Winner Wednesday: Danielle Bean

This week’s Winner Wednesday features Danielle Bean, winner of the 2005 Homeschooling Humor Blog Award.

What is your name?
Danielle Bean

What is your blog address?
DanielleBean.com

Tell us a little about your family.
We are a Catholic homeschooling family of 10 — mom, dad, 5 boys and 3 girls. My husband is a teacher and I am an at-home mom and part time writer/editor. We live a rather rural life here in New Hampshire in a home my husband built (and is still building).

Your children have beautiful names, how did you choose them?
Thank you! In the Catholic tradition, we chose saints’ names for our children, but we also sought to make many of them a little bit unusual. Kateri, for example, is named for the Native American Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha and Eamon is a form of Edmund which is rather common in Ireland, but not so much here.

Can you share what a typical day is like for you?
Hmmmm, do I have a “typical” day? Well, I can tell you about my favorite days. My favorite days are when we go nowhere and nothing unusual happens. We spend the day together at home and focused on our work — school work, housework, and play throughout the day. There is a sense of controlled chaos and at the end of it all I feel truly connected. To my kids, to my husband, to my work, and through all of these to God. I would love to tell you that is typical for us, but usually there is something else going on to distract us: stomach viruses, pregnancy woes, baseball practices, grocery store runs, doctors’ appointments, etc. But there are enough good days, enough focused days, to sustain me. And in the end, I see that even on our less than stellar days, we are making forward progress. And that is a very good thing.

What led to your decision to start blogging?
I consider myself a victim of blogging. I started out wanting to maintain some kind of daily online presence as a means of practicing and promoting my writing. Eventually, my audience grew and before I knew it I was being swept up as part of a “blogging phenomenon” that quite frankly I knew very little about. I resisted the blog label for a long while, but I accept it now. My name is Danielle bean and I am a blogger. There. I said it.

Who was the first blog you read online?
I had a really negative first blog experience. The first one I read was a personal blog kept by a woman I vaguely knew through a previous online connection. She sent out a mass email with a link to her blog and I clicked over to see what exactly a “blog” was. It looked like narcissistic nonsense to me. I was grossly disappointed and for a long time that’s what I thought “blogging” was — over the top self-importance and navel-gazing. I suppose that’s why I resisted the label for so long. Now I know that, like any means of human communication, blogging can be done awfully badly, but it can also be done really, really well.

Can we see a photo of your desk where you blog?

I was tempted to clean it up for the photo, but then I decided that would be cheating. Notice the almost-empty glass of Diet Coke and the ever-present binky.

What is your favorite topic to blog about?
Toddlers. They are a never-ending source of material for me. If God ever stops giving me toddlers, He better hurry up and send me some grandkids or I will be forced to retire.

What do you love most about the homeschooling lifestyle?
I love being close to my kids and I love being my own boss. I love that I can wake up on a dreadful, gray day in February and declare it Brownie-Baking Day and it is so. We skip the fractions and learn to measure and mix. We skip history class and make memories of our own. We skip religion lessons and instead practice charity by delivering a plate of fresh brownies to someone who could use cheering up. Some people think of homeschooling as a huge burden, and it sure can feel that way sometimes. But it’s terrifically liberating too.

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