What an awesome weekend with some very cool people. And I made it home, which was my concern in going--that I was going to be detained out of town longer than expected and that maybe I wouldn't connect with anyone and I'd run out of gluten-free food. None of that happened. We made it home in record time, despite some less-than-clear roads. And I was so lucky to be with a great group of women and to have the intensity of not being able to distract ourselves with outlet shopping and my other plans that had to fly out the window with the weather. Plus we got beautiful snow on top of it all. Isn't life great?!

I roomed with two other women from my Community Group. It's kind of interesting, since I am not a member of this church, but I still feel very close to many people there, and I run into them often when I'm out and about. I love these relaxing weekends where there's nowhere to go, very little structure, and someone else is doing the laundry and the cooking. There was also a perpetual snack buffet in our main meeting room, so at any hour, day or night, I could get chocolate, cookies, cake, chips, and all manner of sugary drinks. I could get used to that!

In addition to listening to a really wonderful, talented speaker, I spent the weekend doing some of my favorite things with people who share my passions. I played what probably amounted to several hours of Yahtzee with some other dice aficionados (I was singing the praises of online solo play if they couldn't get enough with people in real life!), and I played Settlers of Catan, which is my current second favorite game, with two very cool sisters and their mother. I cannot say how excited I was to find other people who enjoy this kind of strategy game. I also finished a hat that I was knitting and started a new one...and started it again...and started it again...and ripped it out yet again. We also always play a very fun group game that is a variation of musical chairs: one person stands in the middle, and everyone else sits in chairs arranged in a circle around that person. Then that person makes a true statement ("I have more than two piercings in my ears."), and everyone for whom that is also true gets up and has to change seats, and whoever is left without a seat has to make the next statement. It's a total blast, and though it typically starts off pretty benign (what color we're wearing, where we went to school, how many places we've lived, who has more than one sister, etc.), it quickly gets much more personal ("I have peed in the shower," "I sleep naked when I'm not at places like this," and much juicier confessions). This can go on late into the night. I stayed in and played Yahtzee instead of going out to dinner on the semi-plowed roads while snow was still falling, so it was just an all-around very cool weekend.

And now the weekend continues with a snow day tomorrow. I needed that. I need some time to regroup after a hard week and to get a temporary reprieve from my usual hectic schedule. My kids need more time to do their homework. What we don't really need is an entire playday that will get us behind on the work we need to get done, but I love to see everyone having a good time outside, and as it gets a little warmer, more time can be spent there. Today the big excitement was the giant icicles hanging from our roof. I was begged to take a rake and knock some down for them, and then they sucked on them (I personally wouldn't lick anything that came off our roof, but I'm not them...) and made sculptures with them outside. I shoveled the driveway and the front steps, something I always forget to do until we have a treacherous ice slick and people are nearly breaking their necks getting to the cars. We watched the movie "I Know What You Did Last Summer," which isn't the most horrific of the horror movies out there (though I do recall watching it at the movie theatre in Squires Student Center at Virginia Tech and being petrified to walk home!), so it seemed an acceptable choice for 11 year olds desperate to watch edgy movies but not ready for something too sexual or violently horrific. What I forgot is that the language in this flick is really not very, ahem, clean. It was the "f" word every minute or so. Not that they haven't heard that coming straight from their dear mother's mouth at the same rate many times. But still....

And then we played my number one favorite game, Ticket to Ride. I think I converted Kerry, or at least hope I did. It was interesting playing with four players--in some ways, perhaps less cutthroat than with 2 or 3 players, since we could use double paths. And I see how one can play online, either against the computer or other players, which could be very dangerous to my time management. This game wins out above Settlers because it is shorter and doesn't require such a heavy amount of setup and preparation nor such a heavy refresher course on the rather complex rules and procedures of play. Plus it's harder to really stall on a turn in Ticket to Ride. You can get deep into trades and multiple people building on a turn, which can make Settlers go on for quite a while. Oh yeah, and I won. That always makes me like everything!

