Just wanted to wish everyone a very happy V-day! I am currently in the middle of trying to finish a book and some article deadlines, but will have more news for you soon.
Hearts and flowers!
Lori
Merry Christmas
Dearest readers and friends,
Can you believe 2007 is nearly over? I want to wish all of you a blessed holiday. No gift you can give or get is as precious as the salvation that Jesus gave us all. All the hustle and bustle and Coach purses and other gifts simply pale in comparison. My wish for you is that you’ll remember the true reason for the season and experience joy because of it.
Merry Christmas!
Lori Soard
A Day In the Life… (part 1)
A day in the life of a homeschooling mom, writer, editor, chauffeur, housekeeper, wife, church secretary, daughter, mother, friend…
Like most women, I have many roles and many different hats to wear. Often, I have to juggle those hats or wear more than one at the same time. Life it hectic, crazy, busy but happy and fulfilling.
I often find myself wondering why I didn’t just say no to whatever task is at hand, yet when that task is completed, I feel joy at helping others. I have learned over the years to pick and choose those volunteer jobs and to only take on short-term commitments outside of a few things I do regularly. This is to help me keep my sanity.
I have also learned to only take on tasks that I in some way enjoy or am skilled at. To take on a task I loathe makes me unhappy and makes those around me unhappy. There is usually someone else who actually enjoys doing those things and therefore can do a much better job at them.
Sing? I love it. I may not be the most skilled singer in the world, but I love to praise God with my voice and I love it even more when others sing along. I believe my skill in this area is in choosing songs that have deep meaning for me and also for others because they can sense my passion. It is more in the heart of the singing than in my actual skill level, which I will be the first to admit has much room for improvement.
Writing? Obviously I love writing. It is my chosen profession. It is where I feel confident, strong, capable. I also feel that God has given me a gift of written gab so that I can reach others in some small way. I have often said that if my words change just one life or bring hope to one person that I have made all the difference and I still feel that way.
Mom? Most days I love this role. My girls are my world. They are before writing, singing and the other things I love. To have the opportunity to raise them, mold them and get to know their precious souls is such a wonderful gift from God that i can hardly express my gratitude at being a mother. Having my girls was not easy. Pregnancy was at first hard to come by and later hard to maintain. I almost lost both of them multiple times, lost a child between them and yet they are healthy and thriving. This is more of a miracle than I can express, especially now that I understand more fully the many crazy hoops my body had to jump through to accomplish their being here. I thank God for them every single day. Yet, I am human and we all have our days. Any mother who has homeschooled will tell you that life is just downright insane at times. There are days when nothing seems to click and for a perfectionist like myself that can be tough.
Homeschooling my girls has grown me more than anything else I’ve done. I’ve learned to pray without ceasing during the hard times, and it has brought me closer to the Lord. I have learned that my patience has its limits and there are days when we are all just spinning our wheels. I’ve learned to take my eyes off my “to-do” lists and enjoy the moment. Recently, we set our other school work aside and we had a Jane Austen week after my girls caught the movie “Emma” on television and expressed an interest in this favorite author of mine. It was perfect timing as a movie called “Becoming Jane” was also out that week about Jane Austin’s life. We read Austin books; we studied the time period; we even learned about money of the time and worked in some math. Most of all, we laughed together over Austin’s words and at her quirky way of looking at the world and seeing the humor beneath all the pomp and circumstance. We had vivid discussions about how different things are now and yet how people are still very much the same. I know in my heart that my girls will remember this week long after they forget how to diagram a sentence. It was more educational in many ways than our typical school work. Unstructured? Yes, yet they learned so very much.
Chauffeur. Sigh. Run here, pick up this friend, take that friend home, run the teen to youth group, run the youngest to a Keeper’s meeting, run to the library, run to art class, then to music class, run to Hobby Lobby for supplies for the science experiment. My car’s wheels have been run off. I’ve always been a person who loves to run, yet these days I find myself craving the at home time I rarely get. My oldest will get her learner’s permit next year and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I almost can’t wait until she is able to get her own driver’s license. She can then run herself to her friend’s house or to youth group and I can breathe again. Then again, the thought of my baby on the road is terrifying, so maybe I take it back.
Those are just a few of the roles I play, so you can see how busy and full my days are. Amazingly, I wouldn’t change a thing. I love God and serving him through the church, I love my girls, I love home schooling them, I love writing and I love my husband enough to want to keep a nice home for him. There will be time to sleep later in life.
In part 2, I am going to take you through a typical day in our household as a home school family.
