So Long, April (and Kindergarten, 2nd, and 4th grade)!

I'm so thankful April flew by. March felt SO LOOOOOONG, I was concerned Chet's fairly short deployment would end up feeling six years long. So, thank you, April.

We are officially finished with our school year (although, we do school mostly year-round, so we'll begin that routine fairly soon). I told the children a few weeks ago that May 1st was their official promotion day to 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade. They can't wait.

We had our last homeschool group meeting Tuesday, and Sydney finished her Memory Master oral exams yesterday (she passed!), so the kids were allowed to do what they wanted today. Which was this, apparently:

They went outside around 9:30 a.m., and I barely saw them again until 3 p.m. when I gathered them up to go on a walk around the neighborhood. I didn't even have to feed them snacks or lunch! (They filled coolers with ice and food and fended for themselves. They even took the toaster outside, along with my glass butter dish, which is slightly frightening, but since I didn't even know about it until after it was put back in its proper place...good for them.)

Happy Thursday! On to Friday and MAY!

A Rare Sighting

Half of my children are affectionate; the other half are not. So I about fell out of my chair when I saw this:

They even STAYED that way!

They didn't know I was taking their picture (otherwise they would have flown apart like repelling magnets); I was plopped down in a chair with my feet up on an ottoman, doing a Spanish lesson on my phone. They were none the wiser when I switched to the camera app.

This Wednesday night there is a mountain of laundry needing to be folded and put away (and more needing washed). Thursday we shall do that, because we are taking the rest of the week off from school (except for piano practice, much to the chagrin of one of the people pictured above).

Puzzle

Lorelei received this puzzle for her birthday:

In October.

She/we didn't open it or start working on it until after Christmas. When Didi visited in March, she and I (as in, Didi and I) worked on it a ton, and nearly finished it.

Thankfully, Lorelei cares not that she doesn't complete her puzzles herself, just that her puzzles get DONE (although there are certain members of the family she doesn't wish to even touch a single piece, e.g. Ford and Ruthie).

Sunday I told her it was time to complete it. There were only about 30 pieces left, and it took she and I about 20 minutes.

There was only one piece missing (right in the middle), which is a miracle considering it sat on the floor, under the couch but still exposed, for four months.

As soon as I snapped this picture, we took it apart and put it back in the box.

I've never been so happy to reclaim the space underneath my couch.

Happy Tuesday, friends.

Monday Night

In preparation for bed, I turned off all the lights downstairs with the living room looking like this:

I thought it was strange when I called down earlier, "Kids come upstairs for bed!"
Kids: "You mean, right this second?"
Me: "Yes!"
***Kids immediately thundered up the stairs***

I hope they wake up well rested, because I know what they'll be doing FIRST THING tomorrow morning.

Happy Monday night. (It's Monday, right?)

The Last Sunday in April

April has flown by, unlike March, which seemed to pass slower than the pace of a dead snail moving backward.

I know I haven't talked much about COVID and the kids' and my days in the midst of it, so I'll tell you quickly that because our schedule with our homeschool group hasn't changed (we've simply moved to Zoom meetings, like the rest of the world), we are BUSY. Our last day of the school year (homeschool meeting-wise) is this coming Tuesday (April 28th), and Sydney is in the midst of achieving Memory Master again for this year's material. (Click here to read the post I wrote last year about the end of our school year and Memory Master.)

She's already completed the Memory Master oral exam with her tutor (she did that last Wednesday), and will do one last oral exam with our director (yet to be scheduled, but it will be done by Friday, May 1st). 

Because Sydney is 4th grade this year, she also takes a weekly in-depth language arts class in the afternoons on the days our homeschool group meets. It focuses on English grammar (understanding parts of speech, diagramming sentences, etc.), strengthening mental math skills, and writing. For weeks she's been working on the final writing assignment (a report about Leonardo da Vinci -- everyone in the class is writing about a historical figure from the Middle Ages, and no two children are reporting on the same person). She actually finished the paper last week, but needs to present it (I'll take a video with my phone), and I will post the video on our school group's Facebook page for a coordinated "watch party" this coming Tuesday.

All that to say, in a lot of ways our lives have marched on since COVID began, but we are ready to complete this school year and have a break. We'll probably take a week or two off, and then settle in to what I like to call our "summer studies" (I coined that term just now).

Happy Sunday, friends! Here's an unrelated picture of some of my plants and some things Ruthie likes to play with (including a fly swatter and my rolling pin, which I never use):

Ford's School of Life

Ruthie had another lesson in Ford's School of Life today.

Ruthie: "I wish Daddy could stay home forever." (Meaning, she wishes he weren't deployed.)

Ford: "Ruthie, if Daddy stayed home forever he wouldn't make any money. And if we didn't have any money we couldn't buy food, and we would have to eat cats and rats."

Ruthie:

Ford must have overheard me trying to explain wet markets and communism to Sydney and Lorelei earlier this week.

Clearly, we're all a little confused these days.

