2020 - A Year In Review

 Wow! What a year it has been, eh?  

Like you, I never, ever would have imagined that 2020 would have turned out the way it did. I truly hope that this was a once in a lifetime year. I swear that sometimes the only thing that kept me sane was the fact that I knew that just about everyone on this planet has been affected in some way by the goings on of this year's multitude of events. 

I know that a lot of the press coverage has been pretty negative this year, and to be honest, it probably should have been. There was a lot of awful stuff going on, but I also want to acknowledge that from these horrors have also come some blessings. 

For our family personally there have been some hardships, but there have been so many good things to come out of this year. 

In 2020 - 

Joshua graduated from high school.

Andy and Josh began their freshman year at college.

Sarah made the decision (after much thought and consideration) to become a traditionally homeschooled student for the remainder of her high school career. 

Elizabeth completed her 7th grade year and began her 8th grade year of homeschooling. 

Bobby came home in March to work from home where he continues to be until July of 2021, but may become an indefinite situation. 

Elizabeth turned 14.

Sarah turned 16.

Joshua turned 18.

Andrew Timothy turned 20. 

Bobby and I turned 41.

Both boys were eligible to vote and voted in their first election.

We lost our sweet dog, Lily, to cancer at the end of March.

We brought home an incredible train wreck of a rescue dog (who is now doing so much better) in June.

Sarah took her first solo flight this fall (before COVID got really bad again) and spent a week in Portland, OR at Sky View Horse Ranch.  

We explored the state a bit more and explored several new state parks. 

***********************************************************************************

I think that the most important thing that happened in 2020 for our family was a sense of awareness. We became more aware and paid attention to causes like Black Lives Matter. We talked a lot about how the color of our skin gives us an unfair and unjust advantage in life and why that was/is and what we can do to level the playing field. (We also realized how little we knew about social injustice.) 

As a family we talked a lot about voting and causes and parties and political beliefs. We talked about rights and civil liberties. 

We also realized and became acutely aware of just how fortunate we are to live the lives we live. COVID rocked our world as a collective whole.  It turned families upside down and inside out. Our family life wasn't all that changed. Our kids came home for schooling, but they were used to that since all were homeschooled for most of their schooling years. Bobby began working from home which we considered a bonus. My life didn't change much either. I realize that we are in a minority when I look at our family situation, and I am thankful that we were/are in the place in our lives where we had minimal shake ups in terms of home/work life situations. My heart goes out to all who have had to finagle jobs and day care and schooling. 

The hardest part for our family has been social distancing. We take that pretty seriously in our house and not being able to visit friends/family or go to certain places has been hard, just like I know it has been for everyone. 

We became more aware of what's important in our lives. Being together is important. Protecting each other, loving one another, creating memories with one another, carrying one another, celebrating one another - all of these things had a spot light shown on them this year cast by all that seemed so bleak. I hope that as we move forward we never forget how awful this year has been, but that we take with us all that was good and use that to propel us into 2021.  

As Glennon Doyle is known for saying, "We can do hard things." 

We certainly can because we did. All of us each in our own ways. 

December Reading List

 I spent two weeks of this month trying to slog through Moby Dick. I like to read as many classics as I can both with my kids and by myself, and I almost always am glad that I did so. I also have a hard time not finishing a book I start. I spent a week of the two that I pushed through Moby Dick trying to talk myself into (and out of) finishing the book. In the end, I realized that I was being insane. It is okay to not finish a book. Maybe I will come back to it at another point in time, but for now it wasn't a good pick for me. 

That being said, I only got through 3 books this month, one of which I have read multiple times, but I wanted to leave this year reading a book I loved and I will. I anticipate finishing my current read on New Year's Day, so I am including it in this month's 'read' list. 

This month I read: 

This was an interesting read. I had no idea how unsupported the Revolutionary Soldiers were in terms of lodging and (more importantly) food. It makes me realize just how deeply that this country wanted its freedom from the British when I understood how our soldiers were basically starving through most of the war with no lodging and not enough supplies (like clothing, etc...)

I ended up reading this book (and the one above) because Andy purchased them as part of a class he thought he was going to take (but ended up dropping). I wanted to see what professors were requiring their kids to read in college classes these days. It was interesting to read a book from someone just visiting this country from Europe. To get Fanny's take on the way Americans did things during that time period was enlightening. I definitely won't read this book again, but I am glad that I took the time to read it once. 

