and a (not so )quick catch up

and a (not so )quick catch up
How neglectful I have already been of my new blog! We have tweaked our daily schedule around here to make room for some regular afternoons socialization with our homeschooling friends, and also to respect mom's natural biorhythm of being a morning person who is pretty much out of steam by the time lunchtime comes. Most homeschooling moms, I know, do all their school early in the day and do chores in the late afternoon/evening hours. We have been doing that basic plan too. However, it takes way more energy for me to clean than to sit down with a history read aloud, and the cleaning is just not happening far too often. So, we are trying something new. Maria is doing her independent work in the morning while I work on some daily chores, including getting meals for the day pre-prepped as much as possible. Then, after lunch we will either go to a homeschool group activity or I will catch up on some far behind purging and organization around here. And in the late afternoon, I will work on school work with Maria. I'm hoping that by our Easter break the house will be in shape again. Then we can spend some of those after-lunch afternoons working on rabbit trails together. So far it is working nicely. I'm not sure what we will end up doing next year though....then I'll have to get in school with Kain somewhere. It always amazes me that every school year I think, "Well, that's it. We can't possibly work anything else into the schedule." But we do. It always works out, and there always seems to be just enough time to do what we need to do.

So, briefly....

Tuesday- this is a blur to me already. I know we did a full day of school. I think I worked on our new schedule plan this day quite a bit.

Wednesday- Also a full day of school. Had to pick up Kain and take him to his first therapy appointment. It seemed to go well. I talked to the therapist for a bit first, and then she took Kain back. When she came back out with him she told me that she needed to speak to me first again next week. She had this really meaningful look on her face, like he told her something she wants to talk to me about already...kind of freaked me out a little! Kain likes going a lot. Having someone's attention solely focused on him for a hour....he loves that! He doesn't get a lot of that here, I know...but he's in school all day, and spends half the weekend with his Dad!

Thursday- Fun day, and also recent enough that I can recall a bit more detail. This was our first day on our new schedule. I sent Maria off to do some work on her own,,,reading a catechism chapter on the Eucharist, a worksheet from Let's Learn Music, a narration to copy and illustrate from Bible History, a saxon DIVE lesson on the computer, and some science reading to do that I found out the following day she "forgot". In the afternoon we went roller skating with one of our homeschool groups. John was off of work and came with us. It was Jack's second time roller skating, and he had a ball! We made this a half day of school, because I needed to get dinner on early and everything organized for John so that I could leave in the evening to go to Mom's Share with my Catholic homeschool group. First time out in weeks and weeks. It was very nice to get away for a bit!

Friday- Maria and I both had dental appointments in the morning, so I made this another half day of school. After our appointments I took her to Target to spend a gift card she received for Christmas. $30 is a lot to a 10 year old...until she is in the toy section and has to actually narrow her choices to $30. Jack had one as well and I had fun spending that on him. Maria bought a little electronic keyboard and a "Littlest Pet Shop" addition to the menagerie that lives upstairs. Jack got a colorful set of wooden stacking/nesting blocks. I like Target's toy section. They have far less in the way of trashy toys than Walmart does. Everything at Walmart seems to be battery operated and/or a knock off from some movie or tv show. At home, John and I worked out the details of our new budget (yesterday was the first payday on the new budget). I also gave up on our dishwasher and threw a wrench in the new budget by telling John we were going to have to call a repair guy on Monday. Our dishwasher is three years old and a piece of junk. This is the third repair, and of course now the warrantly is expired. The dishes have been coming out looking questionably clean for a bit now,,,,(one of those is something really wrong or is this just my imagination? things) but this morning's load was not clean in the slightest. I ran an empty load and realized that the spinning/spraying water thingies are now not spinning at all. I spent the rest of the afternoon washing dishes by hand and using the dishwasher as a drying rack. After we picked up Kain from school, Maria and I went upstairs to wrap up her work. We discussed the catechism chapter she had read yesterday, went over her independent work from yesterday, gave a diagnostic spelling test from WRTR (list K this year, woohoo!), drilled catechism for 5 minutes. I gave a fact drill sheet from her math lesson and pulled teeth to get her to work the new lesson problems with me. It was painful and tearful and took forever. By the time she was done with math our time was up. After we got Jack in bed (Kain was spending the night with his Dad), we quickly worked on her current poem (CHristmas Everywhere ...told you we were behind, haha!), recited the Our Father in Latin, and filled in a blank map with the southern states and capitals. So, in spite of the math delays, we managed to get everything done except for drawing.

And today- Saturday- grocery shopping and a library trip. I know, Walmart on a Saturday, right? Not too bad...Kain is not here, so that makes shopping a lot easier! Need to move the childproof latch on the pantry higher up...Jack smashed a giant jar of applesauce on the kitchen floor this morning (sigh).

On the menu for later today- Quesadillas for lunch, and Saturday evening is pizza and popcorn night (homemade,,,very, very easy, much cheaper and quicker than waiting on delivery on a Saturday night!).