I’m excited to announce that Mary Lois Sennewald’s book, Roadschooling Ryan: Learn As We Go is now available for purchase. I helped Mary in the beginning editing stage of this book acting as a content consultant, more or less, suggesting what parts might be cut, expanded, or clarified. It has since been edited and published by iUniverse. This book really stuck with me, especially as a mother of a son with an above average IQ combined with some learning challenges. How many times have I wondered if sitting in a classroom confined to his seat for 7 hours a day was the best way for him to learn?
What about learning-by-doing? What if you packed up all your needs in an old VW van and drove across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, learning history, culture, and life lessons on the road? Sound like a crazy idea? It wasn’t for Ryan and Mary Lois. It was an exercise in patience at times as they blended the real-life experiences with the academic requirements to get credit for the year.
Mary’s style of storytelling is very engaging and honest. There’s ups and downs, fights and tender moments, and triumphs and failures. If you’ve ever wondered if traditional education is REALLY the solution for educating your child, or fantasized about bucking the establishment and experiencing new adventures, or even if you love to travel and get a glimpse into how life is like outside your hometown, you’ll enjoy this book. Have you read it? Then please post your comments below!
Conversation between my husband (Ed) and his dad (Dave):
Dave: “When does school start?”
Ed: “In a couple weeks, I guess.”
Me: “Ed, it starts Monday!”
I’m just glad one of us has a career that enables us to know what’s going on with the family, lol.
Speaking of which, I’m off to the school to take the boys to meet their teachers. I’m sure I sound like a broken record (for those of you old enough to know what that is!) but I love being a virtual assistant. You just can’t beat the work/life balance it offers.
I just got home from picking up my 4-year-old son, Drew from preschool. I guess the long weekend of playing really wore him out because he was grumpy when I picked him up and fell asleep in the car on the way home, which he hasn’t done since last year.
As I lifted him out of his carseat to carry him into the house, he sleepily opened his eyes and said, “I love you.” Right then, I was truly thankful that I have my own business and could experience a moment like this.
Life is good.
So I wake up this morning at 5:15 when my 6-year old son Kyle tells me, “Mommy, I threw up in my bed, and I have diarrhea.” Lovely way to start the morning, lol. So, my husband changes the sheets, I grab a bucket, sit him on the toilet, run a bath, get him cleaned up, Ed gets fresh sheets on the bed, and we put him back in bed. It’s a stomach virus going around. Fortunately no fever, just no fun to have.
So, since after starting some wash, getting everything cleaned up, etc., I have some time to ponder, and think how this will affect my day. Umm, just a little. That’s one thing I love about being a VA. I can keep my kids home with me and not feel the guilt so many of my friends feel when they have to call in their absence to work. I can still work on my laptop, take care of my son, and just get slightly behind. I can catch up when my husband gets home from work.
I really love the work I do and the flexibility it offers to meet the needs of my family. I’m just feeling grateful today.
Last week, my kids and I were visiting my parents in Savannah, GA. Working virtually, the world seems smaller and I almost forget about the differences in other parts of the country. Maybe that’s why I was struck with wonder at some of the “little things” that were quite different from home. 1) I saw a real, live gecko for the first time. My kids said, “Look, it’s just like the one on the Geico commercial!” 2) When we went fishing, we caught more sharks than fish. Apparently, the waters off Savannah are warm, and this time of year has quite a lot of sharks. They were small–less than a foot long, but impressive. One was even a Bonnethead, which looks like a mini Hammerhead (dubbed the “killer shark” by my 4 year old). 3) You can’t buy McDonald’s iced coffee in the South. That is a tragedy!
What is it about travel that makes it tiring to the body but rejeuvenating to the mind? Someday I might have to be like the VAs that travel the country and work out of their RV. Back to work!
Recently I saw a story on MSN about how drinking one can of regular soda per day (like Coke), can make you put on 15 pounds in a year (provided you maintain your previous caloric intake before you start drinking the soda). Wow. For someone like me, who definitely could drop 15 pounds, (more than once!), I have decided not only to eliminate regular soda from my diet, but also eat less processed foods, less meat and more fruits and vegetables.
For me, who has a HUGE sweet tooth, that’s challenging. I started this on Wednesday, and so far, so good. I have not had a single regular soda. I drink water all day, occasionally a very small glass of milk or juice (once a day) and one can of caffeine free diet Coke a day. My only real “junk food” I’ve included in my diet is a Quaker chewy granola bar, because that satisfies my sweet craving. I went to Strites Orchard last week and picked up a bunch of fresh fruits and veggies and will go back tomorrow for more. Instead of using a pre-packaged pizza crust, I made my own in my bread machine this week, I’ve eaten toast with organic peanut butter and natural honey or Kashi cereal for breakfast, fruit for a snack and veggies with some low cal dressing and small amounts of cheddar cheese or some cooked veggies for lunch, my granola bar in the afternoon and a dinner with the family at night.
