And you have to test them, right? To be sure they're on grade level?

This is the question I get most, hands down, when uninitiated people are asking me about homeschool.

Answer: no. In Utah, there is no oversight, no regulation of homeschool. I can take my kids to the schools when they are doing standardized testing, or I can use any measures I myself deem reliable to check their progression. No one is going to come check up on me at all, so I even can just stay in bed all day, and let them build Legos and watch movies and never crack a book. I can do that.

But why on earth would I? Why would I sabotage my kids like that? I keep them home because I believe I'm educating them better than the public schools do, not because I want to go easy on them. I want them to have a broader and deeper knowledge base, not be doing first grade work at the age of ten. I want them to be productive, contributing members of society, capable of supporting themselves and their families. I do not wish them to be eternal infants forever dependent upon me.

And it always freaks me right the heck out when I find out about families who do just that. They withdraw all their kids from school and keep them home, and then never crack a book. Can't be bothered to work up a curriculum. Spend their day in bed.

I mean, I have sympathy for health problems, or depression. Sure, there are some things that keep you in bed all day, legitimately. But in those cases, public service announcement, PUT THE KIDS IN SCHOOL. They may struggle socially. They may be behind their grade level. They may have to start with short vowel sounds and three-letter words. But Concerned Parent, is that not better than sitting around all day, not learning to read or write or do math at all? Isn't it? A little?

I cannot even wrap my mind around a parent who would find the public school system so risky (?) that they would rather have their kid at home doing literally nothing educational than be in school and learn something.

(Yes, I know a family doing precisely this. My fifth grader is by far more accomplished in every subject than their 18YO eldest, who has "graduated". Which, when there's no oversight or regulation other than a mom's say-so, is without actual meaning under certain circumstances.)

Little Frankenstein

Wednesday was a weird, wacky day. The kids were rolling and stomping and steamrolling through the house, and I could. not. get. them. to. settle. down. At all. Lots of yelling, lots of noise. Occasional crying when someone [usually Kyrie] got hurt. I'd say, "Calm down, guys. Stop now. Someone's going to get hurt even worse."

At about 3:45 pm it finally happened. Kyrie screaming like crazy, so naturally I assumed it was she who was hurt. But no. "Mom! He's bleeding! He's going to need stitches. MOM!"

Well I don't automatically assume stitches are needed on the advice of my six-year-old. I gathered Macklin onto my lap and applied pressure for a long time, going through lots of tissue. About 20 minutes later he was really quite calmed and the bleeding had stopped. Now, remember: I get nauseated when I even think my kids are hurt. I just can't stand for them to be in pain. I lifted the tissue, and Mack's forehead was gaping wide open. I quickly put the tissue back and loaded him into the Suburban, and called the clinic on the way: "I have a kid who needs stitches, I'll be there in 10 minutes, I hope you can work me in."

They did, bless them, saving me $50 over the cost of an ER visit. Our good friend and neighbor Dr. Allan Day did the stitches, it required two deep stitches and four on the surface.





Though he'd just had stitches in his toe about six weeks ago, I still thought he was pretty brave. He definitely remembered the numbing shots and dreaded them the worst; and though he did scream his little lungs out, he was perfectly still and didn't thrash around for that part. Then while Dr. Day was doing the stitches Macklin was telling him all the subtleties of just who is an Autobot and who is a Decepticon in Transformers 2, and spoiling the ending of Iron Man 2.

I bought him a doughnut for his bravery. (Last time he got a tiny little ice cream cone.) On the way home he said, "I don't want stitches ever again. Those shots hurt! And I don't want more shots. But next time I get stitches, let's get a snowcone."

Unfortunately (?) the stitches will be out next Monday, so we can't even work this into a nifty Halloween costume.

Life just keeps coming at me, and I love it.

Here's a sampling:

We started putting a window into Emma's room this past weekend, after thinking, pondering, planning, and wondering about it for at least six years. It's going well so far, though we aren't done. The interior still has quite a bit to be done, the exterior a little. Click on the photo if you want to see more photos of the process.

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Emma got her driver's license on Monday! She celebrated by taking Kyrie a few blocks away and buying twinner pink flower rings at a little toy store in town. Cute. I can now hardly wait for school to start, because I don't have to drive! We also did come up with rules, which I'm recording here mainly for posterity. Above all we want her to be safe, and we think attention and awareness are the keys so we're trying to build those.

