Pea Green Soup. . . .I think

Do you have a list of thing in your head that you just know need to be done but it seems like you NEVER have time to work on it? Well painting J's room has been on my list all summer. We probably longer than that but I definitely wanted to do it this summer.

Well it looks like this is our last sort of free week before school is in full session. We started doing some things this week to get ready and ease in to a schedule before it was necessary. Steve had this weekend off and he was taking the girls on a father/daughter canoe trip, so it was just me and the boys.

So we planned to use today to paint J's room. It was amazing. I ran to Lowe's early & got the paint. No one was out--quick trip. While I was gone the boys emptied the room & took down all the posters, papers, stickers & such that were on the walls. So we started around 10 and at 10:02 I thought "Oh my this is gross."

J has a camo comforter and wanted to have green walls. Not Christmas green, not bright green, not even forest green(to dark), but muddy yucky green. Well it did match the comforter but when we put it on top of the yellowy faded off white that was there already--things weren't looking too good.

M's said well let's keep going. I said maybe it will dry and look different. So we kept on and finished around 1. Thank you God for my oldest son who can roll paint on faster than I can trim. He saved me so much energy and amazingly once the old color was covered it looked a world different. It matched the comforter and with the color of wood trip we have--it looked AWESOME. Not anything like pea green soup.

School daze

Well it has begun.

M is a senior, E is an 8th grader, M is in 6th grade & J is a big 2nd grader! Wow. I cannot believe that our kids are are this far along.

I love this time of the school year. We are making plans for how much we are going to get done. Making up a daily schedule--fitting in all those fun activities. The daily grind hasn't really started. I am planning & plotting. It all looks great on paper. Soon it will be time to try it out. That is when it gets real & difficult.

We have to balance hard work with sickness, disturbances, attitudes(mine included!), and just life getting in the way of school. We aren't starting really early this year because we won't have our vacation in the fall as we do sometimes. Yellowstone in June allowed us to use the fall a little more for school.

Last year we didn't really have a schedule and that drove me up the wall & made planning anything sort of not happen. This year we are going back to a schedule & I think it will go better. It did make the kids more responsible for planning out their day & I think that is good. In fact M and E will continue that as they are old enough to take that initiative. M and J however need more guidance & it allows me to have individual time with them.

So today we took some tests to see what they retained in Math. We use Saxon and often the first 20 or more lessons are review. This is good as it can remind the kids of things they have learned but it also is not always necessary. We hit the lessons that they need out of those review lessons & move on to new things. The kids like the idea of skipping some lessons at the beginning. Okay I admit it, I like the idea of skipping things too.

This summer has been great for PE. We have bowled, walked & swam. One of my goals is to keep PE in the schedule! We aren't as active in the winter--I need to get creative when it gets cold. Maybe I will put Megan in charge of that as she was creatively doing the Skip It & Bop It at the same time this morning.