Watch What You Wish For...a homeschooling adventure

What is that saying? Watch what you wish for, or it just might come true.






Well my wish has come true. Yes, I have been wishing for a farm for a few years now. I want space where we can grow enough food for our family to be sustainable. Land for animals to roam and enjoy life. Real farm animals that can provide things like eggs, milk, cheese. I have even day dreamed of homeschooling our children and wondered how they would develop if we allowed their innate curiosity and inquisitive minds to take the lead in their learning.

Our Siamese cat, Ryuki thinks, "he's animal enough!"

It looks like my second wish is coming true and I'm currently homeschooling our young 'uns. I hadn't quite pictured how this would unfold or even come about. It wasn't like this was my BIG wish either. But still, I had sent it out into the Universe and here it is. This is the cool part about putting your wish out there...wherever "there" is. Once you send it out, the vibration of that dream is picked up but you have NO CONTROL over when it comes to pass, or how it will transpire.


Case in point, I had no idea that the teachers would go on an extended strike with the Province in order for my wish to come true this September.WOW!

But no matter how things manifest, my dream has come true. I'm a homeschooling mama! Albeit without the farm, without the cool farm animals. (Although Ryuki, our Siamese cat...picture above would say, he is animal enough!) I know it's coming. If you don't know me by now, here is my daily mantra...."trust and let go."

So yeah! We are on day 2 of our homeschooling foray and I'm EXHAUSTED!

 

I have to start reading some homeschooling blogs to figure how in the heck they do it. This is the hardest thing I have ever done. It's right up there with keeping our newborn twins alive in the first year of their life, while taking care of the 6 older ones, without any outside help.

After that I thought I could do anything. And while yes, I am a warrior, this homeschooling gig has it's limits. I'm on day 2 and like my daughter said this morning when she woke up, "do we have to still do this?"

First of all, just getting up at 7 am, after having had a summer of sleeping a bit later (like 8 am with our three little ones) has been really hard. Of course it doesn't help that I often stay up into the wee hours to read or write. But, gesh a mama has to have a life. Getting up an hour earlier is a killer. Do you think regular homeschoolers sleep in?

Then the other issue is, while I'm homeschooling, I'm not attending to any of my chores, like working in the garden, cleaning the house, doing my laundry, AND my little work crew are not assisting with any jobs either. Thank heavens, it's rained off and on the last two days so I haven't been stressed about watering the garden, harvesting or collecting seeds.

Dill seed is just one of the herbs I want to save

While the rain and cooler weather has been a good thing in that the kids feel like fall is coming and returning to structured learning is part of the package, I cringe to think of the weather changing back to a warmer trend since they will probably want to have friends over to our swimming hole.

Anyway, that is my rant of the day and right now I'm not too thrilled with our Provincial government because they just don't get how tough teaching our kids is. One of the big issues on the table is class size and classroom support because in any given class there can be a 1/3 of the students that have various learning challenges.

Grace working on a math worksheet but she also likes the IXL web site for math

Practicing flute and piano

Grace looking up flute music on the computer..which makes homeschooling so easy

Harrison plays drums, ukelele and violin...I know a weird combination right?

After spending two days with my crew, who are all like little sponges and as far as I know not even dyslexic, this is a huge task. So right now, I'm on the side of the teachers but if they stay out for much longer, yeah, yawn!, I may be swayed to side with the government.

The biggest part of homeschooling is keeping the little ones busy and occupied.

What I love about homeschooling though is you can drop everything and just paint.

I like the level one readers as they learn their sight words easily
Also, the Leap Pad  Explorer has been a great tool for introducing math and reading to young ones
Another side benefit to homeschooling is all the great bonding that happens

Enough said about all that, you know what I'm doing, so if I'm not writing regularly, it's 'cause I'm SPENT at the end of the day, when I normally have some time/energy to hit the keyboard.

What I REALLY wanted to talk about was my initial title, "Watch what you Wish For," and all that THAT, entails.


If you have read much of my blog, or know me in person, you will know that I fell in love with a piece of property that is about 30 minutes from our current homestead. The house was absolutely PERFECT for us. A large Cape Cod style home with bedrooms for everyone, or space to renovate to create that. The interior was decorated in my favourite colours and the flow of the house was well suited for our family and their various ages and genders.

The property was perfect too. Almost 18 acres, some in pasture, some in woods, some garden space. They even had the kind of chickens that I wanted already living in the back yard! The thing that resonated with my heart was the fact that this was an established Christmas tree farm. An environmentally friendly farm at that. Could it get any better than that!

Now if you don't already know me, I have to tell you that Christmas is MY fav season. I love Christmas trees most of all. We have four Christmas trees in our house every holiday season. We have one in our Hobbit's Hollow play room/media room, (sometime soon I'm going to tell you about our Hobbit's Hollow and creating unusual space) then two fancier ones on the main floor. The kids even have one, in the hall, outside of their bedrooms.

The first time we toured the farm, I walked amongst the trees, stretched my arms to touch their branches and smelled the forest filled scent, I knew I had found my new home. For some strange reason I thought the house would just wait for us, until we could prepare our house for sale, list it and then sell it. Well it had been on the market almost a year when we first toured it and it was not cheap so we thought it may not move as fast and my husband thought also they may be more motivated to sell once we finally made an offer. Everything seemed right about it and things for the longest time seemed to be falling into place for us to move in that direction.

