I don’t have a topic. I need a topic. How do I plan a topic. Lol. Make a list? Get a blog planner? I found one, now to use it. Uh oh. How do I do that? Not a clue. I have been busy planning and printing for the school year. But I have been doing well sticking to my new habits so for now just shout out post to the tools I use to help me change my life for the better.

Bit shout out to pinterest, how can you not like it. I found my blog planner, my garden planner, my homeschool planner, my de-clutter guide, what didn’t I find on there? Ha a husband. Pinterest has added a lot to my life between that at YouTube. I am on fire getting my life back. Functioning with children is hard. You really do have to learn how to live optimally again. Without personal reflection you might not realize you are NOT operating  at your fullest potential. You are just a hamster on a wheel going through the motions happy no one has fallend to their deaths. Like for real. I live on the top floor of an apartment and my oldest son managed to open the screen. Why? To see fireworks. What was I doing wrong that my oldest son doesn’t realize that opening the screen to see fireworks is not a good idea? It is my job to teach him and sadly I had failed. My house was a mess. We where doing chores all over each other. I am gaining weight due to stress and eating the boys left overs simply not to waste food. ? Back the truck up. We have plenty of food. I don’t need to do that. But stress can cloud your vision. Maybe I was eating to stop from yelling. Either way not healthy.

Next shout out award goes to FABULOUS app and 8fit, I have Google fit but never used it. I don’t like being tracked. Lol but the free version of fabulous and 8fit work marvelous. I have worked out happily with my children 15 days in a row now. Fabulous motivates me to do it and 8fit has adaptable routines to music we love. And they have a wide selection of stations in the app to fit anyone.

For my 33rd birthday I treated myself to a brand new blackberry PRIV. I am in heaven with this phone I raved about the Motorola juke b a while ago because of the keyboard. I gushed over everything. This phone is the best of everything on the market. But no play, how did I find it? I am a tech nerd and I know how to Google for what I want. Edge scrolling secure blackberry framework with and android os. I am in heaven yall. This phone has a productivity suite I had no idea I needed, until I awoke from my postpartum motherhood haze and saw the disaster that was my home. No wonder I was neglecting my blogging desire to document my life for posterity for my children. I was exhausted running in in circles going no where. Haha tunnel vision of my cage. Thank goodness I broke out. With my productivity suite, I was so organized I was able to download more audible books hah which lead me to the book “Listful Thinking” which pushed me over the edge in productivity. I have always been a list maker, but YOU CAN MAKE LISTS WRONG! I was making list wrong. I got deep interesting my lists and tada. I remembered to go to the designer blog website signup for the newsletter and get the free planner I saw on pinterest. I downloaded it. I have not used it. But I have my list of topics just not fleshed out.

I am a homeschooler and I am alone. I have delved into the Charlotte Mason way of mother culture. Listening to blogs and I found a braindump planner sheet. The fabulous app reminds me to do my morning pages. But with the brain dump pages I don’t have a fog and I remember more because all the crap is in a list where I can find it. Instead of my pile of notebooks no table of contents. Almost as full as a sea of some well planned thoughts. But lost in the currents of time. The pages folded in on each other’s good ideas lost never to be seen again. As an entrepreneur that is potential income thrown away. Omg the things I have learned in the podcasts from homeschooling mothers. When I start using my blog planner I will make better notes to share.

I am happy that it has been a week and I remembered to stick to my promise to blog weekly. My tools are being put to use and the climb up to greatness will be long but rewarding.

I just realized I didn’t post about my father’s death in 2016. The real reason I departed from blogging that year was simple. After my post on my birthday he died one month later. I was in a tail spin. I had not fully rested. I was mad the nursing home did such a poor job. I was mad Cmha messed up my dad’s belonging. So many emotions and feelings to work through not in a public forum. I spread my father’s ashes at the MLK monument AND enjoyed my first trip via train with my boys. I met my relatives from my mother’s side of the family I had never met before and realized I have kindred spirits in my mother’s side where I am a black sheep in my father’s side. My strength comes from strong women I never had the pleasure of meeting before the age of 26. I finally get to see the whole picture that equals me. So 2016 was rough, but it catapulted me in to this magnificent 2017 year. I am overflowing with happiness and enthusiasm for the years to come.

