Day in the Life?

 Looking back on just this single day in Homeschool History, things look pretty rosy.

I was up a little before 8, mostly because David had an early meeting. Got my shower out of the way, and even found time for a walk to the park, during which I caught up on Dr. McGee's lesson in 2nd Corinthians that I mostly slept through last night. Lucy was up the same time as we were: she remains the sole early riser among the younger set. Having recently moved into her very own room, she can now do this without bothering her sister - although when it comes to mornings, Grace can apparently sleep through a hurricane! Regardless, Lucy was motivated to start on her independent work right away, and was done with everything (math, handwriting, daily grams, and vocab) before group work.

I dragged the other kids out of bed about 9:15 just before my walk, and managed to get us all sat down for Group Work by about 10:15. We reviewed our memory work (John 1:16-18, the last part of the intro we'll memorize before going on to a new passage) and read the TTB World Prayer Team e-mail together. Then we finished the history lesson we began yesterday (from Notgrass's Adam to Us) on The Great War. We usually finish lessons in one day, but David uncharacteristically hijacked me yesterday - the two world wars being favorite subjects of his. We were done by 11:30, and David had time to put together lunch for the three of us who were hungry at that early hour. 

After lunch Lucy and I went to finish up the HTV tasks we'd started over the past few days: she had a complicated Kirby (video game, not vacuum) iron-on for her new T-shirt that was part of her birthday present, and I had a TRFC logo to iron on to a sweatshirt for a gentleman from church who's favorite Twin Rocks shirt was lost to the EMTs who responded when he fell and hit his head about 10 days ago. 

Somewhere in this time Grace asked me if we could go on a "long walk," which means a ~4 mile round trip on a footpath across a nice wetlands area terminating near a convenience store. That takes about 90 minutes at the pace we maintain, and with dance at 3:15 it was impractical for an afternoon journey. I compromised on a much shorter walk to the grocery store for milk. But before we could leave, Lucy had extracted the marbling paint kit she got with her birthday money (ages 14 and up) from the craft room and had half the pieces out. She is very good at presenting me with a fait accompli when she knows permission may not be forthcoming. Anyway, I realized that was not a project to do without supervision, and furthermore one that needed to be done outside. And I had promised her to help her with it "soon," my "soon" being considerably more flexible than hers! Grace was pretty grumpy at the derailing of her walk plans, but when she was invited to participate in the craft she was less so. The results were mixed, but on the whole promising. We did not use up all the materials by any stretch, so Lucy's $10 seems to have been well spent.  

Thankfully there was just time enough to do the grocery walk without rushing afterwards. This turned out even better than hoped, because on the way we noticed a neighbor on the next block with a whole outdoor patio set on the driveway with a "Free" sign. It was weathered but intact. Our own outdoor table broke under highly mysterious circumstances roughly 3 years ago. (The kids still remember this because of all the fascinating back-stories they created for how the glass table-top ended up in approx. 10 million individual pieces, which proved to be about as difficult as you would expect to sweep up from a bark dust-covered area.) I was eager to have a replacement, and even more so if it did not require a trip to the store, outlay of cash, and assembly. So James and I hurried over in the van once Grace and I returned from the store and picked it all up. 

By then it was time to head to dance. That's about an hour's round trip, especially if I stop to manage a little communication or pick a podcast. Once home around 4:45 I grabbed James so he and I could check out a house Dad is looking at. It was really too far away (12+ minutes at rush hour) and on too busy of a street - not to mention it already had an offer. I really, really wish he'd jumped on one of the mobile homes that were available last month! 

Back home for real, James prepared the traditional Tuesday ravioli, meaning I had time to mess with other projects too numerous and minor to mention, as well as throw together this day-in-the-life post. 

Maybe later in the week I'll expand it to a "week-in-the-life" post, because it's been one wild ride around here in the last 5-6 days!