Once upon a time, there was a slob. She wasn’t happy being a slob, but that was just the way things were, so she tried to live with it. Somehow, the slob came into possession of a book (possibly surreptitiously deposited on her nightstand by her husband) which purported to be the answer to her intractable problem. The slob opened the book. She started to read.

Just ten pages from the beginning, she started to cry. After twenty pages she threw the book across the room, never to open it again, because nothing had ever made her feel so hopeless. That book had been written in the most condescending way possible, by someone who had obviously never struggled with slovenliness, and it outlined the most extravagantly nit-picky method of learning to keep house that one could imagine. It was basically: Clean up your house, clear your clutter, and then voila! keep it that way, you idiot. “Why couldn’t you figure that out without a book?”, it seemed to taunt.

This is not that book.

This book, 28 Days to Hope for Your Home, is actually written for People Like Us (slobs) by Someone Like Us.

That book-throwing Slob, as I’m sure you guessed, was your humble blogger, and I eventually figured out how to keep a house relatively clean all by myself, no thanks to the Mean Girl who wrote the hateful book that broke my spirit. For me, deslobifying (as Dana White, aka Nony the Slob likes to call it) was a years-long, painful process, and I still struggle with the details of daily living when life gets out of hand.

If I’d picked up 28 Days to Hope for Your Home ten years ago, I could have been spared many tears, missteps, and emergency cleanings when the in-laws were on their way over. Alas, ten years ago, no such book existed. The good news is that it does exist now, and the rest of you slobs (I use the term with love) can benefit from it greatly.

When I opened up Dana’s book for the first time, I thought I was just looking over a friend’s book so I could help her promote it. I had no idea I was actually going to enjoy myself, and even get a little bit excited about my own deslobification–which is not really complete yet, and may never be. It’s a personality problem I’ve got, as it turns out.

Dana gently, and with great humor, guides us down the path of neatness slowly, one useful habit at a time. What she teaches in these 51 pages is simple and doable. Even better, it works!

I can vouch for her method because it echoes what I eventually figured out for myself: Little habits, over time, become big lifestyle changes! In just 28 days this book really can help you change the way you think about your mess home. It doesn’t do this by beating you about the head with your failures, but with easy steps that you really can just jump into.

I tell you all of this, of course, because I want you to buy this book. For the whole month of February, 28 Days to Hope for Your Home is on sale for half price. Spend this $4 tonight (or whenever), commit to doing precisely what it says, and by the end of the month, you’re going to start to feel a glimmer of hope that your home could be a haven, instead of an embarrassment.

I don’t promise miracles, and neither does Dana. You’re not gonna be June Cleaver come March 1st just because you read this book. What you will be, is cleaner. Click here to buy the book. You’ll be glad you did the next time someone rings the doorbell unexpectedly.

Disclosure: All the links in this post are affiliate links, so if you buy, you benefit this blog as well, at no extra cost to yourself.

                          

One of my favorite pastimes is checking on my search engine traffic to see what brings people to this site. This being a homeschooling, homemaking blog, I get a lot of the obvious kinds of searches, but some of them are really too good not to share. Here are a few of my favorites in the last couple of weeks.

Is homeschooling wrong? Um. No. What moral sphere are you inhabiting? Murder is wrong. Homeschooling is educating your children…which is more than we can say about a lot of so-called schools.

Should I homeschool? Probably.

Faceboobs. This is a daily search term for me. I don’t know what it means, and I’m scared to Google it. This is not the blog post you’re looking for.

What does a hillbilly look like? I’m not kidding. I get this one two or three times a month! Obviously, Google thinks I’m a hillbilly. Fair enough. Here’s what I look like, no makeup and no baby bump:

A hillbilly, apparently.

Things homeschoolers should know about life. In a nutshell? Keep breathing. That’s always done the trick for me.

Can you homeschool when you and your child don’t always get along? Get along? You mean, like, you have equally hostile attitudes toward each other? Sounds like somebody needs to grow up. I won’t guess which party. Seriously, though, my kids and I have some personality clashes, but I am still Mom. Yes. You can do it. In fact, homeschooling could solve the problem entirely.

