Well, after spending one half an hour looking for a parking spot and then walking toward what we determined was the crowd gathered at one end of the park, we were surprised to find ourselves at an outdoor bar and grill. The only demonstration had been at the entrance to the parking lot where a group of about 100 people were carrying protest posters. One bubbly old lady thanked my kids for paying her bills which amused them. But that was it.
We enjoyed a nice walk along the Sarasota waterfront in absolutely perfect Florida winter weather and consoled ourselves with a take-out lunch from the nearby Whole Foods Market.
I was there merely as an observer. I'm inclined to think some sort of bailout may be necessary at this point, but certainly not the free-for-all currently being legislated. I'd prefer Americans just toughen up and ride out the storm. This from someone who admittedly feels no economic pinch. Yet. I think a free market is really our best option and have the sneaking suspicion we may be selling our children into slavery.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tea Party, Anyone?
I have to take Sarabelle to the doctor this afternoon at 3:30, but the kids and I are going to try to be there, at either the Fort Myers or Sarasota location. I can't believe there are three within a relatively short drive from our house.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Fill-in-the-blanks
Schoolwork as usual. Nothing new to report there. What I have been keeping busy with, aside from a week-long break when my Boston cousin and her family came for a visit, is filling out forms. I'm working on Australian passports for myself, Sarabelle, and Grice, and an application for a new charter school for Grice.
Yeah, we homeschool, but we're not afraid of using the public system, or any other system for that matter, when it works for us. While we were away, Florida absorbed its community colleges into the state university system, so we now have a real state college not too far from our house here. That's where I tried to get Sarabelle in as a dual enrollment homeschool student but courses weren't any available until the spring term. This particular college is currently taking applications for a collegiate high school charter opening in the fall. One hundred ninth graders will be accepted the first year. At the end of the four year program students will not only earn their high school diploma, but will graduate with a full associates degree. Grice is interested, but only if her two best homeschool buddies get in. Right now, if there are 100 or fewer applications, everyone is admitted, and if it goes over 100, students will be selected in a lottery. My biggest concern was about transportation because though it's in our county, it's as far away as it's possible to be. But since this is a county public school, students will be bused. Yay!
Deadline for applications is March 20. Students will be notified of acceptance by April 1.
Stay tuned...
Yeah, we homeschool, but we're not afraid of using the public system, or any other system for that matter, when it works for us. While we were away, Florida absorbed its community colleges into the state university system, so we now have a real state college not too far from our house here. That's where I tried to get Sarabelle in as a dual enrollment homeschool student but courses weren't any available until the spring term. This particular college is currently taking applications for a collegiate high school charter opening in the fall. One hundred ninth graders will be accepted the first year. At the end of the four year program students will not only earn their high school diploma, but will graduate with a full associates degree. Grice is interested, but only if her two best homeschool buddies get in. Right now, if there are 100 or fewer applications, everyone is admitted, and if it goes over 100, students will be selected in a lottery. My biggest concern was about transportation because though it's in our county, it's as far away as it's possible to be. But since this is a county public school, students will be bused. Yay!
Deadline for applications is March 20. Students will be notified of acceptance by April 1.
Stay tuned...
Surprised?
Your morality is 0% in line with that of the bible.
Damn you heathen! Your book learnin' has done warped your mind. You shall not be invited next time I sacrifice a goat.
Do You Have Biblical Morals?
Take More Quizzes
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Insane
Via Joanne Jacobs:
Are books dangerous?
I plan to continue exposing my children to these potentially lethal items. Does this make me a criminal?
Are books dangerous?
I plan to continue exposing my children to these potentially lethal items. Does this make me a criminal?
So many books...
Via Meg at Get In, Hang On:
The introduction states, “apparently the BBC reckons most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.” Some of the list seems to come from the BBC’s Big Read list of 100 favorite books in Britain, although not completely and not in entirely the same order.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien *
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible – X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell *
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X +
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
Running total: 6
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X +
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger *
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
Running total: 10
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell *
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens *
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X +
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X +
Running total: 15
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen *
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres *
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X +
Running total: 18
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X +
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X +
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X +
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding *
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Running total: 21
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen *
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth *
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley *
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
Running total: 23
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov *
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville *
Running total: 24
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson *
75 Ulysses - James Joyce *
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray *
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Running total: 25
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens *
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro *
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert *
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Running total: 27
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery *
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X +
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X +
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Grand total: 29
Not so many but more than most according to the Beeb. My list of plan-to-reads is much longer, of course, and many are sitting on my shelf waiting patiently for their turn. How about you?
