First official sam and linds and crew blog

As of this date, August 29, 2008, Samuel and Lindsay Eyre live in North Carolina, have five children and five pets and we no longer have fleas. We just stopped an experiment in homeschooling, and now have two girls back in school and one son in preschool. Minus fleas and homeschooling, Lindsay has much more time, and true to form has struggled a bit with what to do with this newfound time. I've decided to stop being a maverick and begin a family blog. Then I won't have to send out emails to those who may not have time to read them.



Mary and Lucy began school on Monday, and I nearly had a nervous breakdown. It was very strange to go from complete control, pretty much, of what everyone did at every minute, to very little control over the oldest two. My house was so quiet, I could hear at least a milk jug drop. I had a whole lot of that random time I find so difficult to know what to do with. The fifteen minutes here and there when no one needs me. I have limited myself to no more than two hours of house cleaning a day, so I don't go completely crazy, and just taking care of the youngest three has been an adjustment. I miss my girls and I miss loving and the wonderful learning we were doing together. Homeschooling was really quite selfish because it satisfied much of my intellectual needs, but oh well. I'll just have to satisfy those needs elsewhere.



The girls are doing great. This year, Lucy has barely cried. (She did cry and get really upset about having to ride the bus, because it turns out she needs glasses too and was worried she wouldn't see her bus number on the screen.) I think their teachers will be all right. It is so wierd to go from focusing on every wonderful thing they could possibly learn to having to say, "ah, oh well, they probably won't learn a lot, maybe they will, but they will survive and grow up and hopefully be productive people. They can learn all the missed in the next life, right, right???" (the question marks indicate increased desperation) This is almost a direct quote to Sam from me every night.



Brief kid update, because I could go on about myself for way too long!



Mary is doing well, I think. She never tells me much about school. I'm trying very hard to let her make her own choices as much as possible, and neither do too much for her or decide too much for her. It is such a tough balance, I'm finding. I've decided I am not going to be a homework enforcer, unless she really begins to never do it. Yesterday, she forgot to bring her homework home, and sort of panicked because her discipline clothespin would move from blue down to green as a result. I told her we could not go back to school to get her homework, but if she hurried enough the next morning and got all her stuff done (violin practice, scriptures read, dishwasher emptied) quickly, she might be able to get to school in time to get her homework done before the bell rang. She did just that. I was so independent with my schoolwork, I hope most of kids can be the same. One of my stresses with so many kids is how in the world I'm going to keep up with homework, sheets to return to school, activities, church stuff for each individual one etc... They HAVE to learn how to be responsible for their homework. We'll see how it goes.



I got a new insight into Mary's violin lessons yesterday. Mary does a great job practicing violin each day, and she is improving steadily, but she can never tell me much of what happens at her lesson or what she's supposed to be doing. I realized yesterday why. She pays zero attention at her lesson. Her poor 17 year old teacher has no idea what Mary can and can't do. Mary just starts talking about random things and makes no sense. The home is fascinating to her, there are six kids in the family from 18 years old down to 9 years old. Five girls and one boy, so much for Mary to feast her eyes upon. Luckily, this is a fabulous family, heavily invested in music, so I don't mind the admiration, but from now on I'll be going to Mary's music lessons, and make sure she at least knows what she's supposed to be practicing. (Sam went to them before, I was worried I would get really stressed with Mary if I went to her lessons and practiced with her.) So, here I think I need to be more hands on, not less. But I'm not sure. That whole balance independence thing again. Like that wonderful article in the September Ensign said, Love, Limits and Lattitude. I want to figure out our own families version of limits and latitude as well as love.

I think I'll end here, and add more about the rest of the kids tomorrow!