is more about an experiment gone wrong.  It is about being excited about a venture and then realizing that maybe it was not such a great idea after all.  Or, maybe it was a good idea, but just not a good time.

I have many friends who homeschool through the summer.  It makes sense...especially where we live.  It is so hot in the summer, who wants to go out and do anything.  If you are going to be at home anyway, why not get school done.  This made total sense to us.  Our summers are usually a time when everything slows down to a crawl.  Oh, we might go to the pool now and then or head down to the beach.  We might go to the movies once in a while or go out for ice cream, but, overall, we stay at home and I get to hear the constant "I'm bored", "there's nothing to do" chants.  It made sense to do summer school...to get my daughter ahead of the curve.

But, in life, there are no guarantees.  Just because we have had 13 years of slow moving summers does not mean that the 14th year would also be slow.  In fact, plan on it being slow and decide that you will take advantage of that and see what happens!  

Here are our challenges:

• My daughter is going on a missions trip to Germany at the end of July...lots of planning involved in that...fund raising....getting things together like passport....etc.
• My kids can be the healthiest kids in the world (and so can I) until I plan to do summer school.  Then, one kid gets a bacterial infection from the pool, I get a UTI, another kid has allergy issues requiring more trips to the shot clinic, same kid has a dermatological outbreak (doctor), same kid needs wisdom teeth extraction (consult visit done, surgery scheduled), and more to be inserted later, I am sure.
• Social calendar.  Never a problem before....and than my poor, unsocialized homeschoolers have social calendars that rival any others. I have spent more time driving around in the past few weeks than ever before.  Church events, pool, movies, bowling, beach, etc.
• The challenge that hurts the worst to admit is me.  I only have one kid doing summer school....ONE KID.....and I am in summer mode.  No supervision on my part.  Oh, I say I need to check this work or that work...but I don't.  I don't give proper instruction.  I am in summer mode (and I am driving all over tarnation).  My brain is on vacation.  The only thing I want to think about is what is on the schedule for fun for the week.

So.  Today I am calling summer school officially over.  It sounded good.  God bless those who do it.  It is clearly not for us.  Oh, I will try to slip some math in here and there....make sure they are reading....but it is summer, and they are only kids for such a short amount of time.

It has been a LONG time since I have posted on here.  My intention in starting this blog was to share our adventures in homeschooling and thus encouraging others in their homeschooling pursuits.  Here's the deal, I have not posted in a long time because homeschooling this year has just been THAT successful.  This year has been our most awesome year yet...full of fun, learning, fun while learning, social highs, and so much more.  In fact, it was SO successful that we find ourselves at the beginning of May and we are just about done with the school year.  

My son, Daniel, and I work closely together...he is 8, afterall.  Somehow, we managed to just zoom through the work...it was not our goal to go quickly.  This was just how it came to be.  My daughter, Sierra, works pretty independently...she is 13, afterall.  I had doubts about her finishing early...had a goal of maybe mid-May for her.  It looks like she will be finishing up next week, though.  We are all on a high.

Truthfully, though, I struggled a little bit with ending so early.  We are hard wired to think that school runs from the end of August to the end of May (or beginning of June).  It was hard for me to let go of that mentality and to just celebrate with my son as he is so excited to get an extended summer holiday.

Many parents I know do school year around...taking long breaks here and there.  This appeals to me because the summers here are SO hot and HUMID, there is little you can do but complain about being bored because it is too hot to even drive to go somewhere.  I am slowly trying to work that into a possible upcoming schedule.  For now, we are enjoying freedom that has been hard earned!!

So, what is on the agenda?  What does one do when one finishes up so early??  Can you say FIELD TRIPS!!!???  Oh, am I ever excited.  The field trips will be mainly for my son and I (with a friend and her son dragged along with us).  We are looking forward to taking a trip down to the SpaceCenter Houston, going on a Crocodile Encounter, visiting the Houston Police Academy for an open house day, possibly popping into the Children's Museum and maybe a trip to the Blue Bell factory....we have even considered a trip to Huntsville to tour the prison museum (and a stop at the Sam Houston statue).