I am so excited. I figured out how to home educate my children so they are happy to learn and I am happy to teach. Took me three years and a slow start but I have chiseled out enough time to read articles and books and watch blogs from the best. I downloaded planners created my own discover someone was selling a copy of a planner I had been making by hand since high school which I found hilarious. But I am not a hater. I never tried so I can’t be mad the success was not mine. I don’t have to do the work to digitize my planner so win in my book.

I am not a writer. I am not the best when it comes to the are of grammar. I am sure you get what I am saying. So thanks to some very smart woman  like Charlotte Mason, pam barnhill and the creator of the design-your-homeschool.com I was guided in the right direction to get my homeschool in gear. I found my focus and truest desire for my boys down on paper and in order. Thanks to accountable kids, I organized family meetings and discussed with my children what it is they wanted to learn and how they wanted to learn it. Thanks to andrea Mills for cementing in my mind I don’t want a Christian based curriculum and that church at home is OK. Andrea helped me organize so much almost every thing really when it comes to motivating and keeping my boys on track. Thank you just see Trish for pointing me in Andreas direction, and entertaining me along the way. Trish also helped me realize I like the idea of a virtual coop and that I can’t be a curriculum junkie. There are so many good curriculums out there but no one is perfect and I could go broke trying to catch them all as if they were Pokémon. But like any addiction I had to learn how to say no.

I have to back track because I can’t say enough about Andrea Mills. I want o cry when I think about how beautifully she runs her home and how similar we are. Even though she uses a Christian based curriculum I know where her heart is and she made home schooling easy by using the curriculum she was familiar with and MADE IT HER OWN! She inspired me to take the Calvert curriculum I already have and make it work. I even took inspiration from the A.C.E. Star chart and made my SAGE chart. Pure gold.

The fly lady helped me to get my house in order one zone at a time instead of trying to kill myself cleaning the entire house in one day. Easy is a godsend with it charts and stickers and stamps. I want to scream I am so happy. My house isn’t perfect but I can walk around and not trip over toys. I can find my clothes. (Yes, my clothes got lost, it was bad).

Shout out to buildyourlibrary.com for being another kindred spirt in the curriculum and family dynamic realm and providing a super pre history curriculum source. And a wonderful addition to my little passport subscription and not making story of the world blah, she introduced me to elemental science. I would die with out it and their podcast. I have a new good reads friend and knowledge of the Sea homeschooling group and the Ohio Waterpark gathering for homeschoolers. Not directly to the Waterpark gathering but while I was looking for information on S.E.A. groups in Ohio.

Thanks to books by the foot, woodenbooks, forgotten books, teachingchildrenphilosopy.com and uua.org for providing me with collection of worthwhile books my children will cherish for generations and to fill my library to the brim. Thank you hoopla and overdrive and kindle unlimited because I don’t have room for all the books I want right now and some of the ones I checked out before I bought turned out to be duds so thanks for saving me money.

I know I might be forgetting a few right now who have transformed me into a homeschooling phenom, fired up and ready to be a juggernaut  educating my two boys to be the next leaders of the world. Truth, beauty and goodness are my goals. Confident, strong willed men my vision  so clear, of my children blossoming out of the fertilizer of my first few (failed attempts, from my point of view, the boys none the wiser) years of home education. I know I have the tools I need to bring those goals and my vision to fruition. I am on a mission and I have my garden plan ready. The soil is rich, I have the drive and desire to tend it fully, through blood, sweat, and tears. There is no stopping me. Welcome to #thejumpoff this is something I can’t help but be passionate about and I want to share it all. This is the day I vow to blog once a week. With a special report every 260 days. One for homeschool portfolio sake and two to share with my children and inspire others for real who don’t want to waste three years like I did to get it right for the love of their children. When you decide to homeschool it is a serious undertaking and when you don’t have a clear vision, mission or plan of attack, money time and energy get wasted. You doubt yourself, give up, and regret too much. Life is too short for any regret.

I have had this blog for many years I wanted to help victims of abuse but I never identified as a victim and felt I was making people feel ashamed or I was being preachy. Then I wanted to blog about my real estate business. My heart was no longer in making money. I got tired of the long hours and just wanted to be with my children. Thinking of Katy Perry, yes we are all chained to the rhythm,  but I am not running on a hamster wheel anymore. I am free. I hope I can inspire others to be free sooner rather than later.