This last half of February has been a blessing. The weather has been so springlike and beautiful—it’s supposed to be 71° today!—and I’ve loved being able to make such great strides in the garden so early. DH has loved how little firewood we’ve used, and we’ve all loved how much time we have been able to spend outside.

Last week was a hard week. The untimely death of a friend, and the death of an uncle have brought up a great deal of…stuff. Introspection, musings on mortality, wondering what it’s all about—you know, the usual.

It has also become increasingly apparent that Bernard needs more than she can get from home schooling. She seems to need more mental challenge and certainly more social interactions than she’s getting here with me right now. We’ve been planning for her to go to the early college program starting next fall, but there turned out to be an opening for her right now, so she’s starting tomorrow morning! We’ll take her in tomorrow and get her schedule set up, but after that she’ll be taking the bus. I’m so very happy for her, and so grateful that this program is available to her, but it’s going to be a big change for all of us—I’ve been homeschooling since 1996!

The other change around here is that we’ve all decided to get off facebook for a while. Bernard because she is going to need all her focus for school for the rest of the school year, me because it triggers some addiction part of my brain, and I can’t leave it alone, and ED because she doesn’t really care about it. I’ve just got too much going on to get sucked in on facebook during the day—one of the problems with being at home all the time!