Which Duggar will rebel? What busybodies we are! That sounds like a question for Miss Cleo, not Google. You know what I find interesting? In an age when the culture expects that every single child will rebel as a teenager, people predict that the Duggars will have only one rebellious child out of twenty! Sounds like even the naysayers know the Duggars are doing a good job!

When your kids drive you nuts… Take a deep breath and be the grownup. You don’t get to go nuts. Just learn to like ‘em.

How to decide what kind of homeschooler you are. Try something. If it works, keep it. If it doesn’t, try something else. I love the easy ones!

I hate the Duggars. Then you need to turn off the television and get a life. Stop wasting your energy hating people who a) don’t know you exist and b) aren’t doing anything to you.

Reason the Duggars have so many children. Despite the fact that I have watched only three episodes of the Duggars’ show, I am apparently now an authority on the family because of a single post I wrote. I feel pretty safe saying that it is because they are having sex while she is ovulating. How hard was that?

Where did the Duggars get their bus? The bus store. Again, how am I the authority on the Duggars?

Interesting what people want to know, isn’t it?

                          

A winner has been chosen for the Crowe’s Nest Media giveaway! Congratulations, Apryl!

There’s still time for all you losers to get your own copy of Your Backyard: The Life & Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly along with a free study guide (ARV $8.95) when you use the code GetAlongHome at checkout. That code gets you $1 off, too, so hurry up and use it! The code will only be good until February 3, 2012.

Click to shop:

(And hey, if you buy it using that code, I’ll get a portion of your purchase price in my own little pocket, at no extra cost to you. Just so ya know.)

                          

We’re talking about getting Dad (or Mom, if that’s how your family works!) more involved in homeschooling. I’d love your advice and opinions.

                          

The wife was sick.  No words strike greater terror into the father of four and a half than ‘sick’ and ‘wife’, especially such a father whose wife is a homeschooling, stay at home mom.

Oh, sure, everything starts out ok.  I mean, how hard is four bowls of cereal (replete with banana shavings and banana chunks, since I can’t chop evenly) really?  The baby eats like a champ, and I’m not foolish enough to think that this isn’t because of the novelty of Daddy doing the feeding.

Yes, my wife spoils me rotten.  No, I’m not ashamed of myself.  Moving on…

This is day two, and I decide that I need to get the kids out of the house.  Nothing major, nothing I haven’t done before.  However, today is library day.

Foolish me.  I’m prepared for this.  This will be cake.  After all, look how well breakfast went!

We get the van loaded, the children all nestled in every conceivable safety precaution against danger short of bubble wrap.  There’s some diabolical numerology involved in a three year old girl, a five point restraint, and two bowls of sugar frosted O’s; I’m sure it foretells the coming judgement somehow, but at any rate, it makes for a lot of patience being blown early.  It’s ok, though, no problem.

Many Veggie Tales Silly Songs later (as much for the kids as me, I’ll own up), we go through The Pledge.

“OK, kids, we’re going to be on our best behavior in here, right?”

The children allow that they will indeed behave well.

“We’re going to use our quiet voices, ok?”

The children consent to collective quiet.

“We’ll do what Daddy says without argument, or we’ll go home, is that clear?”

The children confess to the clarity seen in my previous statement, solemn as parsons, calm as cucumbers.

I unstrap them, and lead them inside our community library.  I’ve been here before.  I have a list of books that I need to collect, but I’m a grown man.  I served my time in the 80′s southern Pub Ed system and their insistence upon Messr. Dewey’s method; how hard can it be?

As it turns out, it can be impossible.  The card catalog of my childhood is replaced by a PC, a golf pencil, and a hint of paper.  The latter objects are for noting your inability to find anything in the most circuitous, infuriating, labyrinthine web application devised.  When Hell upgrades their methods of moving between the inner and outer circles, the modern Dante will surely be using our library’s search engine to find his way.

I can’t find any of the books my ailing lady wife has listed, but again, I am secure in the inherent order of the building; I’ll simply make my way through the stacks and find what I’m looking for.  I’m sure this is what Moses was thinking, Jews arrayed behind him, on day one of that forty year hike through the desert.

