A good start.

We finally got started on our spring cleaning today.   Technically, it is still spring for about, what 21 more days but boy is it hot.  We have central air, but when everyone gets up and starts moving the furniture and cleaning behind it, it gets warm.  We're trying to do it with the book "The House That Cleans Itself."  in the hopes that we can get a better system with everything having a place so that when we clean, it will take less time and effort.  I'm glad we got started today. 

The House That Cleans Itself: Creative Solutions for a Clean and Orderly House in Less Time Than You Can Imagine

It begins.

The summer work and then fun.  We're going to try and mix them up a bit, but we have quite a bit of work we need to do and that really does need to come first.  We've got to get the house repaired and refinanced.  That is the absolute #1 priority.  We also want to get it decluttered, spring cleaned and get the laundry shelves out of the living room (yes, they are still there!)    After we get that done, then we will feel like we can be hospitable again and consider the possibility that the kids could have some friends over.  They've been asking and I've been saying no for several months now.  :-(   

This past weekend, though was relaxation time for the kids. The only instruction that went on was the continued instruction on driving that I'm giving the oldest.  I do think I might have a few more gray hairs than I did before this started, but he's getting there.  We practiced parallel parking yesterday.  We found a deserted parking lot.  He'd park the Suburban (no easy feat!) and then one of his siblings would get out and walk the parking lines so he could see how close he was to getting in them.  He's not ready to try between actual parked cars yet.  I've been working on preparing his transcript from my high school records and I think I've finally got everything on there.  I need to have a brief consult with Dad about it before I type up the final one. 

Did you hear it?

My daughter said when she finished school on Friday she went outside and yelled "Yay summer!"  We really only have 1 neighbor who could've potentially heard her and I don't know if they did, but it's the thought that counts, not who hears it, right?  Anyway, we're officially on summer break now.  My daughter and I went on our first of the summer adventures yesterday, but it didn't really work out all that well.  We wanted to go to a U-PIck strawberry patch but we didn't want to go to the one we usually go to because it's almost an hour away, so I found a closer one on the internet and we went to it.  Unfortunately, it was closed, so we ended up going to a couple of yard sales and to then to Target. It didn't turn out to be exactly like we planned, but it was pretty fun anyway.  

Today, we were talking about various things and my youngest asked me, if I could change the geography of the world,what would I do.  I said I'd make myself an island to live on.  He said he'd exchange the names of Iceland and Greenland because they seem to be backwards.  :-)

The last day of school.

I can't believe it's here and I can't believe we finished before the end of May, but it is and we did.  Yay, now we can get to our spring summer cleaning and then get started on our summer adventure list.  

Next to the last day of school.

I can't believe we're actually getting done in May.  This is the first time ever.  The kids are so independent with their school work now that they just do it and my (occasionally crazy) schedule doesn't really matter.  They just do school without me.  Now my thoughts are turning towards getting the pool up, gardening, spring (summer) cleaning, vacations and things like that.  I've also given a bit of thought to what we'll be doing for school next year.  We'll still use Life of Fred and Teaching Textbooks for math as they are the best we've found so far, I think. I'm not the math teacher here, so I'm not sure of that.  I am going to be getting some of Dianne Craft's materials for my youngest, to try and teach the boy how to spell.  It seems odd to me that he can read so well but spell so badly.   I may just stick with what I have with him, though, since I already own Sequential Spelling.  I might even do a combination of the two.  With the girl, I haven't decided anything.  She's a good student.  I may let her do some of the choosing.  There are just so many good things out there to choose from! 

Good times.

We had our 4H class yesterday.  All of the other moms in the group have been volunteering to teach lessons, which is great.  This way we get the benefit of everyone's expertise.  Yesterday, our teacher was one of the women in our homeschool group who is really a great artist.  She did an art lesson and every kid in the group produced a work of art to be proud of.  They were all good.  This dragon is by my youngest son and the horse is by my daughter.  I couldn't find my oldest son's drawing this morning when I was searching the house to take pictures of the art.  I'll try and share his later. 

We had a good time with the homeschool group and planned a bunch of things to do this summer.  I'm so glad I found this group.

Last week of school.

It's the last week of school.  This is the earliest we have ever finished, if something doesn't happen that will prevent us from finishing this week.  It's allergy season here in Ohio River valley but all the rain doesn't seem to have dampened down the pollen.  We are all a little bit sneezy but not too bad.  I personally am not as bad as usual in May.  Usually, the tree pollen just about kills me.  I typed that and then sneezed 5 times.  Oh well.  Maybe it is. 

Anyway, this is the last week of school.  We've got a 4H meeting this week and otherwise, we'll be finishing up as many things as we can.  The kids are really going to enjoy not having to do their school work.  It will take my husband and I a few weeks to stop reflexively saying "Have you done your school work?" or "You'd better get started".    Ahh.  Summer.

Sunday.

We always have this dilemma on Sunday afternoons - what to do?  Since my days off are Sunday and Thursday, Sunday is the only day of the week my husband and I have off together.  Consequently, we have about a million things we need to do but we also need to have family time on these days.  Because of his work schedule, we can't really have family meals together on the other days of the week.  We usually end up having a "what do you want to do" kind of conference and sometimes we waste half of our day trying to decide what to do.  :-(

Blah.


Update:   We decided to all do something useful around the house and got quite a few things done and then we went out to eat and then came home and watched Mythbusters together.  It turned out to be fun.  I like the recommendation that we write down some ideas for when we can't think what to do.  That will help for next time.