Dave Out Loud Beginnings Part VII

Home School Dad Revisited.

Hello and good morning.  My name is Dave and I used to go by the moniker Home School Dad.  11 years ago I began this blog, as I was a stay at home dad and the home school teacher of the family.  I started home schooling the kids in 2008 and did that full time until the fall of 2013 when I went back to working full time.

I still blog but now do most of it  at Random Acts of Roller. I have started many blogs over the years but my favorite has always been HSD (Home School Dad).  I have been thinking a lot lately of restarting Home School Dad. With that in mind, I decided to post one of my earliest blog entries.  You can click here to see how it appeared on 1/8/9.

If clicking here is not your thing, it's okay cause copying and pasting is mine...

When I first heard about Homeschooling.

First appeared in Home School Dad

January 8, 2009

Do you remember where you were the first time you heard about home schooling? I was at a wedding. At the reception, I was placed at what I call the odd duck table , the table where you sit friends, family and coworkers not likely to know anyone else, I have a name for it because I have been placed at that table many times.

So at the odd duck table there was a lady from out of state, Colorado, I believe, who home schooled her children. This was the mid to late 80's and I had no idea what homeschooling was or why anyone would want to do it. I just sat there as she regaled other wedding guests with stories of her home schooling journey.

I think it's appropriate that I first heard of home schooling at the odd duck table. Home Schooling itself has been an odd duck for many years. People aren't quite sure what to make of it. It can be frustrating as  a Home School parent, when you see the  same reaction from each person who learns you are home educating your children. This is why I asked you to recall your first experience with the concept. Perhaps, your initial reaction, was not unlike those you encounter today. We often expect people to understand things the way we do and forget our understanding is part of an ongoing process often evolving over many years.

Homeschooling over the years has quietly been inching away from the odd duck table. Everybody seems to know someone these days who is home schooling. It is not uncommon now for park districts and libraries to have special activities for home school families.

2020 Perspective:

First of all,   if you did  look back on the original, you may have noticed I did a little editing of my piece.  It bothered me  that I had let regaled be spelled incorrectly for 11 years.  I also had a tendency back then to just end my posts and go on to the next thing. I began this post some hours ago, got this far, and was really tempted to end this post abruptly as I had just finished an overnight shift and was much more interested in sleeping than culminating. Instead, I went the save button route and came back to conclude.

So much has changed since 2009 when I wrote this that it's hard to provide appropriate context.  Obviously most parents with school age children have now found themselves more knowledgeable about what schooling at home looks like.  The Covid 19 shelter in place orders have seen to that.  schooling at home is in some ways different than homeschooling.  I currently have an 8th grader who is home-schooled , a 12th grader who is public schooled and a daughter taking some college classes. Now that everybody is staying at home, my responsibilities towards their school work have not changed at all.  I help my 8th grader with math and I do nothing with the older ones.  When I wrote  the original post they were were 3, 7, and 9 respectively and I was involved with every aspect of their education.

In the coming weeks I will begin to post more here.  I plan to revisit earlier posts as I did today, but mainly I hope to move beyond that.  In June, our homeschooling journey will end as our youngest moves on to public high school.  As the pandemic continues to take its course, our world will adjust to a new normal.  In the same way, our family has been adjusting to a new normal over the past 5 years as our homeschooling has lessened and lessened.  Amid these changes, I have been tempted to change the name of this blog.  I have decided not to yield to this temptation.  The content may be different or perhaps non-existent, but on these pages and in some parts of myself, I shall always be a home school dad.

Thanks Blago A HSD Rewind

From time to time, I like to check my statistics to see what if any of my previous posts are getting the most hits.  This month, the most looked up of all my posts (by over 100 looks) was a post I wrote about former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich back in June 2011 shortly after he http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/11/10/blagojevich-to-start-working-in-prison-library/
was found guilty on several counts.  I wrote this post as an epilogue of sorts to all the teaching and parenting material Blago's missteps had given me. 

I am reprinting it here, as an HSD rewind. 


It was a Tuesday, that's all I remember for sure. That's the day the kids had their enrichment course. (It's a co-op, but they don't call it a co-op. They call it enrichment courses.) Puppy and I played in a kid's area while Bunny took an art class and then Spider Droid took a chess class. I was driving to enrichment classes, (that's how I knew it was a Tuesday) when I heard on the radio that our state's governor Rod Blagojevich had been arrested on federal corruption charges. The most egregious of which was trying to sell the then President-elect Obama's vacated senate seat to the highest bidder.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a photo by captainleadbottom on Flickr.