Apparently children’s books need to be split into not one, not two, but three sections, and it is of tantamount importance that they be classified in different methods in each section.  Dewey makes an appearance in one of them, however my subject (China) is in great demand, as I can find every nation on earth (including, heaven help me, Uzbekistan) in the Geography section but it.  I truly cannot find China with both hands and search engine, and the baby is squirming mightily.

I would ask a librarian, but they’re busy, as it turns out, readying themselves for Story Time.  “Ah”, says I to myself, slyly, “I shall drop the kids in story time and try again.”  This I attempt.

My daughter, however, has decided that the young mother’s baby to our right is the most interesting plaything, and is reaching for him despite said mother’s discomfort.  I gently pull my daughter to my left side.  Or try.

She’s not having any of it, and her insistence on the matter is getting progressively louder.  I pull her away from the group and whisper in her ear that she is to sit on my left.  Apparently, this is three year old girl for “arm and detonate”, because she goes off like Fat Boy over Hiroshima.

The experiment is over.  I pull my children out, the smell of failure oozing from my pores.  I am a terrible parent.

Why the digression, you ask?  What has this to do with marrying a blogger?

The next day, at work, the first person I see says to me, “Hi Jess.  How was the library?”

“Uhh, ok, I suppose.”  I’m wondering, was this person there?  Do I have a golf pencil still stuck behind my ear?

A little later, from someone else : “How’d you make out at the library?”

Is my name Truman?  Is my poor performance the butt of company gossip?  “OK, I guess…”

Later, outside our building, I run across a friend whom I haven’t seen in almost a year.  “Jessssss!” he calls out, “How’d things go at the library?”

Just before I begin to drool, it finally hits me. Facebook.

Random people know about my life because my life is a part of my wife’s life, and my wife’s life is part of the collective knowledge which is the Internet, or as I am more and more coming to think of it, Them.

You people know more about me than does my pastor, my co-workers (except those co-workers following my wife), and in some ways, my children.  (Although sooner or later, their reading skills will engulf an RSS feed aggregator, so this will balance out.)

I am not a public person.  I have tried using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging, Google+, Instant Messaging, IRC, Offline Mail, and every other electronic social interaction since before most of you knew the difference between a web page and a wombat, and you can verify that by the string of inactive accounts on servers across the face of the planet.  I’ve tried, and found I can’t stand them.

I love people, but I can’t stand graffiti, and that’s pretty much what social interaction over the Internet becomes, vehicles like blogs barely excluded.  If you have any experience with CB Radio over the last few decades, you’ll know exactly what I mean; the easier it is to talk over a given channel, the less intelligent the conversation on that channel becomes.  This is why ham radio enthusiasts exist; you can only talk to them if you took a test and earned a license. My attempts at legislating an Internet license continue….

On the other end, I don’t have much to say, really.  Or at least, I have a lot to say very, very infrequently, as evidenced by the above.

So it is fascinating to see the woman I married, who started out being even quieter, less outgoing than I, become the central hub of a huge network of total strangers who know about how I had planned to take the kids out to the library.

She is kind, my wife.  I am, in many respects, an absolutely terrible human being, rife with issues and ailments that would be, to most people surfing the wave of public interest, comedy gold.  Yet she has never taken advantage of this, and has always portrayed me as a good husband, father, and provider.  You people believing this image is as intimidating as it gets, and I try to live up to this.  It only now occurs to me that she knows this, and therefore…

No, too paranoid. Never mind.

At any rate, while I read her blog religiously (because A. Google Reader doesn’t require me to talk to people, B. I enjoy her blog, and C. What kind of idiot do you take me for?), I should really follow her on Facebook more closely, even if that does mean I have to filter through the mental quagmire of all the people I’ve friended (read as family) in order to do it.  It would be easier on my paranoid reflex.

And so you know, the library didn’t go so well.

