Excuses, Excuses, Excuses!

I have been taking a lot of flack lately for not keeping everyone updated on the antics of Shenanigans Inc.  For those of you, who feel like "their favourite sitcom was abruptly cancelled mid-season", I apologise and have a little story to tell:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who would skip her way up the driveway at 7:40 in the morning and gleefully wave to her children as they hopped onto a golden bus.  She would spend her days making home made meals, organising and cleaning her home, getting beat up by a bunch of old guys at karate, and thinking, thinking, thinking.  Amidst the peaceful solitude of her days, she would reflect on the antics of her children and how much she loved them.  Brimming with warm, fuzzy thoughts, she would sit down and share her reflections (and a gazillion photos) with the cyber world to celebrate all the wonder and joy of parenthood.  Life was good!  

Then one day, the girl with great big ideas got the grandest idea of them all: she decided to home school.  

And that is where the story ended.

Instead of curling up with a warm cup of peppermint tea and her lap top each evening to share all the humourous, uplifting or eye-opening moments of her day, she now spends her evenings putting out fires.

Like this one:

and this one:

She thought homeschooling would simply add another, more interesting, dimension to the antics of Shenanigans Inc, and it definitely has.  In fact, most nights, the CEO of all this craziness has entire blog entries outlined in her mind, but fails to write them down due to exhaustion:  mental, physical and spiritual exhaustion. What the girl with an affinity for grand ideas failed to realise was just how difficult homeschooling would be, especially with a high-needs child like Elliot.  She spends day after day, sitting at the kitchen table redirecting her boy with the attention span of a fruit fly, encouraging him to continue on in spite of how difficult he finds the work, and, periodically, enduring his lengthy, and often passionate petitions for an end to child cruelty, or, as you and I know it, "education".  It can be very hard on one's head!  

So, why did the heroine of our story decide to homeschool for a second year?

Because in spite of how hard, how frustrating, or how tedious it can be at times, she does it because she knows it is what her boys need right now, and it can be fun, a whole lot of fun!  She does it because she has seen her boys, especially Elliot, make tremendous leaps in their cognitive development, and because, as sappy as it sounds, she loves spending her days with them, learning, playing, laughing,

making the Nile,

writing in hieroglyphs,

writing in cuneiform,

watching Zoe play soccer,

making ooey, gooey messes,

having John Travolta look-a-like contests,

performing death-defying tricks,

exploring the properties of wind and gravity, while looking very cool,

mummifying our chicken, King Cluck,

playing video games, while training for future trapeze performances,

and having intense debates over who is the most important Avenger.

And during those not-so blog worthy moments, she relies on the hope that homeschooling will ensure that her boys can be gainfully employed someday and will never have to live in her basement . . . 

tee hee!

Oh, and if you want more consistent Shenanigans Inc updates, you could always come over and tackle my kitchen for me.  :)