RAOK Challenge for October
Okay, folks. Here is your Random Act of Kindness Challenge for October. For those of you who are new to my site and my philosophies, this is simply doing something kind for another person (usually a stranger but not always) without any expectation of recognition or return on your investment of time or money. Here are some things my daughters and I have done in the past:
*Planted flowers in a dead flower bed while we knew the neighbor would be gone for the day.
*Left an envelope with 25.00 in the door of a home of a family we knew were struggling for money. It was cash and we put no name on it, but we did write on the envelope that we hoped God blessed them.
*Paid for the car behind us in the drive through of a fast food restaurant (we do this often).
*Sent flowers to a teen neighbor we knew was going through a hard time and signed it anonymously.
The best thing to do is to listen and pay attention and an opportunity will present itself. So here is your challenge.
1) Find one nice thing to do this month, whether it is to pay for the car behind you or doing something for a neighbor. Remember to try not to let them know who did this good deed. Sometimes you have to let them know. In those cases, decline their thanks and tell them to just pay it forward sometime.
2) Compliment at least one person a week. Please be sincere, though. Don’t lie. You can often find something you like about most people. Maybe it is his smile. Maybe the necklace she is wearing. And so on. We try to compliment cashiers at local stores. If I notice the person in front of me giving that person a really hard way to go, I always make an effort in this way. You’ve probably seen it. People can be downright nasty these days. Why not make him/her feel a little better with just a few kind words.
Then, come back here and post our RAOK in the comments area. I am getting a lot of spam in my comments, so I’ve set them to approval only. If you don’t see your comment appear, please email me and I may have to have you post it again and really look for it. I had 75 spam posts today alone. If anyone knows how to stop those, please let me know.
Have fun this month 🙂
Lori
Fall
Dearest friends,
Fall has always been my favorite time of year, although I am beginning to grow a bit partial to summer as well. Imagine my delight when I walked outside last week and that first crisp fall day beckoned from my front porch. The air was a bit cooler and a slight breeze lifted my hair from my forehead. My little mini-dachshund (my doxie) threw her long nose up into the air, sniffed and just held her head up in the air, let the sun shine on her face, squeached (yes, I made that word up) her little eyes closed and loved the moment. It looked like a good idea to me, so I did the same thing. The two of us stood out in the front yard in the quiet stillness of early morning (okay, early for me is like 8 a.m.) and enjoyed being alive and the approach of fall.
Fall means pumpkins, crisp leaves we can rake up and jump in, long walks, and bonfires at the fire pit. It isn’t long until we are on hayrides, drinking hot apple cider and then the swift moments of fall fade into winter and another season is past among the blur of the many seasons that have gone before, each moving a bit more quickly with each passing year as though we live in some type of crazy time warp that speeds up sequencially.
Where have the years gone? Am I really this adult person, so much different yet still exactly the same as I was when I was very young? How I miss the joy of my mother raking up those leaves for my four-year-old self so I could leap into them. How I miss the joy of seeing my own small children enjoy this moment as they grow older and too mature for such foolishness. But, oh how I look forward to one day seeing my own children enjoy this passed on gift of the love of the moment. I can almost picture my future grandchild, face lifted to enjoy the fall sunshine, running toward a big pile of leaves and leaping into them with giggles, squeals and pure glee. Who knows…perhaps I’ll join her and reclaim that joy of childhood once more.
Order your copy of Finding Ms. Right
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Review
“Soard, the author of several books, captivated me as a first-time reader. Her characters are lovable, and their journey to find love kept me turning the pages.” –Faith Smith, Romantic Times
Review
“This is an author to keep your eye on. Move over Jayne Ann Krentz and Jennifer Crusie. There’s a new gal in town.” –Patti Andrews, Word Museum Reviews
New Book Cover–FINDING MS. RIGHT
Hi, all. Amber Quill sent me the cover for FINDING MS. RIGHT. I absolutely love it! Here it is:
Screenwriting & Film and Playwriting & Acting for 4th-12th Graders
Below is information on a new class I’ll be starting in August for the 2007/2008 school year.Ă‚Â I think your Jr/Sr High students would enjoy this class.Ă‚Â I will also be doing a class for younger students (4th-6th grade) on the same day (different time) but we may all work together some if the scripts need younger or older students.Ă‚Â We’ll work that out as we go along.Ă‚Â We will meet every other week for an hour and a half for the older kids and an hour for the younger kids.Ă‚Â We may have to expand that time if we aren’t getting everything done to two hours and an hour and a half, but we’ll see how it goes for now. I am trying to get us a class room at Graceland, but if that doesn’t work out we can use one of the classrooms at our local church close to Sellersburg. Day will be decided later but will more than likely be a Thurs. or Friday.
