We've Moved!

It was a long, tedious experience, but we finally did it; we sold our house, packed up all our worldly possessions and headed south 600 miles to take up residence three states away. Moving is a major hassle. Moving and homeschooling was a hassle and a challenge. Moving, homeschooling and updating a blog- well, that just didn't happen.

So here I am, settling into our new home with the holidays right around the corner. We're about to travel north again, back to snow country for the Christmas holiday. I'm looking back over the last couple of months trying to figure out what is worthwhile enough to write about. Mostly we stuck to the essentials- math and language arts with a lot of independent work. Part of me felt guilty that I wasn't spending as much one-on-one time teaching Casia as I had been before the house sold. But on the other hand, this was a pretty drastic change for Casia and she doesn't always handle change well, particularly that which she considers negative. Emotions ran high the last two months and I think having the flexibility to not do school work some afternoons or even days was a good mental health break for her. She was very distracted by the upheaval in her life and wasn't very receptive to learning at the time. 

Since we've arrived, she's started to be more positive about the moving experience; she's still not happy about it, but she's looking for that silver lining. I've found some great resources here in Virginia for homeschooling; in particular, an art school for homeschoolers that meets once a week. Casia is going to be joining an orchestra, a middle school play and taking Irish dancing. She's very excited to start all this in January. She's also anticipating some pretty fun field trips to the aquarium, zoo and the beach! 

Sadly, we had to leave behind Nkuku, the mummified chicken. We had to leave behind a lot of things. After twelve years of living in a 3000+ square foot old farm house, we had accumulated a lot of stuff. We didn't really need all of it and we certainly didn't want to move all of it, so we gave away most of our furniture and many of our toys and clothes.What we couldn't give to friends and family we left out on our country road. It never ceases to amaze me the items that were salvaged from the road side; to be used again instead of ending up in the landfill. We put out old broken dressers, scraps of chip board, old dingy planters and other junk from the basement and garage. The next morning I asked Jacob if he saw all the items that were taken. He replied by telling me what was missing from the curb and mentioned that someone even went into the garbage can and pulled out an old bucket. I asked if it was the bucket with the blue lid and he replied in the affirmative. I asked again, "The bucket with the blue lid," and then added for clarity, "that had the words 'Mummified Chicken' written on it?" And at that we both started laughing. So somewhere, someone out there has adopted our little Nkuku. I hope he's found a good home!