13 year old baseball boy.

Ashton promised to let me try and get some cool baseball pictures for his birthday.  That was in November and it is now April, but better late than never, right?  I'm trying to figure out lighting, shooting in manual and to remember to adjust settings.  It's a lot!  I was so excited about the manual pictures I took until I got home and saw them on the big screen...all grainy!  I don't know what I did.  But thankfully I had a bunch I had shot on auto mode that got it right for me.  Happy birthday, quite late, to Ashton.  Thanks for putting up with your mama and modeling for her.

I am beyond frustrated with homeschooling right now.  It is SO boring.  Of course, some subjects are not a barrel of laughs and are going to be somewhat dry no matter what, but not everything should be!  I'm hardly even reading aloud.  So much time is caught up in teaching everyone math and English, giving spelling tests and grading workbooks that I don't even feel like I'm connecting or getting any quality time with the kids!  Don't even get me started on the lack of "love of learning" around here.

A lot of my online time has been me looking into Charlotte Mason approaches.  This is something I had done in the past, but had a hard time keeping up with.  It was not structured enough and while I had started out strong, I would piddle out after a few days or a week.

I have to fix something.  No one (not even mom) is enjoying school.  We used to learn all sorts of interesting things together and enjoy school time.  Now it's just like being in public school again.  I find myself pushing through things just to "check the box" and moving from one dry thing to the next.  It's so discouraging.  I wouldn't like homeschooling either if that was what was going on

How do I fix this?  I don't know what to give up.  I don't know how to change our entire day around.