Circling the Wagons

We haven't had many blog worthy events in our family lately.  There is a lot going on (more than we would like), but the "happenings" are too private and tender to be included in a blog.  We have outside stress pushing in on us from multiple directions and it's effecting everyone.  Some of the children are having nightmares.  They're all more emotional and prone to tears.  Most of us are walking around with a ball in our stomach and have to force ourselves to eat.  We had our 15 year old son crawl into our bed the other night and weep uncontrollably for nearly an hour.  One of the children said, "Everything is falling apart."  Another said, "This is turning out to be the worst year ever!"  I think we are using every tool we have ever learned to help comfort our kids.

Even when we thought we were at our stress capacity, more waves of stress kept crashing through our family.

It's all we can do to "circle the wagons" and pull the kids close.    In fact, the bonds we have with some of the children are stronger than ever as we help them with their heartache.  Dode and I are doing our best to give the kids perspective and to remind them that we're here for them and so is their Savior Jesus Christ.  Dode turned to me the other night and said, "How long until all this stress starts impacting our relationship?"  Yikes!  We're working hard to prevent that from happening.  We've learned over many years of heartaches that there's usually something to laugh about in any situation.  We're trying hard to find that in the various stresses we're under.

One of the bright spots in our lives is Miriam's new smile.  Her teeth are so misaligned that when her permanent teeth come in, they don't push out the baby teeth.  So far, she's lost one on her own and had three pulled at the dentist.  Last week I took her in and they pulled out her two front teeth.  I just can't get over the cuteness of that gap.

Saturday, a day of "work" and play

I am teaching at Day Camp National Camp School again this year (as a volunteer), my 4th time.  I love teaching there because I love day camp and I love getting the chance to share my enthusiasm with new day camp leaders.  I also enjoy teaching with top notch teachers who challenge me to do my best.  National Camp School is in April and part of getting ready for camp school is having a meeting where all the staff can meet each other.  Our camp school draws people who are running camps throughout the Pacific Northwest, and sometimes beyond.  So, our staff is from a large area.  We have someone from Spokane, someone from Southern Oregon, one from Walla Walla, two from Portland, two from Tacoma, one from Seattle and me.  Those who could make the trip got together on Saturday.  Those who couldn't drive so far participated through Skype.  We met at the scout office in Tacoma to get to know each other and to develop a common vision for the school.

Tacoma is a 90 minute drive for us.  My meeting was supposed to last from 10-3.  Anastaya and William's grandpa lives in Tacoma so we took advantage of our trip to let them visit with him.  After Dode dropped me off, they went to the assisted living home where their grandpa Bill lives with 6 other seniors and a caretaker.  They stayed at the house visiting for a while and then went out to lunch.  After lunch, they went to a park where they could play at the playground and visit a beach.  Bill ran out of energy at almost the same time they needed to leave the park in order to pick me up on time.  Perfect timing!  Because I wasn't along, there weren't many photos from the day.

Anastaya and her grandpa at the restaurant

Miriam's fancy "boot" is protecting her broken toe.  It doesn't slow her down any!

My meeting got out on time and we had to decide what to do with the rest of the day.  We had a wedding reception to be at in Lynwood at 7:00 and we didn't want to drive all the way home to Arlington just to turn around and head back to Lynwood.  We decided we'd go to the zoo in Tacoma.  We pulled up at 3:30 and found out the zoo closed at 4:00.  There's a beach right next to the zoo so we went there to kill some time.

After playing on the beach, the little people wanted to explore the trails.  Miriam set off in the lead, quickly scaling the hill.  I could hear Anastaya breathing heavy behind me and wondered how long it would be before Miriam ran out of steam.  She made it all the way to the end of the trail where we met up with a road that would take us back to the car.  Her energy went totally to empty when she tripped and knocked her knee into the pavement.  After that, Dode had to carry her for a while while she cried and begged to just go home.

