That's how many days we have left in the school year.
We finished a lot of our core subjects - math, language arts, reading - a week ago, and so these last couple weeks have been dedicated to state history lessons, art, humble science experiments, and numerous read-alouds. Weirdly, all those more fun school subjects end up taking a lot of energy and effort, and even though I've had several blog post ideas in my head for weeks now, I can't seem to muster up the margin or energy to type them up. So a chatty post it is.
Forgive the typos in advance please. I'm tired.
But four more days. Four more days and we'll all be as free as a bird.
Fun With The Grandmas!
Speaking of interesting school activities, the last two Fridays have been dedicated to special school activities with the kids' grandmas.
Derek's mom has done an incredible amount of research into his family tree. She is so thorough, and she has traced some branches of his family back to the 11th century. I asked her if she could come up and tell the kids a little more about their ancestors, and also about how she researches geneology. She told us stories of some of the kids' great-great-greats, which include many really fascinating people, and she even printed a little mini-tree for each of my kids showing their all great-great grandparents. The kids were so interested in all of it!
Before she left she demonstrated how she researches a family tree by using my side of the family, and we got a couple names filled in. We looked through census records from 80 years ago, and I watched as the family of one of my grandparents grew from 7 members to 9, and then back to 8 ten years later after one of the names disappeared from the record after a death. I knew about my grandparent's family before, of course, but seeing it there in black and white, connected by a few clicks to my own name on the tree - it made me feel more connected to my heritage. Those were tough times, and I come from people with grit, and seeing it on paper makes me even more grateful for the blessings in my life now.
It was so interesting to see how it works and see names so closely connected my own in the original records, and I am thinking I want to dive into more family tree research myself this summer. I will also be busy recruiting my mom-in-law to come back up soon and tell the kids more stories! It's fascinating to see the amount of detail she has been able to find on the family.
The very next Friday, my mom planned a "field day" for all her grandchildren (all of which are homeschooled). I have a lot of memories of field day when I was a kid (particularly memories of being proud that I beat the boys in the sprints - there is only a small window when that could have happened! I don't run.) I loved the idea of a field day so my kids could have some fun memories of races with their grandma and cousins! Final analysis - huge success. My mom planned a ton of different types of races, the kids loved it, and no one compared or felt bad about any of their placings/ribbons. We had a delicious lunch, explored outside and fed the horses, and visited more while the kids played. It was a great time with the family and a good chance to practice good sportsmanship!
(The dress-up relay race!)
Awana And Rain And Mother's Day
In other news, we also had our last night of Awana a week ago. The kids got all their awards, my mom was able to come to the ceremony, and it's a consensus that we can't wait for it to start up again next year! Derek and I will have to be more strategic about planning date nights over the summer - we became rather spoiled this winter with a free 1.5 hours each week for a dinner date.
We celebrated Mother's Day this last week by seeing Derek's mom for breakfast, and my mom for lunch - before heading home, lounging on the couch, and watching Survivor reruns. (After the kids melted my heart with adorable cards, and gifts which they bought with their own money. Some of which were candy. Some of which we ate while watching Survivor) .
We did have plans for an outing to the zoo on Mother's Day, but the weather ended up being rainy and cold. And what do you know, it snowed again on Monday and Tuesday, making this a near record-long snow season for our state. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it snowed AGAIN before the end of May, so we may smash that record! Doubtful though, since I know for a fact that it has snowed here in June before, but we'll see. I just read an article about the Southwestern states possibly declaring a water shortage emergency for the first time, so let's just say I'm grateful for any snow we get here. No fires this summer please.
Fun Things, Anxiety-Producing Things
The rest of this week will likely be filled with fun and stress mixed together - on Friday I am going on a girl's night with my college friends/book group girls, which will be the first time our group has eaten at a restaurant together in over a year. As I am looking forward to that, I am also anxious for our poor old dog who has a surgery scheduled for Friday.
A couple years ago we discovered a tumor on Harvey's neck, which we briefly grieved about because our vet assured us it was most certainly malignant. I was making mental plans for budgeting in cancer drugs for our faithful hound, but when the results came back the tumor ended up being a benign tumor which usually occurs in cats, completely baffling our vet.
Well, Harvey has another tumor on his leg, which our vet again says is most likely malignant. I am holding out hope that it will end up being another one of the cat-tumors, but on Friday he is getting it removed. It almost physically hurts me to take him to the vet, because big and tough as Harvey looks, he acts like a scared Chihuahua whenever we have to take him in for a checkup. His anxiety gives me anxiety, and then there is more anxiety about the fact that the tumor is right on the join of his back leg and I'm running worst-case scenarios in my mind of the surgery crippling him. Our vet assures us that the risk of that is low, but...I'm just nervous. You dog people understand.
Cookie Dough And Summer Fun
Finally, as the school year has been winding down, I've been thinking ahead a bit to what kinds of things I want to plan for my kids this summer. Last summer I made a mostly at-home summer bucket list, which was a success, and I would like to plan out some fun activities for the kids again. But, I have to admit, I am tired. Homeschooling will always be worth it for me, and it's incredibly rewarding, but it is also verging on exhausting when we reach May. Like I mentioned last week, we keep a traditional school schedule because I need a break in the summer to rest mentally.
So I will wait to make any fun summer plans until we've had time to reset, but I must mention that I did find this cookie dough recipe book while I was at the library today, which was surprisingly motivating. A few years ago I took the kids to the mall in the summer, and there used to be a cookie dough shop there. I've never been one of those people who likes to eat cookie dough raw, but my kids very much enjoyed the experience of eating uncooked cookies. I am pretty sure that the cookie dough shop went under, but I am thinking this book and our own cookie dough cafe might be an easy place to start for summer fun.
After I rest for a couple weeks.
Four more days...
You can do it! Sounds like the last few weeks have been full of busy fun!
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