I am a confessed anglophile. I love things British. So, even though I am not a big fan of award shows on the whole, I had to tune into the British Academy Awards last night for about 40 minutes, just to see what the “more intelligent” English speakers think is really good entertainment. Not surprisingly, several of the films that won awards in Britain were the ones that have won awards here. But after my brief viewing of the show, I had added the following films to my must-see list for this year:

Girl With A Pearl Earring (I read the book, so I already wanted to see this one.)

Cold Mountain ( I tried to read the book, but couldn’t get into it. So the movie is the next best thing.)

Lost in Translation (The premise is fascinating, and Bill Murray is always good.)

Has anybody who reads this seen any of these? Let me know your thoughts.

Our oldest boy lost one of his front teeth tonight. He now looks like the quintessential 7-year-old. A photo would be really great for this entry, but I won’t have one for a while. I’ll see what I can do soon though.

Oklahoma is generally considered a very homeschool-friendly state. There are very few regulations on record that limit home school families. So it is pretty easy to homeschool here as compared to several other states in the country. For instance, you don’t have to register your child in a school here like you do in some other states. However, I just received word of some legislation that seems very biased against not only homeschoolers, but private schooled children as well. Here’s the information I got . . .
Continue reading Homeschooling in OK →

The great prognosticator has spoken. I grew up in the rural area of a town about 20 miles north of Punxsutawney. In my adult life, I have often used Punxsutawney (or Punxsy to regional natives) as a point of reference to explain where my home town is in Pennsylvania. I also gave an informational speech on Groundhog Day for my freshman speech class in college. So Groundhog Day always holds a special place in my heart. The thing is, I don’t think the folks in the Groundhog Club at Gobbler’s Knob have yet realized that 6 weeks of winter (what is predicted when the wood chuck sees his shadow) is no different than “spring is around the corner” (what is predicted when Phil is shadowless). I guess the point is that in the dead of winter, we need a reason for a little diversion, even if it comes in the form of a large rodent.

Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows we have an 8 1/2-month-old baby girl, Charis. Well, recently she entered a whole new era of baby-dom–crawling. She started crawling about 2 weeks ago, and late last week started to venture from beyond the center of the living room. Now she can make it to the bathroom in 30 seconds flat. The look on her face when she enters a new room on her own is priceless. To look at her, you would think she was a 6-year-old at Disney World for the first time.

Charis came to us nearly 4 years after our youngest child, so it has been a while since we did the “baby thing.” We also did the baby thing with the first 3 in 3 years, which means we never really had any “big kid toys” around to have to deal with like we do now. You know what I mean–Leggos and every other kind of toy with little pieces that an infant could easily chew on and eventually choke on. So the doors to the older kids’ rooms are regularly closed. We are vigilantly watching and listening to make sure she doesn’t go somewhere that could lead to trouble.

Did I mention, we’re old (at least I am). This means we get even more tired than we did chasing after the first three (and I never thought then that this could be possible 😉 The up side of all this is that this time around we have 3 very young people to help with the chasing.

The bottom line is that we wouldn’t trade all the chasing after Charis we have to do and the monitoring of her young ‘chasers” for anything in the world. (We might be willing to part with some of the Leggos and little toy pieces, though.)

It’s hard to believe. Charis is already 8 months old! She’s got 4 teeth, and she is crawling (mostly military, but a few regular crawl strokes here and there). So she’ll never be that sweet still baby again (not that she was ever really that still). But she is so much fun, it is hard to get too sad about her growing up. With each month, she is more expressive, more curious, more loving. They all grow up sometime, but wouldn’t it be nice to freeze time once or twice to be able to go back to visit those tender moments when they were so tiny–sort of like holograms from Star Trek?

Fun? The definition of fun is subjective as well as relative to where you are in life. For me, one thing that I’ve found fun lately is watching scenes from my new DVD of the A&E production of Pride and Prejudice that I got for Christmas. What’s even more fun is watching my husband get absorbed in the ins and outs of the movie.

Who is that masked man riding in that snappy new Jeep baby doll stroller? Is it Ken? GI Joe? A Rescue Hero? No. It’s Robin, and that isn’t a baby doll stroller, it’s the batmobile. Nevin has taken to pushing his sister’s Christmas gift doll stroller about the house and outside with his toy Robin proudly standing where the baby doll would normally sit, and all 3 of the older children have now dubbed the stroller “the batmobile.” Really too funny. I would have never guessed this would be how the stroller would be used, but it has added a new bit of amusement to our lives.

Wow! 2004 is here already. Have you noticed that the older you get, the faster time seems to move? I remember thinking a week was an eternity when I was a little child. Then, in high school, if someone said, “Get that to me a week from now,” I would think, “A week should be plenty of time.” Now, if I have a week to get something done, I feel much more pressured. Time is much more fleeting to me now. I think about the concept of time a lot when I hear my 4 year old say “We did that last year,” when she means “yesterday.” I am also reminded of it when I see my 7-year-old beginning to have a better understanding of how long periods of time really are.

Regardless of how quickly 2003 passed for you, I wish you the best in 2004. Happy New Year!

Amazingly, we got our tree up this year on the day after Thanksgiving. I have been enjoying it a lot. I am not tired of it in the least. Here are my questions:
When do you or your family put up your Christmas tree? How long is too long for it to be up? Do you use colored or white lights? Is it eclectictically decorated or does it have a style? My answers are:
1: Shortly after Thanksgiving.
2: More than one month is too long.
3: Colored lights (for the first time ever in my adult life).
4: Eclectic (ever since the children arrived).

p.s. If you are one who does not celebrate Christmas, please don’t slam me for talking about Christmas trees. Just pass on by my blog.