1. She and all passengers absolutely must wear seatbelts.
   
2. No iPod listening for the first three months, or until we as her parents have confidence in her. Music can be distracting.
   
3. No answering or making calls on her cell phones while driving. Her passenger may answer her phone for her (since Christian will almost always be in the car with her), or she may pull over to make or answer a call.
   
4. No cruise control for a couple, maybe three, months. She knows how to use it and it was a good tool at first to make it so she didn't have to worry about speed amongst all the other things. But now B wants her to drive intentionally and learn to be aware.
   
5. If she gets a moving violation, she has to pay the ticket herself, and no driving until she has.
   
6. If she gets into an accident, she has to pay the insurance deductible herself for the repairs, and no driving until she has.

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Yesterday was B's birthday, his big 40. He'd forgotten that it was even a landmark day until his mom reminded him. (Of course I already had four and zero candles for his cake and a 40 banner, but he didn't know that.) Went to Cabella's (which is kind of like an adventure park for the shooting crowd, lots for the kids to see and do for an hour or two) and then out for maybe our most expensive dinner ever. In addition to our family of nine we invited B's mom, his two siblings who are still at home, and his visiting sister and her baby. Had a marvelous time, and I hope he did too. His younger brother Adam has arranged for him to go skydiving for his mid-life crisis, and I think it sounds like a kick in the pants. :)

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The rest of the neighborhood started school yesterday, but for us the Hogwarts Express leaves on 7 September. We'll take Emma and Christian over to the Academy on the 6th—which just happens to be Christian's 15th birthday—for orientation and meeting teachers and assignment of lockers, etc. Then they go off alone on the morning of the 7th and we'll get started here. Exciting stuff. I should really check and see if I need any school books and maybe order them.

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So another week and a half of summertime for us! Swimming pool, green grass, playing, climbing trees. Plums are ripening on the tree out front, we ought to go pick those. I love the lazy last days of summer.

A few of my favorite things

I love my house. I don't think I've ever told the long story of how we got here. We lived in Provo, a college town (home of Brigham Young University, and neighboring Orem—it's pointless for the two cities to be two cities because they seamlessly blend into one—is home to Utah Valley University) for most of our married life. I went to BYU, Blaine went to UVU (which was a community college then, UVCC) and worked as a designer at the [Stephen R.] Covey Leadership Center. Briefly just after Christian was born we lived in SLC in my parents' basement when we were flirting with architecture rather than graphic design as his career path, but that lasted only a year. Covey Leadership let him telecommute the whole time, and it was a piece of cake to move back to Provo when he decided architecture wasn't his cup of tea. We bought our first tiny little house in Provo when I was pregnant with Libby.

But we wanted space, a soccer field of grass and trees to climb. When Covey Leadership Center merged with Franklin Day Planners and became Franklin Covey, they moved to SLC and we didn't want to relocate. Blaine became a contract designer for them, self-employed for the first time, and we had a lot more freedom to choose where we'd live. We took little day trips to small towns all over Utah. And when we came to Fairview, we knew we'd found the place. The first thing we did was buy an acre of pastureland between two houses. It seemed perfect! And then we alienated all our future neighbors by planning to build a geodesic dome. The guy who sold us the land was always friendly and nice to us, but the rest of the immediate vicinity was pretty hostile. We scaled back and decided to build a regular house, but we kept getting blocked here with our soil perc test or there with our building permit. It was like the hardest thing ever for us to build on that lot.

So one day I thought, okay, I'm going to drive around and see what's available. I loaded the four kids in the minivan, infant Jackson promptly fell asleep, and we drove up and down the streets. We pulled up in front of this house, for sale by owner, and I thought it was adorable from the outside.

When we got back to the rental where we were living at the time (long before I had a cell phone you see, but if I'd only known the owners were just across the street) we made an appointment for the evening to come look at it when Blaine was done with work. Every wall was a dingy gray-white, the walls were heavily textured with plaster, the carpets were all in colors I hated and some, upstairs, were so shaggy and long they needed to be mowed rather than vacuumed. The bathrooms were awkward in layout, and the kitchen was big but dark, dark, dark. I was just completely overwhelmed, thinking there was way too much to do to make it livable. I crossed it off my mental list.