I am a homeschool mom, of course, so my focus has been, for the past couple weeks, the next school year.  I have already been packing up this year's work...picking through what I want to keep (Daniel's many poems) and what I want to throw away (worksheets galore).  I have already decided on curriculum choices for both kids and am currently trying to sell old curriculum to buy new curriculum.

This summer break will be loaded with new challenges.  First of all, my daughter will be starting High School next!!  HIGH SCHOOL!!!  Could someone please explain to me how that happened??  I was just discussing with Sierra her future.  She has all these HS credits she needs to graduate and we have to consider dual credit courses to go towards her college education.  I have listened to several parents (support systems are FANTASTIC) and discussed different options with Sierra and she has agreed that after a shortish break from school, she will dive right into high school material.  I am very proud of her for making this decision.  The reason for this is getting as much of her regular courses done so when it comes time for those cumbersome dual credit courses, she can concentrate on those solely.

The other challenge for the summer is Sierra will be going on her first mission trip!!  She will be headed to Germany with her church student ministry group.  So, while saving money for curriculum, we are also saving money for Germany.  But, as her student pastor said...Joshua only needed heed God and step into the river Jordan and the waters parted.

So...for now, we will enjoy the fact that school year 2012-2013 is done (just about).  We will look forward to having some fun.  I will post later on our past school year and our school year to come.  I will make a concerted effort to post more often.  In the meantime, what better way to celebrate the end of the school year than with a nap...yes, I think I will.

A few months ago, as I wrote in a blog recently, I decided to give Harry Potter a try after years of staunchly standing up against the books.  My motivation came in the form of a smarty pants son of mine who has a high aptitude for reading, but lacks the motivation to read.  In an effort to get him to at least try to read for pleasure, I began to wonder about the series that had been at the top of my personal "no-no" list of books.  I researched the books and decided that if I was going to get him to read the books, than I probably should read them as well.  (Sierra jumped on this band wagon and I have never seen her read...devour....books like she did this series).

It took about 3 months, give or take a week or two, for me to finish this series.  These are not your average children's books.  Books 4 and 5 were some of the longest books I have ever read.

I officially finished the series today...at 11:30 in the morning...when I was supposed to be getting ready to go out with the kids...I could NOT put the last book down and upon finishing the last book, I threw it down in great satisfaction basking in the story I had just completed.

J.K. Rowling is a genius as a writer and a story teller.  It is no easy task for a writer who journeys out on an adventure of writing a series to accomplish what she accomplished.  I have read many series and they often start out strong, but weaken over time...feeling often as if they were stretching out the story to sell more books.  Not so here.  Each book set up the next book as well as backing up the previous books.  You grew with Harry...went to school with him....had relationships with school friends and bullies...were privy to the innermost workings of secret plots to overtake the dark lord.

I will not give anything away in the story, though I believe most people have either read the books...watched the movies...or both.  I will say this...the books are ten million times better than the movies.  They are rich with story and character.  

I will say that everything I was worried about in the beginning of NOT letting my kids read the books were unfounded.  This is pure fantasy.  I love the imagination it has awoken in them and the vocabulary is rich.  The story lines are so well developed, I am not sure she ever left a hole in the story.  I heard that each book gets darker and darker as the series goes on and this is certainly true, but the morals and the story overshadows any of the dark stuff.  

I feel completely confident letting Daniel read these books (he has just about finished up The Prisoner of Azkaban (which he LOVES).  Sierra finished the series way before me.  As I finished the book, and Sierra and I sit and discuss the different parts of the series, I just sit in wonder at this author and her immense imagination and her ability to write a cohesive series that did not leave me sighing with frustration or boredom.  I hated the characters I was supposed to hate and loved the characters I was supposed to love.  I gasped in shock several times in each book (more so in the last few).  Harry and his friends were not infallible and there were times I wanted to reach in and strangle them which made it so much easier to get into the series.

I tip my hat to Rowling.  Well done.  

