What is on our plate lately?

We have spent several wonderful weeks at home!
Jer had some minor surgery and the kids and I have just exed out events on our calendar and stayed home to be together!
It was movies, board games, walks, and very wonderful time together.
Jer is recovering well and we are happy for him! I know that we will all look back on these days as having been wonderful!
We are planning a trip in May, probably to Florida. Jer may have some business taking him to Orlando...so we will have the chance to see the "Harry Potter" theme park this year! Woo Hoo! (IF it is open at that point, that is!

Do you remember Tim Conway in the "Mrs. Wiggins" skits? He played Mr. Tudball. I had a visit from that character today! Jer and I are getting bids from various companies for awnings on the back windows. The fellow who came today what Tim Conway, no kidding! Every time I asked a question, he would walk that shuffle walk out to the car to get more information to show me..! He even sneezed like Tim Conway! It took everything I had to NOT laugh. "Oh, Mrs. ah Wiggins!"
Didn't like his awnings though...
LOL

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"Schooling confuses teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new."
~ Wendy Priesnitz

I have been talking to several parents this week who are all considering homeschooling their children. In every single case, the schools' failures to meet the needs of their children is their main impetus to explore the homeschool lifestyle. I am angry and horrified at some of the stories that I have heard. The next problem these parents will face, though, once they move to a homeschooling lifestyle, is to absorb the ethos of homeschooling. That "book learning" is not the same as getting a great education.

That, alone, took me a few years to grasp. How can I pass it on to these loving, angry, desperate, and wounded parents? The answer is that I'm not so sure I can do that in a few sentences. That truth, for me, was a truth that revealed itself to me as my research went on and on.

In the meantime, I am grateful to have the opportunity to offer my support and assistance to any parents about to take the leap into the homeschool lifestyle!

I love Quotes.

I do. I love quotes. Is it because I'm too lazy to read the whole book, watch the whole movie, or follow the entire story????????? Hmmm...maybe!
But, more likely, it's the kernel of truth or meaning or thought that is important not to miss.

So, quotes are fun to read.

I go online and look for quote collection sites and read, read, read.
But I have one quote that is my favorite. To me, it is my religion. It expresses exactly how I think about the world and all of us on it. It is by Carl Sagan; here it is:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Oh sure, people have told me that this way of looking at things must be very depressing, to see our earth as such a small mote in a ray of light. But, to me, it is just the opposite! It is an amazing thing, see! It does make me feel small, sure, but in a good way! In the way that the Grand Canyon will remind you of perspective...only waaaaaaaay more so!

It give me peace. It gives me comfort. It makes me feel a true sense of awe such as I have not felt before.