The introduction states, “apparently the BBC reckons most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.” Some of the list seems to come from the BBC’s Big Read list of 100 favorite books in Britain, although not completely and not in entirely the same order.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien *
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible – X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell *
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X +
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
Running total: 6
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X +
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger *
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
Running total: 10
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell *
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens *
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X +
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X +
Running total: 15
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen *
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres *
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X +
Running total: 18
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X +
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X +
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X +
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding *
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Running total: 21
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen *
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth *
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley *
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
Running total: 23
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov *
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville *
Running total: 24
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson *
75 Ulysses - James Joyce *
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray *
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Running total: 25
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens *
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro *
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert *
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Running total: 27
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery *
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X +
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X +
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Grand total: 29
Not so many but more than most according to the Beeb. My list of plan-to-reads is much longer, of course, and many are sitting on my shelf waiting patiently for their turn. How about you?
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Blowing Sunshine
From a posting on our local support group:
Governor Charlie Crist invites Florida students to participate in the Florida Sunshine Week essay contest. The essay contest is open to all Florida school students in grades 9-12, and winners will be notified the week of March 9, 2009.
The first place winner will receive a $3,500 scholarship, the second place winner will receive a $2,000 scholarship, and third place will receive a $1,500 scholarship. All winners will be invited to attend an event at the Governor's Mansion.
The essay topic is: "Describe the various public records available under Florida's open government laws and how access to these records strengthens citizens' civil rights and liberties." For more information, visit: http://www.flgov.com/og_sunshine
I guess they're not talking about the right to privacy...
Governor Charlie Crist invites Florida students to participate in the Florida Sunshine Week essay contest. The essay contest is open to all Florida school students in grades 9-12, and winners will be notified the week of March 9, 2009.
The first place winner will receive a $3,500 scholarship, the second place winner will receive a $2,000 scholarship, and third place will receive a $1,500 scholarship. All winners will be invited to attend an event at the Governor's Mansion.
The essay topic is: "Describe the various public records available under Florida's open government laws and how access to these records strengthens citizens' civil rights and liberties." For more information, visit: http://www.flgov.com/og_sunshine
I guess they're not talking about the right to privacy...
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Happy 200th!
I never thought Darwin was such a big deal. Raised a Catholic, I knew the Adam and Eve story and after probably believing it to be absolutely true as a child, much like Santa Claus, I eventually believed it to be just another creation myth, nothing to be taken literally. I'd heard about evolution, natural selection seemed pretty obvious, and I could certainly see the resemblance between apes and man, but I never gave it much more thought.
Until one day when Jorge and I picked a nephew up from his strange little Baptist school. We asked him how his day was:
It was awesome! We listened to a recording of a dinosaur!
A story about a dinosaur?
No! An actual dinosaur! They played a tape for us. This man studied dinosaurs and had a recording of a real live one!
Maybe they were imagining what they might have sounded like...
NO! This guy found a real live dinosaur...
That's impossible, [Nephew], dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years...
And recording devices have only been around about a hundred years...
And dinosaurs were never around when man was...
Uncle, Jorge! You're an evolutionist!
Well, I guess I am then, [Nephew].
Me too, I announced after hearing our nephew's disgusted accusation and my husband's avowal. It had never occurred to me before then that a school would teach outright lies. Or, at least if they were not intentionally misleading students, be so damned stupid. I was outraged and glad to count myself among the heathens.
Today I'm making sure that my children understand that evolution is true, and what a difficult decision Charles Darwin faced over publishing his revolutionary findings.
Out of all the books we've read and enjoyed on the subject these last couple of weeks, my favorite has been the elaborate and gorgeously illustrated The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin by Peter Sis, while Elle prefers Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story and has been eagerly taking notes chapter by chapter. To celebrate Darwin's milestone anniversary and because I realize now more than ever how important this knowledge is in the face of growing ignorance, I'm going to set aside all my other current reading in favor of Darwin's own groundbreaking classic, On the Origin of Species.