I missed my little people. Rutledge is just so enchanted by snow that it's hard not to have a smile on your face when you see him putting on his snow pants and his hat and boots and when he comes in with his bright red cheeks (I'm loving the eczema a bit less...). He is just so cute when he is all curled up in my bed, too. I don't know how parents can stand to not sleep with their kids at least part of the time. There are plenty of times that I enjoy my privacy and solitude at the end of the day, but right now, looking over at his little feet sticking out of his Mario Kart Wii pajama bottoms and his little hands tucked up under his belly while he sleeps on my bed. I cannot believe he is going to be five in about 2.5 weeks. Even though I want him to become more mature and stop with the baby talk, already, I still am not ready to not have a really little boy.

There was at least a foot of snow here and about 6.5 inches or so in Williamsburg. This is such an awesome winter so far! Come on, snow, bring it on again!

You know, it seems like kind of a bad idea to purposely go away for two days to the place where the snow is going to be heaviest when we live in a state that gets infrequent heavy snowfall and therefore doesn't clear roads in a timely fashion. I'm still debating whether this retreat is the best idea. On the good side, it seems that although there is a vomit illness that some children at preschool had this week, Rutledge might have dodged it. I kept him home today because he was still coughing a great deal last night and sounding a bit croupy, but also because with something he's already fighting, he doesn't need to be exposed to something we truly don't want. You'd think I'd be resigned to illness with four kids, but nope. I'm still a zealous germphobe, probably even more so now because it can take a while for something to make its way through six people.

I listened to Andrew Pudewa's recorded seminar on how to build writing skills by helping children collect lots of strong, sophisticated oral communication primarily through reading aloud to them through high school. I don't need a lot of convincing, but I really do like to hear it again and again. And today, we had no shortage of reading aloud. I finished _Caleb's Story_ with Frances, and now we are reading a shorter book by the same author. We read a James Herriot picture book that reminded us a great deal of Babe. Last night Ollie and I started reading The Boy Who Dared, which is about a Hitler Youth boy who is executed for high treason after standing up for what was right and spreading the truth when the Nazis tried to control information given to German citizens. It was intense, and we couldn't put it down, so we finished it this morning. Then I continued with Strawberry Girl, which is one of the books from the Sonlight list that we had skipped. It's interesting--set in the backwoods of Florida, but very much in keeping with the "trailer park genre" that the Newbery committee seems to favor. It's not a trailer, but that's just because it took place at a time before the trailer was invented! And as if that isn't enough, we're making our way through A Gathering of Days, which is a New England girl's j0urnal from the 1830s. The writing is harder for the boys to get into, and I understand that, but again, it's a Sonlight book that I'd like us to experience, and though the subject and quaint writing is a little challenging on our attention at times, it is still giving good historical background about the North before the Civil War, and it fits well with where we are in A History of US, which unfortunately is perpetually before the Civil War. I swear we make no progress in this series. And if we weren't reading enough things at once, I also started reading The Dead and the Gone to Walter and Ollie tonight. We're only about 20 pages in, but this is sort of a sequel to Life As We Knew It, which was an amazing book that we read for a book club a few months ago.

My running is going kind of poorly. I keep forgetting to do it, or it gets late and I don't have time. Today was the first time I've run since last Saturday, and I was supposed to have gotten in at least 2 other exercise days before today. I don't even remember how far I'm supposed to be running at this point, but I'm sure I'm not doing it. I tried to make up for it today. This afternoon, I had about 15 minutes before ballet started, and I went for a quick run. It wasn't terribly far, but I still got winded and had to walk about 1/4 of the way. I took a route I've never done before, and it was rather hilly, which isn't something I've subjected myself to yet. I estimate I ran about 3/4 of a mile to a mile, then walked about 1/4 of a mile. So tonight I went out again after I came back from picking up Rutledge from capoeira (he's so adorable doing his kicks and ducking and parrying back and forth in rhythm and participating in a big circle of kids clapping for the sparring dancers). This time I did better. No walking, and though I stayed in our neighborhood, I probably ran about two miles. I think I could have kept going, but it was late, and I didn't want to push myself and knock myself out. Because it is going to snow this weekend, I'm going to spare myself the trouble I'd be in with a 3 mile run on Saturday morning. It's pretty obvious that that is canceled, even though the bad weather hasn't started yet and won't until late tomorrow. I'm going to take this opportunity to get my run in for tomorrow and to make it a good one, then to try to get on the treadmill at the hotel this weekend if I can. I'm going to get that iPod charged up, since today was the first day I listened to music while running, and it really helped me. Normally I count in rhythm to 100 over and over again as my feet his te the ground. Much better to spend the time with Iris Dement singing "Let the Mystery Be" on repeat.

