Happy Independence Day!!

 Life was mostly quiet this week.

Reading--We're still reading The Mysterious Benedict Society.

We went to the library, as we do every week.



Play--It's hot, but we don't have access to a swimming pool, and the kids have outgrown wading pools and flooding the sand pit, so they've played a lot of card games and board games.

And they watch videos with their older sisters.


And sometimes they play with their sisters' phones.



Chores--I'm working with Ladybug and Lola on cleaning out their room.  As in packing up their things as if we're moving so that we can really clean it.  We've made very little progress, but every bit counts!

American Rhythm--We're at the point of having weekly meetings to sort costumes, plan dances, and work on administrative details.

Gardening--Baymax and Beowulf worked for 2 hours with our neighbor.  This week they sharpened tools, weeded, and pruned a tree.

CAP--Little Princess is having daily meetings as she prepares to be a Flight Commander in less than 2 weeks!  Her lesson preparation and other work is taking her hours each day.

Neighbors--One family went out of town and hired my crew to take care of their dogs and chickens while they were away.  Every day they've gone over at least twice to be sure the animals are properly cared for.

The 4th!
We headed up to my sister's house for the day.  She lives in a small town about an hour north of us.  She also has a pool!

(I took not one picture of the kids in the pool.)

We attended the town parade.


The kids swam for several hours.

We ate too much food.

We visited with family.

We watched fireworks.



It was nearly midnight when we finally got home, and it was so hard to get up on Saturday morning to do animal care (the kids) and the neighborhood milk run (me).  I'd blithely volunteered for this weekend without realizing just how tired I'd be.  Fortunately, I made the 2 1/2 hour round trip to the farm safely, delivered the milk, and was able to coordinate a nap schedule with Sir Walter Scott. :) 

The kids dropped in and out of sleep all day.

We are a family that needs our margin!

It's so weird to say that we start school, dance, seminary, and childcare (we're going to watch Baby C [I think we'll call him Tadpole here on the blog] 2-3 days a week) next month!!!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Week, Briefly (Summer is not over)

Image
Last August I was not ready for school to start, but I did it anyway because I thought I should. And in September I had mental health crisis of the most serious kind. This August I am not ready for school to start. And I'm honoring that. However, I am ready to document brief moments of the beautiful learning that my kids engage in when I'm not running school. This week Rose Red is in Florida at a surfing camp.  She's with a sweet friend.  I could not be happier for her to have this experience away from home, at the beach, out-of-doors, physically active, and just plain cool. As far as I'm concerned, this is a quarter of a credit of P.E. The rest of us are at home.  My teens are reveling in their last days of bizarre teen sleeping schedules before early morning seminary begins next week. Pixie has been working on memorizing the dances she's choreographed for our dance team.  She'll be teaching the 10-12 year olds and dancing with the 12-17 year o...
Read more

We're Doing Our Best

Image
 I'm not sure why I'm so full of self-doubt and complaints as I am right now, but it's a reality. I'm healthy again.   Just left with the sniffles and occasional congestion that will probably follow me until spring. But no fatigue or weepiness anymore. I got the Christmas books ready. I suppose we need a prettier basket, but I'm quite pleased with how many fabric gift bags I've sewed this month . . . and how pretty they are. (That baby gift bag on the left is how Lola chose to package one of her gifts to a sibling. 😆 ) On Monday afternoon, I sat with the kids and read all of the books we'd missed from the first to the 9th.  It was a lovely time with so many expressions of joy and remembrance as favorite books appeared.  With the fire burning and the Christmas tree lights glowing, it felt like Christmas! Their assignment that day was to choose one illustration from one of the books--each child had his/her choice--and reproduce it as well as possible.  I d...
Read more

We Got a New-to-Us Minivan (edited)

 I've been writing and writing about car troubles this year, and we were finally done in by our teen car.  The current set of necessary repairs were to cost more than we paid for the car originally, so we decided to donate it to a veteran's organization, and I spent the week shuttling people to and from work. I don't mind serving them at all, but the time it took felt like it took over my mind, my body, and my schedule.  I started to feel sick and exhausted, and I struggled to get normal things done.  I eventually said to Sir Walter Scott, "The girls are free on Friday to babysit.  We are going car shopping, and we are not coming home without a car!" We are 2 years and 2 months away from fitting "the whole family" at home into an 8-passenger minivan, so we decided to go that route, and then when we don't need our full-size van we'll trade that for the pick-up truck Sir Walter Scott craves. I remember choosing to buy a 15-passenger van (despite ou...
Read more