Weekly Wrap-Up

I love this time of year. I love the flowers and the resuming of hiking and I love finishing things up for the year.

And I love prom season. I really do. I'm glad our support group does a prom and does it well.

 

Photo credit: Donna Williams Photography

Prom consumed a lot of the past couple of weeks. Or months. After prom and the after-prom outing (Sonic), the girls' dates dropped them off at our house to spend the night so that they could get up early in the morning to do the Color Me Rad 5K. They were all questioning their decision to sign up for a 5K on the morning after prom, but they had a blast.

And they had all Saturday afternoon to nap. So did I, since I was their early morning chauffeur.


I love that co-op classes for K-8th grade are finished. So does Duncan, although he is taking one high school class. And I love that high school classes will be over on Monday!

But I don't love that, between my middle- and high school classes, I have  34 research papers, 34 creative writing journals, and 19 final exams to grade.

What was I thinking?

I love these last few weeks of our own homeschooling. Laurel will actually be done on Tuesday after German class, but Duncan and I still have a couple of weeks left. It is absolutely amazing how much we get done every day once all of his outside activities are finished for the year! We are finishing up the first part of his Sonlight World History program. We'll finish the rest next year plus add in a high school textbook. Because, well, unbelievably, he'll be in high school.

And my daughter will be a senior.

And speaking of seniors, tomorrow is a really, really big day.

But first, here is another ending.

Last night was the very last End-of-the-Year Awards Ceremony for these four girls. The three blondes in the picture above (Laurel is the middle one) have been in it since we started our troop 11 years ago.

That's them at our very first awards ceremony. I know. It makes me cry, too. All four of the girls (the brunette joined 9 years ago) are completing their Stars and Stripes Award, which is the highest level a girl can achieve in AHG (comparable to the Boy Scouts Eagle Scout). Laurel is now gathering her signatures, compiling her binder, and waiting on her Board of Review. We're nearly there.

It's not just her, though. Eleven years of my life have been committed to American Heritage Girls. This past year since  "Saying Goodbye to a Decade of Little Girls"  (i.e., the end of our 10 years as founders and coordinators of our troop) has been surprisingly lovely. I thought I'd be sad every time a Thursday came around and it was meeting time, but I really wasn't. We left our troop in incredibly capable hands with women who love these girls just as much as we do. It has been an amazing transition in so many ways.

And speaking of transitions, back to tomorrow.

This little boy? My firstborn?

He graduates from college tomorrow. Magna cum laude from Belmont University.

I wrote "Burying the Big Yellow Bus" for Simple Homeschool in the middle of his freshman year at Belmont. He was 17 years old. Since then he's grown up a lot. He has spent 2 summers working on my brother's farm in New York. He's driven across the United States, and he's spent a semester in Italy. He's written dozens of papers and received top writing awards at his college.

And now he's done, and he's coming home. I have no idea what that looks like.

His plan is to work at the airport for a few years so that he can have free flights anywhere. He just wants to travel.

I remember graduating from college and having only vague plans for the future. Like, maybe I would go to graduate school. Or maybe I would get a teaching job. Really, all I wanted to do was hang out with my friends.

I would not have predicted that, less than a year after I graduated, I would be married to the one I had given up on. {For the record, I don't wish that particular scenario for my son.}

The point is, the end of college is just another beginning.

Stay tuned. That's what we're doing.

And now, my daughter is heading off to her last Friday morning of her childcare job, my 13-year-old is awake and Otto of the Silver Hand is calling.

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Weekly Wrap-up

Some weeks are just like this:

Some weeks are heads buried under the blanket as you dictate the spelling list, and you vacillate between wanting to yell "Get your HEAD OUT FROM UNDER THE BLANKET!" and thinking, "Does it really matter if his head is under the blanket?"

Some weeks you just want to watch the red-bellied woodpecker and the goldfinches and the pretty red house finches frolic at the feeder behind his head.

Some days, it's too sunny and beautiful to think about grammar. It's better just to put up your hammock under some trees in the back yard or just to pet the cat in some sunny spot.

Some days, it's too dismal and dreary to do anything at all.

Some weeks you completely, 100% understand when he groans when you say, "Let's start school" or when you peak in at her and she's snuggled under her blankets watching a movie instead of writing her paper.

Some weeks, you're counting down the days until summer.

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In Just Spring

Everything is flowering, about to flower, or just finishing up flowering here in East Tennessee. My backyard is like a fairy land, bursting with purples and pinks with a few dashes of yellow and white, all smothered in green. It's hard to resist the urge to join the dog rolling around in the grass. I only resist because of the itchiness.

And so today, some flowers, a few faces and a poem. 

Today 

By Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze  

 

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, 

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight 

 

that you felt like taking 

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table, 

 releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage  

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting 

into this larger dome of blue and white, 

 

well, today is just that kind of day.

