Make Your Life A Musical!

Remember that big television production conference I was telling you about? Want a sneak peek at David's newest product? If you like American Idol and Glee, then you'll fall head over heels for...

Make Your Life a Musical from Mad Rush Pictures on Vimeo.

How a stranger saved my marriage and rescued me from having to live in my minivan.

I have to tell you guys something. It's going to come off as boastful, which we know the nuns frown upon, but it must be said anyway.

I rarely screw up.

You can ask my family. They will completely vouch for me. I am a good wife and mother and pretty butt kicking housewife and I almost never drop the ball.

That bit about almost never dropping the ball makes the times when I do drop the ball pretty serious.

Tonight I dropped the ball. Think Buick sized ball.

All week David has been preparing for a television production conference with lots and lots of big potential clients. He's been editing and recording, getting all of his products just so. My job was to bring his best clothes to the dry cleaner to have them ready for pickup today so that he has what he needs for his trip tomorrow. I dropped the clothes off on Wednesday like a good little hausfrau and made a mental note to pick them up today.

You know where this is going don't you?

I completely forgot that dry cleaning even existed until 5:30pm when a wave a ice cold nausea washed over my body. I had forgotten to pick up the dry cleaning and now my husband would have nothing to wear to his important meetings and his deals would fall apart and we'd have to live in our car.

I called him and told him.

"Well," he said "You need to find out who owns the shop and get them to open it."

This was not what I wanted to hear because this was an impossible task. How on earth would I ever find out who owns the shop? And then asking them to open it up so that we could get his clothes? Impossible.

I started to plan for our new life living in the minivan.

"Send out an email to the list. I'm sure that someone must know who owns it." he said.

Now I really wanted to throw up because not only had I screwed up, but David wanted to me to send out an email publicizing my mistake to all 2,000 of the families in Arlington who subscribe to the Arlington email list.

Finally I sent out the email, sure that we were doomed to a life in the minivan eating government cheese when I actually got a response. A resourceful subscriber figured out the name and phone number of the owner and sent it to me.

I forwarded it to David, because I'd pretty much rather die than make that humiliating phone call. Since I was schooled by nuns I learned that when you screw up there is no mercy, just a hot seat in hell. The nuns would have hated David because he happily called the owner, explained his predicament and asked the owner to open up the shop on a frigid Saturday night. Which the owner is very kindly doing.

So there it is. A huge screw up, a Hail Mary toss and the retrieval of hope. Just another day at Shiny Red Houses.

Mail!

There are so many reasons to blog. It's a creative outlet, you can make new friends and sometimes people send you stuff!

This week I got a package in the mail from Julie.

Notice this?

'

She was trying to prevent David from getting into it.

Such a pretty box! It has holes in it which means that come spring my children will want to use it as a bug habitat of some sort. Must remember to hide it.

Check out what she put into it!

Chocolate and floss! Chocolate because, well, duh! She must know that I have been slacking on my New Year's resolution to floss. As god is my witness I will floss tonight, right before I put in my new mouthguard which I love!

She also sent me an instruction manual on felting coffee cup holders. Because she knows how much I love felting.

Thank you Julie! It made my day and I'm sorry to say it also made David's day. He's been sneaking chocolate all day. Bad husband!

Homeschooling at Shiny Red Houses...

Since we started homeschooling this fall people often ask me how we do it. I find that they usually want to know what the legal implications of homeschooling are, as well as the practical day to day schedule of actually teaching.

The first question is easy to answer in that the laws around homeschooling vary from state to state and to some degree from town to town. Most of this information is easy to find by googling your state and the word "homeschooling". The state of Massachusetts makes homeschooling quite easy and our town is particularly accommodating.

Our first step was to send a Letter of Intent to the Assistant Superintendent of Schools as well as a lesson plan outlining our learning plans for the year. Then I unenrolled Rebecca from school and we were on our way.

Creating the lesson plan was overwhelming at first, so I googled around a bit and saw the huge variety of homeschooling lessons plans that parents have used. Some parents favor a very unstructured "unschooling" approach and others have an extremely structured plan. Our style is somewhere in the middle. I found that going to the Massachusetts Department of Education website was helpful because I was able to see what their standards were and could use that as a jumping off point in creating my own plans.

Because I am a person who loves structure, I knew that I would want to use some workbooks and establish a routine.

