Sunday, January 16, 2011

Freedom from FB

After finally succumbing to the pressure to join FaceBook, and actually enjoying it for a while, I have recently come to the realization that FB really hasn't brought any substantial benefit to my life.  In fact, it has done the opposite by taking much of my free time from my family, and myself.  I haven't done any knitting or spinning, no photography, not as much reading, no new blog posts, etc.  FB really became a drain of my time and energy, it stifled my creativity, and essentially created an addict.  I made the decision last week to delete my FB account, and after a few days of withdrawal, I am finally feeling liberated!  What a relief.  It is time to get back to my life.  The life that is here - now - and is REAL.  The article that pushed me over the edge is here - http://www.minimalistathome.com/your-digital-life-is-not-your-life/.  Perhaps some of you will come to the same realization as I did.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

2011 - Already?!

Another turn of the year has come and gone.  We are already 1/2 way through January!  I find myself amazed at the accelerating rate of the passage of time.  No matter how hard I try to slow life down, it keeps going - faster and faster.  I suppose I will just have to accept the fact that time really does fly.
So where have I been the past 4 months?  Home.  Trying my best to bring harmony to our household.  And although challenging, I have had some success.  Here is an update on the happenings of late;

We are still homeschooling, and doing MUCH better than we did last year.  December was tough to keep momentum going, but that is par for the course with the holidays.  I am not going to beat myself up about taking a few weeks off for the holidays.  I am overjoyed to say that we are almost finished with MathUSee Gamma!  We started over with it in September and have made steady and swift progress.  Both kids are reaching mastery of multi-digit multiplication.  We are on course to move into division in the next month or so!  I am so very pleased and am breathing with relief at their progress.   The Spectrum writing workbooks have proven to be a tremendous help as well.  I have seen great progress in both of their writing and spelling abilities even though it doesn't feel like we have been making any extraordinary effort.  I think the variety of the lessons as well as more consistency has been the key to improvement.  Reading has really taken off this year too, especially for H.  It is a joy to come home from the library with armloads of books and actually see that my son is reading them.  I thought it would never happen, but patience has paid off.  Overall, I am feeling the best I have thus far with our HSing.  I think I have finally reached a true knowing that the kids will be fine, even if we don't do it like they do at PS.  It is a blessing to have them learning at home.  My son is still very enthusiastic about cooking, and is looking forward to some serious science projects.  Both kids also want to learn to sew and knit, so there are lots of fun things on the horizon for us.

As for myself, I have been challenged to the extreme over the past few months in several aspects, but I feel like the sun may finally be breaking through if at least a little at a time.  My primary concern at the moment is my struggle with severe anemia.  The past three months I have been struggling with it, but have just come to discover that it has gotten worse.  I am now engaging in overdrive iron supplementation and hope it will make a difference.  Another month will tell.  My financial picture is slowly taking shape with the recent purchase of a duplex, but I still am looking for a way to further supplement my personal income.  I am seriously considering starting up my spinning business again.  Which reminds me - I have actually made some time to sit down with my wheels again!  It feels so good to create once again.  It has been long overdue...

My goals for this year are pretty basic - to keep up our HS momentum, to improve my (and our) health, and to continue to improve my financial outlook.  And finally to bring back joy and peace to my household.

OH!  I almost forgot!  We got another doggie! She is a young Australian Cattle Dog (aka; blue heeler).  I never in my wildest dreams would have thought I would ever own more than one dog at a time, but much to my enjoyment, we now have two!