It was there in the car on the way to enrichment classes, that our 2 1/2 year civics lessons began. Theses include lessons in filling vacant seats, abuse of power, impeachment, trials, hung juries and retrials. Then today as I went to run errands with the bigs, I turned on the radio and they announced a verdict had been reached in the Blago retrial and would be announced in the early afternoon. As quickly as that, our civics classroom started all over again.

Here are a few educational and pseudo educational moments from the last 30 months of Blagomania:

• When Spider Droid first heard about the Blagojevich arrest he assumed that the governor had been framed since a governor would never do anything wrong. What I wanted to say to him was "live in Illinois much?" But I went the AWANA route and reminded him of his memory verse, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

• Many of Blagojevich's public appearances gave us quite a lot to discuss. I tried to find a video of him quoting Rudyard Kipling shortly after his initial arrest. The only one I could find was merged with Simpson's clips. So instead here is the beginning of an interview he did with Dave Letterman shortly after the impeachment.

(The video did not come up when I cut and past my original post. Click here if you are interested in seeing the video.)

• The kids' impression of him was aided by the media. At one point between the arrest and the impeachment, the kids got to calling him "Governor Deadmeat" because he had been referred to that way in a local paper.
• We even did a Lego workshop about him. . .

Just kidding! Here's the real credit: rod blagojevich, a photo by robayre on Flickr.

Blagojevich's downfall seemed to be that he felt that his years of service to the public entitle him to some sort of payback. During the past 2.5 years, even in his trial, he talked about all the great things he did for the state of Illinois. His defense seems to be (a) This is what politics is(everybody's doing it)and (b) I deserve something out of this. I am sure that in his mind, which must be an amazing place to visit, he did nothing wrong.

Interestingly enough, these are my kids' two biggest excuses for not admitting when they were wrong. "They started it"and "But I wanted it." Blagojevich serves as a warning to my kids and hopefully everyone who tries to cover up their misdeeds with excuses.

So thanks Blago, for all the civics lessons. I guess we'll just have to wait until your sentencing date to learn more.

Meanwhile back in 2013 . . .

After Blago was sentencedin late 2011, I did glean a few more lessons from his transgressions.  That post can be found by clicking here.  I had not heard anything about him since his incarceration until I saw this article http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/11/10/blagojevich-to-start-working-in-prison-library/from November 2012 in preparation for this post.

Re United

V as in Viral, Video and Vault

This is only my second time using an HSD rewind to get through the marathon-like paces of blogging from A to Z.  I say marathon-like, because if this were a marathon, we would need to stick an extra 1/5 of a letter at the end.

Today's post goes back to October 2010, when I was writing posts about labels something, I call meta blogging, something Amy calls wake me when it's over.  I wanted to share this post about the United Break's Guitar videos yesterday for U.  But it turns out V works just as well.

One of my most popular tags is videos (# 6 after initial 300 posts). There are 3 types of videos that I post here:


1) videos I have taken of my family


2) Videos friends and family have asked me or allowed me to post


3) Viral videos I have found on the internet or that have been reccomended by other blogs.


One of the videos from the third category that I found most compelling is actually a series of three videos by a group called the Sons of Maxwell fronted by Canadian Dave Carroll.

The incident that inspired the songs took place in my home town of Chicago as United Airlines mishandled the guitar of Mr. Carroll. The real tragedy took place as Carroll could not get United to fix the guitar. After going round and round with United, Carrol told the airline's representative that he was going to write 3 songs about the incident, record them, make music videos and post them on you tube. Carrol was as good as his word and he posted the following 3 songs:

United Breaks Guitars Song I

United Breaks Guitars Song II

United Breaks Guitars Song III

Now I haven't flown United since the incident. This isn't really much of a boycott as I haven't had flown anywhere to since July of 2001. I will continue to post cool videos like these though.

Meanwhile back in 2012

I still haven't flown in a plane (although the rest of my family has) since July 2001.  I have continued to post cool videos and will continue to do so.  Here is a video of J.J. Heller who we as a family saw in concert last Friday. 



