Day: January 7, 2010

Dad’s got homeschool pretty much covered, but not the rest of our lives, so here’s our 2009 in summary!

January:
It snows a lot… everyone’s toes are cold and we make tamales and go go-karting at Pigeon Forge with friends and 25 Random Things on Facebook is big.

February:
I take the ACT. That’s it. February is always such an uneventful month.

March
Amigurumis are made, we go to Georgia to visit good friends and go to the World of Coke, and we see FIDDLER ON THE ROOF(!!!) I turn 15.

April
Aunt Julia comes to visit and we do awesome things like make bread and play card games and go to garden nurseries!

May
Swimteam starts up again, the whole family gets temporarily fired up about the garden, we all cook a lot and go to the history museum, and we go to a paintball get together in the Charlotte area.

June
Christian and I laugh it up with the swimteam buddies, Christian owns his events, I do something weird to my arm in mine, and we all enjoy summertime.

July
Tio Jorge, Tia Mary, Jorgito, Valeria and Brandon all come down for a visit, we celebrate the fourth of July with the Mathises (early fireworks!!) Dad and Christian complete the cat tower, my friend Danielle stays with us for a weekend, Betty Blonde turns 1, Betty Blonde T-shirt is released.

August
We go to OREGON!! There, we are greeted at Portland’s green-and-purple carpeted airport by awesome friends. We stay with Grandma and Grandpa, visit old friends and wonderful cousins, and best of all, go to Boring for a work day and to Saginaw for convention.  It went by too quickly! School starts up again. 8th grade for Christian, 10th grade for me.

September
Conventions continue… we go to Denton and Shelby and see our Southern friends. Christian turns 14.

October
We go to another get together in the Charlotte area (different people), carve pumpkins, play soccer with friends and sing hymns.  Christian and I have a Halloween party + ice skating.  I am the Cat in the Hat. Christian is a newspaper vending machine.

November
MEXICO!  We go to Thanksgiving dinner, my quincenera, a wedding, and lots of carne asadas!  We get to see all our beautiful little cousins and all our beautiful older cousins.  We are lucky to have seen both sets of cousins in one year!

December
We start the annual Christmas puzzle, Jenna and I do a lot of baking, Dad works hard, Mom works hard, we have a lovely Christmas, and we ring in the New Year with our now traditional call to the Joyces.

I have already written about the fact that we are a little bit behind in our homeschool right now and that we made a major overhaul of our homeschool schedule last week.  That major overhaul was not just about getting caught up.  The big change for Kelly is that she now makes her own weekly work schedule.  We lined out her goals for the rest of the year with milestones along the way.  Last Sunday afternoon we sat down together and made this weeks schedule.  The plan is that she will work together to make her schedule each weekend until she gets the hang of it, then I will go over it with her to assure she will meet the goals on which we have agreed.

I still continue to make Christian’s schedule this year, but have decided on a change of emphasis in his reading.  In that upgrade, we have scheduled his first book, The Intellectuals by Paul Johnson.  After that he will read Rodney Stark’s The Victory of Reason.  He has started into Johnson book already.  It is much more difficult reading, but he enjoys it.  We are just about finished with our read through a A Patriot’s History of the United States.  We will move next to Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Greg Koukl.  Then we will move on to read The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer.  We have pre-ordered her The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, too.

There is only one CLEP test this month.  Kelly will take the Western Civilization I test.  Then, in February, there will be no CLEP tests but both of the kids will take the ACT with essay.  To help with that, I have ordered a well known book titled On Writing Well by William Zinsser.  I have been told it is somewhat of a classic.  When it gets here, we will decide whether to read it aloud or have each of the kids read it on their own.