We stayed at the wedding reception just long enough to be polite.  For 90% of the time we were there (1 1/2 hours) Miriam lay her head on the table and asked me every two minutes if it was time to leave yet.  The reception took a while to get going but once they turned the dance music on, Miriam came to life and got out on the dance floor to bust out her moves.  She did not want to leave when we told her it was time but we still had a 45 minute drive home and then showers for children plus sacrament bread to make.

We'd left the house Saturday morning right at 8:00 am and got home a little after 9:00 pm.  It was a long, tiring day!  We got a lot done but I'm glad every day doesn't take quite so much out of us all.  On Sunday we all got home from church and just crashed.  Naps for everyone but Miriam.

Starting school all over again

Last fall, the Seattle Times newspaper had an article about free online college classes. Link here: Why some of the best universities are giving away their courses.

It's called Coursera.org.  Dode checked it out and found a class he wanted to take on computer game design.  He sent me a link where one of the founders of Coursera explained what it was. 



Coursera classes are free.  Because they are free, you don't get college credit for them.  What you do get is the education that the colleges classes offer.   Instructors teaching at top colleges from around the world create classes.  They post video lectures, give homework assignments, and have quizzes.  Anyone can sign up to take the class, following along week by week with the assigned work.  Through this forum, a teacher can reach many more students than in a traditional classroom.  How many more?  There are 80,000 students in one of my classes!

I'm the kind of student who always took extra classes in college.  Back then, a person could take 15-18 credits for the same price.  I always took 18 credits because I love learning.  A full load is 15 credits.  Those extra three credits were an extra class every quarter!  It felt like free education and I choose classes that weren't part of my major but were ones that interested me.  Back in the fall, I looked through the course catalog for Coursera and didn't see anything I was interested in until January.  In January/February there were four classes I wanted to take.  I decided to sign up for all of them with the idea that they were free and if it ended up being too much,  I could drop classes.  I signed up for personal finance, foundations of human nutrition, nutrition for disease prevention and intermediate algebra. 

The finance class started a week before the rest and I had no problem getting the work done.  A week later, it was time to add the next three classes.  The nutrition classes each had about an hour of lectures to watch plus quizzes and homework.  The algebra class recommended using an optional computer program at another website to do the homework.  It's called ALEKS.  I paid $50 for a 12 week license and took the assessment to see how I was doing.  I could have done the class without ALEKS but I'm learning so much more by using it.  After over 20 years away from math, it revealed that I had 80 different concepts to master in one week to catch up with the class.  Yikes!  I also learned that ALEKS considered this class I'm taking to be pre-calculus.  I'd taken calculus in college but that was a long time ago.  I wondered if I'd overreached but started working my way through the 80 concepts. 

Dode always tells the children, "In math, if it's not neat, it's wrong."

He flipped through the pages and pages of math I've done and said, "Well, it's neat so it must be correct!"

I found it almost addicting.  My brain was craving that math.  Concepts I'd learned years ago were coming back to me and I was able to make it through the backlog of work in a week.  I won't tell you how many hours I spent on math that week but it's in the double digits!  I was also able to see what concepts I'd only learned years ago just enough for a test.  When I was re-learning something I'd mastered before, I could feel my brain clicking away thinking things like, "Yes!  This makes perfect sense!  Give me more!"  When I was working on things I'd never fully learned, it was like starting from scratch and puzzling them out.  The reason I wanted to take the class was to help the children with their homework.  They've looked at the work I'm doing and said, "Mom, you're way beyond us!"  They also think I'm crazy.  The idea of doing recreational math is absolutely foreign to them.  They prefer to do as little math as possible.  To find their mom giving up reading for pleasure to sit and do math just blew their minds!  But, the tools I'm using are also used in their algebra so it was with joy that I helped Anastaya with a properties of exponents assignment without having to do a quick google refresher first!

For now, I am able to manage getting the work done in my four classes by getting up an hour early each day and by spending all the time I would be reading a book working on my classes.  In March, as three of my classes are winding down, Dode, Isaac and I  will be taking a physics class, "How things work".  We will be able to portfolio Isaac's work for high school credit and it will give the three of us something to talk about together.