The more things stay the same, the more they change

Spent the day yesterday in the three-hours distant hamlet of Cedar City with my Emma, checking out a university. Did the housing tour, the university tour, and the financial aid/scholarship session. Made Christian drive us there and back, to get 6.5 hours driving experience under his belt. Kid is 16+, he needs to get his license. We had a great time all around—laughed and talked through the drive, walked and talked through the tour.

Last night as I lay my weary head down, I wondered: how am I ever going to sleep next year? How will I ever rest again, not knowing whether Emma is home or not, fed or not, sleeping or not? How will I let her go?

And then I remembered, she's been away for a week at a time several times—mostly for church camps of various sorts during the summer. And I always slept fine. I'll worry, I'll pray, I'll text and FB a lot, but I'm sure I'll get through.

This is Emma's last Christmas living at home with us, and we realized we've not really established our own traditions, not firmly. B's mom has been so very strong about hers, about wanting us all there every Christmas Eve for dinner and a program, that we've been a little haphazard about our own, sometimes doing one thing and sometimes another. I'm a little sick about it, actually. This year we're going to do our own thing, because next year we want Emma to come home to us, not to Grandma. Fingers crossed it's never too late to cement a tradition of our own.

Mind blowing.

I remember the day Emma was born, the day I came home from the hospital with just one tiny little baby to take care of and the whole future of mothering in front of me.

Emma has now officially applied to two universities. O_0 More applications to come, no doubt. Seriously, where has the time gone?

Forgive us this day our daily rant:

(1) The hardest part of homeschool. It is not teaching math or science to the older grades. It certainly isn't teaching a kindergartner to read, which is a delight start to finish. What is the hardest part of homeschool? Keeping the house tidy. Imagine summer vacation when kids are in and out all day, and leaving stuff all over. But summer is easier (at least here in arid UT) because when they come in they're dry as a bone. In the autumn they track in dry leaves and leaf skeletons. In the winter they track in snow on their wet boots. In the spring they track in mud. And they do it all day long. And they leave out toys, and they leave out dishes, and if ever I even need to do something like bake a birthday cake (happy birthday, Macklin!) then school has to come to a grinding halt and they make even more messes.

I love them, and I love homeschool. But this is the hard part. Not curriculum or organization or anything else. It's keeping the house liveable.

(2) Many years ago when Emma and Christian were wee and my bigger nephews and nieces (who are less than 10 years younger than me) were in their early teens and experimenting with vegetarianism or veganism, I remember all being gathered at some family meal event. It might have even been Thanksgiving, I don't know. And there's this lovely serving platter of food (who knows what it was? soup, stew, casserole, it doesn't even matter) and I said, "Can't you just pick out the meat? Isn't it vegan then?"

That has come back to bite me in the butt so many times in the last 13 years. So allow me to post this as a Public Service Announcement: Using meaty broth in a dish, or cooking with meat, taints everything in the entire dish. We can't just pick out the meat and eat the rest. Having had meat in the mix makes It—whatever It is—inedible to someone who doesn't eat meat.

I can't believe I was so naïve once that I didn't know that. But I still encounter people on a monthly basis who are equally naïve and think the same thing.