2 Weeks and a Preview

It’s been two weeks since I left Facebook.

The first few days were hard. Isn’t that sad? But, I’m happy to report that “status update” is no longer part of my mind chatter.

I do miss the people. I miss the support. I miss just feeling like I’m not the only person in my head sometimes, or that no one knows what is going on with us. For example, some of my status updates this week would have been:

“Our garbage disposal bit the dust. It stopped working, we tried to fix it, but we ended up making it smoke and trip its circuit. Not good.”

“Epic Fail: breaking your OWN window when you lock yourself out. We were loud. Cross one off the bucket list.”

“Air conditioner quit today. Bad compressor. Fixed with a “bandaid”, but looking at a $4k repair really soon. Have I mentioned we just fixed the air in our Honda for $1k?”

“I’ve been waiting for Greg’s car to die for years. Check engine light came on. Now, with the new house, we NEED it to keep working. Little Toyota, I’m so sorry I hated you. I love you again.”

This all happened THIS WEEK. Needless to say, I’m riddled with anxiety. It seems like everything is falling at once, and the list of projects is getting longer and longer, while the bank accounts take hit after hit. But here is what is good about not being on Facebook. I would have put those status updates, and that would have been it. Now I’m forced to put it here, and give a real update. The update is this: I am not in control. No amount of stress or anxiety is going to make it better. I need to learn to be content with where I am at and remind myself of our great blessings. We have been blessed beyond measure. While this cheaply built home is driving me insane right now, its a HOME. A fantastic home by some standards. At least we have money to fix our air conditioners in the 115 degree heat; 2 years ago we wouldn’t have. Even if Greg’s car dies, we still have one. Even if all the stuff falls apart and we somehow lose our new home, I will be okay. Devastated, but okay, because I serve a God who is greater than my worries, my pride, my anxiety, and my control. I’m trying to find rest in that.

Enough heavy. 🙂 Because I simply cannot wait any longer to share some of our school room, here is a sneak peak at one of the parts!

This is part of our reading corner! I love how it is coming together, so organized and pretty. The top holds our All About Spelling cards, our build a word box, and a basket to catch random things. I’m going to purchase a file holder to also put up top to hold my hanging file folders for Letter of the Week, Expedition Earth, and any other lesson plans I may need for six weeks. I don’t want to keep it all out, so I’m going to rotate every six weeks. The second shelf hold my supplies bucket (extra manipulatives, craft supplies, etc), our Letter of the Week bucket (to hold our alphabet tiles, magnets, marbles, beads, etc used for some of the activities), and our Art bucket (paint, paintbrushes, modeling clay, etc.) The next shelf holds our curriculum. I found those plastic holders at Lakeshore Learning, and then organized them to hold our supplies. The Readers bucket holds all the books that Jackson can choose from during his Read to Self time, the Read Alouds (which is still mostly empty since I haven’t ordered them yet) will hold all the books that I read out loud to the children, and then there is Math/Science/ Logic and Writing/Grammar/Spelling. The bottoms shelf holds one more curriculum file, which is History/Handwriting/Electives, and then the blue basket which contains all the books we used last year. In our new house, a huge shelving unit is going in the schoolroom closet that will hold everything from past years, which I’m excited for. To the right you can see the CD player where Jackson can do Listen to Reading for any books we may have on CD. I’m going to replace these camping chairs with bean bags. Remember when we were kids and bean bags were cheap? What happened?!?!? I swear, bean bags are RIDICULOUS now. Inflation hit beans hard, apparently. 😉

Today I’m working on our calendar for Circle Time, which means I will have the “Days of the Week” song stuck in my head all day. Have a lovely Wednesday!