They told us at the concert that the video had just reached  100,000 views on YouTube.  I am going to take credit for anything past that, so go ahead and share it with your pals.  And don't worry United didn't break her guitar, she has a tour bus, and she plays harmonica. 

Time to (Re) Make the Donuts.

AS IN DONUTS

April 4, 2012

One of the ways I plan to blog through 26 letters of the alphabet in a mere 30 days is by recycling posts from time to time.  HSD Reweind is already a staple here, so I don't exactly feel that it is cheating.  Today's post goes back to January 2009, when HSD was in it's infancy.  As you read on you will find that we will actually travel back a little more than a decade for this tidbit. 

A few years ago we had a family website and I would write occasional articles on it. Consider it a pre-blog blog. I named those articles Memo: Random. Occasionally I am going to post them here under Random Postings. This one is back 7 years ago from 1/27/2002.



Recently, I have been waking up in the middle of the night, usually around 3 A.M. Most nights, I go right back to sleep, but sometimes I don't even try. This morning was one of those occasions.


I woke up at 4:30 after 4 hours of sleep. My wife, Amy, was feeding our soon to be 3 month old boy. She put him into bed and went back to sleep; but I was wide awake. So I got up, went into the computer room and looked up some things on the Internet.
At about 6, our daughter walked in the room. In order to let the other half of our family stay sleeping, I quietly got her dressed and we went out to buy donuts. I didn't have any cash on me, so we went to a Dunkin Donuts that I "remembered" accepted credit cards.


When we got out of the car,  the store looked how I expected a donut shop to look at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning: sparsely populated. There was one car in the drive-thru, one customer ahead of me, and one "regular" nursing his coffee in the corner booth.


When it was our turn, I made our order, making sure to get a good variety. I asked my daughter to tell the man what kind she wanted and in language typical of a 2 year old, she said she wanted a white one while pointing to a powdered donut. (If 2 year olds couldn't point it would be a lot harder to understand them.)


When it came time to pay, I pulled out my check card and much to my surprise and dismay was told I "remembered" wrong about them accepting credit cards. They did not!




I rather sheepishly had to admit, I had no actual money on me. My plan was to run to an ATM, get cash, and pick up the donuts. The counter person told me to just take the donuts and pay him back another time. I was reluctant to accept his offer but he insisted.

We took the donuts, went back to the car, got cash at the ATM and came back. By this time, activity at the store had perked up a little. I got in line to pay the guy back. At the same time the "regular" got in line behind me. I thought he was just refilling his coffee but he had come to talk to me.


The man was probably my Dad's age (late 50's/ early 60's). He was the kind of person my daughter would refer to as a Grandpa. To her, there are four types of males (Baby, Kid, Man and Grandpa). He told me that I did not have to pay for the donuts, that he was picking up the tab.


The most embarrassing part of this incident of not bringing cash was the implication that our family was destitute and needed to panhandle for donuts. Thinking this was his impression, I politely declined indicating "I have money." He responded, "No, I've got it. It's for being honest and coming back."


I was still tempted to refuse his offer, but I think I correctly labeled that temptation as stubborn pride thanked him and went back home.




Many thoughts have penetrated my cranium about what kernel of truth to pull from this man's act of kindness. The first thought I had was that honesty must be a small commodity these days when a total stranger thinks it an oddity that needs to be rewarded. Another along those same lines was that honesty should be a given and needs no reward. The third was always keep $10.00 in the glove box for donut related emergencies. Finally I latched onto this:


Honesty, like any virtue should be pursued, taught and praised when seen in action. As a member of our society, the "regular" was simply affirming the ideal of honesty by giving my family breakfast on the house.


As my children grow up, Amy and I will try to teach them many valuable lessons about character. I can think of none stronger than when you spot virtue in our fallen world: be the guy who buys the donuts.


Meanwhile in 2009: The Dunkin Donuts was torn down recently and a new Dunkin Donuts just opened up at the same location. They now accept credit cards at least I "remember" using one there. :)

Back in 2012 again.  I thought of this incident a few Saturday's ago when I walked about a mile and a half with my current 6 year old to get cash from Walgreen's to buy donuts at the donut store around the corner from our house.  I walked all that way because that donut shop does not accept check cards.  It turns out, that now they do and I walked a mile and a half out of the way.  I have been able to pay forward that regular's investment in honesty in several ways over the past decade and will continue to be on the  lookout to applaud the virtuous.

