A Week, Briefly (10/30/17)

On Saturday I folded laundry for a looooong time.  Pixie took my picture with most of it--we'd already put a few piles away.  That's not really a school thing, but it is a time-management thing, and time-management is part of homeschooling.  Truly, having all of the folding be my job is NOT working!

We went to "The Kitten Farm" on Sunday for Family Night.  Following are a gajillion pictures because I feel happy when I look at them and because I didn't feel like being selective.

Last week's tractor pic may have been frame-worthy, but this shot is one in a million!                 Photo credit:  Sir Walter Scott

It was honestly hard NOT to bring a kitten (or three) home.

We tried to get a card-worthy photo of all of the kids . . . this one won't make it into anyone's mailbox, but it makes me laugh at how hard it is to get 12 kids to cooperate for pictures.

Monday
It was an ugly day.

I don't want to talk about it.

We did do lots of school, and that part was good:
   Morning Meeting
   Academy
   Symposium
   One-on-one time
   Teen Mentor Meetings
   Individual Studies.

We also had warm cinnamon apple cider and homemade oatmeal cookies (gf/df/sf) for snack.

That was good.

And Sir Walter Scott had a rousing wrestling-with-the-kids-on-the-living-room-floor session. Then he read stories to them to settle them down.  Then I kicked them all out of the house to play outside before dinner.

Building fairy houses

That was good, too.

But the hard stuff was big, and it is too hard to talk about now.

Tuesday
Morning temps below freezing . . . it's early for that in our neck of the woods.  I need some more hot breakfast ideas now that we're gluten-free, and we've found out how much we all HATE quinoa for breakfast (believe me, we've tried!).  We love oats and rice and eggs and baked treats . . . I guess that's enough.

Perhaps I'm just missing cream of wheat and cracked wheat lately.

I had to be out the door before breakfast for 2 fillings and a wisdom tooth extraction.

I felt yucky all the rest of the day, but I did manage preparing and serving all of the rest of the family meals, doing 2 sets of dishes, Academy, one-on-one school time, evening reading (to the non-teens), and a trip to the library.

But I blew off piano lessons.

The teens went trick-or-treating with friends, but the rest of the kids and I had a quiet evening at home.

Here are Holy Cow! and Oh, Dear! together at the service project last week.

Wednesday

First thing in the morning, I came home from driving with teens to seminary to find these two like this.

The Elementary 8 and I bundled up for the 40-ish-and-misting weather, and we hiked around a lake.  We found deer tracks and looked at the changing colors and textures around us.  We explored places that are now empty but this summer were full of wildflowers and grasses.

This was a crazy sort of fungus--dry but spongy and soft.

Such lovely berries

Climbing back up the dam to the lake after running down for the sheer joy of it.  In the summer this hill is 3 or 4 feet tall in wildflowers and grasses.

Exploring seeds instead of flowers . . .

Beowulf had a tantrum, and Brother broke down a few times, and our thermoses were so effective that our "warm" cider was still boiling hot, so we couldn't drink it until we got home and poured it into mugs to cool.

Most of us have burned tongues.

But in spite of the challenges, it was a good morning.  We didn't do any hard investigating or learning, but we looked and experienced, and that is enough right now.

At home we had Academy, one-on-one school time, and Symposium.

Still no piano lessons.

Pixie was so tired that not even Lola jumping on her back got her up.  She slept right through lunch.

Rose Red kindly dropped Pixie off at dance and picked her back up again because it was game 7 of the World Series, and Sir Walter Scott never ever asks to stay home and watch sports, and he planned to pick Pixie up, and he would have without complaining, but watching this game was something he clearly wanted to do . . . so thanks, Rose Red. :)

During a commercial break Sir Walter Scott came to visit with me, "How was your day?" he asked.

"I was mean," I answered.  "I'm tired of being mean.  I need to stop.  I just feel so gross and wiped out that mean happens before nice can."

He kissed me and sat quietly because there was nothing to say, and he understood.

Thursday
Dance day . . . all day.  We costumed, rehearsed . . .

and then Nature Angel fell in the parking lot and broke both the radius and ulna in her left arm--right across the middle.

We spent the evening in urgent care.

Friday
The teens and I had a laundry folding party.

Nature Angel started feeling better, and we got a casting appointment for early next week.

Then Pixie and I cut and sewed costumes for our show next week.

Even so, we managed Morning Meeting, Academy, and Symposium.

I spent an hour on the couch snuggled between half a dozen small people.  Nature Angel dozed in the overstuffed chair with her arm elevated on a couple of pillows, and Beowulf was still cleaning up his toys from quiet time because he refused to do it earlier.

But half a dozen kids and I had a lovely time together.

Pixie ran off to a babysitting job.
Rose Red is desperately trying to finish up enough schoolwork to qualify for going out tonight with her new love.
Super Star wrote well over 5,000 words this first week of NaNoWriMo
Belle took Theo on a 2 mile run, and then she lost herself in a pile of library books.

Tonight our little babysittee gets to spend the night and all day tomorrow with us because her mommy will be at a women's church retreat; I do hope it refreshes her tired spirit.  This young mama has had it rough for the past year, and she needs some refueling.

I'll be taking advantage of Old Navy's Friends and Family coupon sale tomorrow to play the Santa game for my teens.

We have another week of gray, chilly weather ahead.  I hope to find sunshine in my soul.


(linking here)