                          

Teaching kids at home means being able to follow the interests of your children and really dig in to the things that mean the most to your family. Ideally, the end result of all that focused learning is something worth sharing with the whole world. The folks at Crowe’s Nest Media are a homeschooling family whose passion for nature study has led them to produce some extremely high-quality educational materials for Christians and homeschoolers, one of which is Your Backyard: The Life & Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly.

Your Backyard: The Life & Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly is a DVD packed full of information about the Monarch butterfly, covering everything from stages of life, migration, and how to find them, raise them, and help scientists track them. An accompanying study guide for homeschoolers will be released in the spring of this year, and I’ve got a code so you can get it for free, so be sure to keep reading for a special offer!

One of my kids’ favorite things to do is catch caterpillars and watch them transform into butterflies. We’ve done it so many times, I really thought we knew a lot about the Monarch butterfly. I guess you can chalk that up to a lack of proper research, because there was a ton of stuff on this DVD that I didn’t know about Monarch butterflies.

Crowe’s Nest Media has announced that Your Backyard: The Life & Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly is a semi-finalist in the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, and it is a well-earned honor. The video is beautifully done, and I won’t be surprised when it wins.

There are several bonus features on the DVD, including how to order tags for your own Monarch adventures, bloopers (these kids are so cute!), and a wonderful testimony from Dr. Jules Poirier, a design engineer with an impressive career in aeronautics and an expert Monarch butterflies. Most importantly, he is an unabashed lover of Christ, and the Crowes are too!

This video affirms the work of God’s hand in nature as it teaches about the amazing Monarch butterfly. Though many scientists like to try, we can never separate God from the world He created. It is His, and if we don’t acknowledge that, we miss some profound truths in our studies. Your Backyard: The Life & Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly furthers the aim of our own homeschool to glorify God in everything we learn, and I’m really grateful for this resource.

Buy: You can order your own copy of Your Backyard: The Life & Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly from Crowe’s Nest Media for $19.95. If you order before February 3, 2012, using the code GetAlongHome, you’ll get $1 off your purchase, plus a FREE download of the Monarch study guide, scheduled to be released this spring (ARV $8.95).

Win: Crowe’s Nest Media would like to send one Get Along Home reader a free copy of Your Backyard: The Life & Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly.

How to enter: Visit the Crowe’s Nest Media web store, and leave a comment telling me you did. It’s that easy!

Extra entries: For extra chances to win, you may do any or all of the following. Leave one comment here to let me know about each extra entry you complete.

• Subscribe to the Crowe’s Nest blog RSS feed or email updates.
• Stop by Crowe’s Nest Media Facebook page and leave a comment on their wall thanking them for this great giveaway.
• Follow Crowe’s Nest Media on Twitter @crowesnestmedia and let me know your twitter handle in a comment.
• For even more chances to win, visit these other participating blogs:

Spell Outloud
The Curriculum Choice
Finding Joy
Mama’s Learning Corner
The Traveling Praters
Handbook of Nature Study

Details: This giveaway is open to anyone in the US. This giveaway will be open until noon, January 30, 2012. The winner will be chosen by And the Winner Is… WordPress plugin. The winner will have 48 hours to respond to my email. If there is no response after 48 hours, I’ll have to choose another winner. Please use a valid email address in your comments so that I can contact you if you win! Please use one email address per entrant, per household, per IP address. If you cheat, I will most likely catch you, then spank you thoroughly and send you to bed. The giveaway provider (not Get Along Home) will be responsible for prize fulfillment. Good luck!

Disclosure: I received a copy of Your Backyard: The Life & Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly to facilitate this review. I will also receive 10% of any sales made using the coupon code provided. I’m as objective as possible, but here’s your mom blogger grain of salt in case any of that makes you feel queasy.

                          

This week, I’m over here at High Country Parent giving newbie homeschoolers my half-baked advice: How Do I Get Started With Homeschooling? You should probably go over there and leave your own thoughts, so they don’t get completely lost listening to me.

Also, in case you missed it, I had a post at AboutOne.com‘s blog, In a Nutshell, about my first heart-stopping adventures in the grocery store with cash only.

Happy weekend, my friends!

