It’s Friday…

and I didn’t have a good title for a post, but wanted to summarize a few things that have been going on around here.

1. The three middle kids – Angelina, Zeke & Graham – have slept out in the tent for the last two nights.  They set it up at the end of the tree rows, so are a distance away from the house.  They brought our old covered fire pit and have been cooking breakfast and dinner over the fire!  Yesterday I didn’t see any of them until shortly before lunch when Zeke came back to use the bathroom.

2. Dash is making progress (FINALLY!) in getting his subjects completed. 

3. A new, larger pool has been ordered and the kids can hardly wait.  They spent a lot of time swimming last year.  We’ll need to do a bit of work to level the ground before setting up the new pool, but it will be well worth the effort.

4. I’ve made more progress on clearing the flower bed of weeds, but we sure could use more rain to soften the ground.  It comes up in clumps which I then have to break up to level off the surface.  I’m tired in about 20 minutes!

5. Almost all the supplies for the next school year are on hand and I’m almost done creating the necessary lesson plans.  I’d like to have all that figured out before heading to the MN Homeschool conference next week.

6. We finally have a broody hen!  She’s set up with a clutch of eggs and we hope this experiment goes well.

7. Cloth diapering is going well.  There have been days where we’ve only used them at night…sending Louis out to the tractor with cloth diapers is just not practical!  However, we have days, like yesterday, where it’s only cloth.  In fact, I did make the decision to order diapers for the new little one coming.  However, because my ‘little’ ones tend to be pretty big, I opted to buy the regular sized instead of infant sized.  The way I see it, we’d only be using the infant for maybe 2-3 weeks and then the baby would be into regular sized cloth diapers.  2-3 weeks is not enough time to justify the expense.

8. The vegetable garden.  It hasn’t been planted, yet.  But, today is looking like a nice day.  Maybe I’ll sneak outside and get it done!

Swimming Lesson Recap

Dash passed Level 5!!  He was excited.  He looked stronger than last time.  Angelina, Zeke & Graham need to repeat, but none were disappointed.  I think that if we hadn’t missed a year of lessons, Zeke & Angelina could have passed, too.  Dash, Angelina and Zeke VERY much enjoyed lessons this year; Zeke especially had a great time.  Graham wasn’t so enthralled.  There are only two pictures to remind us of the whole two weeks.  They were taken by Eric on his cell phone, so are fuzzy and not worth sharing.  Let me give you a mental picture though…

Picture #1:  Graham standing in front of a cement wall, goggles in place with a wide, happy grin – he looks ready to have a good time

Picture #2: Graham clinging to his instructor, his arms very tightly wound around his instructor’s neck.  Definitely NOT smiling, but tense.

Most of my time during lessons was spent entertaining a busy, ‘get me out of this hot house’ baby Louis!  I couldn’t imagine carrying another thing into that pool area – like a camera.  Graham only went to his lessons about half the time, the rest of the time he was with me or trying to make himself small so his instructor wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t in the water or anywhere near the edge of the pool.  No amount of my trying to convince him would change his mind about relaxing and giving it a real shot.  However, in hindsight, I realized that he hasn’t been in a pool often.  We moved when he was just two & we sure didn’t set up a pool that summer!  Something about showing a house and having a pool set up on the deck doesn’t really jive.  And well, out here on the farm, there is no grass… that would amount to a large mud pie.  So, no pool around here, either.  Poor child has been deprived!

The best part about this set-up was that all the kids had their lesson at the same time.  Yep, four kids in four different levels … 30 minutes a day for two weeks.  The instructors were great, too.  They let us know the first day that our child could be moved up a level if they had mastered the skills for the level in which they were enrolled … definite plus.  I’ll be back for more next year.