Summer Sabbath Musings

It's an already warm Sunday morning.  I can't seem to get motivated to get up and get ready for church.  I have a lot of that problem lately.  Something I need to work on, I guess.

Yesterday we went to Provo to look for an apartment for Cody to stay in while he's going to BYU this fall.  We got lucky and found a little dump of a house for cheap and he signed the contract.  It's right next to campus, so that will be good since he won't have a car.  We had fun walking around campus.  It was pretty deserted.  We played around in the sculpture exhibit outside the art museum.  It was really hot and we were tired from walking all over, so we didn't stay too long.  We went out for a late lunch and headed home.

While walking around campus I was sure regretting that I didn't graduate and really wishing there were some way that I could go back to school and finish my degree.  Walking around college campuses does that to me.  We happened to see a sign across the street from Cody's rental house for apartment rentals for families.  The rent was super cheap!  I got all excited thinking, hey we could sell our house and move down there and I could finish school!  I spent the rest of the day dreaming of my big plans.  Then I went on the BYU website and looked at admissions for transfer students and my hopes came back down to reality.  The website said it is highly unlikely that students with more than 90 graded credit hours would be admitted.  I was so disappointed I could cry.  (And I did!)  I have way more than 90 credits.  I probably should just face  that I had my chance to earn a college degree and I blew it and move on with my life.  But boy, is it hard!

Summer is here!

Well, graduation has come and gone.  This boy is a high school graduate.  Doesn't he look good in his Tongan-wear? That is what he wore to seminary graduation where he played the prelude music on the violin with his friend and Faha played the viola and where he gave a wonderful talk about his favorite scripture Proverbs 3:5.  (Yes, I know that was a run on sentence)  I can't believe my boy is an adult now.  He just needs to get a job!  He is so excited about his plans to attend BYU-Provo for Fall semester and then go on his mission.

School is out and I have a house full of kids everyday.  It's hectic and noisy and messy, but it's also fun.  (Most of the time)  The kids are enjoying just playing and relaxing, which is what summer is supposed to be about, right? I always feel the pressure to make sure they are doing something educational and structured and I feel guilty when they are not, but I figure I will give them these first two weeks of summer vacation to just enjoy being kids.

Siu's New Room

So here is Siu's new room.  It turned out pretty cute.  I love the wall color! I had it matched to her new comforter set and with the lighting in her basement room with no natural light it looks great.  She is very happy with it and is doing well keeping it clean.  We found that crazy lamp at Home Depot and the trash can at Ross.  We especially like that the matching trash can has a lid so Dumb Dog can't get into her trash can.  We still need to make her American Girl doll (Ashley) her bed.  As you can see, she still has to sleep in the box she came in, poor thing.  If I can dig out my sewing room, then we can start sewing the bedding for her bed.  It matches Siu's bedding.  We are also going to iron some fabric peace signs on the wall.  I saw that project on pinterest and I loved the idea!  I also want to make a matching fabric cover for her vanity stool.  Ideas on how to do that?? I can't see where to take off the top to do it, so I may just have to put a cover over that one and try to staple it around while it's still attached to the legs.  There's no end to my projects, just completed phases.

So our tetherball literally was played to death.  It was a good investment of  $15.  The kids got a lot of playing time out of it.  Faha is the family champion tetherball player.  Not surprising since he is at least 5 inches taller than any of the rest of us and could probably bench press us all.

I've been doing a lot of moving things around, painting, and generally trying to spruce things up around the house.  I'm in the home stretch of my spring renovations.  Just one more room to paint, then I will be taking a vacation from moving and painting.  I love it though.  I love that I can make my house look totally different with just a little change here and there and spend minimal money doing it.  I like that kind of change.  I will post pictures of the room renovations soon.  Siu's and Pasi's rooms are probably picture ready, but Cody and Faha's room is NOT.  I'll wait until they get back from their music tour to San Francisco tomorrow and give them some time to clean up, then I will take pictures and post them.  I really love how Siu's room has turned out.

Farewell to Winter?

Today is the last official day of winter and I guess Mother Nature wanted us to make sure we remembered it. It's only snowed a little, but it's been cold and the wind was blowing like crazy last week.  I don't really like wind.  Maybe a nice gentle breeze, but anything stronger than that I don't like.  I'm hoping for a nice wet (rainy, NOT snowy) spring to green up my lawn and make it look really good.

