This Rugged JoyFull Home

The first of October and my daughter gets done with her 3rd quarter homeschool portfolio. I know, it's just the third quarter of our school year, three down and one more to go but somehow we always find a reason to celebrate different occasions in our homeschooling. For example, someone gets a perfect score on a quiz one morning, we run to the nearest grocery to get a gallon of ice cream to celebrate that little victory, sometimes never going back to school again later that day, we get carried away.  Someone loses his last and overdue milk tooth, then we pop open Pringles and sodas in revelry of this significant loss, we find ourselves lounging in the family room for too long and later get amused that it's already dinner-time. Still, someone learns how to read phonetically and we get elated that everyone's reading in the family, we find ourselves staying up late at night watching impromptu movie marathon. Maybe we're that kind of homeschoolers; serious learners but fu...

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that one day I will be driving through the congested streets of Metro Manila and to actually DO LIFE here on a semi-permanent basis. I mean, I love travelling to Manila, but it is the traffic situation here that I dreaded ever since. I'd tell my kids, "pinch me, pinch me, this is just a dream..." as we sat in traffic most of the time when we had to run errands, pick up our groceries, or go to church, or go to their piano lessons at school. A fruitful day would come by so fast and it was interesting to note that my 14 year-old girl and my nine year-old boy have adjusted well to our new environment in no time. We. are. home. I wish I could say that our homeschooling journey has always been predictable and turned out the way we planned it to be. But I would be lying. Take this incident that happened to us last week on our way back to Manila from a short visit to our beloved Batangas City. Driving from Manila to Batangas via C5 road -...

This, I was asked by my boy one Sunday morning while we were enjoying our breakfast made from left-over food I salvaged from the fridge; yesterday's rice, diced spam, crunchy garlic and ground pork I patiently browned in salted butter and soy sauce and then almost always instinctively, I topped with sunny side eggs. Maybe I can call this our family's yang chow fried rice to be formal about it. I also made sure I prepared a mug of hot Milo beside each  plate. Anyway..."do boys always have to be older than girls, Mom?" I tried my best to not over-react as I cleared my throat and mentally composed a wise response to my son's question. Out of the blue, one random question, but I knew that this question was important to him. Deep inside I felt glad that my boy was able to voice out a question that may cause embarrassment for a  9 year-old like him to ask for fear of being laughed at or judged by a family member. I fully understood that he asked it from the contex...

What a wonderful experience it has been! (  This photo courtesy of TMA Homeschool ) So these posters were attached to the email I received from our homeschool provider two weeks ago. I felt my heart leaped as I read all the statistics and how the homeschooling movement had grown in the Philippines over the last half a decade. Then The Hunny and I decided right there and then we won't miss this TMA Family Convention for the world! It happens on a Thursday and our car is on number coding and aaah, we're homeschoolers, we'll figure out how to get there without our car. And so we ended up borrowing my sister's car to get to our destination first thing Manila-morning. ( This photo courtesy of TMA Homeschool ) Here's a screen shot of a txt message I received from our academic consultant from TMA two days before the event. Now my heart melted as I felt the butterflies flew like crazy in my stomach, ugh. What to say? How to say? Okay, we're homeschoole...

August 8, 2008 AVAILABILITY / AVAILABLE Definitions : -Qualified and willing to be of service or assistance -Capable of bringing about a beneficial result or effect (www.thefreedictionary.com) “AVAILABILITY,” a character trait awarded to Eunice Bethany when she was on K-5 during their Moving-up Ceremony last July 28, 2007 at The Master’s Academy Homeschool, Christ’s Commission Fellowship 3rd Flr. Auditorium, St. Francis Square Bldg, Mandaluyong City. Text was written and read by Mom. At TMA Homeschool we believe in honoring the parents as we received recognition on the same day for “surviving” the entire school year “unscathed.” We also believe in honoring our children for putting up with us, parents. Kidding aside, here’s a verse from the Bible that continues to inspire us to school at home where our classroom is the world: “And He (Jesus) went down with them (His parents) and came to Nazareth , and He continued in subjection to them; and...