Raiz Roots Homeschool Month 3: Finding Gratitude During Difficult Times

Making Thanksgiving Turkeys During A Playdate!

November was a busy month for Raiz Roots Homeschool and the Fuentes Family, from discussions about the election and what the results will mean for our family and country, to nature excursions, gardening, prospective homestead tours, planning for Thanksgiving dinner, and hosting our first Writing Workshop. Arturo and I both have a vision of what we want the future to look like for our family, homestead, and homeschool but November came in like a wrecking ball and threatened to take it all away.

We put our family home on the market in October in hopes of moving to the homestead of our dreams, but as we got closer to the election interest rates began to rise and fewer and fewer buyers came out to look at our home. We completely understood though, because the rate increase made it seem impossible for us to afford the move ourselves. I began to feel defeated. I felt like everything was trying to keep our family from achieving our dreams.

It is easy to let grief reign when things don’t go as you imagined. It is essential to recognize this, but your success and happiness lie in finding inklings of gratitude to get you through the rough patches. November taught our family this lesson and we began having daily conversations about what we had to be grateful for. A recurring theme of our nightly discussions on gratitude was family. We soon realized that the only thing that matters is that we are together and have a roof over our heads. Times are hard now, but we will continue working towards our dreams and one day we’ll get to where we want to be.

So, we shifted our perspective and began appreciating the little things, like taking family walks and observing the many native plants in our community. Before starting our nature study, we hadn’t even realized that every plant on the trails and in the parks of our neighborhood is a native California plant. It made us appreciate the thought that went into curating the spaces. We even collected White Sage seeds to grow on our future homestead.

We spent a lot of time in our own garden furthering our understanding of native California plants, cleaning out our summer/fall garden in preparation for the spring. We found a hidden gem in our town, Vail Ranch Headquarters, where our family has been able to fill our tummies and our farm animal desires until we can get more animals of our own.

As I end this blog post, I want to encourage you all to take a moment to think about gratitude. I know that Thanksgiving is over, but finding bits of peace to get you through difficult times is a skill that should be practiced year-round.

We are looking forward to finishing our Grassland study soon, and with the winter holidays approaching we have so much to do. So stay tuned for a recap of our Grassland unit and all the fun recipes and crafts that we have planned for December.

Happy Holidays!

Zamequa Lopez- Fuentes 

& Raiz Roots Homeschool