Some of my Squiggly Spaghetti Thoughts

It was a busy week. We did a lot of schooling, home-keeping, extra-curricular things. No injuries this week, thank the Lord. I am ready for all the extra things to be done. Gym class is finished, but not art or dance-pretty soon, though. We're on track with all our school subjects except for Hannah's science & Jonah's grammar.

Here's a pic of all the kids at the table doing school type things-even the baby! :)

The 4-H horse show season is starting up & the barrel racing season has already started. Today Hannah was stressing out about the equations for her science. Total Force=mass x acceleration minus force of friction. And she was stressing out because Casey is having issues and Copper is dive bombing the barrels, fighting the bit & not moving off her leg cues. They're both young horses, she's a young rider(although a good one) & so it's a lot of work. Hannah & her horses have a lot of potential. We know 2 professional horse trainers & they are both willing to answer questions & let us bring the horses to them to see what the deal is, so I talked her thru it. She's a perfectionist & gets frustrated when she knows she's doing something wrong, but doesn't know how to make it right. We talked about changing thought patterns. Instead of thinking of something as a problem or a failure, we can consider it a challenge, an opportunity to learn something new. We can talk to God about it, give Him our problems & simply ask Him for help & wisdom. I've been telling myself the same thing because I didn't understand Hannah's science at first, either & really didn't want to learn it when I'm knee deep in laundry, shoulder high in dishes, trying to help 4 children all with different things & all at different levels.. I was in the shower this afternoon asking God for help with keeping up with everything.

So, we're both working on changing our patterns of thought. I encouraged her to give herself & her horses grace & room to make mistakes, to grow & develop-it takes time, lots of it, but they have plenty of that. After we got done talking, she was smiling, laughing & bounced out of the house with her ponytail swinging to ride Copper with a good attitude. She called Don (horse trainer) about coming out there with both young horses so he can watch them to see what their miscommunications are. She called her Dad at work to see if he'd take her to a used tack auction when he got home and he said yes-and she was thrilled.

We didn't get all our work done, but I feel like we scored big today. What a privelege it is to be able to encourage my 14 yr old daughter & to be able to point her to the Lord for her help, even with her horses. We've had this conversation before & I imagine we'll have it again.

Don says this to Hannah about training horses: "What do we HAVE to do today with this horse?" (answer is nothing) "What do we WANT to do with this horse?" (as much as we can) His point being, work on the issue that presents itself, instead of skipping it & working on the goal you have. If a horse is spooking at the gate, don't make him work on flying lead changes-work on his fear of the gate. Conversely, if the child is discouraged about something or whatever, deal with that instead of charging on with my list of school subjects that I want to check off. LOL I've been guilty of that.

I tell ya-I don't know who's learning more in our homeschooling journey-me or the kids. :)