My life is changing quite a lot this coming year. Our 2nd child is heading off to college. There will be the much younger child left at home. I want to successfully launch ds and not feel lost myself. I am working out a lot with weights and walking. I am going to not only read German again I am going to go converse at a local Stammtisch even if I'm a little scared to go! It has been 20 years and other than talking to myself and teaching ds a semester I have not spoken hardly any German. I may pull out one of the German lit book that is on the easier side that I read in college and plow slowly through it. Andorra by Max Frisch. It's a very good book and seems to be perfect for current events now too. I may sign up youngest for German Saturday school and take a class myself for German teachers that they offer. My Dad is a builder and I want him to teach me everything he knows about building a house and buying property. I'm really excited about this, but I havent' explicitly talked to him about it. I am chomping at the bit to get started. I'm hoping this will help through launching another child. I am going to learn how to artfully speak up for myself when I hear rude and disrespctufl comments. I had a real problem in a church small group with one couple, which was at my house no less, and I'm not going to put up with people like this any dang more. Youngest child will be homeschooled and I hope to use all my experience and everything I learned off these boards to maximize his learning. I want to find him a good Sunday School or Christian Ed even if that is at another church. Slowly build a good wardrobe of quality clothes that maximizes my positives and downplays negatives and looks confident. Develop more social connections and attend more events. We are often the people who invite and have parties and dinners and we love it, but I would like to find more people who return the invitations at least occasionally. Start hiking in the many beautiful places around our state. I have more! LOL It's a big year for me!

I like weight lifting only videos and Cathe Friedrich has many of them. She's one of my very favorites.

Really nice shoes are a favorite around here.

I want to start purchasing gifts in Sept and be completly done by Nov 1.

So much to unpack with all of that. It's heartbreaking in so many ways. Someone close to me was a TA at selective college. They said that the students might be slightly smarter, but for many of them it was all about what is the next big thing and not about a meaningful education. It was meaningful if they could get a good job at the good company when they graduated. It's like you say, the motivation is not for learning it's always about the game and prizes.

I think sometimes rigor is synomymous for relentlessness. It's similar to the concept of being consistent in parenting and instead end up being relentlessly a disciplinarian out of fear. I try to remember my kids are not solely preparing for a future and the next best thing, but that they are living also just for today and if every today is all plowing through work work work it is worrying to me for the sanity of the kids. I have to be conscious of this because I tend to set up high expectations, but I hope it's only because I think they can acheive them. I'm not sure that expectations are tied to rigor, but rather that we work to our ability level instead of lazing in comfort.

I have traveled alone, but was in my 20's. I think if I traveled alone now I would do something like hike or the Camino de Santiago, which is on my bucketlist of things to do. Many people do the camino alone, but it's the type of alone where you can have companions if you want too and the hostels are full at night too.

Do you have a room you would like to redecorate? Possibly a consultation with an interior decorator?

I would find it a bit hard for my own kids. One of my best friends did change her name around age 11. Her parents were from a scandinavian country and she had a common name from that area but almost unknown for English speakers and it had a letter not in the English alphabet. She just used her middle name from that point onwards. I think her parents were a bit sad, but they totally understood why.

I haven't heard of this in real life. I have heard of people keeping their babies at home and having limited guests. I have also heard of asking guests to wash their hands which seems sensible to me. If I visit a baby I just go ahead and wash my hands right away, because I don't want to make anyone nervous. I did not take my newborns out to public places.