I did not want homeschooling to devolve into junking and baking cupcakes every day, though that would be pretty awesome.

Our local Barnes and Noble has a great selection of homeschool curricula to choose from so one day I went to the homeschool section and scooped up every curriculum they offered and looked through them all. I knew that I wanted something engaging and clearly written. I wanted texts which would explain things clearly and logically and which would keep us on track educationally.

I ended up coming home with the Harcourt Family Learning Complete Curriculum.

Rebecca and Lily really enjoy these books. They cover Spelling, Writing, Language Arts, Reading Comprehension and Math. Rebecca uses a separate book for vocabulary which she had been using when she was in school.

Science and History are covered as a family through books, movies and trips to museums. For Lily I also use Brainquest Workbooks. I love Brainquest! I use it to supplement what Lily is learning, particularly with math. Lily loves looking for patterns in math and this book really makes it fun for her. I only wish that they had Brainquest workbooks for fifth grade so Rebecca could enjoy it too.

I am lucky in that both girls love to read and they love it even more now that they don't have to keep a reading log! Reading is a daily activity. I like to let them chose their own books and follow their interests.

Once I explain the materials we use, folks often want to know what an average day looks like. It looks a lot like this.

Rebecca likes to work on her bed. She had a desk in her room but she never ever sat at it. Finally I took it out and put in a dresser.

This was the first page of fractions. She was so happy to be done with long division.

This is her schedule for the week.

What can I say? I like having a plan.

Lily often learns best in her pajamas. I suspect that this is a common trait among homeschoolers.

This is the lesson plan book that I use to keep track of everything we learn each week.

We generally do our work in the morning which leaves the afternoons free for playdates, dance class, Hebrew school, gymnastics and other adventures. A really wonderful aspect of homeschooling is the ability to take a break if someone is sick. In school if the kids miss school they quickly fall behind. If one of us is sick we just pause our learning for a few days until everyone is well.

Homeschooling isn't for everyone. I'd be lying if I told you that there weren't some days that I just wish I could be alone in the house for a few hours catching up on the things that I want to do instead of teaching long division which I could completely live without. Mostly though the benefits outweigh the negatives. As a family we are so much closer than we were and closer than I thought we could be. I never thought that I could do this. I am so grateful that I did.

I know how to have fun!

Guess what I did tonight? Go ahead, give it your best shot.

If you guessed "fit yourself for a night guard so you stop grinding your teeth into oblivion" than you are correct!

We've had a bit of stress over here at Shiny Red Houses lately and it's been manifesting itself in all sorts of new and exciting ways. More specifically, it's turning me into my mother, a woman who has perfected the art of manifesting stress in dozens of different ways. Job stress- migraine. Emotional stress- stomach ache. Stress caused by blogging daughter- back spasm.

I've been waking up the last few mornings very aware that my jaw is clenched. My dentist has been trying to talk me into buying a gold plated ruby encrusted night guard for the last year. At least I assume that it is gold plated and ruby encrusted since it costs a car payment, which I suppose is a small price to pay for not destroying your own teeth, but still.

Today I made my way to Walgreens, a happy place where dreams come true. There I selected a do-it-yourself night guard that the clerk at Walgreens assured me would do the job. It was 29.99 which I'll be honest with you, was about 20 dollars more that I really wanted to spend.

Tonight after I put the kids to bed I went downstairs to create my very own customized night guard. Upon reflection I now realize that I should have invited the kids to watch and it considered it the homeschool version of introduction to dentistry. They could set up a little stand on our street- Lemonade/night guard stand!

Customizing this night guard involved the use of a pot of boiling water, a stop watch and my teeth. Believe it or not, I followed the instructions and it worked!

Now tonight I will enjoy the sleep of a woman whose mouth is filled with 29.99 worth of molded plastic.

Now if my back would stop spasming I'd be all set.

Why I should not be allowed to leave Arlington without my minivan...

I know that there are some of you out there who look with scorn upon the minivan. They see its ability to carry six children at a time and liken it to the shackles of motherhood.

These people are either drunk or insane because the minivan is the carriage of the goddess.

I press buttons and the doors slide open. I press the button again and the doors close. No fumbling with door handles in the rain. We are able to happily transport friends to museums or the movies with us. Even with the van full of people, I can still stuff the trunk with good junk if I pass a particularly promising pile on trash day.