                          

I wanted to write something new today, but math ran long. And then spelling happened. And then chores took forever. So I’m just gonna give you one I wrote for my Friday High Country Parent column recently. I thought it was a fun one. Enjoy!

Why Do Homeschoolers Have So Many Kids?

OK, so not all homeschoolers have a dozen children. I’ve met many, many homeschoolers with just one or two kids. In fact, I’ve seen parents with only one practically apologize for not having more, like they’re letting down the team or something. (We’re not judging you, honest.)

For the most part, when I meet with homeschooling families, I find myself feeling like our family is on the small side, even with four small kids running around so quickly you’d swear there were at least six of them. And I have been known to look on our small (but growing!) brood as somewhat unimpressive beside the families of six children or more.

But why on Earth do homeschoolers end up with so many children? I can think of lots of possible reasons. Some of them apply to large families that don’t homeschool, I’m sure:

No Television. You know all those crazy homeschoolers think television is from the devil, don’t you? Well, there’s not much else to do after the sun goes down and the kids are in bed, so we make more kids. “You really ought to get cable.” is a line I hear pretty often when I’m out and about with my little ones, so I’ve concluded that television must be a very effective form of birth control. By the way, folks, if you think television is more fun, you’re not doing it right.

We like kids. Lots of people love kids. Not surprisingly, many of them become teachers. The rest of us, fully aware that no sane person would pay us to teach their children, grow our own. Even moms who don’t start out with a love of teaching (like yours truly) learn to appreciate kids in ways that education-outsourcing parents might not. We have to. They’re. Always. There. You learn to like kids, you decide to have more kids. Makes sense, right? Personally, I think everybody should make an effort to learn to like kids. It’s good for the soul.

The Snowball Effect. When you have one or two munchkins lighting up your life all day, a couple more seems like the next logical step. They grow so fast, after all! We want it to last! Before you know it, you’re up to your eyeballs in little people. Once you’ve got a few, why on earth not have a few more? There’s a point where it seems silly to think you couldn’t handle one more. I mean, you’re already handling five, right? Now you decide to stop?

Homeschooling is a less expensive lifestyle. I’ve had lots of people tell me they’d homeschool if they could only afford to, but I think it all depends on the kind of lifestyle you live. Lots of homeschooling families live very frugally, supporting families of far more than the average 2.1 on (typically) a single income. They wouldn’t be able to do so if they weren’t at home to do the gardening, hanging laundry to dry, upcycling, sewing, cooking from scratch, etc. Less gas is used when you stay home. There are fewer temptations to spend money when you’re not out all day. Add up all the little costs of an out-and-about lifestyle, and you can see how homeschooling not only pays for itself, but encourages family growth by providing for more people quite abundantly.

Practice makes perfect. I think a tweet I sent out this summer just about sums it up:

We need another baby soon. I’ve ruined the first four.

How about you, big family moms? Why do you have so many kids? Are you NUTS?

                          

I am not a girly-girl. My husband, however, happens to like girls, so I humor him by wearing my hair long—really longer than is practical for a housewife with a lot of messy jobs and small children pulling it all the time.

Since I lack the patience to spend very much time fiddling with my hair, it’s a ponytail or nothing if I want my hair out of the way. I don’t even have the patience to make a nice braid. But I do like pretty things, regardless of my inability to figure out how to use them, so I have a bag full of clips and sticks and things for my hair that I’ve collected over the years, hoping to someday get it right.

Enter the Lilla Rose flexi-clip:

That took less than ten seconds to do. Try not to mind the uneven hair color or the fact that it’s just a little bit crooked. Just focus on the fact that I finally have a hair clip that goes in my hair, stays in my hair, and looks pretty, even after just 10 seconds of actual work. This hair clip was built for impatient women! Hooray! Imagine how pretty it could be if I spent thirty whole seconds on it!

I received the Scrollwork Stoneset in Wood flexi-clip in medium. The flexi-clip has a unique one-piece design that makes it easy to use, and hard to lose—which is important when you lose things as often as I do. Sizing can be tricky, but if you find you’ve ordered the wrong thing, Lilla Rose will let you exchange it for the right size, so ordering is risk-free. Add to that the fact that they’re both durable and inexpensive, and you can see why I’m crazy about this clip.