And then I looked over at Blaine and he mouthed, "I LOVE THIS HOUSE." And wee Emma and Christian, who were then only about 6 and 4 years old, came in and said, "MOMMY MOMMY WE CLIMBED THE TREE OUTSIDE ALL BY OURSELVES IT IS JUST RIGHT FOR US! AND DID YOU SEE ALL THAT GRASS!"

So I had to walk through the house again with different eyes, eyes of a mom of a future big brood (I knew I wasn't done and that I wanted more kids). And it changed everything I saw and everything I thought. We made an offer the next day, and put our impossible acre of pastureland up for sale. It sold quickly, and here we are.

The hideous window treatments came down the day we moved in, but we lived for many years with the dingy gray-white walls and horrid carpets. In fact upstairs is still all shag, and still needs a good mowing. But I don't even see it anymore. Piece by piece we're remaking this house and the parts we've done look amazing to me. I have overwhelming happiness when I walk into one of my bathrooms and know that I did all that tape and mud, I sanded and painted those walls, I laid that tile. I'm still tickled every shade of pink about the kitchen facelift, every time I walk in there. I have lots left to do before the entire house is done to my specifications, but I'm enjoying the ride.

I love my yard. It took me a long time to get aboard that train. Watering the lawn is a huge deal, and I remember many an early morning with a hugely pregnant belly dragging the hoses around and shedding tears, thinking to myself, "Wasn't this B's job? Didn't I tell him, when we moved here, he was in charge of watering?" And I did only a halfway job and the lawn was tan with tinges of green. And at his busiest he didn't have time to mow and none of the kids were heavy enough to weigh down the seat on the riding mower so I had to do it, wah. Hours and hours on that mower to mow my green-tinged tan lawn. But a few years have changed everything. Kids are big and doing outside chores like champs. I've got watering down to a science, Christian can also do it, and I'm teaching all the kids how to help with it, it isn't such a chore anymore. And the lawn is so pretty! There are strips that are still sort of rough and ripped up from the sewer hook up four years ago. That's a scar that's taking a while to heal. But mostly the grass has filled back in and it's green and beautiful and Christian mowed it yesterday and as I was setting up my sprinklers this morning at 6:30 I actually, weirdly, thought there was nothing I'd rather be doing. The sky was so pale blue right then, pre-sunrise, and the air was just barely cool, and it smelled a bit like rain. And mostly I was struck with wonder and glee that this piece of land, this little bit of house, is mine, inside and out. I've earned it. I adore it.

I wrote a while back (maybe mostly on Facebook?) that I was redoing the laundry room. I still need pulls for the cupboard doors, but I'll show you what it was then, and what it is now.
BEFORE


AFTER

And that is why I love my little corner of the earth.

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Now playing: Simon & Garfunkel - Homeward Bound

My little cup of joy runneth over.

Things have changed since I was 16! When I was getting my driver's license I had to (1) take driver's ed, both a classroom and a driving portion; (2) go to the DLD and take a written test and eye exam; (3) do a driving exam with someone at the DLD.

So I assumed things were the same!

Emma finished her driving portion of driver's ed last week YAY, and I just got the email notification that her final test and essay assignment were approved in the classroom portion (which we did through Utah Online High School, and I shall never do that again because it took her too long when left to her own little timeframe).

I just called the DLD (because they're in the local office on every Monday and select Thursdays so it seemed a very fortuitous time to contact them) to schedule a driving test. They said, "Didn't she already take it with her instructor? We have a pass in the system."

So you don't have to take a road test anymore, the one she took on her last day with the driving instructor counted! She doesn't even have to take another written exam, the classroom portion counts for that! All we have to do is take a new pic, pay $30, show her ID, and she is a licensed driver.

That can all happen next Monday.

She will drive to school on the first day! After two years of having my morning schedule hinge around getting her to school, I don't ever have to drive her any more!

I am so happy! :D :D :D

Now hub and I just need to talk about rules. I'm thinking she only gets one fender bender or speeding ticket for free; infraction number two comes with some amount of time off driving (during which my schedule goes kaput again, sigh) and infraction number three might mean she has to fund her own driving. But that's all serious stuff, and it's harshing my excitement about having Emma be almost a licensed driver. So I won't think about that for another week. :)

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Listening to: R.E.M. - Shiny Happy People