Whew, I have been really out of it this week and very irresponsible. I need to learn to say "no" and not take on so much, and I definitely need a paper calendar. I buy one of these every year, and every year I do a piss-poor job of actually using it. I can't even say why. I seriously think that it's an ADD/executive function situation. I just can't seem to get things from my head to a piece of paper or the computer screen without forgetting things, feeling like it's hopeless that my schedule is actually going to stay the way that I write it down, and not really knowing where to start. It's also just tedious, writing down one after another thing that is repetitive. Dance every week on Monday, etc. There are so many regular things that my calendar looks cluttered, and then I think that I'm not going to actually see the "unique" thing of the day that shows up, and there's of course the decision to be made about whether to use a calendar with a month at a glance, a week at a glance, or something for each day, and then whether I would need all 3 or a combination of these. And I guess that is all one long-winded way of saying that I have serious problems with executive functioning!

So here's the skinny on this week's gaffes:

* Saturday, forget one of my best friends' daughter's birthday party. The girl is one of Frances' best friends. I had the invite on the fridge, but didn't remember the party until Sunday afternoon.

* Sunday, forgot board meeting for swim and dive team. Remembered it Monday night.

* Monday, realized I hadn't notified the trumpet, flute or Latin instructors that the boys were out of town skiing and wouldn't be at their lessons.

* Tuesday, got mixed up about trumpet lesson was rescheduled for today or tomorrow (I thought it was Wed.) and missed it.

Meanwhile, I was at a LLL Leaders' meeting tonight to determine schedule for the next 4 months, which puts more things on my calendar. And I said I'd help with the Easter kids' community celebration at church (moon bounce, farm animals, pony rides, 3 egg hunts, craft projects, cookies, cotton candy). I probably shouldn't have.

Tomorrow I'm going to prioritize getting a calendar. I think I need a print one. Maybe I should print it myself (but what to use? The one in Entourage? Something online? Something I could sync with my iPod? See my problem?!). But I need to have it on my person at all times and be updating it by the minute as our regular routine changes. I used to be able to hold it all, mostly, in my head. Now I think we've reached critical complication mass!

Rehearsals are ramping up for Frances' big show next month. She has dance 5 days a week now, which is completely overwhelming to me, since she's not an only child. We still have our classes 3 days a week, we still have dive 3 days a week, we still have trumpet and flute that are constantly being rearranged so there isn't a fixed time, we still have piano and art class and preschool pickup and field trips and weekend obligations. In a few weeks, Frances will be practicing up to 10 hours a day for her show (hopefully only one day of that!). No wonder stuff is falling right out of my head.

It is probably fortuitous that this weekend is a retreat with the church we used to attend. I'm still part of a small group there, and I'll be rooming with some people who are in my small group. As with last year, I'm both looking forward to and apprehensive about this. I like my autonomy, and it makes me nervous to not have my car with me and not to have my own room. I don't know the people there all that well, don't have any close friends going, and, well, I'm only but so outgoing. So I'm nervous I'll feel lonely and left out and like I don't fit in, which probably is not true at all, and I didn't really feel that way last year, and I knew people even less then. Plus I wonder how my family's life is going to proceed with me gone and a big potential snowstorm here. Will I come back to a mess? Will I come back to feeling very unprepared for this coming week's classes? Will everyone get where they need to go?

I'm not that overwhelmed, though I think I sound that way. I'm just feeling extremely embarrassed that I don't appear to handle our life very well. I should be doing a better job of juggling things, but it's hard. I wish I could get it together and stay centered, and it's always a little unnerving to get evidence that I'm not doing as well as I think I am.

One of the hallmarks of the IEW writing program is that it requires students to consciously use all 6 of the "dress-ups" that it introduces in every single paragraph until they have internalized the process and can then be less conscious about it and still have varied sentence openings and structures. So in that spirit, here's a little composition of mine.

Amazingly, I jogged a level two miles with the novice group of runners from our church who are training for the upcoming Monument Avenue 10k race in March. While I typically consider myself to be a mediocre, if not incompetent runner, today I shocked myself by not becoming excessively winded or throwing up. Because I was able to complete the entire run without walking, I am now looking forward to the training I will do for the next six days and promise myself that I will not slack off like I did last week.