Until one day when Jorge and I picked a nephew up from his strange little Baptist school. We asked him how his day was:
It was awesome! We listened to a recording of a dinosaur!
A story about a dinosaur?
No! An actual dinosaur! They played a tape for us. This man studied dinosaurs and had a recording of a real live one!
Maybe they were imagining what they might have sounded like...
NO! This guy found a real live dinosaur...
That's impossible, [Nephew], dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years...
And recording devices have only been around about a hundred years...
And dinosaurs were never around when man was...
Uncle, Jorge! You're an evolutionist!
Well, I guess I am then, [Nephew].
Me too, I announced after hearing our nephew's disgusted accusation and my husband's avowal. It had never occurred to me before then that a school would teach outright lies. Or, at least if they were not intentionally misleading students, be so damned stupid. I was outraged and glad to count myself among the heathens.
Today I'm making sure that my children understand that evolution is true, and what a difficult decision Charles Darwin faced over publishing his revolutionary findings.
Out of all the books we've read and enjoyed on the subject these last couple of weeks, my favorite has been the elaborate and gorgeously illustrated The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin by Peter Sis, while Elle prefers Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story and has been eagerly taking notes chapter by chapter. To celebrate Darwin's milestone anniversary and because I realize now more than ever how important this knowledge is in the face of growing ignorance, I'm going to set aside all my other current reading in favor of Darwin's own groundbreaking classic, On the Origin of Species.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Save the words!
Countless words are languishing unused and forgotten. Please consider adopting one. Take it home and make it your own.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
The Truth, The Whole Truth, or Nothing Like the Truth?
I've been trying to write a letter. It's a very hard letter to write. And not just because I am determined to share the recipient's dedication to elegant handwritten missives highlighted with clever and thoughtful illustrations.
How do you tell someone you think they are wrong, about everything, about the most fundamental things? How do you tell a very dear someone whose primary interest in you is saving your soul that you don't believe one single word of it, that she is the one being misled?
Do you bother to cite the plentiful evidence? Do you send her a book to read in honest enquiry of the truth knowing full well she has her own more important book and will only discredit any evidence as Satan's red herring?
Do you say nothing because your relationship has never been about small talk and without this key discourse you really have nothing to share?
Do you break someone's heart for the sake of being honest?
How do you tell someone you think they are wrong, about everything, about the most fundamental things? How do you tell a very dear someone whose primary interest in you is saving your soul that you don't believe one single word of it, that she is the one being misled?
Do you bother to cite the plentiful evidence? Do you send her a book to read in honest enquiry of the truth knowing full well she has her own more important book and will only discredit any evidence as Satan's red herring?
Do you say nothing because your relationship has never been about small talk and without this key discourse you really have nothing to share?
Do you break someone's heart for the sake of being honest?
Monday, February 02, 2009
Monday Morning Quarterback
Confession time. Although it probably comes as no surprise, I hate professional sports, the big, blown-out-of-proportion, wastes of time and money (and please, don't even get me started on people who drive around at high speeds in circles for a living), but I will admit to watching that thing last night and maybe even yelling at the television a time or two, like during that one play just prior to halftime. I watch for the commercials because my brother is head of a CGI department for a trendy Manhattan agency and often has one running (not this year, though he did tell me to keep an eye out for Coke's insects stealing the bottle ad), and for the halftime show because you never know when there could be a spectacular wardrobe malfunction (fortunately Springsteen's garb remained intact and he put on a great show, and I'm not even a fan.)
This morning I thought it time to review the post-season goings-on and critique my plays. And for your sake, the football metaphor ends here.
