Well, I’ve written a few guest posts and it was a much more . . . emotional . . . task than I thought it would be. Blogging is such a strange hobby. I’ve been known to lay my soul bare here, at least a little around the edges, but this is like my living room.

And I’ve invited y’all and y’all come knowing a little of what to expect.

But taking parts of my story over to someone else’s blog felt much more like crying at their house then I expected.

And it was really hard to figure out what to say.

But here’s what I said, anyway, so you have something to read while I try to get some sleep after a middle of the night standoff with the local coyotes.

When Money is the Last Thing on Your Mind over at Money Saving Mom

Housekeeping When Your Heart Isn’t in it over at The Happy Housewife

A Child’s View of Heaven over at The Tuckers Take Tennessee

And I have better days coming. And worse, but I’m going to write about the better because I want to and this is my living room.

And if I’m back from vacation, why am I so tired? Hoping to start filling in what we’ve been up to over the past couple of weeks after I finish sleeping off the drive back from south Texas!

Roscommon Acres shall be taking a wee little break as we leave Daddy in charge of the animals and head down to Texas for a four day grief camp for the children.

We’ll be hiking and sightseeing and spending a few days almost entirely unplugged. Hopefully I will return next week recharged and ready to tackle replanting those beans and share all our adventures with you.

In the meantime, you can take a moment to read my recent article over at Heart of the Matter: Homeschooling When Your Heart isn’t in it: It’s OK not to homeschool.

And I guess consider this an open thread. I’d love to read about what all you have been up to when we get back!

AprilG! Congraulations! You won a $100 Visa Gift Card in the Purina Pro Plan Selects giveaway! And thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway.

There is just one more day to enter to win a $100 Visa gift card. And watch the video of my dogs not listening to me. Well, I guess that will still be there even after the giveaway is over.

Good luck!

In response to a discussion on Twitter, I decided to start a fan page on Facebook. I’m not entirely sure what the point is since this is a personal blog, but they all said I should do it. (Why do I hear my mother in the background saying, “If they all jumped off a bridge . . ?”)

Hmmm . . . That doesn’t sound very convincing, does it? How about something like “The Roscommon Acres blog now has a community fan page on Facebook!” Or “Like Roscommon Acres for daily updates on the projects going on here on our hobby homestead, including beekeeping, starting an orchard, gardening, poultry and grief.”

That last one doesn’t really seem to fit, but it follows me everywhere I go, so I may as well warn you. Also, we’ll be getting chicks, ducklings and keets soon, and I know you want to watch them grow up on Facebook.

Now that I have a fan page, I’m curious how many of you have one. If you do, do you like it? Why did you decide to start a fan page rather than just use your personal profile? (Hopefully you have a better reason than just that strangers on Twitter thought it would be a good idea.)

OK, so if you read my blog regularly, you have already read this post. But if you go over there and read it, you will like it better. That’s why that blog has a community of like 20 million people and mine . . . well, mine doesn’t.

Loving Nature’s Garden has put together an excellent tutorial on when to plant vegetable seeds. My seed order just arrived yesterday. $70 in seeds! My garage is about to be turned into a makeshift greenhouse as well as a makeshift poultry barn.

If only one of the actual barns had power!

Adventures of a Somewhat Crunchy Mama has been running an interesting series, 31 Days to a Somewhat Crunchy You. Honestly, I’m not so much into “crunchy” but I can always do with a little frugality and conserving resources is always a good thing.

My article, A Simple Walk, is up over at Heart of the Matter. In it, I reflect:

…this is what education is. A simple walk, an invitation to come along side, to join in my day.

Trying to get the children to write a letter? You know, the old fashioned kind that involves pen, paper, envelope and stamp? Ditch the envelope and try some Letterfu! I can’t wait to try it with mine. They are constantly asking for envelopes and this, well, this stands to save a bit in that department as well as provide a few extra minutes of thoughtful entertainment.

Come across any posts worth sharing recently? Please share them in comments, and please don’t be shy about leaving links to your own blog!

So, we’re moving.  That’s not exactly news.  We’ve been moving for a year, at least.  With a house closing a week away, however, it all seems a little more real this time around.  We have been talking and dreaming and planning for so long, it really was beginning to feel like it was just talking and dreaming and planning. 

Over the past year, my time has been taken up by planning a new business, having a baby, a serious illness, having a baby, selling a house and having a baby.  This blog sort of hung out in the background, sometimes arousing feelings of guilt for long periods of neglect and sometimes providing a welcome distraction when I actually got time to compose my thoughts enough to write.  In the in between times, however, my thoughts keep returning to exactly what it is I want from this blog.

I sit to write, but my mental energy isn’t focused on homeschooling like it was a year ago.  I have spent much more time reading about intensive rotational grazing than I have about socialization, and articles about heritage breeds are much more likely to be bookmarked than are articles by yet another journalist who obviously doesn’t “get” homeschooling.

Still, the adventure we are about to embark on is all about home education.  When we began homeschooling, I thought we’d be doing school at home.  I’d teach, my children would learn and the big difference would be the location.  Sure, there’d be that nice stuff about catering to my children’s needs, family togetherness and all that, but I essentially thought homeschooling would be the same in function just different in form.

What I didn’t expect was how much this adventure would change me and my views on family, parenting, education and society.  I didn’t expect life to become so . . . intentional. 

And yet I don’t know what that all means for this blog.  Now that my baby appears to have made peace with sleeping at night, I should even have more time to write.  I’m just suddenly not so sure what to write about.

I don’t really know what “good enough” parenting is.  Maybe it is a British thing, but apparently it is something of enough concern to the UK that the government funded some research which concluded that better parenting leads to better adjusted children.

‘The notion of “good enough” parenting may seem ideal in today’s hectic world, yet the reality is that “good enough” parents will most likely produce “good enough” children at best.  MailOnline

There really are no startling revelations in this study, at least as it was reported.  Except maybe that you can get government money for this kind of thing, but that is hardly a surprise, either.  One little part caught my attention, however.

The Good Childhood Inquiry recently claimed a culture of ‘excessive individualism’ among adults was to blame for many of children’s problems.

It said 30 per cent of adults in the UK disagreed with the statement that ‘parents’ duty is to do their best for their children even at the expense of their own well-being’.  (Ibid. emphasis mine)

Thirty percent?  Forgive me, but if you are not ready for making some sacrifices for the well-being of your children, you are not ready for the responsibility associated with caring for another human being who will be wholly dependent on you.  I’m sorry, but if you want to get a dog, you need to be ready to make some sacrifices or you should get a stuffed one.

Here, I’ve only heard the discussion framed in terms of how much is too much.  Like, at what point have you sacrificed so much for the well-being of your children that you are actually doing them harm?  An instructor I had in college, for example, argued that while staying at home with children is a good and noble thing, a mother doing so who was unhappy in this role would do her and her children a favor to put them in daycare and get a job.

Are we really that distant from our own children that almost one third don’t seem to agree that we should put the best interests of our children before our own?  And if true, what does that say for our future?

Hat Tip: Are We There Yet?

parenting culture

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Howard Ahmanson is switching parties?

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