No one here is great at transitions – except perhaps Dan. Dan’s busy season is summer (because engineers like to send products out for testing while they are on summer vacation, but Dan is the one testing things.) Market Basket has great prices and most of my favorite GF foods, but it’s so popular I don’t want to shop on Saturdays or evenings, so we have a “Suburban Nomad Day” when I don’t teach lessons but do run errands with the car – after dropping Dan off, but that eats up kitchen table days. So, we are still doing kitchen table school until the end of July.
But summer-ified kitchen table school, mostly finishing up the Story of the Early Modern World, trying to nail down the times tables, the ever-on-going quest to gain reading fluency and practicing ocarina, because if you let a musical instrument sit, it gets grumpy. Matt is nearly done with Latin (and my Mom is itching for her summer off, she’s his tutor for that subject.) This week Matt is at a week long musical drama camp with A Work In Progress (check out their work on Friday if you are in the area) but he’s working on algebra and Latin in the mornings – I’ll make him a checkoff list with deadlines, soon!
K’s vegetable garden was fine even with the half centimeter hail last night. We are still harvesting strawberries for the second week.
We’ve gotten past the big milestones of Spring (which is a good thing since it’s Summer now)
- coop was fun,
- testing coop was fine,
- the planning meeting for next semester’s coop went nicely, despite our car deciding it needed repairs right on the day I needed to drive to the meeting – but there is a board now, and they could have handled it without me, like they did in January when I was laid up with pneumonia!
- and I’ve gotten the data base to work like it should! A scheme I’ve worked on since 2008.
- I’ve gotten my end of the year reporting into the school – but we have new people handling our paperwork. I think this is my 4th superintendent since Ben was 6.
I’ve still got lots of big things to organize yet, but this summer they shouldn’t be so guilt inducing as other years (in the what do I do with my kids while I’m writing all this stuff) sorts of guilt. Loni and I decided we would swap children for a day – she gets everyone while I write, then another day I get all the children. the older boys will just need nice food and places to play board games and discuss things, but I’d better plan some crafts for the girls, we should pick a day when Ben is off from work.
He’s in the store room at Morin’s Catering, often the walk in fridge, so I’m making him more fingerless mitts. I’m working on a pair of Comet right now, but I made a modified pair of Half Moon Mitts for him last month.
The Family Fun Fair is approaching, this year I’m telling the story of Zacchaeus from Child Evangelism Fellowship’s publications, so I’m not developing it from scratch – that’s not as much of a work saver as it sounds though. I’m not sure why I can prep for Sunday School week after week without turning a hair, but evangelistic events with strangers makes my stomach hurt, but I’m always glad I did it.
Another scary thing, I started a newsletter for my knitting/crochet designs. But hopefully it’s not scary for you, because it comes with a coupon for your choice of any of my patterns, and the first info for when I’m releasing a new pattern, or calling for beta knitters.