School Room

So, I've been working on organizing the school room for the upcoming school year and things have been moving very slowly. Life has just been crazy and I'm so glad I started trying to get this room together in July. I made a lot of progress yesterday on the decorating side of things. We needed new school chairs this year and I found some at the Salvation Army thrift store in Greenbrier. I got four wooden chairs for $20 which I thought was a great deal. The only problem was they were a nasty dark brown color. I decided to let the kids pick out whatever color they wanted and I spray painted them. I think they turned out great! Another project that I had been working on was getting some of the kids' artwork framed and making a wall of art in the school room. I ended up spray painting some old frames I had sitting around with the same colors I used on the chairs and framed some of the nicer pictures the kids had done...So things are slowly shaping up.

 

Week 1

Four Science labs, new spelling words, alphabetizing, paragraph writing, adding, multiplying, reducing fractions, and one astronaut craft later and we can sit back on Sunday evening and say the first week of the Doak Family Homeschool is complete...It is such a joy and special privilege to be able to teach my kids here at home and watch them learn and "get" new things every day! Ashlyn is such a little math brainiac and her reading is spectacular. Stella continues to adore Science and is thrilled to be studying chemistry this year. And Quinn is freakishly intelligent. His questions amaze me and certainly keep me on my toes. Here are some pics from Week 1! Enjoy!

Thursday Thoughts....

I had cancer a couple of years ago (thyroid) and following my surgery and recovery...i had this whole new perspective on life and everything that was thrown my way...I really did look @ everything as a gift...and it was like this incredible high and wonderful feeling...nothing really bothered me, I didn't get stressed, I was completely happy and content and it lasted for a while, but it slowly started to fade and one day I woke up and realized I was exactly the same person I was before I found out I had cancer. And it really made me sad to think that this feeling of euphroria was gone and I was left having to "work" to appreciate everything. I was like everyone else...taking life, family, God for granted...sad, huh? well, I'm slowly coming out of the shell shock of all that and I really do believe that it takes work to be happy and that it's more of a decision rather than something we race to catch...so I wake up and tell God, "Bring it..I've got this..." and yeah, it's not the euphoria that I once had for a brief moment, but rather something so much more...just some thoughts..I'm grateful for it all...though not to say some chapters in my life are more fun/happy/interesting/colorful than others...the thought that I can choose happiness is comforting.