Details are below.Ă‚Â Let me know if you have any questions.Ă‚Â This should be a lot of fun and will give the kids an opportunity to learn creative writing, see how a script is put together and to learn how a film is put together and the same process with a play.
August-November
We will work on the elements of screenwriting, plot, characterization, format, film a screenplay that the kids will work on and we will have a premier for the parents.
December we will take a break since many families go away during that month.
January-May
We will learn more story elements, write a play, learn basic drama elements, basic voice instruction, and put together a play with a which will be performed for parents at the end of the year.
The kids will also get a T-shirt, which we’ll have them design and they will also help come up with a name for our group for the year.Ă‚Â Example:Ă‚Â Home School Writers & Actors Guild.Ă‚Â I’m going to allow them to come up with ideas and then the class will vote on the final name and design.
The class will run $35.00/month (a portion of that is going to be donated to the facility we wind up using and also to purchase T-shirts and such), but I do ask that you commit to staying in for at least the full semester (example August-November). It is really hard to write someone into a script and then have them leave mid-stream.Ă‚Â They also need to commit to being available for practices or to make up that time with homework or an additional practice if they simply have to miss.
I will also have the kids work on their own screen writing and play writing and we will have some interpretive readings and monologues to get them used to doing this in front of other people.
If you have a shy child, they are more than welcome.Ă‚Â I will try to work with them to help bring them out of their shell a bit.Ă‚Â I was shy as a kid too, so I understand what they’re going through.Ă‚Â Sometimes a small part or something they can do with others helps tremendously.
I’m going to limit the group size this first year until I see how everything comes together, so if you want to reserve a spot for your child, email me and I’ll send you a registration form and additional information.
Thanks so much!
Lori
PSĂ‚Â This is taking the place of the summer camp I was considering.Ă‚Â After researching some of the pieces out there, I really don’t feel we could do it justice in such a short period of time.Ă‚Â I may look into doing something next summer after I see how the timing on these classes works out.
Lori Soard
Cutting Edge Writing
Juggling Life & The Freelance Career
One of my friends asked me to go out to coffee this week and I had to tell her no. I simply had too much on my plate that I hadn’t finished. That is when I realized that I haven’t been taking my own advice. I haven’t been making the most of my time. I’ve goofed off this week, a lot. I’ve ignored the early to bed/early to rise wisdom (okay, I ingore that one most of the time anyway). I have walked slower when I’m outside because it’s gorgeous here this week. I’ve found excuses to run errands.
that’s when I realized that by working myself into exhaustion to make that extra buck here and there is not productive. It is so important to schedule in some down time for ourselves. When we do so, we are much more productive and things just seem to get done. Here are some ideas for increasing your productivity.
TAKE TIME TO BE YOU
Sounds simple doesn’t it? But we rarely do this, especially if you are a wife and mother like I am plus a freelancer on top of it. Add to that my duties as a daughter, church member, choir member, and friend and life is hectic to say the least.
What is the one thing in this world (other than writing) that truly speaks to your heart and soul? For me there are several things. I love movies and even enjoy studying how they are put together, filmed, and promoted. I also love singing and music. I enjoy studying new techniques for voice, singing int he choir, or going and listening to concerts. I love museums and leanring anything new. This makes life simple. It is easy to find things that interest me even if it is an old movie on AMC.
TAKE TIME FOR YOUR SPIRIT
We are spiritual creatures. While we can go months, years, or longer without nurturing our spirit, it can take its toll. When I go more than a week without spending time in prayer or reading my Bible, I find myself scattered and unable to focus. It always amazes me how I say, “I don’t have time to spend on soul matters this morning,” but yet, when I make time it seems to increase the amount of time I have. There is really no explanation for this phenomenon but it does work. This also applies to…
EXERCISE
When you spend just twenty minutes a day, you feel better. This gives you more energy and focus and tasks are completed more quickly. It probably has a lot to do with the oxygen making its way through your body when you exercise, including your brain. I have found that on the days I truly don’t have twenty minute to give, that if I’ll take a short ten-minute walk or do my eight-minute Tae Bo workout, I will get more accomplished that day. Whenever I try to skimp on this area or spiritual areas, I get little finished.
FIFTEEN MINUTES
I’m getting ready to teach a workshop on using fifteen minutes to accomplish a lot. It doesn’t sound like much time, but I used fifteen minutes this morning while waiting for a friend to come over and teach my daughters about sewing to do the research on a short article I had due. I had already laid some preliminary steps on the article by using fifteen minutes the other day to email questions to some people for quotes. I then used fifteen minutes after my friend left to work up a very rough draft of the article. I cooked lunch for my girls and one of their friends who was visiting, cleaned up and finished up my article. It only took me twnety minutes to finish the article. First of all, I was focused on my task and second I had done much of the legwork already.