I have read this book twice (maybe even three times) this year. I just love, love, love it. The Sioux and Comanche Indians fascinate me. I wish there were more good books on them that I could get my hands on because I would read them all.  

Well, I reached my goal of reading 52 books this year. 

I wasn't sure if I was going to make it at one point, but I ended up finishing the year up with 54 books read. I was going to try and come up with a new goal this year to top last year's goal, but I think instead I am just going to stick with trying to read a book a week again. Here is the monthly breakdown - January - 7 February - 8 March - 7 April - 2 May/June - 5 July - 5 August - 3 September - 5 October - 4 November - 5 December - 3 2020 total - 54

Anywhere

If you had the option to live anywhere in this country, where would you live? 

Would you stay where you are? Would you move some place you've never been? Would you move back to some place you once were? 

Would you live in the city or suburbs? Would you choose to live in the country?

Would you choose to live near family? Would you choose some place far away from them? 

Would you choose to move to a place in which you could live a life that looks so different from your current one?

 Would you live some place cheaper or more expensive? 

Would you live close to amenities or would you live somewhere away from as many of life's material choices as possible? 

Would you choose to move somewhere where the scenery took your breath away? 

Would you move somewhere more culturally diverse? Would you move somewhere with more people just like yourself? 

What would you choose? And WHY would you choose it? 

Our own family is facing these questions as we speak. We are fairly certain (but not 100% yet, we will have the final word by April of 2021) that Bob's job will allow us the option to live in just about any state we choose. While this idea is so exciting, it is also extremely daunting. Every state we have lived in thus far (since deciding to leave Ohio) has been selected either for us or by us because there was a job opening. We also felt that each of these places we lived was less of a choice and more of where we were led to be at that time in our lives for one reason or another.

Now we have 47 options before us. (Alaska, Hawaii, and California are out for us.) How do you figure out where to go, especially when you are a collective unit of 6 people? (The boys, at this point anyway, are planning on coming with us.) What do you prioritize? How can you make 6 people happy, and if you cannot make everyone happy whose happiness gets priority? These are all questions Bob and I are working through right now. (We are also working through where we would move to in Indiana should he be required to go back into the office come April because staying in our current town is not an option for various reasons.) 

For me, this whole process has been really cool and really scary. Do we make safe choices or do we take risks? Do we move somewhere that is beautiful, but would require me to go back to work at least part time to afford to live there? Do we move some place we have already been or do we move someplace new? The choices are endless. 

Anywhere...if you could choose anywhere, where would you be?

16

 On December 1, Sarah turned 16.

 My how times flies. I look at this beauty before me and cannot believe the young woman that she has become. It seems like just a blink of an eye ago she was this chubby cheeked smiley little face. Now, she is a beautiful young woman. (Who is now taller than me and has been for a while.)

We were a little confined (by COVID, of course) as to what we could do this year, but we tried to make it as good of a birthday for her as possible. After much family discussion we made the decision to allow my mom to come out and celebrate this birthday with us. We really went back and forth over this decision, but in the end decided that my mom (with a weakened immune system herself from MS) would be the most cautious about COVID exposure and would be the safest member of our family to have over. 

We celebrated Sarah by playing a trivia game that Bob made up, which was really, really fun. We then had our 4th annual Blind Olympics in which all of the kids performed various activities blind-folded. We gave out a "fabulous" prize at the end of the tournament based on who had accumulated the most points throughout the tourney. Activities this year included: a taste test, bowling, wheelbarrow races, bobbing for ping pong balls, a race to gather braille clues around the house and then decipher what the clues meant, & a bean bag toss.

Sarah opened gifts and ate  food of her choosing -as is the custom in our house. (McDonalds for breakfast, Chick-fil-A for lunch, and eggplant parmesan for dinner.) We topped off the day with ice cream cake. 

I will say that this birthday was hard for me to swallow, not only because it brought into focus how grown up my beautiful daughter is, but because it was the first birthday (and only) that did not have the significance it could have because of the implications of her disease. Even Sarah commented that in a different life she would have been getting her license at this time, and a part of me cannot help but mourn for the loss of this right of passage. 

Overall, despite the obstacles in our world right now, we managed to have a good day. I hope Sarah felt celebrated and loved for surely she is a treasured member of our family, not only on her birthday, but every day. 

