What I've been doing for the last month

Persistence had her first experience with public school this month and she didn’t like it one bit. She had to go to Kids Club for two weeks while I helped my sister work on her house. She was forced to go to the school with her brother and six year old cousin to do crafts and play fun games every morning. Every afternoon she had to ride in a big yellow school bus (Isn’t that the only reason kids want to go to kindergarten?) for some torturous field trip; cave exploring, river walking, hiking red cliffs, swimming and water slides. All this activity was so agonizing that she complained all night and all morning about going. She wanted to stay home and play in the dirt with the chickens. Excuse me? Isn’t that what she does every day at our house? Oh yes. I forgot. This girl is a busy-home-body like her Mom. She likes to go, go, and go as long as all the going keeps her right at home. Now she will never in her life have liberty to complain about being home-schooled.

Yes, I have been sadly absent from my blog for a month. My sister was visiting for a week. She helped me clean up the garage, unpack boxes and hang things up around the house. Then I went to her house for two weeks. I spent the first week scrubbing her tile on my hands and knees with a chisel and then grouting it. The second week I spent measuring and cutting all her baseboards and trim. Let’s just say we are so not even. We were never even from four years ago when we tore down two walls in her kitchen, re-textured and painted all the walls and ceilings in her kitchen, living room and hall, ripped up carpet and painted kitchen cabinets, etc. Actually this trip really seemed like a vacation compared to that. We even made time to exercise every day. Let’s face it. We’re not spring chickens like we were four years ago. We really have to pace ourselves these days.

Last week I spent recovering from my two week vacation and acting like a Mother. I got some really good yell time in with my kids. No! Of course I don’t yell at my kids. I meant that they were yelling at each other. Or was that the baby screaming, her favorite new past time? I can’t remember. All I know is that I need a vacation to recover from life. Maybe it’s just the heat that is getting to me. I think having no air conditioning isn’t helping. Was that a double negative? See? It is way too hot in here.

We did have fun garage sale-ing yesterday though. Driving around in the car all day with three kids is fun no matter what the temperature. The few treasures we bought made it a success. Persistence bought a pair of roller blades ($5) that weren’t 5 sizes too big for her. She doesn’t look like a Bratz doll on skates anymore. I found some Magic Tree House books ($5 for six) that I refused to buy from Persistence’s book club ladies on Friday. I told them if I bought them I would just be mad when I found them at a garage sale the next day. It feels so good to be right! It happens every now and again. Not very often with an 8 year old around but if we don’t count him then I’m actually right quite often.

Speaking of Victor, (Oh, that name is so perfect for him! I think I’m going to go out and change his birth certificate tomorrow.) he bought a box filled with assorted wooden game boards that included chess ($3). He’s been begging for a chess board for some time now. You would think a home-schooling mother like me would want to encourage an activity like Chess but I didn’t know how many hours of chess with Victor I could handle in one life time. We will soon find out. Lovely didn’t get anything in particular but she examined Persistence’s books for a few minutes and she thought they tasted good.