It’s Friday of our second week of school. It’s felt a little bit like a circus around here (again). I awoke to the sound of a large truck and talking out in my driveway. Trash guys are here to take away the debris from our deck demo. I overhear them say they can’t get it all on one trip and will have to come back. Then, Maria shows up around 8:30 to clean my house– she is a welcome sight for me! The kids start waking up one by one looking for breakfast. Then, the doorbell rings and the trash guys are back again ready for round 2, but not until Cat gets some clarification from me. Yes, Cat is his name. While I am out in the yard, a delivery truck pulls up to drop off some outdoor furniture. They work around the trash truck and get that taken care of. The kids and I start school in the kitchen while Maria works upstairs. Then, we go upstairs when she is ready to come downstairs. As we are doing school, I hear the yard guys weed eating and blowing and cutting grass. A little while later, the trash guys are back and ready for round 3. I just hope they are done before the firewood is to be delivered. Josh opted for a load to be dumped on our driveway instead of them stacking it for us because “it’ll be good for the kids to do some manual labor.” O-K. (UPDATE: The guys had time to stack the wood, so I went ahead and paid them for that because, um, reality. It’s storming and there’s a tornado warning until 10pm tonight. Stacking wood is not on my radar in such conditions.)
This stay-at-home-mom gig is a far cry from sitting on a couch eating bonbons.
Not to mention our day yesterday. We had a visit to the eye doctor for Ruby because she wants to give contacts a try and needed her eyes checked again anyway. She had to practice putting them in and taking them out several times. Can you say ORDEAL???

The next stop was the orthodontist for them to fix something that was broken in her mouth. We scoot home, eat some lunch, then I take Mack to the pediatrician for a check-up. He is a healthy kid, but he does have this pain in his heels that they call Severs Disease. It’s just growing pains, basically. Some kids get it worse than others. We had an absolutely hilarious thing happen to us while we were in with the doctor, but I can’t share it with the internet because Mack might strangle me one day. We both laughed and laughed till we couldn’t laugh anymore about it. I’m including it here in hopes it will jog my memory in a few years when I am reading these blogs to remind myself of what life was like.
This morning, in the midst of all the people in and out of our house and around our house, Mack was just being an absolute clown. Words are his jam. He speaks and speaks some more all day, every day. They were supposed to be doing math when he overheard me tell Ruby what the topic for “FreeWrite Friday” was. It had to do with the football game we went to last night, so he stopped with the numbers and pulled out his notebook and got to writing. Writing and writing and writing. It is so great that he loves the words, but he also needs to develop some love for the numbers–at least to get him through the basics of high school and college math. Maybe he will marry a math wizard that loves budgets and crunching numbers.
This week we worked on a second part of a writing project that is basically noticing words and writing down words. Then, we wrote them on little cards and randomly chose about 15 and put them together the best we could for a poem. That was pretty funny as most of them made little to no sense, but if you read them just right, one might think you were extremely artsy and creative.
Anyway, this week we studied a piece of art (as in, the kids told me all that was “weird” or all that they didn’t understand about the painting) and then I led them through some questions and in the end, everyone was to have a poem written about the painting. Ruby went first. Hers was so-so, but good. Molly wouldn’t read hers out loud. Mack was pretty proud of his, but none of us were expecting much of it, if I am honest. However, he blew us away! I was super-impressed, and he was quite happy that we all were blown away. Again, words are his jam.



We have been working on spelling a good bit this second week of school, too. The rule for the week is “I before e except after c– watch the exceptions.” Ok, I don’t know if you have ever tried to teach this spelling “rule,” but it is kind of annoying.

I mean, seriously. Talk about exceptions. However, we used the rule for most of our spelling words, but not without much commentary on this “stupid rule” from the kids.
Mack found a golden quote from his reading book:

On another note, Molly never becomes so interested in practicing her piano homework than when it is math time. That girl gets serious about pounding those notes out when it means she doesn’t have to do math. Except she does have to math.

The clown with the pianist. Both doing what they can to dodge the Saxon Math book. And when I would give Mack a look that said ‘GET TO WORK,’ he would say, ” Don’t look at me like that. I’m a Christian.”
Don’t ask me what that means. I don’t know. And he doesn’t either.
We also went shopping for some hunting clothes for Mack this week. He has grown like a weed this past year and none of his clothes from last fall even come close to fitting him.
And since I don’t know about hunting so much, this is the pic I sent to Josh with “Is this the right kind of camo???” Because, wow, have you been in a hunting section at the store lately? Choices galore.
So, second week of school, you weren’t as productive as the first week in actual books and projects, but there were definitely some lessons on time management and schedules and over-booking of ones’ life in there. From birthday dinners to eye appointments to grammar lessons to many people in and out of the home…..I am hoping and praying for a restful Labor Day and maybe a “NO PROJECTS” commitment for the fall and winter.
Oh! And here are some photos from a fun Thursday night at a pre-season Panthers game.





The times when the camera caught people dancing was my favorite part by far! So funny.

I saw my cousin, Austin, at the game! Small world. He is a huge Steelers fan, so he left happy last night, I am sure.


Sweet little moment with Josh and Ruby. These kids are blessed to have him.