See? There's a:

--who/which clause
--"ly" adverb
--because clause
--quality adjective
--strong verb
--adverbial clause (www.asia: when, while, where, as, if, since, although)

I am doing my best to help my boys and my students in class to produce work with these kinds of stylistic elements, and especially for them to do it naturally. The writing that results is often varied, interesting, complex, and helps them create better cohesion because the required adverbial clauses tend to make them logically link ideas together, which can create a better flow for the reader. I am so very pleased. I have seen a complete transformation, especially in Ollie, who used to be phobic about writing. He still is a very, um, challenged speller, and he seems to have an on-again, off-again relationship with punctuation and capitals. But that aside, he has allowed himself to become much more creative in his written work, and he can now face a blank sheet of paper without panic or seizure. Here is part of a recent piece of writing he did, and I'm shocked to say that it only took him about 45 minutes to produce a 3 page story, something I would never have believed possible even 3 months ago. I have edited for punctuation and spelling here, but here is the middle of his fable about the Lion and the Shepherd (a version of Androcles and the Lion)

"As he was hobbling by, a shepherd who was named Carlos heard the anguished screams of the lion. Carlos cogitated ,"What a poor creature! I must help him!" So he nonchalantly walked up to the lion and pulled out the sharp, glistening barb from the sole of the lion's foot. As soon as it was out, the lion did a backflip and rode a unicycle to show his utmost appreciation and then shimmied down the rocks into the darkness."

I could not be more pleased! And he handwrote his first draft, which I know is difficult for him. We have been practicing this week with some other stories, though I've only had them discussing them orally with our Story Sequence Chart or I've been writing down an outline with their help. Breaking down the process into smaller parts is really helping them get a handle on a concept that is new and more involved than what they've done in writing so far. Now they must ask questions, consider the elements of a story and how it develops, analyze for theme or moral (is the moral of "Where the Wild Things Are" to not sass your mother or that running off on your own is not as satisfying as it sounds when you are angry and hurt or that being a benign dictator isn't a fair tradeoff for being away from the love of your family?), and then put that into words using a specific set of stylistic techniques. I'm ready to start Frances with the program, too, after seeing how well it both promotes creativity and gives comforting boundaries. She is not a reluctant writer, but she could use some strategies to help her stories have a greater sense of plot and development, rather than many episodes and excessive, if very creative details. I love really finding something that is a good fit for us and not wondering whether I should be using something else!

Last night was a banner tennis night. Not to brag, but I played the absolute best tennis of my life. I was aggressive, not at all afraid of the net, I was running around like a madwoman and sweating buckets, and I was getting to balls that I normally would have considered a lost cause. It was an amazing feeling to know that I had played my hardest and best and that we won (6-2, 6-2), but also deserved the win because we had worked for it. Sometimes I don't feel completely in sync with my partner, and because Hilary and I don't play together very often (only at this particular tournament, actually, which is only once a year), it can be awkward because we do not always read each other's needs and movements. Last night we were simply on. As a result, we won the A Flight of the 6.5 and under division, which was exciting. And if that wasn't enough, I won a raffle item, a free one-hour lesson with one of the pros at her club. I love private lessons, but since they tend to run around $50/hr, I don't get to do them as often as I'd like, so this was a super prize for me. Plus, now that I am on fire for tennis, I'm motivated to up my game and throw my whole self into it (okay, not the whole self, but as much as I can spare from my teaching roles and obsession with iPod Skeeball). I think I did win a "loser's bracket" before at Woodlake at a tournament (though I never did get that Woodlake dri-fit tank top I was supposed to have been given as a prize!), but normally I end up out in a semi-final round. This is hopefully the beginning of something big.

I love days when we don't have a lot of stuff to do, and today and tomorrow are among them. We are watching movies (the boys are watching "9" right now, but it's not my type of flick), I took Frances out to buy some craft supplies (she wants to sell shell animals and friendship bracelets as well as regular and gluten-free baked goods at a farmer's market this spring), and we went to the library to get some origami books. Kerry and I were able to go out to lunch sans children after the run/walk this morning. And tonight I'm going to take as many people as I can cajole to go to see Thoroughly Modern Millie at the local high school. Tomorrow I'll need to prep for my classes and inventory our ski supplies. Walter and Ollie are going on Monday morning bright and early, so they will miss their Monday classes. I'm jealous, since I want to chaperone and can't because I have to teach. Doesn't being responsible suck sometimes?!