2012  --  A rough year and a blessed year.  More blessings than not, but the not was bad enough for me to be glad that 2012 has come to an end while I will hold on to the blessings tightly and carry them with me into the new year.

This year, Daniel got a best friend...and not just any best friend, but a best friend that is so much like him and that comes with the added benefit of parents I adore and consider to be the best of the best as friends.  

This year, I became more involved in a Homeschool Group and have gained friendships that I value more than anything.  I have prayed for years for friendships like these and God has rewarded me greatly.  The wisdom they share, the laughs we have and the camaraderie is priceless.

This year, I have watched my daughter mature and grow.  We have become closer, if that is possible.  I attribute our relationship to homeschooling.

This year, we experienced hardly any sickness minus a cold here and there and Daniel's unfortunate Christmas day illness (I think it was food poisoning from the night before).

This year, we made adjustments in our school structure that have proven to be very beneficial to me and the kids.  Daniel is now working ahead...so far ahead that I am not sure what grade level he is really on.  Sierra is not working ahead, but she is working on mastering her skills and I could not be prouder of her progress.

This year, money was tight...tighter than we have had in years....and we never went hungry, we always had a roof over our head, we always had electricity to keep us warm/cool, we never really went without and learned a new level of dependence on God.

This year, my daughter has grown almost as tall as me and my son has begun to experience growth spurts himself.

There is more I could list....there are all the small blessings....but you get the idea.  2012.  

2013 holds a lot of promises for us...promises I can't wait to experience.  Our journey of homeschooling will continue and my expectations are high.  Sierra will start High School in 2013, which is pretty depressing.  My goal is to finish a book I have been writing for a couple years (and by a couple years, I mean I started a couple years ago and have not touched since).  Matt and I will celebrate 15 years of marriage.  Sierra will go to her first semi-formal dance.  Daniel will continue on his crazy road with his friends as will I.  Matt and I will, like so many others, endeavor to get healthier, physically and financially.

So, thank you 2012 for a year of ups and downs...but excuse me if I give you this quick goodbye as I welcome in this new year!!

So, it has become tradition for us to, each Christmas, have a White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake as our Christmas dinner dessert.  I found a recipe years ago for a Olive Garden copycat that is really really great.  For the past couple years, though, we have received, as a gift from a friend, a whole White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory as a Christmas present.  This year, we did not receive the cheesecake and I asked my family if we should just buy a cheesecake which my answer was a resounding NO.  I was going to have to make it.

So, Christmas Eve was the day.  I wanted to bake the cheesecake on Christmas Eve so it would be set and ready for Christmas dinner.  It was a bit of a problem from the beginning.  I have not made this recipe in years and it has a lot of moving pieces...you have to make the raspberry sauce by cooking raspberries, cornstarch and sugar to boiling until a thick sauce is formed...then you must strain it from the seeds.  Also, you must make the white chocolate which is, in a double broiler, white chocolate and half and half.  And you also have the cheesecake mixture going in the mixer (to which you will add the white chocolate sauce to).

Everything was going great...raspberry sauce was cooking and thickening properly.  Cheesecake mixture was mixing up well.  But, the white chocolate sauce seemed so thin...almost watery.  I couldn't figure it out.  I went ahead and added the mixture to the cheesecake mix, making the cheesecake mix so liquidy.  I knew, instantly, that something was wrong.  I put the oreo mix into the bottom of the pan and pressed it in.  I added half the cheesecake mix which poured in like a thick liquid.  My heart sank as I added raspberry sauce and it just sunk right into the liquidy mixture.  Next, I added the second half of the mix and added the raspberry sauce on top.  It looked like a mess and I knew INSTANTLY that this was a mistake of some sort.  I searched my recipe over and over and could not figure it out.  What had I done wrong.  Recipe wise, I followed the directions implicitly.  Than I thought to look at the half and half container and saw that I was supposed to shake it vigorously (I am sure to mix the half cream with the half milk).  Who knew??  I do not drink coffee...  I just knew that the white chocolate was just melted with mostly milk.  I knew, without any doubt, that the cheesecake was ruined.  

