My name is Aubree Jolley. I am wife to Don and mother to Aurora, five and precocious, and Aria & Isabelle, identical two year-old twins. We live in Arizona, cramming five people and two businesses into a little three bedroom condo, but at least we have a roof over our heads, as Don says! Don is a self-employed architect who works out of the house (bye-bye bedroom!) and also an ink-line artist who sells his art mainly to the history loving crowd - more specifically, the Civil War loving crowd; most specifically to Civil War reenactors. Don is a Civil War reenactor himself. I would term myself a living historian. I like the clothes, food, and day-to-day activities of history: the part that makes history actually live.
I home school the children, which is a funny thing to say when the oldest isn't even old enough to officially "be in" kindergarten. But we are half-way through a kindergarten curriculum, and the twins are getting their letters and sounds down, which is rather funny because they know their alphabet and letter sounds, but you can't understand most of what they say yet. My home school philosophy is slowly gathering shape. I've been researching and researching and researching and researching different philosophies to form my own from the best of each separate theory. There are so many similarities in the best philosophies that it is becoming fairly easy to see what needs to be done. I follow the best ideas from Thomas Jefferson/Leadership, Classical, Montessori, Suzuki, and Charlotte Mason. The core beliefs of each have a lot of similarities, such as surrounding young children with greatness, through literature, music, and example. Cram their heads with foundational or core knowledge repeatedly until that knowledge is imbedded deeply enough so know conscious thought is required when it is needed. Let them be self-motivating and the masters of their own education so that it becomes a life-long love affair with learning. Use great mentors and be a great mentor yourself. Don't move from one thing to the next until the concept is mastered, no matter how long you need to stay with that concept. I could go on and on about the similarities I've discovered! The biggest thing is to escape the conveyor belt mentality, because it is there even in different branches of home school philosophies. There are fanatics out there who only ascribe to one philosophy with all the rigor of a religious zealot and can't see beyond that to find the good in anything else, thereby creating their own conveyor belt without realizing it. I try to, as Aurora would say (quoting "Bridge to Terabithia"), "keep your mind wide open".
We are LDS and as such are devoted to the cause of Christ. I love being LDS and knowing who I am, where I came from and where I'm going. Since I've been blessed to have this knowledge from birth, I sometimes take it for granted. But I am working feverishly to try and make our house a sacred, special haven where the peace of the Spirit can abide and our children can grow into capable and eager disciples of Christ.
These posts will contain a smattering of this and that, hopefully becoming an all-around portrait of our family. Speaking of family...there are a couple of two year-olds who are smack dab in the middle of mischief stage trying earnestly to destroy the house. I'd better go and put family first....