I am a happy tennis girl! Okay, so I keep losing, but I'm a winner anyway :). I am playing in a member-guest tournament with a friend, and we won our first match, lost our second, and lost our third in a tie-breaker...but we actually won. How does this happen? Well, as soon as we got off the court and reported our score (1-6, 7-5, and a 7-1 tiebreaker), we were told that we still won because one of the players on the other team was a substitute, since the original partner was sick. That is a huge bummer for them, and I felt really bad. On the plus side, however, we advance to the finals in the A flight (the top of the "loser" bracket). Plus except for that first set, where I was really dizzy and felt faint and vaguely like I was going to barf, I was totally on in the second set, and I felt like I played well and aggressively. Considering I haven't been on a court for almost 3 months and am relatively out of shape and, ahem, didn't get bumped up to 3.5 like I think I should have been based on my record for the past two years, I'm rather pleased with how well I'm doing. Overall, I have had a great time and felt pretty on this week. Tomorrow night we face our final match of this tournament, and I think we honestly have a good chance of doing well. These ladies were defeated in a tiebreaker tonight by the ladies we played our first night of the tournament. Not that this necessarily means anything, but hopefully we have a shot at it. I have won my flight one other time in a club tournament, but usually I only make it to the semi-finals; this is the boost I need to get off to a good start once the real season starts for me in two months.

I am really rather very excited to throw myself wholeheartedly into tennis again. Surburban starts the last week of March, which I'm sure will be cold. I was not very engaged this fall and I didn't play in many matches. My goal this time is to play as often as I can, hopefully with some help from Kerry getting Frances and the boys to drama and math class. This summer I hope to play 3-6 times a week. I was a slacker last summer because we were busy and I was stressed and could barely fit one more thing into my schedule, but this year should be back to obsession again.

And I made my decision about next year. We are signing up for Classical Conversations. I'm hoping that this will be a good move for us and will give us the structure and academic community we need. The pluses of it are that it is relatively affordable, it is close to our house (15 minutes or so), it is complete (6 subjects, covering all core areas), it is rigorous (the expectations sheet clearly sets up many hours of work at home each week), and it uses all of the kinds of curricula that we either are already using or would like to use. They use Saxon for math, which is what we have been using for about 3 years now. They study Latin, which is what we have been doing for the past 2 years, and they use IEW, which is what we use for writing. I'm so extremely excited that I wish it would just happen right now and we could get started right away! A huge bonus is that all four kids can attend. Walter, Ollie, and Frances will probably all be there from 8:30-3:00, and Rutledge will go from 9-1. I love it when I feel really confident about a choice I've made and can feel at peace with it; I am the world's worst decision maker because I see nothing but shades of gray in everything and waste way too much energy on second guessing and buyer's remorse. I'm not feeling that at the moment, and I'm not feeling torn any more. Yay!

There is an incredible smell wafting from my downstairs. I thought it was the bowl of Pad Thai that someone left on my dresser (yes, we do have a rule that food must be eaten in the kitchen!), but now I'm realizing that there must be a Crockpot set to go all night with a roast or turkey in it. It smells like beef, but I know that we have a turkey thawing in our refrigerator that needed to be cooked today or tomorrow, so I'm guessing that that is it. I sure hope so, since that would make a most scrumptious breakfast.

Choices, choices. It's always a matter of figuring out a priority. And it seems like every single day has too many choices to make because a body can't be in two places at once.

To go to flute lesson that was rescheduled or game day because I needed to get out? Hey, why not both?! Now it's to go to the free play at Henley Street Theatre tonight or to small group. I'm going to go to the play because the kids will really benefit from it, and I don't know much about commedia dell arte and probably should. We've been to one other performance at Henley Street (All's Well that Ends Well, I believe), and it was interesting and provocatively done (though admittedly hard for 9 or 10 year olds to get into with a lack of sets and a more modern setting). Tonight's show was advertised as for all ages, though it's 8:00 start time is rather late.

And then there's the big decision: Westminster or Classical Conversations. I'm leaning CC right now, but the pressure is on to choose very quickly. We shall see...

