Welcome to week six of this homeschool mother’s journal!
We opted this week to work through Labor Day Monday and instead take Thursday off. I rearranged all of their school work so they were still finishing a full weeks worth of work, just on four days. It worked so well it leaves me wanting to make this happen more regularly. We spent our day off laying on a dock by the water, reading and chatting. Then the boys played Wii for a couple hours (a rare treat for them) and we ate angel food cake and made homemade pizzas.
We are working on pulling things together for Nigeria. It’s moving along slowly, and we definitely need to start picking up the pace! We leave in a little over five weeks! School is on track for us completing term one before we go, giving us a three week break from school while we are there. We will take some free read books on kindle with us, plus journals. But other than that it will be an education in culture.
Our pool closes the end of this week, so we enjoyed it as much as we could this week. It has been the best investment – we’ve shared it with friends, burned lots of energy, and – as it turns out – it helped immensely with my ankle that is still stiff from my break back in the spring. We are going to miss it when it closes for the winter!
I have shared a little about my ebay selling. It’s worked out so well this school year as the boys are so much more independant and it gives me a lot more time to devote to work … well, technically it should give me more time to work on work. But I am still working on the discipline of just hunkering down and getting the work done. This week I was able to get a bunch listed and older listings updated. The weather was gorgeous and I set up my office outside. It was so perfect!
I shared this image and caption on instagram:
Years ago I started a calendar of firsts using Edith Holden’s beautiful Yearbook. From time to time I will make an entry in it with little observations of what is happening in nature and sometimes attempt a painting. It’s one of many notebooks I keep and while it’s probably one of the least frequently updated, it’s also the one I reference most. I find myself turning to it when I can’t remember when the figs are suppose to ripen, or when I am missing the gorgeous scent of the tea olive tree and want to know when to expect it again. This morning Judah and I watched a cardinal hop from plant to plant and nibble at each one. It spent about 15 minutes doing this and made us both laugh. I wanted to remember that.
We got a little off our normal morning routine that had been working so well for us, so this coming week I need to work hard to pull us back on track and get us started, with breakfast complete, at 8. We haven’t always started so early, but in this season it works really well for us! 
Finally – I wanted to share about our new grocery item of the week … it’s probably our very first TOTAL disaster! For some reason I thought this was a sweet treat and I handed each of my guys a piece, and as we typically do with a brand new food, counted down and we all took a bite. More than half of us ran to the trash can to spit it out immediately. And the remaining one made it there soon after. Clearly, I never read the can, which mentions this is a good substitute for pulled meats if we add sauce to it. Oops! I stuck it in the fridge to figure out what to do with it, and haven’t yet figured that out yet!
Happy weekend my friends!! It’s Paul’s drill weekend, so we will be laying low as drill weekends are always a little draining on everyone and over the years we’ve learned a quiet schedule and easy foods are the best way to go on such weekends!
Check out previous entries in the homeschool mother’s journal series here.