Turtle Cake is Best a HSD Rewind (Sort of)

This post was originally aired in 2010 in November.  It has been one of my most popular posts over the past 2 years.  Somehow, it has been in draft status for a while.  This is probaly from  back when I was trying to clear out all the kid's real names and put in their blog names. 

Since the post was in draft it did not count in my post count.  So this old post is actually # 600.  600 posts and I even brought a cake!



Spider Droid's Cub Scout Pack had a cake walk Friday Tonight. Each Cub Scout was to design and help make a cake according to a theme. I did not tell Spider Droid all the themes. There was an "other" theme which meant decorate the cake any way you want. I neglected to mention that one to Him. Otherwise it would have been A Star Wars Cake all the way. There is a limit to how much Star Wars stuff a guy can take, so I said nothing.


One of the themes was wildlife and SD decided to make a cake based on his favorite animal, the turtle. Here is how it turned out.

While Amy and I helped with some of the baking and decorating, SD was involved in every part of the process.

For each The scoutmaster announced 3 scouts in and asked them to come to the front. At that point, you knew they were in the top 3 but not what place.

When we entered the cake I heard many positive comments about the turtle cake and since some of those same people were judges I was not surprised that his name was called for the top 3.

But this did surprise me . . .

First Prize!!! Congratulations, SD! When it comes to having good ideas and implementing them, I guess you take the cake!

Meanwhile back in 2012 - Spider Droid is no longer doing scouts but he still likes turtles. 

I promised that I would wrap up the HSBA today.  If you check out my pages you will see a HSBA 2011 page. In it I have revealed all my voting for the awards and also highlighted all the winning blogs and shared a sample post from each. 

HSD Rewind: Pilgrim Hat Cookies

We are making Pilgrim Hat Cookies for Thanksgiving again this year. Here is a HSD Rewind to tell you all about how to do it.

Original Airdate November 2010

We were finally able to buy frosting and thus able to make some cookies that Amy read about in Working Mother magazine.

Here is what you need . . .

Fudge Striped Cookies Cream Cheese Frosting Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Orange Frosting Tube

Step 1. Set Fudge Striped Cookies Stripe side down on cookie sheet


Step 2 spread frosting on top of peanut butter cup .Step 3 affix peanut butter cup on cookie. Enough frosting will run over to make brim for hat.
Step 4 with orange frosting, make belt buckle on side of hat.
Step 5. Voila.

Meanwhile back in 2011 . . .





I guess if you take off the buckle you could also call them Ringmaster Hat cookies. That is just a clunky segue to remind you in the Chicagoland area that there are just 3 more days to see the Ringling Brothers Circus perform Fully Charged at the United Center. They will not be performing tomorrow but have 8 big beautiful shows between Friday and Sunday. If you use the keyword MOM you can still save $4.00 per ticket.

Next Time: Thankful for a Random Wife

Six Word Rewind

This week I showed my face in the blogosphere after a month long absence. What better place to get back in the swing of things than participating in Six Word Saturday @ShowMYfaceDOTcom?

My Six Words:

They (Still) Drive Me Crazy Sometimes
About a month into my blog, I started sharing poems I wrote here. The first time out I was all ready to put out a poem I had written 10 years prior. I decided at the last minute to write an new one instead. Here is what happened . .

Original Air date February 2009

I, like many people, am a closet poet. That is where my poems remain, in a drawer, next to the closet. From time to time I am going to pull one out of that drawer and share it here. This time to show I am not merely a former poet, I will present one I wrote only hours ago.

They Drive me Crazy Sometimes

She drives me crazy sometimes
Who can win an argument with an amnesiac?
But, no one gets me like she does
She makes our house a haven
And, only laughs when my jokes are funny.

She drives me crazy sometimes
Who made her the third parent, anyways?
But, beneath that bossy boiler
Lies an artist's soul
Skipping and humming. Playful and loving.

He drives me crazy sometimes.
Who can have that many questions about Star Wars?!?
But, he is as adventurous as a pirate.
As giving as Robin Hood.
And as resourceful as Macgyver.

She drives me crazy sometimes
Who wants to be a puppy every single day?
But, she makes cuteness an art form
She's a three year old thesaurus
And she loves to ask God to help people.