Tennis is a very lovely sport when you are winning. So tonight I really like tennis. Considering how little I've played this fall and winter, I think we did fairly well at this member-guest event. Tomorrow night is likely to not look quite so lovely, but that's okay. One day of happy tennis is better than none. And it's always nice to see familiar faces of players that I see during the regular seasons as well as at this event. My plan for the spring and summer is to throw myself whole hog back into tennis, though I suppose I'll still have to have some tennis boundaries when it comes to morning school times. Or maybe not. It will all depend on how self-sufficient everyone seems to be when the time comes.

You have to be a homeschooler with kids you worry about to appreciate this next momentous announcement: Walter took notes today. Beautiful, properly spelled notes in readable handwriting, with detail and thoroughness. And apparently without threats or bribes of any kind. He is taking a 16 week life science class right now, and they are studying cells. It looks like there was a lecture/discussion today about the parts of a cell, and he came out with two pages of information, including well-drawn diagrams and a lengthy metaphor about the cell as a productive city.

The other exciting thing that happened today is that Ollie wrote a whole little report (only two paragraphs and several pictures put into Powerpoint) in less than an hour. It wasn't a big deal. I wasn't involved at all. We remembered it at 8:30 last night, he went off and looked up information online about Death Valley, he made himself a keyword outline without input from me, and he wrote two paragraphs while I was upstairs. The only help he really needed was with formatting it in Powerpoint so that things fit neatly on a single frame. A year ago this would have sounded like a miracle. This fall it would have taken three hours and intensive direction and help from me. There is hope. And I really do feel like IEW works, especially in taking the fear and mystery out of writing for people like boys, who often think they can't write or go into a panic at an assignment. There was no panic here, no anxiety. He just did it. Way cool.

Frances brought home a gigantic "castle" made from cardboard boxes today from her Story of the World class. In my disaster of an upstairs in the house where I'm always moving furniture, this is really quite the last thing that I needed, and if this 4x4 foot castle wasn't big enough, it has spawned a trash-building spree that will probably last for days. I applaud her creativity, but I am going to have to be forceful about my need to be able to walk safely through a room.

Mondays always exhaust me. I love Tuesdays because they ask so little. I can sleep comparatively late (Rutledge has to get to preschool), we have all morning to do our work, and the boys don't have any activities until Ollie's dive practice at 7. I don't have to prepare anything for anybody except people in my own family. The only trouble I see right now is that I doubt we can find any of our schoolbooks in this hellhole of a house. The downstairs is pretty decent, but the upstairs, where the work gets done, is anything but conducive to good study habits or concentration. Perhaps I should burn the midnight oil and get some organization going before the gang wakes up.

Our new read-aloud is "The Christopher Killer," which is a very graphic young adult novel about a 17 year old girl who wants to be a forensic pathologist and helps her coroner father investigate a gruesome body scene. It's off to a great, if late start. Frances is reading Kit, the American Girl's first story to herself, and I'm reading "Skylark" with her. We're also reading some James Herriot dog stories. I'm amazed at how much Walter has changed in the past few months, going from never listening to books to being totally engrossed and noticing when his vocabulary words go by (which is very often) or when derivatives of their Latin words appear.

The hardest decision I'm trying to make now is what to do with next year. On the one hand, I like doing our own thing, and I like choosing my own curricula and being free to change when things aren't working out as planned. On the other, I appreciate having direction from outside, having some structure imposed upon us by obligation, and having other adults involved in my children's lives, especially as motivators to urge them to build up their strengths. Some positive peer pressure is also not something I'm afraid of--the motivation of wanting to share something good with the class or to feel like they are competitive and competent pushes them to do really nice work and that makes them proud. Originally these are not things that I thought I needed or wanted for them, but at this point in our lives, I'm seeing more value in this. What I need to mull over is whether we should stay doing the bulk or our out of the house stuff with the homeschool center where we go now, if we should look toward attending one of the several homeschool "academies" that run much like schools that meet two days a week, or if we should do something like Classical Conversations, which provides a structured day for middle and high schoolers. It's a lot to think about. Thank goodness we actually do seem to have options, including the option to just keep piecing together what works for us in the here and now.

The worst part of playing tennis in the winter: it makes your nose run terribly.