Our first day of school

It was yesterday. And it went so well.

Now, I know that we homeschoolers sometimes want to sugarcoat our lives, as Danielle Bean so rightly and forthrightly pointed out recently. It's true that we're so often being criticized, assessed, and judged as geeks that we want to put forth only the best, the brightest, the sunniest of days and dispositions.

Guilty.

We all do it, I think. In an attempt to encourage and support each other, and to let the world in on the secret that homeschooling can be pretty great, we focus on the positives and let a lot of the negatives slip quietly by with nary a blog post in sight.

Blogs are, in large part, for the edification of others, not the depressification.

And, we all know that there can be plenty of depressifying things about mothering, homeschooling, and life in general.

But, for today I can honestly say (without sugarcoating, hiding the facts, or skimming the surface) that we had a great day.

And so much of it was my attitude ... which is another blog post in itself (hopefully not a depressifying one.)

Here are some snippets of the greatiosity of our day:

We went to Mass in the morning and only one of us had to go to the bathroom, and Ramona timed it nicely for just after the Gospel.

We went out for pancakes and bacon and lots of coffee (and, oh ... did I say I wouldn't hide anything? Ummm .... I just won't mention how much it costs to feed four people a lot of flour, sugar and maple syrup in a restaurant. We will skim over that little factoid.)

We had a leisurely nature walk at the lake, and I really didn't have an educational agenda, which made me a much more pleasant walking companion. We just walked. We spotted our three favorite ducks (whom we've now named Harry, Ron and Hermione), and watched a small flock of geese take off over our heads. We pointed out about thirteen spider webs on one fence, and Betsy panicked only three times about bees.

We headed to the library. And I really didn't care how long we were there or when we got home. And, they had an old videotape of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter on sale for $1.

We came home and did Math-U-See and no one cried.

We read the first part of Twelve Bright Trumpets.

We looked through all of our new books and Betsy read the first three chapters of her Science Daybook.

Ramona found an old phonics game in the closet and almost read several words.

At the end of the day, I had a glass of wine (doesn't every teacher deserve one?)

I feel content. Content with the content of our day.

This homeschooling business?

It can be really good stuff.

Just don't ask me about it in February.