September, October, & November 2020 Reading List

(I had intended to write about Sarah's 16th birthday, but am having a hard time downloading a few birthday pics, so I will post this instead in the hope that I will be able to get her birthday pics downloaded in the next day or so.)

 Since I have three months of books to share with you I will keep this part short & just get right to it. 

September: 

October:

November: 

I enjoyed all of these books. Some of them I have read before such as Sara and Eleanor, The Kite Runner, and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I love, love, love Khaled Hosseini's work. I have researched him to see if perhaps he has written other books, but have found only a children's book of his that came out several years ago. He is probably one of my favorite writers. Both of his books haunt me and I can see myself reading them once a year many years over.  I also enjoyed re-reading Sarah and Eleanor. I really enjoy reading about the Roosevelt family. I am particularly drown to Teddy Roosevelt's life, but reading about FDR's mother and wife are enjoyable to me as well. (I don't really have an interest to read about FDR himself though which I find a bit odd.) 

Some of the books I wouldn't read again. Opium and Six Weeks in a Sioux Tepee are two works that I am glad I read once, but that was enough. The rest of the books I would read again, although not with the same urgency as Hosseini's books. I will say that Hell in the Heartland also haunted me a bit and I had to put it down for a few weeks because it creeped me out so much in the beginning of the book. 

I found Kilian Jornet's book to be a bit egotistical, but I am finding as I read more and more books on climbers and ultra-marathoners that this seems to be a common theme. I still find books on those who push themselves to their limits and risk their lives in nature fascinating and will most likely keep reading books of this genre even though I often get turned off by their tone. 

At the beginning of this year I set a goal to read 52 books. And although I am not there yet, I feel confident that I will be able to reach this goal in December. I am excited about reaching this personal achievement. I need to think about what my new goal will be in 2021. 

January  - 7

February - 8
March  - 7
April - 2

May/June  - 5

July - 5

August - 3

September - 5

October - 4

November - 5

2020 total - 51

School Days (Week of 11/23/20)

 Our school year is humming along. I am having fun this year with my girls and although this school year has been hard socially with COVID I feel like we are moving right along with our coursework. Because of the holidays, the next few weeks will be pretty stop and go with what we accomplish, but I am okay with this. This is one of the many benefits of homeschooling. 

Joshua and Andy are wrapping up their first semester at college. Because of COVID, IUPUI ended the semester for most classes this week. Josh took 5 courses and 3 of them are finished. The other two will end in the middle of December. All three of Andy's classes are now finished. They are looking ahead to next semester and are deciding on how many courses to take. They both plan on signing up for their classes in the next week or so. 

The main focus of this week is the girls reading. Elizabeth and Sarah both read aloud to me most days. Elizabeth does so because she struggles with reading/spelling at what public education would deem grade level (very much like Andy), and I want her to feel comfortable with where she is at and help her grow more confident in her ability to perform both skills well. We are reading the last book in the Land of Stories series which has been such a blessing to us because it is the first series that she is actually interested in reading. I knew there had to be something out there that would grab her interest. It just took a little while to find that series. (By the way, Chris Colfer has done an amazing job with these stories. Just outstanding. I love hearing these stories as much as Elizabeth likes reading them. They are so creative and take the classic children's story characters that you and I grew up with and turned them into something magical.)

Sarah and I are currently working through the Little House on the Prairie series. We are currently reading On the Banks of Plum Creek. Sarah reads to me in braille and our focus is on getting her reading speed up. (Her braille tutor would like her to be reading something more challenging, but I have never read through the series, and we had already started it before her instructor suggested she move on to something harder. I don't like not finishing a series once I have started it. Plus, the goal is to increase her speed, not learn braille. I figured an "easier" series would help her accomplish this better than a "harder" one.)  She knows how to read braille fluently, but is a bit on the slow side. Even though technological advancements have made it so that learning to read in braille is not a necessity to get by in life, I am insisting that Sarah learn to be solidly proficient in her reading accuracy and speed. Call me old fashioned, but I just feel it will serve her better in life if she can read braille despite the potential non-necessity of it. 