There are sizing and styling videos to help the clueless (that would be me) figure out how to order and use the clips. I particularly like the drop bun style, along with whatever that is that I’ve got on my head in the picture. I don’t think there’s a video for that, but it’s super easy to accomplish, or I wouldn’t be doing it.

Win: Of course, I wouldn’t be showing you my own clip if I didn’t want you to have one, too! That would be mean. Gail Harris (aka The Imperfect Housewife), the Lilla Rose consultant who sent me my flexi-clip, would like to send one of you a clip of your own, valued at up to $15.

Buy one!: If you don’t have the patience to wait and see if you won, you can buy Lilla Rose flexi-clips online. I’m sure I’ll be buying more in the near future. I LOVE this clip!

How to enter: Go to the Lilla Rose website and check out the line of flexi-clips available. Then come back here and tell me which clip you’d like to have. Don’t worry. You can change your mind later.

Extra entries: For extra chances to win, you may do any or all of the following. Leave one comment for each extra entry, please:

• Watch the size and styling video and tell me what size you’ll need, or what your favorite style is.
• Stop by Gail’s Lilla Rose Facebook page and leave a comment on her wall telling her how awesome I am. Or you can just say ‘hi’. I’m not picky.
• Share this giveaway via social media using the handy buttons at the bottom of this post.

Details: This giveaway is open to anyone in the US. This giveaway will be open until midnight, January 20, 2012. The winner will be chosen by And the Winner Is… WordPress plugin. The winner will have 72 hours to respond to my email. If there is no response after 72 hours, I’ll have to choose another winner. Please use a valid email address in your comments so that I can contact you if you win! Please use one email address per entrant, per household, per IP address. If you cheat, I will most likely catch you, then spank you thoroughly and send you to bed. The giveaway provider (not Get Along Home) will be responsible for prize fulfillment. Good luck!

Disclosure: I received a flexi-clip from Lilla Rose to facilitate this review. I wasn’t otherwise compensated for this post. I tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, insofar as I can ascertain what the truth is. Read my disclosure here.

                          

Don’t worry. I’m not going to make every single post about giveaways this week. There’s some other stuff coming! Read this, whether you like giveaways or not. But who doesn’t like giveaways, right?

Long-time readers will already know that I absolutely love the Tapestry of Grace curriculum. We’re not using it right now, but we stretched the Year 1 curriculum out through my oldest son’s first two official school years. Right now, we’re waiting for the co-op we want to join to catch up to where we left off so we can join Year 2 with them (hopefully). Also, I wanted to go off the beaten path this year to get a feel for what we might be missing if we tried other things.

It’s been fun, but I’m ready to get back to Tapestry soon, and you can help me! (You would like to help me, right?) We’re not exactly wealthy around here, and all this education costs money. Lampstand Press is giving away a full year of ToG Digital Edition, and we can both have one, if we’re lucky.

The prize is a free digital edition year-plan for whatever year you’d like, along with all the DE supplements (MapAids, PopQuiz, and Lapbook template, plus one level of Evaluations). They’re also including a $20 gift certificate to use for books from Lampstand Press! And hey, if you’re insane and don’t particularly want this prize, you can still enter. I’d be happy to help you find a homeschooling family in need so you can give them the blessing!

How to enter: Just sign up for a free account and catalog, then “buy” a free Love ToG Ticket. You don’t have to give them any information beyond your name and mailing address. Then put my name and email address in the comments section of your Love TOG “order” when you check out. I’m Cindy Dyer at dmajik at gmail dot com. If you don’t enter my name as your sponsor, I can’t win with you, though you’ll still be entered to win for yourself.

Thank you so much for helping me (and yourself!) out. Good luck!

Disclosure: I’m a ToG affiliate, so if you buy from them after clicking my link, I’ll get a percentage of your sale, at no extra cost to you. I don’t earn anything just from the click, nor will I receive any compensation for getting you to enter this giveaway. Unless we win, of course!