They drive me crazy sometimes
But, isn't it worth the trip?

Meanwhile back in 2011. The family still drives me crazy on a somewhat frequentamente basis. Puppy has branched off and is now imagining herself as other animals. Today she was part wolf part tiger. In almost 2 years time they still have the same strengths and weaknesses. Being part and parcel of their family is still worth any craziness endured.

In the past 2 years more of my poetry has surfaced. You can check them all out by clicking here.

Speaking of clicking, click here to return to Six Word Saturday.

Next Time: Don't Know Much About History - A Review

HSD Rewind: Newspaper Fried Chicken

I have a little feature on my blog that announces the most frequently viewed post on the blog. I titled it the post of the week. I was surprised over the weekend to find that the most viewed post was a recipe post Amy wrote for Works for me Wednesday 2 years ago. So let's review the taste sensation that's sweeping the nation and get in the (not so) way back machine to

Original Air Date: June 30th, 2009


I have asked my lovely wife to contribute one of my favorite recipes for this special themed edition of WFMW. This dish works for us as a dish to pass at summer cookouts but also makes a great family dinner. Here is the lovely and Talented Mrs. Dad . . .



This is called "newspaper chicken" because we got the recipe from the newspaper. Creative huh.


**NOTE: This is a two-day affair, but well worth it!


Here's how I make it, but there are any number of variations you can make to make it your own. I take 5 lbs of boneless chicken breasts and cut them into small strips or chunks (I get the bag-o-frozen chicken from Aldi.) I cover them in water in a large tupperware bowl and add 1 cup of salt. Yes, one entire cup of salt. I put the cover on it, and shake it a few times, and refrigerate it overnight. Sometimes during the night, if I happen to get up, I shake it a few more times. In the morning, I dump out the salt water and rinse the chicken well. Really well. This brining isn't for flavoring. Then, using the same bowl while the chicken is on a plate or drainer, I put 2 cups of milk (I use skim) in the bowl and 2 tablespoons of vinegar and stir that up (handy dandy buttermilk.) Then return the chicken to the bowl and make sure the chicken is covered. If not, add more milk. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. I like to double dip my chicken because it comes out so crunchy, really good. I put 2 cups of flour, along with 1 tsp of the following: salt, garlic powder, chili powder, and 1/2 tsp of pepper and dry mustard. Mix it really well in a large ziplock bag (I've tried doing it in a bowl, but doesn't work as well.) So you take chicken out of buttermilk and save the buttermilk! Put chicken on a plate. Then with a pair of tongs or "grabbers" put a few pieces of chicken in the flour mixture to coat, then grab with grabbers, drop in buttermilk, and then back into flour mixture.

Place coated chicken on a tray (I use my pampered chef "stackable cooling rack" laid on top of a cookie sheet.) Once all chicken is double coated, let the tray sit in the fridge for another hour. This ensures the coating will stick to the chicken. **Sometimes I do have to make another bag of flour mixture. This double coating is messy, but it really makes for nice, crunchy chicken. After an hour, get a frying pan ready with enough oil to be 1/2 way up the sides of the chicken. I fry it over medium high heat. Once the oil is hot, place a few pieces of chicken in the oil. If you're doing it right, as the hot oil is cooking the food, the salt water is coming out of the chicken, therefore, making it a nongreasy affair. Love it. So you fry it on one side for about 4 minutes (try to leave it alone here, don't check it a bunch of times), and the other side for about 4 minutes more. This, of course, varies according to size. Using bone-in chicken will take longer. Now, this is important: do not try to keep the chicken warm to try to serve in an hour or so. Either serve immediately, or allow to cool and either serve cold, or microwave to warm it up. If you try to keep it warm in the oven, it gets gooey, and nobody likes gooey chicken! This chicken also freezes quite well. I usually have enough for a meal right away, leftovers in the fridge, and then some in the freezer for a later meal.

Ingredients at a Glance:

5 lbs boneless chicken breasts
1 cup salt, water to cover chicken
2 cups milk plus 2 TBLS vinegar (or buttermilk if you have it)
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt, garlic powder, chili powder
1/2 tsp pepper and dried mustard
oil for frying

Thanks Amy. She also does a great impression of Jimmy Stewart saying chicken. She is certainly a woman of many talents.

