Life is calmer when you take a light week of school

I’d like to claim I took a light week of school because of Spring Break with the local schools, but the reality is after trying to cram too much in we needed a decompression week or two.

It all started with the kids going on a camp out with Jeff.  While they were gone I spent the weekend sewing, and more sewing, and not sleeping.  I may or may not have stayed up until 4 in the morning.

I found the timeline which the kids had put in the wrong place, and we added in about 2 months worth of lessons.  Slowly our timeline is filling up more and more.  The kids are fighting over who gets to put on the figures, so it’s actually kind of helpful for me to have lots of figures to do at a time so everyone can put on some people.

We celebrated the boys’ birthday with breakfast at their favorite breakfast place: Rudy’s Barbecue for breakfast tacos.  Note the introduction of the Gandalf hat which has shown up in all sorts of ways recently in our house.

I just love this picture of the kids gathered around Jeff giving him advice on how to play Plants vs. Zombies 2.  They all love to lay all over him and the poor man rarely gets to sit by himself in a chair.  He complains, but I don’t really think he means it.  We spend many nights watching TV together with various kids laying on top of or next to us, all cuddled up together, and it makes me quite happy.

We ended the day with a family trip to our new children’s museum, this was the kids’ second time there, and Jeff’s first, and they all love going there.  It’s got a lot more than the original one, and they happily spent hours playing at painting and building things, and acting out games.

We ended the day with a family dinner, what seems to be a family tradition of fondue, I suspect it’s because my kids like getting to cook their own food as we eat it.  And the massive amounts of mashed potatoes they eat.  MASSIVE.

I’ve implemented a new cleaning system for the kids, they’re now each responsible for an area of the downstairs and a bathroom.  It’s been working amazingly and my house has never been cleaner!  I’d also like to introduce our secret cleaning ingredient:  SHAVING CREAM!  Yes shaving cream, it’s great for cleaning AND sensory experiences, and the kids think it’s fun.  Now I might go through half a can as they clean a bathtub, but it’s good clean fun.

Princess got to go see Cats with American Heritage Girls, and afterwards they got to talk with the cast and take a tour of the theater.  It was an amazing experience, and I’ve spent the past week singing songs from Cats.  It was pretty amazing to find out many of the cast members didn’t have prior dancing experience, AND several were in high school.

Superman is taking an online class through Bridgeway and is learning about Ancient Greece and Rome.  He was very impressed to find out some of the people in his class are all over the United States and the world (including one in Europe!).  He’s only had the first class so far, but I’ll tell you what he thinks of it as the class goes on.

We learned about the fall of Assyria in history, and it gave me the perfect excuse to pull out my honeymoon album and show the kids pictures from the British Museum and all of the ancient pieces there.  They were suitable impressed.  Or so I’ve convinced myself.

Periwinkle, our house brownie, has finally returned.  The Council of Elders had recalled him while our house was too messy to make sure he didn’t turn into a boggart.  Now he’s back and brought with him some hershey kisses and a note.  The kids haven’t noticed yet, but I’m sure they will soon.  On Monday we’ll be celebrating his joining day, and I need to think of something fun to do with that…….

The boys are continuing Kung Fu, and Princess is continuing to amuse herself in all sorts of ways.  I almost always take a picture of her playing while we’re there because it amuses me to see how she entertains herself.  This time she brought a pile of pipe cleaners and some random buttons and stuff and she created a wizard’s hat to play with.

And we finished up the 2 weeks with:

The favorite lesson of all, the fall of Judah to Babylon.  It’s mainly a favorite because they got to play with Legos.

Oh and our Bible activity: Bowling for Goliath….  That is of course a favorite.

 

Right now I’m listening to happy laughter as the kids all have friends over.  An unexceptional ending to a rather unexceptional week.

And those are the weeks I cling to.  It doesn’t need to be the highest of highs to be special.  Because I know all too soon it will change and things will be busy again, or something will come up.  Life is too mutable for it to be otherwise.

 

Oh, I’ll be linking up to Collage Friday