Yahoo.

Alrighty kids. Cue the banjo music and go get ‘em!

Dang that free-range, organic stuff.

Aw, mom. This is Cuddles. You won’t eat Cuddles, will you?

Just kidding.

We don’t name the chickens. But we do give them a good life before they meet their purpose.

Next!

It’s gonna get you, Bekah, run!

Aww. Shucks.

Mom won’t let us watch Scooby Doo anymore, but this is OK to watch?

It’s a messy job, but Abigail has the right idea.

McGregor: I don’t remember it looking like this before….

…but it does make it easier when they’re so dumb that they just jump in.

I’m with Cocoa, The Million Dollar Mutt. Let’s put our feet up.

We had manicotti for dinner, not chicken soup.

I went by myself. *clearing throat* I hereby solemnly recommend a solid night’s sleep for anyone who might have missed that luxury during the past decade. I am a new woman, I say! Nobody coughed, threw up, peed, lost a pacifier, or had a nightmare during my sleeping hours, and it was good. Moving on…

Friday was an odd day for me. Rural living is different, in a way that can only be experienced, not explained. Returning to Orlando and the beach was a little bit of a cultural shock even though I’ve lived my entire life–minus 15 months–there. There was a mass shooting in downtown Orlando near where I was shopping that morning. After the chaos of that and leaving on the last flight on a Friday night out of OIA through Atlanta, by evening, I was deep in the Kentucky hills—where one assumes that the gunshots are always for deer.

It was all very weird. I can’t be sure of this without hard data, but I think the crime is lower here per capita since everyone has a gun. And everyone knows you have a gun stash. Even my Amish neighbor has a gun.

I went to Florida to look for a temporary rental house. We will be living beachside, during the…winter. I love good timing. Greg has a lot of work, something we’re grateful for in this economy. (You must know I am understating this. I even got into it with the guy at the rental car counter. He thinks the economy is getting better, and I wished him well with that thought after a few good-natured rounds of fact vs. fantasy.) So we’re going to join Greg in Florida from mid-December until July. I am glad for the work, even if we have to temporarily uproot.

This means that we’re returning to homeschooling and city life for a few months for the duration of the contract. Someone will hopefully rent our house, assuming my life where I left off and chasing cows back into the pasture.

We are excited to see our friends, family, and old church. We hope they miss us as much as we’ve missed them. To be sure, this will be an easier transition than our last temporary jaunt in California. But moving, even if only for a few months, always tugs on my heart in a solemn way, a serious way that I find difficult to describe. Perhaps I am adventurous only in my mind.

The artificial situation of an interview made me nervous because it’s been over ten years since I interviewed for a job or attended a pastoral search interview with Greg back in the pastor days. (I play Victory in Jesus with a glissando; isn’t that enough?) For the school interview, however, since Greg works well under pressure, I was hoping to ride his coattails. But it’s possible I’m making too big of a deal out of an interview for elementary school.

At the end of the hour, the chairman side-stepped Greg and went to me with the trick question. We’d spent most of the time talking about the kids’ education up to this point– which had been entirely homeschooling– and our reason for a switch this year. He asked me, “Are you nervous about this?” because I’m very hard to read sometimes.

This question is the equivalent of a pregnant wife asking her husband if she is fat. There is just no right answer; it’s not fair. If I answer in the negative, everyone would know I was lying and that might negate my Christian testimony given just 30 seconds earlier. If I answer in the affirmative, then I might be pegged because I know that “Are you nervous?” is really code for “Are you one of those parents? Because really, we have nine of them, and so we’ve already met quota.”

In the end, we passed the test, with the only tricky part being the kind where my kid went to school one time without a backpack, jacket, or lunch. These reminders of my lack help me not be so judgmental, and you have to look on the bright side. I’ve never lost a kid in Wal-Mart.

The reason I was thinking about the interview this morning was because the school’s goals coincided with our family’s goals, which is not the same thing as saying that any school’s goals would meet ours, and that’s when we decided that it was a good match for us. The process of breaking down the issue was long and difficult, probably exasperated by my jumbling several issues into one. I don’t like to misplace blame, but that doesn’t mean I don’t do it. It’s easier to find a solution when you’re certain of what the problem is.

That’s why I appreciated Erin Manning’s comment on Crunchy Con’s blog after the request for homeschooling advice. What struck me about the comment was the ability to see the issue as it was and not complicate the matter with straw men:

While discipline and homeschooling are bound to intersect, nothing can be more fatal to homeschooling than to misidentify what is really a *discipline* problem or issue as a *homeschooling* problem or issue. If Billy, for example, isn’t doing his math lesson because he doesn’t understand it, is bored or confused by it, or finds the concept frustratingly hard to understand or the presentation of that concept opaque and mystifying, then that’s a homeschooling problem, and there are some steps to take to try to solve that problem that can work within homeschooling: a visual presentation of the concept, some math manipulatives, a more creative approach, a computer game or program based on the concept, a change in textbooks, or even a hired tutor or co-op school lesson, to list some possible solutions.

But if Billy isn’t doing his math lesson because Billy doesn’t feel like doing math, and keeps sneaking off to set up toy car tracks in the living room, and kicks his feet sullenly on the chair rungs when told to get back to work, and tosses his book angrily on the floor–then that’s not a homeschooling problem, but an ordinary discipline one. It wouldn’t matter if Billy were in public school and this were a homework assignment; it wouldn’t matter if Billy were off for summer vacation and was reacting this way to being told to help empty the dishwasher. The homeschooling math lesson is, at this point, just one of those scenarios in which a contest of wills occurs, and which call for the same kind of loving and patient discipline that parents would use for any similar situation.

I don’t have a point in bringing it up, except to note that I appreciate this sort of thinking and hope I can emulate this sort of measured-ness in my own life. I feel the need for wisdom more acutely as my children get older, as opposed to the old days when paci or no-paci was a Waterloo. Just for the record (and to clear my kids of any assumptions of naughty behavior), my switch away from homeschooling had to do with my recovery from health issues and not with the above scenario. Yes, we know I have a Billy named Charles, but he is three and coming around nicely now. Bless his heart.

Here’s yesterday’s launch.

In other news, can someone tell me how the low temperature today is 41 degrees, but it is currently 30 freezing degrees? Are the weather people the same folks who do the government budget? I feel like I’ve been tricked, and I want my money back. It’s only October!

…and she painted her cheeks with nail polish.

I don’t know what I what’s worse–ever using that nail color in this decade or turning my back on a toddler.