Halloween is very important to our three boys. Callahan will be a large, black, scary demon with widespread wings and a hideous red mask. He’ll look awesome.

Jake will be Mario of the Mario Brothers. He’s going to look great. He has the overalls, the red hat with a big white M on it, the mustache, and Mario’s white gloves. He tried to get Zane to be Luigi, Mario’s brother, but Zane insisted on his first choice.

God Knows, how he came up with it, but Zane has decided that he will be Freddy Krueger – the youngest Freddy Krueger I know of. Maybe Freddy as a five year old. Zane even magicked a great Freddy Krueger costume from a family friend, complete with Freddy’s metal-clawed brown leather glove. He’ll be styling. They all will.
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Halloween is important to them for another reason. They like candy. Usually we get enough from trick or treating to last the entire year, from one Halloween to the next. This year we ran out a month ago. Terrible tragedy! We all suffered,

To remedy this misfortune, we are going onto the Boulder mall this year, Ideal Market and the various stores around it, as well as the various King Supers. And, of course, we will cruise the neighborhood for our final candy collection.

We also want to show off their costumes and scare lots of folks.
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A late bulletin, just in – Zane is now considering being a ghost pirate. He does look great in his pirate hat. Maybe he will be both, depending on the venue.

It’s October
The leaves are turning
Falling
Winter is coming

All life hopes
Hopes for a last Indian Summer
Before the cold
Before the dark

When the year dies
When the land dies
When life falters

Only to return
With the spring
Renewed
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In my life
Winter is coming
I know this now

I have lived for many years
And I too am hoping
Hoping for a last Indian Summer,
A last turn of the circle
A last chance to live wild and free
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My body is dying
I know this now
But I will not die

I am part of life
This is true.
But I am more than that
And one day
I will fly free

Home schooling has turned out to be more work than we first thought. Aspen and Jake are at it 3 to 4 hours a day, five days a week. But that’s instead of over 6 hours a day in the public schools.

Jake is styling. He has his own computer. It’s his to use as long as he’s enrolled in COVA, the Colorado Virtual Academy. He also has workbooks, reading books, and various other tools for learning. He even has workbooks for art and for music. He has time set aside for physical education too.

The main thing though, is that every day, for those 3 to 4 hours, Jake is getting individual attention, both from Aspen and from the computer. Jake likes this. He’s very much a one-on-one person. And he really likes computers too.

When I saw all this happening with Jake, I felt sorry for all the kids in the public schools that have to figure out what the teacher is saying (if they are even listening.) They always have to interpret what is being said and what is expected of them. This is so because the teacher is talking to – take your pick – the brightest kids, the slowest kids, or the mystical average kids. Some of the kids just won’t get the message.
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At first, I felt sorry for Callahan still being in the public school system. But after I had thought about it, I became very proud of him for making it all the way through the system to the 5th grade. And not just making it there, but doing it very well. For awhile, he was struggling, especially with reading, but he persevered and has ended up a fine student. He’s very creative too and wants to focus on this side of himself in middle school next year.

Callahan is also very social. He has many friends. He might have had an easier time with learning if he had been home schooled, but he would have missed out on the social side of it. And that is very important to Callahan; it’s who he is. He has a gift. Everyone likes him – and he likes everyone too.

We’re excited! We’re home schooling Jake now. Before the boys were born, I wanted to home school all the kids we would have. But somehow we ended up in the Boulder Valley School System.

But then Jake started having more and more trouble in school. It was never easy for him there. Over time, he became very unhappy.

He’s out now though, and is enrolled in COVA (Colorado Virtual Academy.) He likes it a lot. He did three days worth of schoolwork today in just a few hours. The lessons are on the computer, and COVA has just sent him his own computer to use.

Aspen has done a tremendous amount of work setting all this up. She had to learn a lot of new stuff about her computer and the Internet. It has taken her days and has been very stressful. But she did it. And now, along with the computer’s help, she’s Jake’s teacher.

Jake has been happy these first few days of home schooling, happy for the first time since the public school started eight weeks ago. I wish we hadn’t taken so long to decide on home schooling, but we’re doing it now.

At first, when Jake was having so much trouble at school, I thought that he was bummed by his dawning realization that he has muscular dystrophy and what it’s going to mean for him. Now I’m thinking that he was more bummed than we knew by his school. Since we pulled him out, he has been so much happier and certainly less angry.

However, muscular dystrophy is still a major issue for Jake, He is just beginning to deal with it. But it’s hard for him to get a handle on what’s happening. After all, he’s only eight years old, really more like six years old emotionally because of the muscular dystrophy.

Jake needs help with this. In particular, he needs to be around more boys with MD. He’s so isolated now. We almost sent him to the MD camp last summer. I wish we had. He will go next summer. We’re also going to plug into the MD community in and around Boulder. There are a several MD boys living nearby, demonstrating the various stages of the illness.