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See poem in one place here

First Spring Hike

Our spring break went from five days in Florida to one afternoon hiking in the Smokies, but I'm OK with that. I was looking forward to sand and water and hot sunshine, but who can complain about this?

A few billion grains of sand or a bright spot of yellow hiding behind a moss-covered boulder?

The roar of ocean waves or the song of the river?

An amazing seafood fest at an out-of-the-way crab shack, or Laughing Cow cheese and Goldfish on a rock in the middle of the river?

Feet soaking in the warm ocean, or feet dipped in ice water?

Give me sunshine, something beautiful, a spacious place, and my family, and I'm good either way.

But if I had to choose forever, I'd choose mountains over beach, always.

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Cedars of Lebanon State Park

Last weekend kicked off our 25th anniversary celebration. For my birthday in February, Randy completely surprised me with tickets to see Billy Joel in concert in Nashville. He conveniently combined that with our traditional anniversary cabin get-away weekend. We usually go nearby to the Smokies, but we needed to be close to Nashville for our concert so he settled on Cedars of Lebanon State Park, about 30 minutes east of Nashville.

{First of all, the Billy Joel concert was amazing. I mean, what can you really say about having your whole life come together, childhood to adulthood, in a two-hour show? Hearing him sing "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" and "Always a Woman" and "Anthony's Song" and so many more. It was incredible.}

Our cabin at the state park was very nice—clean with lots of windows and everything we needed except hand soap.

But this post is really about a walk in the woods. It's a meandering trail, flat as Iowa. We're used to hiking in the Smokies, so this easy pace was a welcome change.







Cedars of Lebanon is known for its cedar glades, a unique type of ecosystem that has adapted to the soil layers that are perfect for red cedars but too thin to support most large trees.

We spent lots of time just checking out the amazing limestone bedrock and sinkholes that characterize the park. We were really wishing we had our kids with us, especially Duncan, when we saw all these amazing cave-like sinkholes. He would have had to explore every single one of them!

It was a little too early for most wildflowers, but Randy-the-botanist always finds some plant life that delights him.

Cut-leaved toothwort

Checking out the ebony spleenwort

Shagbark Hickory

Setting free the milkweed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of skeletons of Queen Anne's Lace

It was a perfect day. We are diehard Smokies hikers, but we love exploring different terrains too. Middle Tennessee has some fantastic places to go, including Cummins Falls State Park and Stones River National Battlefield. We are definitely adding Cummins Falls to our list of yearly hikes!

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Weekly Wrap-Up

Mid-March: we're heading into the final stretch of the school year now. As usual, I haven't accomplished all thing things I imagined, especially doing art every Friday. We've done it three times. Three.

And it's Friday again, and art is not on my agenda.

But I do feel that one big goal is being met. Duncan has adapted well to working more independently this year—his eighth grade year. I've noticed a big change even since December. My goal for my kids is that they are doing all their work with minimal input from us by their sophomore years. It's worked well for our older two, but Duncan has seemed to need me more to sit beside him while he does his work. I feel encouraged now that he'll meet that goal, as well.

I've also noticed an improvement in his French this past month. He really struggled with pronunciation up until now, but suddenly he is really getting it. His teacher at our co-op is French, and I always imagine him shuddering at the butchering of his language. I'm hoping he'll suffer a little less now as the kids figure it out.

I'm teaching German to a small group of high schoolers, and it has been fun to revisit both French and German. It's a bit confusing sometimes to work with Duncan on his French and then prepare my lessons in German. Surprisingly, I have found that I remember French (3 years in high school) better than German (junior year in Germany plus 2 years in college). I think I slept through my 8 a.m. German class in college, and while I learned to speak fairly well while in Germany, I didn't learn proper grammar, conjugating, etc. Kind of like Rosetta Stone German—enough to get by, but not necessarily all there.

In other news…

Duncan got Star rank in Boy Scouts. He only has one rank left to go before he can start working on his Eagle Scout project!

In my World Lit/geography class, one group did a presentation on Africa. We had fun doing tribal face painting as part of it.

My co-teacher in tribal paint.

My brother came to visit, which means that my precious nephew Kollman came to visit. Everything pretty much stops around here when Kollman comes to visit. Is there really anything more important?

 

 

While my hometown in upstate New York is under feet of snow, my yard is absolutely full of daffodils. I love Tennessee. Everyone is complaining about the little snap of cold we had this week, but heck. I just see these:

And tonight? Well, if I had a bucket list, I'd check a big one off tonight. Here's where Randy and I will be.

Next week: spring break! We were hoping to go to Florida, but that didn't work out. So instead I'm hoping for nice weather for some hiking and a chance to do serious spring cleaning.

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