Friday Wrap Up

We are on day 9 of school - and it has been a LOOOOONG 9 days. A slow start to a new year. Here goes some rambling.

Keeping 4 kids occupied for hours in school is a challenge - well, that is a really nice word for it. It is downright FRUSTRATING!!!! This new organization system is wonderful, but the work required to keep it up has been a lot. And each kid needs me for different parts of their schoolwork. I really want to give them my undivided attention to help, but that is almost impossible with Nate and Amanda crawling all over me and basically creating chaos. I need to clone myself!!!

Of all the talents God gave me, he forgot the housekeeping one. It so does not come natural to me!!! ARGH! So amidst school, I am desperately trying to keep my house clean. I have been sequestering us in the school room which actually works pretty well – keeps the focus better. But I have to let them out at some point and getting the focus BACK is often difficult.

Hopefully soon we will have a backyard that the kids can play in – anyone with some good suggestions for purchasing a trampoline?? It would be great to say - “go play on the Trampoline for 10 minutes and come back!” I think they would burn off some energy pretty quickly.

I am working really hard to get going on Erica’s Grammar and Writing curriculum – it is taxing my own brain!! Key word outlines, strong verbs, quality adjectives, rough drafts, as well as editing exercises, sentence structure… wow, it is rigorous stuff. She can do it, but really needs me to get her started. Ryan is doing well, reading great and finding that he can read harder books than he thought he could (once we get past the whining…). I purchased a preschool curriculum for Nate, but quickly realized that he is beyond preschool and in pre-K to Kindergarden stuff. He knows his numbers and letters and is completely ready for phonics and reading. But I wasn't prepared for that – I knew he was reading-ready, but I thought he would enjoy the stuff I had for him. Not so much. He had gotten bored very quickly by what I had for him each day and can finish assignments in a few minutes instead of the 10 or 15 I thought he would take. So more balancing…

I use this blog kind of like a scrapbook – recording memories. And who scraps a crappy day?? I think sometimes our life comes across seeming pretty cheery – but things are more often than not completely out of control, crazy, and LOUD around here. I struggle with getting school started on time, coming up with ideas for meals (oh that one can be the death of my attitude some days!!), cleaning up after myself and the kids. And if I start off the morning SOOO tired because I was up till 12 or 1 the night before preparing and cleaning up, then it is REALLY hard to get out of bed in the morning. We are gone Tues, Wed, and Thursday nights every single week, and so the kids don’t get to bed till 9 or 9:30, so they are not early risers, rarely before 7, more like 7:30. I often wake up to the boys playing legos in the bonus room and the girls reading in their beds. I would love to start school at 8:30, but that is HARD!! I lose my temper, the kids are mean and rude to each other, I look forward to bedtime, and Leroy and I hardly see each other some days.

But this is a season, I continue to tell myself that. A season that has its hard spots - but bright spots too. I just put up this in my dining room...

A good reminder of priorities when the days are tough.

I am off to a mini retreat with some leaders from church – 24 hours away. Should be good for some rejuvenation and socialization – since that is what us homeschoolers need...