Sarabelle's stubborn plan to return to Australia for school has finally withered. I stood back and tried to keep my mouth shut, offering sympathy and empathy for her plight, subtly mentioning once that whatever her college plans may be, she's into her eleventh year of school and it's time to prepare. Putting it off any longer in hopes of getting back to school in Australia wasn't beneficial. With an interest in becoming a doctor, journalist, or treasure salvor, and a refusal to "be a homeschool nerd" (though she loves participating in our support group's P.E. and Park Days) and the community college's dual enrollment classes filled until spring, remaining options involved either the local public high school with AP, Honors, or dual enrollment courses, or the high priced prep school in Fort Lauderdale which would simply look good on a transcript. The public school was able to offer her a decent schedule and eliminated the necessity of living with cantankerous older relatives on the other side of the state. The guidance counselor stated it would be possible to register her as a twelfth grader because she has nearly all the credits required for graduation in Florida, but we all agreed she could use the extra year to fill in gaps and strengthen skills. She still hates being here of course, would much rather be in Oz, but has been placated with the promise of spending her summer holiday overseas and is genuinely enthusiastic about her classes (Music - Jazz band playing upright double bass; English Honors; Marine Science; Journalism; Algebra 2; and American History Honors.)
Grice grumbles about it, even though we are still waiting on her math books to arrive and she has a lighter than normal schedule, but she is generally amenable to the idea of learning at home. She participates in the homeschool P.E. and 4-H with her best Northern hemisphere buddies and is interested in the Y's gymnastics program and cotillion.
Elle is a moth to the electronic flame. For this reason, with the built-in DVD player on our TV out of commission, I'm ready to cancel the cable (basic service that doesn't include the History Channel but does have Nickelodeon and which was never desired or required but was unfortunately bundled with our long distance and DSL) and chuck the thing out. We have Netflix now and I have my laptop, that's all we need. We're attending the South Florida Renaissance Festival as an end to that period of study and will be starting soon with Story of the World Volume 3. She likes the 4-H Cooking Club, mostly because she gets to hang out with the big kids, and is also interested in gymnastics, which would be a terrific vent for her perpetually high energy.
I've been learning to take it easy and give the kids a chance to settle in and find themselves. Then back to the pushing. It's all about moderation. For now it seems to be working.
This morning I thought it time to review the post-season goings-on and critique my plays. And for your sake, the football metaphor ends here.
Sarabelle's stubborn plan to return to Australia for school has finally withered. I stood back and tried to keep my mouth shut, offering sympathy and empathy for her plight, subtly mentioning once that whatever her college plans may be, she's into her eleventh year of school and it's time to prepare. Putting it off any longer in hopes of getting back to school in Australia wasn't beneficial. With an interest in becoming a doctor, journalist, or treasure salvor, and a refusal to "be a homeschool nerd" (though she loves participating in our support group's P.E. and Park Days) and the community college's dual enrollment classes filled until spring, remaining options involved either the local public high school with AP, Honors, or dual enrollment courses, or the high priced prep school in Fort Lauderdale which would simply look good on a transcript. The public school was able to offer her a decent schedule and eliminated the necessity of living with cantankerous older relatives on the other side of the state. The guidance counselor stated it would be possible to register her as a twelfth grader because she has nearly all the credits required for graduation in Florida, but we all agreed she could use the extra year to fill in gaps and strengthen skills. She still hates being here of course, would much rather be in Oz, but has been placated with the promise of spending her summer holiday overseas and is genuinely enthusiastic about her classes (Music - Jazz band playing upright double bass; English Honors; Marine Science; Journalism; Algebra 2; and American History Honors.)
Grice grumbles about it, even though we are still waiting on her math books to arrive and she has a lighter than normal schedule, but she is generally amenable to the idea of learning at home. She participates in the homeschool P.E. and 4-H with her best Northern hemisphere buddies and is interested in the Y's gymnastics program and cotillion.
Elle is a moth to the electronic flame. For this reason, with the built-in DVD player on our TV out of commission, I'm ready to cancel the cable (basic service that doesn't include the History Channel but does have Nickelodeon and which was never desired or required but was unfortunately bundled with our long distance and DSL) and chuck the thing out. We have Netflix now and I have my laptop, that's all we need. We're attending the South Florida Renaissance Festival as an end to that period of study and will be starting soon with Story of the World Volume 3. She likes the 4-H Cooking Club, mostly because she gets to hang out with the big kids, and is also interested in gymnastics, which would be a terrific vent for her perpetually high energy.
I've been learning to take it easy and give the kids a chance to settle in and find themselves. Then back to the pushing. It's all about moderation. For now it seems to be working.
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