My Kids

Bec and Bo gave me some pretty sound advice on my comments yesterday. Trying to complete a painting a day is probably more than I can handle. If I was not blogging, I might be able to do it, but I am not willing to make that change – I love my blogs. Bo, my SN1, knows me well. In fact, the apple did not fall far from the tree when it comes to procrastination. By the way, Bo is the one who introduced me to blogging. He has his own blog, although he stopped for a long time. He is now blogging again so you might give him a read (backup to his "General Anesthetic" post). As a little boy, he kept albums full of baseball and football cards, which is not unusual for a boy. But what set him apart is that he could recite the statistics of just about all his favorite players. During World Cup soccer tournaments, he kept charts along with the statistics. If you like to talk sports – any sports – Bo is the man.

My daughter, on the other hand, keeps us laughing. She is such a combination of innocence and smart aleck. She gets the smart aleck from both Toby and me. Toby often calls her a double-bred smart aleck, and like her father, she shows no fear of making remarks that will get someone in trouble or make fun of someone. Last night, she got me in trouble and made fun of her father, but had us both laughing. She announced that I had told her not to worry about trying to please her dad because he had a "little red hen complex". Well, I did say that, and he can be a "little red hen", but she was not suppose to tell it. The innocence part of her personality comes from the way we have raised her. Homeschool keeps kids more innocent. Some people think that homeschooling makes kids un-social or socially retarded. It does not, but sometimes they just have different information or knowledge than PS kids. Someday I will blog about homeschooling, if you want, but today I will just share these stories to explain the innocence of homeschooling and give you a good laugh.

When Jesse’s best friend, Lindsay and her cousin Lila were about 12 years old, they took a hunter safety course. Because they were both homeschooled they were not use to filling out bureaucratic forms like public school kids have to do. At the beginning of the safety course, they had to fill out the usual forms to get their hunting licenses. When the class broke for lunch, both girls asked what "SSN" stood for – they had left that blank on the forms because they did not know what it was. As parent/teachers we laughed at the girls and ourselves. We try to give the best education possible, but sometimes, we miss the simple things that public school kids do every day – innocence.

Last night, not only did Jesse get me in trouble, she told a silly story on herself – one that showed her innocence. She was at the Halliburton Human Resource Office filling out forms for her new job as a drafter. She said the room was full of young men filling out forms and applying at Halliburton. She struck up a conversation with an older black man sitting by her (She is very social. Keep in mind she is also very cute). When she got up to turn in her paper work, the man asked if she was going to take her "UA test". She replied, "Yeah, what is a UA test?" To her embarrassment, in front of a room full of young men, he told her, "Urine analysis." She said that she tried not to look embarrassed, and replied, "I knew that" and laughed at herself. She said she felt stupid because she knew she was going to have to take a drug test; she just did not know what it was called. "UA? Why not call it PP test?" Toby and I are still laughing at her.