Another homeschool year in the books!

I have submitted papers, dotted the i's and crossed the t's for another homeschool year, although I guess technically I homeschooled two and a half kids, instead of three. Max enrolled in a cyber school halfway through the year, and it ended up being a very good experience for all of us. You aren't really totally off the hook as a parent with cyber school, because the kid is still in your house and under your care all day. But it did relieve me of most instructional duties and all curricular decisions.

Laurel and Marko did their usual portfolio routine, where we basically stop school in April and spend a month or more gathering work, reflecting, revisiting unfinished projects...often finishing them with less angst (which is sort of a trick of mine, because they feel like school is over, but I know this part is really integral to their education). This year was complicated somewhat by moving into a new house right in the middle of it, which we did slowly over a month and a half, with very little rhyme or reason other than setting up beds and the kitchen in the new house first. This seemed like a brilliant first step, but actually resulted in us losing interest in the rest of our possessions, because it felt like we had everything we needed. For everything else, we packed a few boxes and threw them in our car every time we were in that end of town. The boxes were pure chaos by the end. Nonetheless, it got done, and hopefully this is the last move for a good, long while. 

Despite the moving chaos, our evaluations with the Dandelion Project were delightful, reflective and rejuvenating. Rock climbing team finished up this week, PALS co-op is done until September, and Laurel is pausing her horse and voice lessons for most of the summer. The older kids are figuring out public transportation from here, and we have discovered our new neighborhood has a public library, weekly farmers' market, extensive woodsy trail system and a public swimming pool. Plus a basketball court which is a block away (far enough that you can't hear the sound of the basketball, but close enough that the kids actually go there all the time and meet up with neighborhood kids and play together). 

I am really excited to be setting up space in our house, we have more rooms than ever. Every kid has their own bedroom, and we have two extra rooms in the basement. Lots of space for projects and hanging out. In many ways, things are going very well for us. 

In less pleasant news, I have been pretty sick this entire year, and have landed in a frustrating liminal space between learning what is wrong and being across the threshold where you treat it. Watch and wait, is what the doctors call it, and it's an actual treatment plan for my diagnosis of smoldering multiple myeloma. Blood tests every 12 weeks, look for trends. The good news is that it may not progress very quickly or at all. The bad news is that it's anyone's guess if you are in that no-worries category or if you have the kind that gnaws your bones to shreds and breaks your kidneys before anything shows up in your bloodwork. I would very much like to avoid the horror of pathologic fractures, thank you very much. In the meantime, I at least got an iron infusion, which did seem to lift the fatigue somewhat, as I had some significant iron deficiency alongside the plasma cell stuff. And yes, I'm getting a second opinion, and forcing myself to go on daily walks and eating lots of anti-inflammatory foods. It seems that if I make it through 2-5 years of no disease progression, I don't have to worry about it too much. I'm honestly pretty cranky about the whole thing, but what can you do, life is strikes and gutters. 

On the schedule for this summer, hopefully a return trip to Nova Scotia to visit friends, Laurel is going to 2 weeks of CIT camp, Max is doing an ultimate frisbee daycamp, Mark is running a race in West Virginia and Marko is playing lots of basketball. I hope to be at the pool a lot, and work in the garden.