The third book that we are reading is one that I read out loud to Sarah. When Josh and Andy were high school homeschoolers we had a subject that I called Great Books. I read aloud to them from books that I considered classics, usually ones with life lessons or important social implications. I tried to expose them to all different types of stories, and we ended up reading through a good number of books. Josh enjoyed the class more than Andy did, but I know that they both got something out of that time. I wanted to continue that tradition with the girls because it is something that I feel is an imperative part of their education as it opens their minds to different experiences outside their own. 

Horses and stories make up the majority of Sarah's interests/life, so this "subject" was a no brainer for me when she decided to come home this year.  Plus, she was working on an Honors Diploma when she was in public school. I would like to be able to help her accomplish this as a homeschooler. Reading the classics and then having her write out extended responses/essays pertaining to those books will help her to meet the language arts portion of an Indiana Honors Diploma. We are finishing up our second book since she came home in September. The first book we read was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. We are going to finish up Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls this week. 

So, that's what going on in our house schooling wise these three school days before our Thanksgiving/Sarah's birthday break. 

Cleaned & Purged

A couple of times every year I take 3-4 days to do a super deep clean of my house. Everything gets washed and cleaned from blinds and curtains to baseboards and walls. No drawer or closet is untouched as I pull out all of its contents and place them into three categories: clean, to be put back, donate to Goodwill, or throw away. 

I always feel amazing after I get this monumental task done. I usually do this kind of deep cleaning alone - my kids know to just leave me be for the duration of my super deep clean. They will help me cull the items in their rooms, and will perform an occasional task if I ask them to, but for the most part they just let me hum right along to my own song as I work through each space that makes up our home. 

Generally, I like to do these kinds of deep cleans in the early fall and spring. I love having the windows open as I move from room to room especially after the air conditioner has been running all summer and the furnace has been running all winter. There is something about having fresh air reinvigorate the house that gives a sense of ultimate cleanliness. 

I love being able to have us all get into bed the evenings after I deep clean each bedroom with every sheet, blanket, and pillow washed and dried out in the sun. One of my favorite 'clean' smells is laundry that has been hung on a line to dry. There are fewer things that I associate with deep cleaning like sun and wind infused clothes/linens. 

I had intended on deep cleaning the house in late September/early October of this year, but I wasn't feeling particularly motivated when the time came. Sarah had just made the decision to withdraw from public school a couple of weeks earlier because on-line learning wasn't working out for her and she did not feel safe going back to school in person because of COVID even with the abundance of caution the school was taking with its safety protocols. (I don't blame her. She doesn't have the luxury that you and I have of  making choices that increase our risk of getting the virus.) We were working through what her homeschool experience was going to look like during those weeks and that took precedence over the house getting a thorough deep cleaning. 

With the holidays coming up, I made the decision a few days ago that I was going to just do what needed to be done and plow through a deep clean. I am so glad I did. Not only does the house physically shine from top to bottom, inside and out, but it also mentally feels 1,000 times better. For me, being a homemaker, I just adore when I know that my house is in tip top shape. I love knowing that no drawer has been untouched and no corner has been left alone. The atmosphere is different after a deep clean - I don't know why, but it just is. Because we are spending the holidays alone this year, I think that this deep clean really came at the right time; it has mentally lifted the collective family's spirits during a time when we were feeling a bit down because we know that we are the only one's choosing to abstain from family get togethers. 

Generally speaking, I like to make as many of my cleaners as possible. The partial hippie in me doesn't like the thought of spraying caustic chemicals in my home if I can find a safer alternative, but I also want to make sure that I am disinfecting my house. Since moving to Indiana I have gone away from do-it-yourself bathroom cleaners for my toilets and tubs/showers though. Our water in this part of the state is so hard and calcium filled that it leaves hard water calcium spots in both the toilet bowl and on the walls of the showers. No matter what homemade recipe I used there were still hard water spots remaining;  I now use The Works and Lime Away for those surfaces. (I still use homemade cleaner on the toilet seats/sinks/ cabinets though.)

If you are looking for a good recipe book for homemade cleaners my favorite go-to-book is shown below. I have been using this book for multiple years. There seems to be a recipe for just about everything.  

  

Now that the house is clean, it is time for me to tackle the mountain of laundry I have. The sheets and blankets may have gotten washed these past few days, but the clothing we wear certainly did not. Good thing it's football Sunday, so I can listen to the football games while washing and folding the pile of clothes that are waiting to be tackled.