The first car that David and I bought together is our 1997 Honda CRV. It is shiny and red and sporty and when we bought it back in 2000 it was only a few years old. We fit both children in it and it was fine.

But then I took a few rides in minivans, vehicles that were as big as my living room and with better upholstery. A few of these minivans had GPS and DVD players and like a little crack addict I was hooked.

Two years ago we bought our minivan. We splurged on the leather seats, the GPS and the DVD player. I love this car. I vacuum it weekly. I polish it. I condition its heated leather seats.

The best part about this car are two features which work together beautifully. The GPS and the DVD.

How do they work together you ask? Here is my little secret: I have no sense of direction. At all. None. Zilch. When I was in high school and Michael Patterson, a boy who drove a red mustang and made my heart pound, offered to drive me home from school I panicked. I wasn't exactly sure how to get home! It was a risk I was willing to take but I don't know which had me more nervous- trying to will him to love me forever or figuring out how to get home.

Anyway, The GPS gets me where I need to go and the DVD keeps the children quiet while we are getting there. Symbiosis pure and simple.

Today there was a problem. Today David had the minivan and I was driving the Honda and reader, after driving my minivan the CRV feels like a brick on wheels. The bigger problem however was that the girls and I needed to be at a theater in Harvard by 5pm.

Have you ever driven in the Boston area? If you haven't then try to imagine a city whose roads where all once cow paths. Now imagine those curvy cow paths with inconsistent one way signs and no street signs. You are now in Boston.

In my defense, I printed up directions and a map. Of course these were mostly useless. We spent about 45 minutes driving around Harvard Square searching for Oxford St which kept hiding from us. This would not have been so annoying had the children been distracted from my navigational incompetence and not felt it necessary to point out that we had passed Harvard Yard again and again and again.

"Are we there?"

"Is this it?"

"Why are we turning around?"

"Is this our street?"

"Are we going to be late?"

"What are we going to have for dinner?"

"Why are we turning around again?"

"Are we lost?"

"Mommy did you just swear?"

Finally I found our street and parked and even found a sign pointing to the building which we were looking for. Of course, this being Boston, it did not actually lead to the building we needed, but never mind. We wandered about Harvard feeling stupid and then lo, in the distance we found our destination.

Once there we saw a lovely musical, more on this another time, because all too soon it was time to leave.

By some miracle we found the car and off we went. Even though it's a very well lit area I couldn't help but notice that something seemed odd with the headlights. They seemed dark. Hmmm.

Oh well, I kept driving and fiddling with them. It seemed that I could make them either very bright or very dark. I haven't driven that car at night in years so I assumed that I just wasn't used to them.

We were in Arlington before I figured out that I had been alternately driving with just the running lights on and no headlights or just the high beams. When I made my discovery I sort of shouted a bit which led to the questions.

"Mommy, why are you talking to yourself?"

"Is something wrong?"

"What's wrong?"

"Where we driving in the dark?"

"Is that legal?"

"Will you get arrested?"

"Mommy, are you swearing again?"

I think I'll just stay home for a while. I rarely get lost here.

The perfect day...

Today was like a dream.

First, the children allowed me to sleep until 9:30 this morning. It turns out that after ten hours of sleep I am absolutely delightful. I woke up feeling happy and refreshed. Who knew? This sleep- it is like a drug!

After I woke up I toddled downstairs to find that my children were playing Cafe. Cafe entails Lily sitting at the kitchen island while Rebecca puts on a fancy apron and prepares Lily waffles with syrup and whipped cream. They were being happy and polite to each other.

After recovering from the shock I showered and got dressed and announced to the children that we would go to the library. The children sung my praises! Books! Free books! How wonderful!

At the library the children picked out armloads of books, found a corner and began to read. I left them in the children's section and made my way to the murder mystery section where on the advice of my cousin Cheryl I picked out a Robert B. Parker novel and a few Jonathan Kellermen's.

Once home from the library the children sat themselves in front of the fire and proceeded to read for the next four hours.

The quiet was heavenly. It was like a miracle and a dream and my birthday all wrapped into one. While they read I tidied, caught up on the laundry and washed the kitchen floor.

We just had dinner and now the children are in their rooms reading again.

As soon as I am done blogging guess what I am going to do? Get in bed and read until bedtime.

The only thing better than a stack of new books is my children with a stack of new books.

If I could just teach the pugs to read...