Meanwhile back in 2011. Amy is still a woman of many talents. Today she got a job that she neither applied for nor interviewed for. She merely told some people she wanted it, and bam, it was hers. It's actually her same job just in a different school, one much closer to our house.

So she will be able to get home quicker and make this fantastic chicken. We still love it and hope you will too. If I repost this in ten years time I might have to remind people what a newspaper was.

As with last time I shared this recipe, I am sharing this @ We Are That Family for Works for me Wednesday because (wait for it) Newspaper Chicken works for me. click here to see what works for others who may not have chicken on their mind and be so easily defined.

HSD Rewind: The Oscars our Super Bowl

HSD Rewind: The Oscars, our Super Bowl.

Timely time to go into the vaults for today post.


Original Air Date : Feb 22 2009




My wife loves sports. She really does. She loves to play sports. She likes to see sports played by others live. What she does not love, or even like, is watching sports on t.v., listening to sports talk on the radio, and tracking statistics, magic numbers, and trade deadlines. So, we don't share the same enthusiasm for sports events like the Super Bowl.

Amy and I are movie people. Oscar night is our Super Bowl. The day the nominations come out we always say we have to see all these movies before the award show. We never get to all of them. I didn't see any of the best pictures noms this year. Amy saw a couple. Hello, 3 small children. I did see all the best animated noms. I saw Bolt 3 times. Don't ask.

This year was not the most rewarding of shows. We didn't realize until yesterday, that the show was today. We had a long day with church and visiting relatives and when we did watch the show, it was online while I finished our tax refund on the same computer. Amy is already in bed, and there are at least 5 major awards, a life time achievement award and my favorite, the "hey, look who died montage."

Amy, let's plan ahead next year and go to a Academy Award party or something. Cause watching the Academy Awards without you is as pleasing as watching the Super Bowl without commercials.

Meanwhile back in 2011:

We did not arrange to go to an Oscar party last year. However, as I type this post, I am sitting in my in-laws drive way (got to love wi-fi) waiting for puppy to wake up so I can go into a cousins 1st birthday party/Oscar viewing party. I am not sure if anyone besides Amy and I know it's an Oscar viewing party. But let's see them try to kick us out.

In preparation Amy and I have picked out who we think is going to win in all the categories. Puppy was upset to find out that Tangled only had 1 nomination (best song). That is one fine movie and our family liked it a lot better than Toy Story 3. But alas, we don't get to vote.

HSD Rewind: Blogoversary edition

It has been exactly 2 years since this blog started. Here is a reprint of our first post from 1/6/2009.

Why We Home School:

Three precious reasons:Princess Puppy, Bunny and Spider Droid!

Meanwhile back in 2011: Thanks for being part and parcel of this crazy look at whatever it is we look at here.

Coming Soon: More of the same and a bit of the unusual.

Go Ask My Dad

HSD Rewind time again. Going back to March 2009 when I wrote this . . .

Some of you may know that I would someday like to write a book. I often say I am working on a book, but that does not do justice to my friends who are actually working on a book. I have ideas for a book on relationships. From time to time I may talk about some of those ideas here. Recently Mama Archer's post was about relationships. In the post she linked to something she wrote in a blog called Weekend Kindness. What she shared was actually from a paper her daughter had written about finding a spouse.

Many of the standards her daughter mentioned are those I am imparting in my daughters. Specifically, a courtship model, that involves the active role of the parents especially the father. When my 9 year old was younger, I taught her what to say if a boy ever wanted to marry her. The response is "go ask my Dad." She still remembers it, and has not fought with me about it, yet, but that day may come.

My youngest child, also a daughter, is 3. She is leaving what I call the "save them every day" stage. The part of their life when you seem to be keeping them from physical peril at every turn. We spend so much of their early child hood keeping them from physical harm, making rules to keep them safe. Before they use a tool that could hurt them, we instruct them, and give them careful supervision while learning new skills.

I am not sure why with all that care giving I would be willing to withdraw all that guidance when they become of dating age. Many parents seem to think they have no chance of asserting control in any of those areas, so they do not try. I was greatly encouraged to read that Mama Archer's daughter plans to allow her parents an active role in determining her future husband.

I will write more about these issues in the future.

Meanwhile back in 2010. My youngest is no longer in the save her every day stage. It's more like the save the house from her stage. I have still not gotten very far with the "book". I have written a few more posts about relationships.