Siu's dance class did their dance at the high school on Friday.  Their dance is to "King of New York" from "Newsies".  She likes it because she gets to dress up as a boy.  They did a really good job.  I didn't get any pictures of the dance, but I managed to get this shot before we left.  Isn't she cute?!

Ramblings of a Hypocrite

I'm a big hypocrite!  I know!  I complain about people who don't update their blogs, and then I don't update mine for a month and a half.  It's just there's not much exciting going on in my life right now, so I don't feel like sharing when I don't have anything new and exciting to share.

Homeschooling is going ok.  Wish I could say it was going better.  Some things are going well.  We are working on some things Siu wouldn't be working on in public school, such as memorizing the Articles of Faith.  She seems to have a hard time with memorizing things, so we have really been working on that.  It has taken us since we started on January 31st, but she has all 13 of the Articles of Faith memorized!  I'm very proud of her. It has taken much patience and hard work and even some tears, but she did it.  She is starting to say that she wants to go back to school, so I have made a deal with her that if she will memorize the times tables 1-12, and a few other things, then she can go back to public school.  I think that her biggest problem with math has been not having her times tables memorized, because she does very well with other math concepts.  She even seems to enjoy some things.  She has requested that we do more art.  UGH!  I'm horrible with art!  I don't know where my kids get their art talent, but I know it's NOT from me!  So we still have things to work on, but I may let her go back to school for the last term of the year.  We'll see how it goes.

I think I have spring cleaning fever, only I don't have the energy to go with it.  This results in much frustration because I want to get tons of things done, but my body just wants to sleep!  We are in the midst of changing everyone's bedrooms.  That's the best way I've found to really clean.  I got stalled a little bit because we decided to paint Cody and Faha's new room before we move them into it.  We did get most of the painting done on Saturday.  Now I just need to get the corners and up by the ceiling done.  Hopefully today I can finish that, then maybe they can move in tonight.  It looks really nice!  Then we can get Pasi into Cody's old room and get Faha's old room painted for Siu and get her moved.  My goal is to have it all done before next Sunday.  We are having company over for dinner Sunday night, so I would like to have the house all put back together before then.

Also planning to paint one wall in the living room.  I thought I had found the right color, but I did a test spot behind the couch and I don't really like it.  But it looks great in Cody and Faha's new room and they really like it there, so all is not lost.  Just have to keep looking for that perfect color for the living room.

Once I get the house put back together and give everything a good cleaning, I want to get started sewing some quilts.  I finally finished one I started about a year and a half ago.  I just decided one day I was going to finish it, not matter how bad a job I did or how bad it looked.  It will probably look horrible to an experienced (or maybe even inexperienced) quilter, but I finished it.  That was the most important thing for me. If I wait until I do it perfect, I will never, ever sew again!  So, it's deal with the imperfection, or give up altogether.  I decided to deal with it, because I enjoying sewing.  Maybe I'll get better the more I do it?

Finally!

Well, we've finally done it!  We have made a decision and a plan and we are going forward with it.  Siu has struggled in school and with school since she started kindergarten.  Even back then, I wanted to home school her, but didn't have the nerve to.  I was afraid she would miss out on something, or I wouldn't do a good enough job, etc.  And then each year as I watched her getting further behind, caring less and less, that little spark of excitement for learning getting dimmer and dimmer, it broke my heart.  Those little voices kept coming back to consider teaching her myself.  But then other voices would whisper in my other ear, that I'm not organized enough, I'm not structured enough, I might not do a good enough job and teach her everything that she needs to learn.  But things are getting worse, not better and I can't watch her continue on this way any more.  Monday morning I am withdrawing her from public school and we will start our homeschooling experience together.

Why can't I teach her?  I'm have taken all the elementary education classes.  I did most of my student teaching.  I just didn't graduate, but I still have all the training of an elementary teacher.  I know how to plan and teach lessons, but most important I love my little girl more than anybody!  I want what's best for her and right now I'm what's best for her.

We are both excited for this new experience and we are looking forward to discovering and learning together.

Do You Ever Wonder?

Sometimes I wish I could be on a "It's a Wonderful Life" type reality show.  Wouldn't that be cool?  You could see how things would be different if you were never born.  I wonder that a lot actually.  What would life be like without me?  Probably a lot better for some people.  Has my life really made any difference to anybody?  Most of the time it feels to me like everybody would be better off without me.  It's just one of those kind of days.