Dinius Fam Happenings

“Summer afternoon — summer afternoon. To me, those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

~ Henry James

On a cloudy day like today, it’s hard to excitedly pronounce, “It’s summer!” – even if it is. It’s the first full day of it, anyway, yesterday having been the summer solstice. I was listening to the radio with my kids on the way to Jesse’s last baseball game of the season, when they announced that at that minute — 4:59 PM — it was officially the summer solstice … the first day of summer and the longest day of the year.

I actually didn’t need to be told. Yesterday was so warm and muggy — it was torture (to me, anyway — I prefer it to be either hot and dry or just cool).

Jesse’s team finished up their last game of the season yesterday. What made it cool is that it was the final playoff game and that they hadn’t been eliminated before that. They lost the game, though, and came in 2nd in their level. Earlier in the week, Jesse had hit an incredible triple. He really smacked that ball and it flew higher and farther than any other ball I’d ever seen him hit. I was sure it would go over the fence, but it sailed down to land just in front of it. Still, an infield triple ain’t half bad and it was fun to see the other team scrambling for it. It was a great hit. I know he was hoping to repeat it last night, but alas, it was not to be.

He may try out for a team next year, too, and that means that between now and next March, we’ll be frequent visitors to the batting cages in Kent and also getting him some more pitching practice. Lonnie will be buying a catcher’s mitt so he can work with Jesse on pitching, too – Jesse throws so hard, it hurts Lonnie’s hands.

School, for us, is done for the year. SAT tests are this Tuesday and Wednesday, and Jesse gets his braces on later in the week. Good thing we were able to wait on those until after the playoffs.

I’ve been very busy this week working on a couple of telecommuting jobs that I found through Elance (one is repeat business, though, and that’s always good). One job is rewriting the home page of someone’s website, and the other job is simple admin assistant work, just reformatting some forms. Another job I just got will be fun to do, though I don’t think I charged enough — I’ll be coming up with some PowerPoint word sets (each set is 8-10 slides) for someone who has a site that teaches infants and toddlers to read. I’ll also be writing a short story for the site, also with PowerPoint. It’s a great product, and I’m looking forward to trying it soon with Bethany.

That’s about it from here. Till next time!

And now…some news.

Most of you know we’ve homeschooled for the past 10 years, starting with Joel when he was about to enter kindergarten. Lonnie and I had talked a little about homeschooling, but up to that point it had just been a thought. A nice idea. It became a reality when we discovered that to keep Joel at his same, wonderful little school where he’d just finished a year of preschool, we’d be paying twice the amount in tuition. Preschool had been three days a week, kindergarten would be five days. Double the tuition.

Then, after some quick figurin’, we discovered that by the time Jesse and Erica were old enough to go to the same school (which was one of the cheapest around), the amount we’d be paying would be equal to our mortgage.

Says Lonnie with determination in his eye, “Well, I guess we’re homeschooling.”

Says I, “Oh…kay.” (Getting an inkling that the we would be me.)

Our decision to homeschool took less than two minutes. Lonnie left for work, determined. I stood frozen to the same spot for the next two hours.

What followed over the next 10 years was an adventure/roller coaster ride/experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. Having your kids at home is rich and rewarding beyond words. Some days were stressful, but mostly we’ve really just had a lot of fun. And boy, do they ever have some great SAT scores to be proud of.

For reasons I won’t go into here, Lonnie and I have decided that I need to begin working from home. To ensure that the kids get the education they deserve, we’re putting the homeschooling books back in the cupboard for the older ones. Joel and Jesse are now enrolled with Insight High School of WA, a public online high school. They’ll be getting their own laptops and headsets to use for the school year, and will be able to communicate with their teachers in real time. I am completely jealous of the classes they’ll get to take, like web design, graphics, and flash animation. This is high school, people! Amazing. I’m hoping to take an HTML class this summer (you can Google HTML if you don’t know what it is), so hopefully I’ll be able to help them and vice versa. I know just enough HTML to be dangerous, but I want to really learn it. Working on building my skills, here!

Erica is in the process of being enrolled with Washington Virtual Academy. They use a great curriculum called K-12, and she’s very excited about her school, too. She won’t be getting a laptop, but will be able to use our big computer.

This means that we are officially giving up our homeschooling status, but it’s the way it has to be right now. I have the feeling I’ll still be very much hands-on with their learning, as much as before, but on the extremely busy days I’ll know they’ve got someone else to go to for help. And having to pay attention to due dates…that will really be a helpful thing to learn. I’m no drill sargeant.

My plans are to homeschool Bethany, at least for her grade school years. Right now she’s only two, so there’s no big hurry to get going on that. I’m already reading to her and helping her learn her numbers and letters, and as she’s ready, we’ll cover more. Big sis Erica likes helping with this, too.

Time to get some studying done, now that the house is quiet. Check back soon — I’m hoping to get my guest bloggers (uh…that’s Lonnie and the kids) on here sometime this week!

Well…I can see from my blog “stats” that quite a few of you have been stopping by, and that’s great! Do leave a comment, though (if you’re comfortable doing that) and say hello. :-)

Baby B. is still sick — it’s definitely the flu. She’s been throwing up off and on since sometime yesterday (Friday). She and I will be missing church yet again this week…

If there was a “good” time for this to hit, I guess this is the weekend. It’s been gray and drizzly, so I don’t feel bad for having to stay inside with her. Also, Jesse’s baseball game was cancelled for today, which made a would-be busy day actually quite laid-back.

(By the way, if you’d like a glimpse into what it’s like living with teenage boys, here it is: Joel’s previous sleeping-in record was 12:31 PM. Jesse’s goal for today was to beat that by one minute. He beat it by 10 and got up at 12:41. This is, without a doubt, the only time in their lives when they can get away with that!)

I spent this evening working on my copywriting course while I waited for Bethany to fall asleep (along with a few hurried trips to the bathroom when she was feeling sick). In case you’re wondering, “copy” is everything from the writing on direct marketing pieces (often referred to as junk mail…ouch), to professional ads in the newspaper, to the words you read on the landing pages of web sites. I’m hoping to get work in this area before the year is out. It’s a home-study course and is supposed to take a year to complete, but my goal is to get it done in about 6-8 months. 

You know, there are positives and negatives when it comes to doing this course at home. The upside is having a flexible schedule for working on it and no teacher nagging me to get it done. The downside is…having a flexible schedule for working on it and no teacher nagging me to get it done.

But I am charging along, nonetheless!

Time for a snack, then back to work. Again — don’t be just a blip on our WordPress linegraph…you’re more important than that. Leave a comment and say hello!