The week, we were going to list our house, was a week full of trials and tribulations. Something always seemed to be going wrong. Our older children were extra needy with their commitments to their various summer jobs, the fitness gym and their social life. So while we drove them around to fulfill their commitments and desires, it just made it harder to complete that last bit of painting, repairs, final de-cluttering projects etc. around our house. Also, D,  my hard working husband, found out he had to go out of town for a few days which added more stress to the whole mix. I felt like I was doing it all but hey, it was my dream to sell and move
.
On top of all that, our neighbour, who has lived across the street from us for 17 years, and has never asked us to help her with anything, came over and asked if we could care for her plants and yard while she was gone for a week. I just smiled and said yes but gesh, could the Universe throw anything more our way. I was having enough problems keeping my yard looking great during our heat wave and now I had her yard to care for as well. Yikes!

As it turned out, her outside potted plants were all over the place and in little pots which meant they dried out really fast in our Okanagan heat. Also, although she had an "automatic" sprinkler system, the automatic part was that you had to turn on and off the zones manually. It was taking an hour and a half every day to water her plants and yard. More than I could afford, but what could I do?


On top of all that, several of our children didn't want to move at all and were putting up protests as the listing date got closer and closer. Almost daily, I would hear a complaints from each one but at different times asking, why do we have to do this.  Then I would have to stop and address their individual concerns, explaining my case for moving and how it would benefit our whole family.  It's tough to convince kids, who have lived in the same house their whole life, that moving away from neighbourhood friends is a good thing. I felt like I was hitting a wall each day during that time.

As the week progressed, I was becoming more stressed. I wasn't eating properly, I was hardly drinking water as I ran around taking care of our neighbours yard and our own. (I won't get into my kidney stone condition too much here but suffice it to say that drinking water is crucial or I end up in the emergency room) On top of that I was just trying to keep our house clean, let alone get it staged for the listing agent's arrival. (have you ever tried to stage a house with 8 kids?)

My gut was telling me that something wasn't right. When there is so much tension, so much stress, nothing good can ever come in that state. It isn't the state of allowing. So when our real estate agent came to list our house, he forewarned us that there were negotiations underway on our farm as we spoke and although there was no offer accepted, there was an interested party.

We wouldn't know for a week though as that was the closing date for the offer on the table. We decided not to list our house though until we knew for sure whether the farm was still available. After all there was nothing else that we were remotely interested in that would house our large family and meet my farm dreams. We waited.

Everywhere I went that week I found feathers. Will even found a few for me and since he too believes they are messages from our angels, he would get really excited when he found one and say, "look mommy, let's make a wish." I had pockets full of feathers that week. Now I have to share a back story on the feather thing. Several years ago, when I was trying to conceive and hitting walls, I read a book about connecting with angels.  In that book it mentioned one of the ways  angels tell us they are near is by sending us feathers. So whenever I see feathers now, I know I'm not alone. As I pick up the feather, the first thing that pops into my head, is their message to me, then I whisper "thank you."


Have you been finding feathers?

(I thought I would share the above Youtube video on finding feathers... I'm an angel believer. If you are an Apple user, you may not be able to view the video so I hope this link will help you, click on,"Finding Feathers, signs from your angels")

That week, I found an inordinately large amounts of feathers. They were everywhere! What I heard from my intuition/heart/soul/gut, from my "my angels"... was it was going to be okay but that my farm was not going to be mine after all. Sure enough, a week later our real estate agent called to say, after a year and half on the market, our farm finally received an offer and it was accepted. It would not be mine. Interestingly enough, it sold for the amount that we were thinking we would be willing to pay for it.

Anyway, the story doesn't end there, oh no, sorry, you know me and novellas. When our neighbour returned from her week away, she brought over this big bag. I was at a loss as to what she had wrapped up as it was large and heavy. As I opened the top of the bag and looked inside, I could not believe my eyes.

Inside was a beautiful blue spruce tree in a glossy red ceramic pot. A Christmas colour for sure. When I told our neighbour all about losing the Christmas tree farm and how receiving this tree was like a sign not to give up "hope,"  she was rather amazed, since as she was thinking of what to give us as a thank you, a tree popped into her mind and seemed to be the perfect gift. It made me cry because my farm was gone and I had no place to plant it but the tears flowed also because someone was listening to my wishes and wanting to send me comfort. Just knowing "that" was EVERYTHING.

This is the blue spruce gift our neighbour gave us.

                                    The meaning of the blue spruce tree is, Trust God

About a week later, we hosted a "long in coming" family re-union at our house with my three older sisters and most of their families. My sister C heard how sad I was about losing the farm but also of how our neighbour had given us such a beautiful gift. She told me that trees all have their own meanings. I had no idea. She said when she was in Scotland, she purchased a tree for each of her sons which were planted in an environmentally enhanced farm that provides a space for people who want to plant meaningful trees, who don't have the space. Also, now her sons have trees planted just for them in Scotland. She chose trees with unique meanings for each of her boys.

The next day I looked up, "Blue Spruce" and found that it means, "TRUST GOD."

Wow! It gives me shivers just thinking of it now because that was another message along with my feathers. To not give up hope and to trust God.

Yeah, I didn't get my Christmas tree farm but I am homeschooling my children right now and I know the farm is coming. I just don't know what it's going to look like or how it's going to come to us. Have you ever felt that anticipating something is even more fun than finally getting it? That is how I'm choosing to look at my big WISH now. I know it's coming but while I'm waiting, I'm going to be grateful for what I have been given, (oh so very much!) and be joyful in the moment. Life is so good!

And that reminds me of a quote that I love:

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

The only thing I'm thinking now and maybe the Provincial government and the teachers have not factored this into their extended dispute, is that some people like me, who were on the fence with regards to homeschooling, may now have the opportunity to try it out and grow to love it.

Day three awaits.

 

I think we are all going to sleep in tomorrow!


Until I see you again, may you be well, happy and peaceful.

Blessings from Hope