Yesterday I went off my program for our neighborhood’s block party and ate from the potluck of yummy foods. I’ve decided not to deny myself on the rare special occasions.
The first day of this experiment, I was majorly craving chocolate and soda. It was really bad. I suffered through the first day, the next day was better and by the third day I wasn’t craving sweets. It’s almost like your body gets addicted to sugar. I now have more energy, am starting to lose weight and feel better about myself. I’ll keep you posted.
Over a year ago, I posted about my experience in transcribing Billy Graham’s last crusade for Penguin Putnam in New York last year.
Newsweek has posted an article online called, Pilgrim’s Progress, where at 87, Billy Graham reflects on his life and the views and positions he has taken. I’m still impressed with this man. He acknowledges his errors in judgement, and doesn’t apologize for changing some of his views over the years. He also doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. Billy Graham is a truly remarkable man; positive and insightful, even in the final days of his life.
The fine folks over at Webcore Labs host my website. I have some neat stat tools where I can see how many hits I get, who my referrers are, bar graphs of my traffic, etc. About twice a month I take a look at it to and especially the search terms. Do you know what this month’s top search term was in finding my website? Free sample eulogy-13 times. Wow. Maybe somewhere out on the web there’s a free template for a basic eulogy, but that seems kind of impersonal and generic, don’t you think? If that keeps popping up, maybe I’ll have to write an article about it to get peoples’ juices flowing.
I find that more people have trouble with actually accessing the right material and content in their brain than the actual mechanics of writing. So, if you’re having trouble finding the right thing to say, give us a call at 717-918-1928 for a free 15-minute consultation. We can take you from the brainstorming process to the finished product easily and painlessly.
If you’re a regular watcher of the Today Show, you’ve seen the author discussing birth order last week. I find that pretty interesting. I’m the youngest of 3 and the only girl. My husband is an only child. Do you fit in to the tendencies of your birth order?
My oldest brother has a degree in Electrical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy. My next brother has his own chimney sweeping business.
And then there’s me. It certainly nailed my career on the head. Plus as a former social worker, I definitely am a champion for the underdog.
When I was meeting with my coach last week, we discussed my issues with numbers. It took me about an hour and a half to try to balance my checkbook (using quickbooks, which makes it easy.) Now I was pulling out my hair trying to figure out what to attribute to which category, how to code transferring money between accounts, etc. My coach told me to just bite the bullet and ask Candy about taking a greater role in it.
Daniel Gerber, of the book, “E-myth” would call this “management by abdication” instead of “management by delegation.” His theory is that you should know how to do each task in your business before you give it to someone else, otherwise, how can you manage them? Hmm. Well, I don’t need to manage Candy, so I’m abdicating my business finances to her. How’s that for justifying my actions?
You know what’s most embarrassing about this? My dad is a retired CPA. The math gene didn’t get passed on to me, apparently. My kindergartner seemed to have gotten the math smarts. He gets 100% on all his math tests. I tease him that someday he’ll be doing the books for my company. My preschooler is going to be a book author or a virtual writer like me. He already takes construction paper and has me staple them together so he can write “books.” He can even read about 10 words. Not bad for a kid who’s not even 4 yet.
Speaking of him, I took my author-VA-in-training to get a speech eval at the local Intermediate Unit. He has articulation problems. Nothing severe, but he’s more difficult to understand than other kids his age, especially with “s”, “p” “g” and a few other sounds. It was really interested to watch the speech pathologist administer his test. He qualifies for speech therapy through the school district and they’ll even come to his preschool to do his therapy in the fall. The woman who did the assessment says she thinks it’ll be a quick fix and he will probably be done with therapy before he starts kindergarten.
I asked the speech therapist if there was any hereditary link to speech problems and she said she didn’t know. If she knew what caused speech problems, she’d retire and be living on a tropical island. My oldest brother had therapy because he couldn’t say “T” sounds. I was in it for not being able to say “ch” and “sh” and a few other sounds. I’m just glad my parents caught it early. Maybe that’s why I’m in tune to it with other kids. I think it’s sad when you see an older kid or adult with speech problems that weren’t corrected early.
Alright, off my soapbox.