I'm Back!

Ugh! When I started this blog I had the best of intentions and thought I’d be blogging away on a daily basis. So much for that theory! We had such a great summer (once the warm weather finally arrived in upstate New York – don’t even get me started) and I had to choose between enjoying time at the pool with the family or hanging out indoors slaving away at my computer in the tiny corner of our upstairs hallway that passes for my office. Guess which won out?

We dragged our summer out just as long as we could by taking our annual “NOT going back to school” vacation in late September. One of the many joys of homeschooling is that we can travel whenever we feel like it. No squeezing our trips in during school vacations, no breaking the bank on airfare and hotels during peak travel times. We get to travel when the rest of the world is toiling away at school and work, which for us means nonexistent crowds, lower rates and a beautiful beach almost entirely to ourselves. It doesn’t get much better than that! So this year we spent a few days seeing the impressive sights in our nation’s capital and an amazing week on beautiful Topsail Island in North Carolina. With everyone else in school at the time, we had a wonderfully quiet week and it seemed the ocean was ours alone.

Sadly, vacation came to an end and so did summer. All too quickly there was a chill in the air, the leaves changed, and we even had a snow flurry in October. We’ve been fortunate since then and still no real snow, which is a rarity here by this time in December!

I am *so* not a cold weather person. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say I have seasonal affective disorder or whatever it’s called, but I do know that my mood and outlook take an abrupt turn when the weather turns cold. Don’t get me wrong – I love the beautiful colors of fall and the gorgeous first real snowfall of the winter – but anything colder than a slight nip in the air leaves me with painfully numb fingers and toes in a matter of minutes (thanks to Raynaud’s), and the early darkness that comes with the time change really gets me down. I’m a warm weather, lots of sunshine, and clear blue sky kind of gal. Skiing, snowmen and driving in the horrible upstate New York winters are just not my thing.

As soon as we got back from vacation, like it or not it was time to begin fifth grade. We definitely got a late start to our school year, which means we won’t be taking off as much time as we normally do during the month of December. But that’s OK. Again, the flexibility that homeschooling allows us is amazing. I can’t even begin to imagine being tied to a school calendar. We’ve become spoiled by our ability to make our own schedule, choose our own curriculum, set our own course. We can try something and ditch it if it doesn’t work for us. We can take our time and really expand on something we love. We can double up on our schoolwork one day in order to allow us more free time the next. We decide what works for us and then we just do it. I can’t imagine it any other way.

The kids and I all had our birthdays in September. Gator and Sport are 10 now. T.E.N. It’s amazing to me how quickly these ten years have flown by, and it scares the bejeebers out of me to think how fast the next 10 will go. Just as quickly as they reached 10, they’re going to reach 20. And there’s not a darn thing I can do to stop it!

And as they turned 10, I turned 45.

F.o.r.t.y.-F.i.v.e.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. How did that happen? I am seriously halfway to 50.

Fifty.

FIFTY.

5.0.

F.I.V.E. Z.E.R.O.

I’ll just add one more Ugh and leave it at that.

So now the holidays are upon us. It’s time to decorate the house, shop ‘til I drop, delay sending my cards so much so that it’s embarrassing, and spend waaaaaaay too much money on gifts. And it’s time for me to get back to work on my blog. Hopefully I can do a better job of updating it, and strive more for getting something posted rather than striving for perfection with each and every post.

It ain’t ever gonna be perfect. And that’s OK.

So here we go. Again. Stick around a while, won’t you?