HSD Rewind: Puppyisms

HSD Rewind

Originally broadcast February 2009 (edited for the 2nd decade of the 21st century, which includes name changing)

A common theme of this blog has been the sayings of my youngest daughter which I call puppyisms.

Here is what I wrote about it last year . . .


I would have no problem at all filling a daily blog with just crazy things my children say. So far the youngest is the most quotable. Today, I was putting on her bathing suit on and then her clothes over them. This generally takes me two minutes because she is a very squirrely three year old. During those two minutes this conversation occurred:



Me: Let's get dressed for swimming.



Puppy: Is today Monday or Tuesday?



Me: No today's Thursday.



Puppy: Oh Man!



Me: ?



Lucy: I love Monday. Is Monday soon?



So, most people might be thinking what is so special about Monday? Monday is a good day for her; she has some classes she really enjoys at our Home School Co-op. I don't think that's why she said it. I think she has my random genes. She just says things as they occur to her. Things that would never occur to anyone. Like the next thing she said.



Puppy: Butera loves me.



Me: You mean Butera, the grocery store?



Puppy: Yes, Butera loves me.



The problem is that she says so many crazy things, generally in a 2 minute period, that I can't possibly remember them all to tell Amy when she gets home. Point in fact, she said something very random indeed after the Butera comment, but now I have no idea what it was. She just marched in the room chanting "Hello Pumpkin. Hello Pumpkin." I guess, that will have to do.


MEANWHILE BACK IN 2010 . . .

Same puppy, different year. She is still as random as ever. We were at Aldi the other day and she was off the wall. She was pushing the cart, climbing on shelves. Just acting nuts. Then she stops what she's doing, becomes all calm and controlled and says to woman next to us. "I really like your hair." The lady thanks her and then she's crawling the walls again

Keith Time: Amy Remembers Keith Part II

HSD Rewind: Library Week

HSD Rewind

Originally Aired January 2009 (Edited for the second decade of the 21st century) We are taking somewhat of a fall break this week as we have 2 field trips, a birthday and a few doctor appointments scheduled for the week. Taking the week off from organized schooling reminded me of our Library Week tradition. Here is what I wrote about it in 2009:

Libraries are a staple in the Roller family. My across the street neighbor when I was growing up was the Elk Grove Village Public Library. We were never able to borrow sugar, but I could get a cook book out, if I wanted to. Now, many years later, while I don't live as close to one as I did, libraries are still near to my heart.

A couple times a year our family embarks on library week. We stop formal schooling for a week and visit at least 1 library each day.












Here are the kids at the main library in Madison, WI.

In all we hit 5 libraries in 2 states. Library Week works for us because:

1) Libraries are fun, inexpensive places to learn and relax.

2) While library week gives us a break from our regular classroom environment, it does give me many ideas for future studies.

3) A well planned library week allows us the opportunity to drop in on friends and family and to visit other towns and cities. This type of multi-task travelling is educational as well as economical.

Even though we home school, I think library week can work for any family regardless of their educational choices. Spring, Winter or Summer breaks make the perfect time for library week. This is actually when we have done most of ours, so as not to interfere with Awana, and co-ops. Even if you have no children or no children at home, visiting libraries with your spouse or significant other can make an excellent date night.

Meanwhile back in 2010 . . .

this post is included in this weeks carnival of homeschooling hosteud at The Home Spun Life. There are many other great posts listed there. Be sure to check them out.

Keith Time: When I Heard Keith Was Sick
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I wanted to be a 4hundrenaire.

Today is a big day in the life of my blog. Yes, it's true. Home School Dad is 400 today. 400 posts that is. It has been a crazy ride to 400 but I have loved every mile. It hasn't always been easy. Writing 400 hip posts is the same as writing 20 squared ones.MATH JOKE ALERT



As I did prior to 300 posts I have been tweaking the look of the blog in preparation for 400 posts. I hope you enjoy the new look, I certainly do.

Starting tomorrow I am adding a new feature called HSD rewind. From time to time I will be reprinting (not just putting links to) older Home School Dad posts. These regurgitated posts may come up from time to time. BODILY FUNCTION JOKE ALERT.

Don't have much more to say for 400. I think I've got at least another 400 in me. Thanks again for being part and parcel of the program, and that's no joke. NO JOKE ALERT

Keith Time: Let's go fly a kite.