Last Week of Summer Break

It wasn't the week I planned, but we're still going forward with school on Monday.

Why?

Because there isn't a better/easier/more calm time for school to start, so we might as well work our way into the routine.

I trimmed 5 inches off Nature Angel's hair--this picture is before the trim.
In the background, you can see the stack of homemade pretzels that Little Princess made for us all.

I worked on choreography for American Rhythm for a lot of the day.
This picture is one I took to show Baymax what I wanted the camera to look like when he filmed my feet so that I could see how the dance I was working on looked like.

It was one of those weird cool days in August, and our kids spent the afternoon at the neighbors' house. Gotta love Catholic and Mormon families hanging out together!
Apparently we had enough kids with just our two families for two actual teams for each of the various games they played. :)

3 hours of active play with friends made both mamas so happy!

This is parsley from my garden. I've hung it in my kitchen to dry, now, and it's just about ready to be crushed and stored in the cupboard for the soups waiting to be made this fall.
(There's lots more than appears in this picture.)

Our new chore rotation went into effect on Friday of last week, so this was our first full week with all of the new chore assignments.

Brother got a lesson in making pasta with meaty marinara sauce because one of his jobs this next year is making dinner on Monday nights.

And Mister Man made Red Beans and Rice with Kielbasa on Tuesday night because that's one of his new chores.

Ladybug is making our morning oatmeal each day.

It's weird to run myself out of my own kitchen. I find I'm kind of nervous about it all, but it's good for them!

The kids all said goodbye to Nature Angel when they went to bed on Monday night because she was already on a plane by the time they got up the next day.

She was nervous, so I was nervous about her nervousness!

But everything went great, and she met a fellow-traveler right away!

First stamp in her passport!

View from her room!

Having been up at 3:30 am, I was slow and foggy all day.

But the washer repair finally happened, so it was a great day after all!

The teens and Baymax had activities that night (our youth night switched from Thursdays to Tuesdays). I helped run Baymax's activity which was painting rocks as thank you gifts to their church teachers.

The teens did swing dancing and then a farewell to the graduating seniors who are officially out of the youth program once school starts.

We had a play date scheduled for Wednesday.

The mom of the family we met wanted to pick my brain about homeschooling littles and bigs together--about balancing everyone's needs.

I'm finding that I very much enjoy being an experienced homeschooler who can mentor newer moms on their homeschool journeys.

My first piece of advice: Give yourself a lot of grace.

She took about a page of notes as I talked her ear off, and she said it was helpful.

I hope so!

Our kids were slow to join forces and be friendly, but when they did, it was over a rowdy game of Fainting Goats . . . played in the heavy rain that surprised us all.

We went to the library later in the day, then Lola and Beowulf did their gardening apprenticeship in the afternoon.

I did more choreography.

Beowulf and Brother thought that since they'd watched Sir Walter Scott do some plumbing repairs in the past that they were now qualified to do repairs on their own. They took the p-trap off the bathroom sink to help with a clog (kid washed muddy shells in the sink instead of outside) . . . but then they couldn't get it back on correctly.

Turns out they'd done some damage somewhere along the line, and Sir Walter Scott had to do more repair work than anticipated.

That's not a side effect of including kids in household repairs that I anticipated!

Seemingly out of nowhere, Ladybug had another seizure. This one looked like a real seizure--like the first one she had in the car instead of the pseudo-seizures she'd had at the hospital. But I avoided medical care (as advised by the hospital psychiatrist), and she recovered more quickly than she did at the hospital.

I also found out that night that she'd been throwing up all day--not acting sick, still eating regular meals, just jumping up to vomit every little while all day. When I finally saw it, she was surprised that I'd be worried about her.

Then she hallucinated that night and ran to the bathroom every 20-30 minutes to pee.

It was a very weird night.

But then Pixie pointed out that some of her behaviors were consistent with a UTI; I felt like a lightbulb turned on in my brain.

One trip to urgent care later, we came home with antibiotics.

I've already written too long about this, but I'm putting several medical details together in my brain (and the journal I've started keeping for her). I've got some good questions to ask our new PCP when we finally get to see her in September.

While all of this was going on, Little Princess was on a CAP road trip to Sedalia, MO so her wing could march in a parade!