My older 2 students took a couple of AP classes each for the experience and also our local colleges just seem to love having students who have taken AP, therefore we did take a few to make them happy on applications. I and my kids found AP to be excessive busy work and it seems like a lot more time than it's worth. Our experience is that the honors classes at the hybrid school were much more interesting and layered and that the teachers had more leeway to really make the classes interesting and without a bunch of extra assignments. With a good teacher I would take non AP every time, if I didn't care about college applications. I can't speak for math AP. My ds is doing one this year and I have no experience with Calculus. I will say ds is finding he can't do his problems in 20 min and turn them in and get an A, but that's likely the same in a non AP Calc. So wether it's the AP or just that it's calculus he's having to slow down and plan ahead a bit more, which I hope is preparing him for college math. To compare my ds took AP Eng Lit last year and this year he is doing DE Eng 1102 at a regional college. DE has overall been a better fit (despite an instructor change and some issues receiving graded work back in a timely manner) and his writing was challenged and it was only 1 semester with 4 papers as the grade. His writing was challenged and he had to up his game in quick order. AP seemed to drag on forever and he was writing a paper every single week. It was very tedious, monotonous and laborious. I think about Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd when we take AP classes.

Dh family is not from Sydney, so we were tourist there and we stayed in the CBD at an AirBnB and walked right to the Woolworths. This is all easy. Sydney is very easy. It's the easiest place in Australia to get around imo. Cell coverage/wifi though is very spotty and so it's hard to use your phone for directions and even using your laptop during the day is gonna be spotty. It's best to write down directions.

I saw this thread, but I didn't have time to read through it till today. There are some interesting things to think about in here. I do have little yell moments every now and then. There is a certain side of my family that has flash temper so the gene info is interesting. The thing with the people who yell in my family is that they are all what I would consider the nice people, the considerate people but also the boundry keepers. The ones who don't yell seem to be more manipulatores and boundry crashers. I don't know which way is better but I prefer the occasinoal yeller to manipulators and button pushers. I find it so much work to deal with. Obviously others may deal better with the opposite. I do not like yelling at all and am so discouraged with myself when I do it. I do apologize when I do it. Although my dd has promised me that if I didn't yell every now and then nothing would get done and they wouldn't be where they are today without a little "encourgement"! LOL Hormonal weeks are a defintie trigger for me. If i could hide for 3 days it would be great for us all.

I play music very LOUD while I clean the kitchen. I don't really like Alexa, which is what we have, because several times while I have been doing homeschool with my ds2 and asked him a question Alexa has responded. I find this creepy, so I unplug it unless I want to hear music.

I guess this is a valid philosphy, but I don't like or really buy it. I find it lazy coaching. My personal view is that young people need good guidance and leadership from adults. Most young people need real guidance on conflict managment and the offenders don't learn anything valuable by being able to continue this nonsense and they need redirected in their desires to control, manipulate or whatever it is. A good coach is so valuable in the development of youth. My own children had some really great coaches that were invaluable in their formative years and development. One of my children was on a negative team with bad coach (even though they were top) and I pulled them off the team.

Yes! We love travel and this child will probably travel more, but he is the least travel easy child of our three. LOL

I'm looking forward to being surprised!

I have done a lot of volunteering and I think this is something I really want to step away from and especially at church. For church I just want to attend worship and do what is necessary to help my youngest develop his faith as his own. I do not mind donating to the food pantry and things like that but I will not be doing any actual volunteer work for a time. I love weightlifing! I do like walking and hope to get in more hikes and beautiful scenery. I am hoping to get the book club started. I know my dh and I would love a dinner club and friends. We are often the inviters and would love to have more people to share that with. I'm hopeful I will find a good rythm and like mentioned above I just need to plan the next phase of my life intentionally.

I think my health is ok and I see an integrated endocrinologist, but I think by energy level I mean my fortitude level! LOL My mental energy is low and after homeschooling/hybrid schooling through high school I have no illusions about what all it takes. It has been worth it, but I have need to refill my batteries. Doing things outside my immediate family has come to my attention. I do need to arrange some things. I talked to a friend about starting a book club. I also enjoy hiking and there are plenty of places around for me to get that in. I have a friend who does a lot of walking so she may enjoy doing it as well.

It is going to be different, but hopefully fine! He does love have his siblings and skypes older dd at college and always asking when she's coming home! She is home many weekend so that is good.

I'm gonna get back to this thread. I ended up with a migrain yesterday evening and had to go to bed.