Tuesday:
Oh. My. Gosh! It's not easy recovering from a full sunny day at an amusement park in your 40's. Sheesh! I slept for TWELVE hours. 10pm to 10am. Liv, God bless her, fed all the kids while I slept. What a big helper she can be.
Chuck had to work and he was dead tired when he got home. He napped from 2p-5p. After dinner, we worked out and then just got out of the house to basically stay awake.
I jotted down a time management plan for school. A rough, rough draft, really. So I'll see how it goes on Thursday and tweak in the weeks to come.

Wednesday:
Went to the library and got 2 weeks of books for two student levels (one for Liv, another for Reece and C). The books are on our science and history topics. You can read that stuff from a text book and it's usually very dry. But "living" books really add some spark and depth and so I load up the book shelf with related books on our current topics. They love it. Had dinner in the crock pot before I left for the library, and went while Brandon (and Chuck) were napping. Got there and back in under 2 hours so I'd say it was a pretty successful venture.

Thursday:
Troops up at 7:45. Morning chores done by 8am. Breakfast, then school, DAY ONE, started by 8:30am. It went quite smoothly, all things considered. We were basically done by noon, with just a few things to do after lunch. In that time, we covered bible, scripture memorization, math, handwriting, spelling, scheduled reading for Liv and read-aloud time for Reece and C, phonics/reading, math, math drills online, science, English, art appreciation for Reece and C, and the creation of a history time line. Next week we'll add Spanish to the list.

Went grocery shopping this evening, then came home for icecream night (we moved it to Wed because we have too much going on on Sundays). We've been making our own icecream out of a box of instant pudding and some soy milk. Everyone likes it and it's easy. Win-win.

Friday:
Day 2 of homeschool went very well. We stayed on schedule and were completely finished at 1pm, with only minor "stuff" that last half hour. I also implemented a chore chart this year. It's going GREAT! (can you say, "Delegate"? I knew you could.) Olivia is changing cat litter, vaccuming the family room, wiping bathroom mirrors and sinks. Reece is collecting garbage, straightening books, sweeping the kitchen floor and wiping down toilets. Cierah is wiping down highchairs and booster seats, cleaning windows on the doors, dusting. All are doing dishes, cleaning rooms, taking turns making lunches for the next day, and generally pitching in when and where asked to. No allowances, as we desire to train them to serve joyfully, but I did come up with a point system. They can earn a desired prize with 84 points (the equivalent of 12 weeks of completed chores). Liv is working for movie tickets, Reece for another frisbee ball, and Cierah for a princess Barbie. They're all very excited (for now, lol) about adding check marks to their own chore sheets.

Went to Danville football game tonight. Team sucks. Had to sit in goose poop (ALL over the bleachers). Bands here don't wear uniforms (don't even coordinate pants. Just ugly printed tee shirts and whatever else they want to wear). Band sucked. No majorettes. Cheerleaders had skirts on that could hardly count as foof covers. Visiting bands don't...visit. That's right, there are no visiting bands. Brandon was very well behaved though and loved the Chick Fil-A cow who cheered with the cheerleaders.

Saturday:
3 for 3. Today was another good school day, even with double level sciences. Liv began formal writing lessons. I'm using a curriculum called Writing Strands for that. She also wrote comprehensive sentences for derivatives of "biblos", the Greek root for book. Her derivatives were Bible, bibliography and bibliophile. She's off to a good start, but her biggest thrill, hee hee, is the dang chore chart. She LOVES a check list, that one. And uh, clearly *my* new vocabulary word for the year is DELEGATION. Ah, even the sound of it is a beautiful thing, lol.

The kids are outside with the neighbor kids right now, doing what kids should be doing; screaming with delight over some catapillers they discovered. That and a freeze pop makes for a perfect late summer day, don'tcha think? ;)

Sunday:
Went to church, then came home and baked some great oatmeal cookies for the kids. Not much sugar and no dairy. Very good. Also made a healthier version of icecream (1 box of pudding mix, 2 cups soy milk; freeze and stir every half hour until firm).

It's Liv's stay up night tonight. She's doing EZ Bake oven. I loved that thing when I was little.