Homeschool Final Judgement

Rest assured that although this blog's entries have slowed down, the same has not occurred for the Freeman family.  It's been so long since I've logged on I didn't even know Blogger had a new format - I'm trying to figure it out, hoping it's less complicated than the Lego toys my girls have grown desperately attached to.  

We finished our homeschool experiment in May.  My go to response when people ask how it went is that I loved it for a year but am thrilled the girls are starting back to school (tomorrow!).   It fit a need for our family and gave us the opportunity to do some really neat things like traveling (although we didn't do as much as I hoped), behind the scenes tour of the dolphin habitat which included feeding the dolphins and giving them their commands to swim and jump, visiting some museums, getting a tour of the Bellagio and have a private performance of the water fountains, loads of arts and crafts and science experiments and so on.  Regarding academics, I think the girls learned as much or more than they would have in school and the flexibility to speed up an assignment if it was easy or slow it down if they struggled was ideal.  Of course with an extra long summer, I'm sure they've forgotten half of what they learned so I am in no way fooling myself into thinking this year will be easy for them.  

The last thing I LOVED about homeschooling was the relative lack of stress or anxiety.  If a kid is sick, no big deal, just take a day off or let them sleep in and work on something later in the day.  If you can't get to your homework because of the double header soccer game followed by three birthday parties, you can do it the following day.  We didn't blow off work (not often anyway) but we could get to it on our time.  I was a happy camper.  Neither of my girls received unexcused tardies or a letter home threatening their promotion due to missed school days.

Having said all that, it was a hard, challenging  year.  The time commitment is great, even when the school day is only four hours and the afternoons are filled with driving the kids to art, spanish, swimming and soccer.  I learned a lot about how my girls learn and when that learning process is so different than your own, it's a struggle.  Some days they would pop up and do their math and other days it fell apart into tears before their seats were warm.  We are all like that, good days and bad, but it's hard to watch it day in and out without missing the forest through the trees.  I'd get so focused on getting this one math sheet done that I'd forget the goal wasn't that sheet but an overall understanding of a concept.  Additionally, I found it hard to balance being their mom and being their teacher.  I'd want to console and reason with them as their mom but as their teacher I felt like I had to crack down more.  Other homeschooling moms make this look much easier than it was for me but I am who I am.  At the end of the day, I'm glad we did it, I doubt we'll do it again but I can totally understand families who embrace this lifestyle.  

The Flood

It seems like since mid-January we haven't had a regular week of school. There have been visitors, colds, trips to the beach and a general malaise that has interrupted our schedule consistently. But I was sure that would turn around this past week. Sam just turned 6 and celebrated with her first slumber party (just two kids), Spring is around the corner and the weather is great, and all the visitors, people and sicknesses alike, have left town. It’s a peaceful Tuesday morning, usually a day Sarah would teach but she’s taking one more day off to make sure Baby O is all better, and I decide we should do our morning schooling downstairs instead of upstairs in the school room.

As it turns out, it was a Very. Bad. Choice. Had we gone upstairs at 8:30am we would have noticed the girls’ toilet overflowing but as it was, we didn’t notice it until 10:30 when the water started pouring out of the ceiling in the family room. It came first out of the ceiling fan and then out of a smoke detector about 10 feet away. The fire alarms went off and the girls ran off screaming in excitement. I remember starting at the fan and the water pouring out and thinking “this is really happening? Really? Maybe it’s a dream…no, it’s not a dream.”

I grabbed the file in the kitchen cabinet that has all of our receipts and found the plumber’s number.

“Blaine, it’s Erin Freeman, you came to my house a few months ago. Water is pouring out of my ceiling! What do I do?” I yelled over the sound of the screeching fire alarms.

“You have to turn off the water. Go outside”

“I know where it is but not what to do! Oh my god, oh my god.” I ran outside and opened the lid to the water meter. “Okay, what do I do?”

“There should be two overlapping valves with smaller holes in them. Turn the top valve so that the two holes are aligned. That will turn the water off.”

“Okay, I see it. Kids, out of the street! I can’t turn it. It won’t move! Clockwise or counterclockwise?” The panic was setting in as the water was still pouring out of my ceiling.

“Not sure, either way.”

“Oh my god, water is everywhere in the house and I can’t turn this. What do I do?”

“Go get a wrench and a screw driver and I’ll walk you through how to make a tool to turn it off.”

I ran in the house, grabbed a few tools, including pliars, and ran back out. I tried the pliars first and it worked, it finally turned.

“Okay Blaine, that worked.”

“The water that is in the ceiling is going to keep pouring out for awhile, I’ll be there in 30 minutes.”

My poor girls, they thought this was the most exciting thing in the world and all I could think was how much money this was going to cost us and would we still be able to sell the house and build a new one.

“This is not funny girls! We may not get to move to the beach now.” I was freaking out and that seemed to shut them up temporarily.

After calling Jim at work I figured out how to turn off the smoke alarms – it’s actually quite simple, you just climb a frickin ladder and yank them out. The decibel level dropped dramatically as did my blood pressure. I threw every towel we owned on the floor, moved the couch out of the way, put a few pots under the waterfalls and waited for Blaine.

I was thinking burst pipes so I was quite relieved to learn it was an overflowing toilet, a relatively quick fix other than for the damage caused. I called our insurance company and within an hour my doorbell was ringing. First came the disaster clean up company followed by the industrial strength cleaning company who bagged and tagged anything and everything that got wet, including kids shoes, clothes, couch cushions, rugs, pillows and so on. I felt like I was in that scene in E.T. the movie where various government agencies descend upon the house in hasmat gear and set up a major quarantine area lest the alien was toxic or something. People just kept showing up in gloves and masks and talking in code. The girls and I walked around in a zone watching the various goings on.

The final workers didn’t leave until 8pm that night. They had ripped out the carpet, vanity, sink, tile and wainscoting upstairs. They tore out the drywall and took down the ceiling fan and pendant light downstairs. They installed 3 large blowers to suck out all the humidity, which were quite loud and smelly. We made a decision to leave town, back the beach we went. So much for getting in a regular week of schooling.

News Flash

So, as it turns out, Sam is quite the character. Whether she marches to the beat of her own drummer or if she falls somewhere on the "there's something wrong with her but not sure what it's called" scale, is unclear. She's highly intelligent but a bit peculiar. Today's bang-my-head, roll my eye, wonder if we need to go on a modified diet to control behavior moment was as follows:

Sam - Mom, what's a lentil?

Me - a lentil? It's a bean.

Sam - So would it hurt if you put it in your eye?

Me - Um, yes, it would.

Sam - So beans are just for eating?

Me - (shaking head) Yes, hun. Just. For. Eating.

Ten minutes later:

Ryan - Mom, Sam never remembers to make her bed! I have to do it!

Sam - (yelling, red faced, eyes bugging out, stomping her foot) I do too remember Wyan! I just don't do it!!!

Seriously, no joke. Kids are crazy or else we are. But I love 'em.