JELLY JUGGLING (reasons to be absent, part 1)

I haven't blogged as much in 2013 as I had hoped to.

I had grand plans.

I wanted to write about our first steps into taking exams. I wanted to write about how we have moved from a very autonomous, eclectic style of home education to a far more structured way of life. I wanted to document it all, day by day, week by week.

But it hasn't happened. And the longer I left it, the harder it was to come back to blogging.

I've noticed that I'm not the only one to have had a quiet blogging year. Other regular blogs that I used to visit have been strangely silent. My guess is that many of those families have children about the same age as mine and, like us, have found that life gets in the way of documenting life.

If you thought life was busy home edding small children, just try starting on the whole GCSE/IGCSE route. It eats up your time, invades holidays, nags at the back of your mind whenever you think you might have a moment's peace and, yes, becomes all consuming.

It's rather like taking exams yourself, except that when it's you taking the exam, you know how hard you've been studying and how much (or little) you know. Dragging someone else through the exam process, when all you can do is spoonfeed information in one end and catch it as it falls out the other end is  somewhat like juggling jelly. All day. Every day.

I have spent the whole year thinking about jelly, wondering how I can improve jelly, Googling jelly-sites for improved jelly recipes, investing in jelly-is-us resources until there is no more room in the jelly cupboard.I have not wanted to post photos of jelly, or report our progress in jelly juggling all year.  My life has been consumed by jelly. I am totally jellied out.

But things will improve. They are improving. I will not ever, I think, enjoy jelly. But perhaps I will become accustomed to it. I may even grow to be a better jelly juggler.