I cried...I wailed...I put it in the oven declaring Christmas dinner RUINED!!  Matt, ever the optimist, said all would be fine but I knew...KNEW...it would NOT.  So, Matt went to the store and bought the same ingredients all over again.  I let the first cheesecake bake out of curiousity of how it would turn out while the second one was put together.  I shook the HECK out of that half and half and the white chocolate sauce appeared to, once again, get liquidy.  Not wanting the same thing to happen again, I only put half of the mixture into the cheesecake.  It was thicker and the raspberry mix didn't just sink and it made for a much prettier cheesecake.

Last night, Christmas night, Daniel was sick.  He was in bed by 6:30.  We, Sierra, Matt and I, decided to try the "ugly" cheesecake that while not pretty, had appeared to cook properly and set.  We saved the "pretty" one for later today.  Well, let me tell you...it was GOOOD!!  Very creamy.  Very cheesecakey.  No issues, taste wise.

So, how is this a metaphor?  Well, this Christmas season has been our most challenging one.  As so many others throughout the country, the recession has made life challenging.  We knew this Christmas would be hard to do all we wanted to do and so we made plans...had it all sorted out.  Knew with what paycheck we would do what.  As what happens, life got in the way.  Unexpected bills....an illness that blocked a week of overtime...etc.  There was doubt that we would be able to do half of what we wanted to do and many things did get lost (outside decorating did not happen this year....oddly due to not finding what we wanted...but a blessing to not spend money on something so frivolous).

I spent much time feeling in despair over how this was going to work...calling Christmas RUINED.  I am such a pessimist.

But, just like the "ugly" cheesecake, Christmas had it's ugly parts, but turned out sweet (though the day itself was full of despair with Daniel being sick....).  We did all we wanted for the kids....no one was disappointed....Christmas was creamy, sweet and delightful...not ruined at all.

There are many favorite things that we love about Christmas.  The music.  The lights.  The decorations.  The warm fuzzies.  The hot chocolate.  The fudge.  The parties.  The tree.  The ornaments.  And....the MOVIES!!  I love Christmas movies from the cheesiest Lifetime/Hallmark movie to the blockbusters.  There is nothing better than cozying up in a nice warm blankie while watching a Christmas movie.

One of our favorites are all the ones featuring the mascot of Christmas, Santa Claus.  When I first became a mom, we decided we didn't want to "do" the Santa thing...that is have our kids write Santa a letter, tell them stories of Santa coming down the chimney, and leaving cookies and milk out as payment for presents.  We struggled with the movies featuring this jolly old guy...fearing confusing our children on whether he is real.  We must've really thought our kids were dumb seeing how they would watch things like Barney or Elmo or any number of Disney characters and love them in all their fictional, fantastical glory.  It didn't take long to break out those great classics about a reindeer with a shiny nose, a living snowman that is confused about birthdays, a kid who is left at home by himself, and all the rest of these great movies.

So, who made the best Santa??  What is your favorite Christmas movie??  

If you are like me, you have a hard time nailing it down.  I love so many of them.  Here is a list of our must watch movies each year:

Home Alone
Rudolph
Frosty the Snowman
Christmas Vacation
It's a Wonderful Life
Charlie Brown Christmas
Prep and Landing 1&2
The Toy That Saved Christmas (VeggieTales)
The Nativity Story
Mickey's Christmas Carol
Small One
Mickey's Christmas Shorts
The Grinch (animated ONLY)
Scrooged
Miracle on 34th Street
The Santa Clause (first one only)

(For me and my daugther) Little Women and White Christmas
(For me)  Little House on the Prairie: Christmas at Plum Creek

It is one of the things that makes me so sad...Christmas Eve night, we will watch It's a Wonderful Life....it is our Grand Finale.  No more Christmas movies for another year.  Don't even get me started on the music.  I could go on and on with that one.