JUGGLING LIFE
When you throw too many objects in the air, you’re sure to drop one from time to time. The best thing you can do is to focus on one task at a time. i actually have a really hard time with this becasue I’m a multi-tasker by nature. The problem with multi-tasking is that you aren’t giving your full attention to any one thing and they all come out mediocre. I find that when I hone in on a single topic I present a much more polished product. I often get more done as well because I don’t have the craziness of 18 different, half-finished projects to worry over. My mind is clearer.
TO DO LISTS
These are a necessity. I commit to at least five things each day that I want to finish. Some days I have to stay up until three in the morning to finish them. I don’t recommend this, by the way. It’s just necessary at this point in my life with young children and trying to home school and work from home. And some days I am finished by two in the afternoon and have all day to either catch up on other things or to play. That’s the nature of a freelance lifestyle.
LEARN TO ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES
If you freelance for any length of time, you’ll learn that there are people who won’t pay you or will pay you extremely late. There are a few things you can do to lighten your stress load. When you have less stress you automatically get more done. Try not to go into debt. Take it from someone who learns the hard way. It is a trap that is hard to dig yourself out of. Try to take a sound financial course such as Dave Ramsey’s FINANCIAL PEACE UNIVERSITY. This course, while we don’t follow all of his advice, has helped our family tremendously. The main area where it has helped is in purchasing cars and not making silly decisions that hurt our family long term.
LIFE
Life is short. If you’ve lived any length of time, you probably realize just how precious and short. Don’t get so bogged down in the day to day that you don’t take time to enjoy your family or a beautiful sunset. Work hard, play hard, and dream hard and never ever give up. There is a way to create balance, it just takes determination, organization and planning.
Here are some sites I recommend to help with organizing various things:
* Flylady.net For help getting your home in order
* Refundcents.com For help getting your grocery spending in order
* DaveRamsey.com For help getting your finances in order
* Crosswalk.com Christian site with Bible studies and ideas for Christian living
* Time4Learning.com Full curriculum website to help homeschoolers get organized.
Time4Learning
Hi, all.Ă‚Â I had to post a short review about the Time4Learning.com website.Ă‚Â We started using this site this past year.Ă‚Â My children HATE math but now they look forward to getting on the Time4Learning website and trying different math games and learning new facts.Ă‚Â I have noticed a marked improvement in their scores on the tests I give them and amazingly enough I too am getting better at math just from helping them with their lessons.
Time4Learning is a comprehensive curriculum (Try the demo lessons) that covers math and language arts.Ă‚Â Most of the grades also have a bonus of social studies and science.Ă‚Â They do have some printable worksheets, so your child does not have to do all their work online.Ă‚Â Although we do not use this as our main curriculum, a parent could easily do so and cover the main facts their child needs to know for grade level.
Because my oldest has struggled with math so much, one thing that really impressed me was that they were willing to set her grade level where I wanted on each subject.Ă‚Â She is ahead in Language Arts and behind in math and Time4Learning was able to accommodate those needs.
Their customer service is stellar. Anytime I’ve had a question or problem, they respond quickly and in a professional, the customer is always right, manner. Visit the parent forum.
My youngest enjoys the playground area at the site, which offers a variety of online educational games. She earns time at the “playground” by completing her lessons. I used to spend half my day arguing with the girls to do their work. Now, when we get into one of those moods where they want to argue, I just say, “Why don’t we do Time4Learning?” They never argue about working on these lessons, so it has helped us accomplish more this year than we normally would. Let’s face it, we want our children to do well but as homeschooling parents, it is sometimes a struggle to fit everything in by the end of the year. That doesn’t mean they aren’t learning valuable life lessons along the way, but at times they really do just need to learn math.
My oldest recently took a test so we could see where we were placement wise on math and she had gone up two grade levels this year. She is nearly caught up now and I’m sure with Time4Learning’s help, she will continue to excel. I can’t recommend this website highly enough. In addition to the benefits of learning, they track your child’s progress so you have a record of his work. I print this off every few months and place it into their files I keep. While we don’t have to keep these records in the state of
It is not a Christian curriculum, but I have yet to find anything in it that disagrees with our family’s beliefs. However, should we come across something, I would bring it to their attention and we would simply skip that section. The parent has the ability to review all lessons before the child completes them as well so that should prevent any surprises.
You can visit Time4Learning at Time4Learning.com to learn more about this wonderful curriculum or to sign up.Ă‚Â Check out their free trial.