I need a rest from my vacation!

When we got back from our camping trip, I was exhausted. We really got off easy. The only sunburns were my husband and I on our noses. The hundreds of mosquito bites seem to have healed. (I’ve never seen a mosquito with a half-dollar size wingspan before. WOW!)  No one came home any worse for the unsanitary lack-of-proper-toilet conditions.

• All the laundry is caught up.
• One of the tents still needs to be unpacked and repacked as it is in three parts instead of the original one bag.
• I need to clean out one of the coolers still and get it back to its owner.
• The formerly clean van needs to be re-cleaned and vacuumed to rid it of trip debris.
• I need to put away the bags we used for clothing as they are sitting empty on my floor right now.

I need a vacation since coming home on our trip!

Anyway, we’ve since restarted summer school, gotten to the pool (which is thankfully still open), pulled just about everything out of the garden because the plants were either done producing or the produce was being eaten by insects/worms/etc., and had a very productive local homeschool group planning meeting for the first half of the upcoming school year.

Back to the grind! Other upcoming posts may include something on how my planning is going for this school year, how this school year will be different from my others so far, and wrapping up summer school with how our new curriculum choices have fared with my kids.

Busy! Busy!

I am one of those introverts who would rather stay home with a good book than interact with people. If there is one thing on my calendar all week, I stress out thinking I’ll forget it or that it breaks up my regular schedule. However, I have been out of my comfort zone for the last few weeks in this regard.

One contributor was some horrible back pain I started having almost two months ago. It was so bad that I couldn’t sit on the floor and change diapers. I became a patient of a chiropractor and am now in much better shape (literally and figuratively). However, it did mean trips to another nearby town three times a week for the past month.

Another contributor is the kid’s summer activities. We have vacation bible school (which the kids are enjoying immensely), going to the pool, the reading club at the library, tumbling classes, etc. I think we were gone more today than home. Except for the morning (breakfast, chores, reading-of-books), the kids more outside more than inside our house today. That’s a great thing for keeping the house clean, but not so great for keeping the children and their clothes clean!

On a side note, we are getting a lot of use out of our bicycles this summer. We’ve been able to bike to a lot of places in town and people are getting used to seeing us pedaling by. We do a lot of walking, as well. But biking is becoming more and more favored each day. We certainly get there faster when we are on wheels.

Activities Review

Things have definitely been busy here since school officially ended for the spring. The kids have been to the pool, joined the summer reading club at the library, learned six letters (one uppercase) in cursive, done upteen review pages in the math books I provided for review, run rampant all over the neighborhood, rode their bike many miles, and driven their parents crazy only a little.

My #2 child is also trying out gymnastics/tumbling. She has only gone twice and the first time was rather nerve-racking as she kept running out of the gym to tell Mom she wanted to go home NOW. When she left that first time, however, she commented, “That was fun, Mom. Can we do it again sometime?” My reply was, “Yes. NEXT WEEK.” The second session went much better as far as her doing what she was supposed to when she was told. We have met MANY young children who are headed into kindergarten in the fall at one of the local public schools.

We are pondering sending the two oldest to Vacation Bible School next week. I am leaning toward letting them go this year and seeing how it goes. My husband was adamantly against it until I asked for his reasons. He could not come up with anything except an aversion to such activities in general. Since we are not sending him, he quickly agreed to give it a go if I really wanted to try it. We will see how next week shapes up.