The Misadventures of our Last Day of School

Like many of you, we celebrated our last “official” day of school on this past Friday.  In the summer, our kids continue math and reading, but we shut down the other more formal work and take advantage of local class offerings and travel time with Dad.   One thing is for sure: there is rarely a dull moment at the Bullard household.    The oldest broke her eyeglasses, so we spent much of the morning trying to understand the restrictions of the newest insurance policy and then tracking down a provider who’s open the Friday before a holiday with an in-house lab.  They say you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, so I should be thankful that 2 out of 3 is not bad.    We’re down to Superglue while we wait a week on the new pair to arrive.  

Also, I had the strangest craving for a buffalo burger, having seen some great nutritional information about them on the Food Network.   Here’s the nutritional scoop on buffalo:

If I could redo my tag, I would replace some other food with buffalo burgers!   They are now one of my favorite foods!   Such a natural flavor that is far above regular beef, although I understand that buffalo on its own cooks up fairly dry, so I added some ground sirloin to give it a little “ooze” (burger terminology courtesy of the Texas Burger Guy).   Add onion soup mix and water, and voila!   We were able to take a trip to the local whole foods market, but if that isn’t an option for you, believe it or not, you can buy this off eBay.   I’ve not bought food off the Internet, but I thought I’d throw that out for the really curious.

On a separate, but yet related, note, I often hear homeschool veterans talk about the role of fathers in the homeschool, and suggest that fathers need to be equally entrenched in the process of education.   Personally, I’ve found it of great benefit to have a husband who’s a bit removed from the day-to-day grind (I suppose the word joy would be more appropriate, if not always accurate) of homeschooling.    As just one example, the oldest has a propensity for dragging her feet on work that she doesn’t want to do, and/or projects that don’t come easily to her.  If she were of average intelligence, I’d not take this so seriously, but given her brightness, I find this particularly irritating.  Consequently, I have dragged all of her 5’6”, 110-pound frame through her first research project all semester long.   Nothing short of my mule-ish stubbornness and the good Lord has allowed me the grace to pull a persuasive essay out of her in spite of her insistence at doing the much simpler biographical sketch.   We started the process in late March, and were down to the rewrite after a fairly well done first draft.   By the end of the day, the rewrite wasn’t finished, placing a damper on the celebration of school’s “official” end.   In all fairness to her, breaking her glasses was unexpected and that one event spun off a whole series of other events.   But the TV being on for a couple of hours that evening when the paper didn’t get finished was another matter altogether.   I was livid.  The right thing to do would have been to pray, but the flesh wanted to be mad, and then to wallow in self pity about how I work so hard to provide learning opportunities for her and she doesn’t hold up her end of the deal.   So in frustration and fatigue, I ran off the lecture that she’s grown weary of hearing and I’ve grown weary of saying about work ethic, the present affecting the future, and not taking this opportunity of homeschooling for granted.    My husband voiced his disappointment and a resolution to do something different next year.  But he also had the sense to do something that I, having been too close to certain behaviors for too long, was too upset to do: pray over her.   The next morning, Saturday, she got up and finished everything flawlessly in one hour.

I know that prayer works, and I don’t doubt that the turnaround in her behavior was the hand of God.   But I also believe that my husband’s vantage point—close enough to know directionally where we’re going, but far enough away to not engage in every bit of discord—allowed him to focus on the one thing that is needful.

So now, where do I find myself?   Yet again, I’m having to press in toward that high calling, to forget what is behind me, and to, as our pastor has stated, pray the solution and not the problem.    Our children are gifts from God, whatever their character flaws might be, especially those that we’ve projected upon them in the midst of our own struggles.   May we never be tempted to think of them as anything less.    God bless you today and always.