In the hustle and bustle of Christmas...the parties and the shopping....the stress and the fuss....don't forget to take time to sit together as a family....pop some popcorn....bake some cookies....and enjoy time spent together with a great Christmas movie.

My favorite Santa:  Tim Allen in The Santa Clause

My favorite Christmas movie:  It's a Wonderful Life or Grinch or Rudolph or Miracle on 34th Street, or The Santa Clause or .....

Everyone has a nighttime routine, right?  If you have kids, you certainly have a routine.  Maybe you have the kids take a bath, brush their teeth, get into their jammies, and read them a story before kissing them and letting them go to sleep. Maybe not?  

Well, we have our routines.  With 2 kids that are 5 1/2 years apart, the bed time routines take place hours apart.  Daniel, who's 7, goes to bed much earlier than Sierra, who's 13.  Daniel's bed time routine is one of CRAZY amounts of love.  Once he is ready for bed, I go in and tuck him all in.  I will sit with him and chat about the day we had...the day we will have tomorrow...and shower him with kisses and love.  Next, Sierra comes in and spends about 10-15 minutes making him laugh.  It is loud and crazy and makes him SO happy.  She makes up stories with sound effects or challenges him to all sorts of weird tasks.  I could never explain what she does with him, but I can say that you have never seen a happier kid than when she is done.  Matt gets the final tuck in.  He sets his music for him (Daniel likes sleeping to music).  They exchange their guy like good nights and he makes sure there are no animals lurking in the room before shutting off his light and closing the door.  Daniel's nighttime routine is long, crazy, and he loves it.

Sierra tends to go to bed after me...I'm a night wimp.  She usually will come into my room and tuck me in at night.  We will sit together and talk a bit and than she kisses me and is off to her room.  Lately, however, our routine has changed and Matt slaps his forehead each night as we partake in what he calls "The Mommy and Daughter Show".  I am not sure how or why this happened, but I will be about to fall asleep sitting up, I will be so exhausted, but the next thing you know, Sierra and I are exchanging the funniest, wittiest comments between each other and Matt just sits and listens to it all in wonder at the two of us.

It often begins as most nights in the past did.  She will come into my room and plop on my bed.  She will start talking about a mundane thing like a test she has to take the next day or where she is at in the book she is reading...and it evolves.  She might say something that will remind me of something else and I will interrupt her and tell her which sparks her into something else and the next thing you know, we are laughing and talking about...well....nothing.  We will spend 45 minutes to an hour and a half just talking and laughing from subject to subject....no rhyme...no reason...but 100% hilarity...well, to us anyway.  The first night this happened, it was kind of a wow, that was a long good night.  The second time, I thought...hmmmm?  By the fifth night Matt was dying (not from laughter, but with how late this would keep going on).  Each night, she would get into the room at 10:15 and not leave until close to 11:30.  He quickly began to say we had a "Mommy and Daughter Show" going on each night.  

It is much like you may see during a comedy hour...two people just bantering back and forth.  We laughed at his calling us this show and at the same time declared we must have a theme song...and our own car...with jet engines.  I said we were a lot like Seinfeld, a show about nothing.  And really, it is all about nothing.  There is no holds barred in our conversation even if there is a man in the room...and poor Matt rarely, if ever, has a part in our show.

The thing is, this is precious, precious time.  Sierra is 13, but she always talks to me.  She tells me everything.  We are extremely close.  This is proof positive.  That we can, night after night, sit next to each other on the bed and just laugh and banter and talk.  I cannot emphasize how important this is.  She is getting more and more independent...she spends more time on her own....she spends time with friends...and yet here she is with me.  No subject is off limits.  We talk about boys, friends, love, the future, music, movies, sex, female stuff (Matt just loves when we get on that subject), animals, and on and on.  

I mentioned last night that I should get a tape recorder (duh, I know my iphone can do the job) to record our conversations...she said no.  What is spoken during this time is for our ears only.  I do not know how long the Mommy and Daughter Show will run, but as long as it does, I will enjoy that time of hilarity and bonding with my daughter...THIS will be something that we will cherish and talk about for years!!