Happy Sunday!

Wednesday...I think...

Well, friends. We've survived another day.

This feels especially important with Chet deployed. 10 years ago (!!!) when he was in Africa, and Sydney and I were flying solo in Jacksonville, I used to mark time by trash day. Today was trash day here in Mississippi, which always oddly feels as if I've accomplished something (and made another week pass).

I have little time; Ruthie is in the bathtub, and the other kids are downstairs playing with LEGOs. I don't have anything interesting to say, other than that I am extremely grateful for simple meals throughout the course of a deployment. (Not that Chet is demanding regarding meals; it's just EASIER to feed children). They had Annie's spaghetti-o's and fruit for dinner. I had chips and salsa. Chet would have understandably balked at such a meal.

Totally unrelated, here is a picture I took of the front of our house a couple of weeks ago after I purchased some outdoor potted plants from a local nursery:

I'll keep you updated on their status. And please note the poinsettias (far right) that are still alive and well in MID-APRIL.

Better go. Ruthie is yelling, "Mommy, I'm out of the bathtub and I want you to carry me LIKE BABY JESUS!"

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, friends! He is risen!

Obviously, it was a low-key day. Our church did me the best favor ever by mailing us a ready-made scavenger hunt. All I had to do was fill the kids' baskets and place the paper clues around the house. (Seriously, thank you, church.)

(I had to hide the baskets in our gorgeous laundry room.)

We watched church (and afterward I met with my Sunday School class via Zoom):

I ordered lovely cookies (earlier in the week) from a local bakery:

Ruthie took a picture of Lorelei and me:

The children introduced me to their LEGO family, which has 13 children (Sydney was telling me each of their names when I took this picture):

Here is how Sydney keeps up with the LEGO children's names:

We wore nice clothes/dresses when we ate Easter lunch, but Ruthie was the only one who stayed in her fancy clothes:

We ended the evening with an egg hunt in my bedroom.

How was your day? Can you believe April is nearly halfway over?!

Lorelei Quotes

Lorelei was VERY quotable today.

1) She was helping me unload groceries, and after I carried a load from the front door into the kitchen and walked back to the front door for another load, she said, "Can't we just leave the groceries at the front door for now? You LITERALLY just mopped the floor!"
Me: "Oh, yeah. Good idea."

2) Also while unloading the groceries: "Oh, you found toilet paper!"
Me: "Yes, but I bought the cheap kind this time."
Lorelei: "Oh...I hope it works."

3) Later I was helping her put together a wooden 3-D puzzle. Trying to figure out if two pieces that looked alike were interchangeable, I asked, "These are identical, right?"
Lorelei: "Well, God said no two things are identical, so probably not. But they look close."

4) Lorelei and Ford were out playing and came in for the evening later than usual. She asked, "Did we stay outside too late?"
Me: "It's late, but it's okay, because I didn't call you in yet."
Lorelei: "Well, we got a TON of exercise, so it was WORTH it!"

5) While waiting for one of the showers to open up, she asked, "What should I do while I wait?"
Me: "I don't know, whatever you want is fine."
Lorelei: "I could help you get some good housework done..."

6) After her shower: "If Ford and I wake up early and breakfast isn't ready yet, can we go outside and train?"
Me: "Train for what?"
Lorelei: "You know, just lift weights and run and get sweaty."
Me: "Uh...sure."
She runs to find Ford and says, "Make sure you get up early tomorrow, because Mommy said we could train before breakfast!"

7) Apparently while informing him of their morning training session she noticed a paper mess on Ford's desk.
Lorelei: "Ford, this is looking a little raggedy. I'm going to help you fix it."
Ford: "Oh, good. Thank you."
***Commence her sounding exactly like a professional organizer/one of the people counseling the contestants of "Hoarding: Buried Alive."***

8) Me, reading from a book of fairy tales: "She cleans the house and cooks the meals. She wears old clothes and sleeps in a cold, creepy room."
Lorelei: "That sounds bad...but at least it's not as bad as the Vietnam War! Sleeping in cold trenches was probably worse." (She may have been confusing the Vietnam War with WWI.)

We just love her.

4/4

Yesterday, Friday, the kids and I wore our new red shirts to honor Chet, as well as everyone else, who is deployed.

Today, Saturday, I woke up feeling the need for a project. I asked Sydney and Lorelei what we should do, and Sydney convinced me to rearrange the furniture in her room. You may be thinking, "That sounds fairly simple and straightforward." However, her room is also the guest room when we have guests (so it wasn't 100% SYDNEY), and her closet holds some random things, like the boxes of clothes that are currently out of season or that Ruthie doesn't fit into yet.

So.

The first thing we did was remove the shipbuilding manuals, leadership books, and memoirs from the bookshelves above her desk that were clearly not hers. She was happy to fill those in with her own books. We also decided, in order to make her room feel more spacious, to move her dresser into the closet. That meant removing said boxes of kids' clothes (and did I mentioned my stash of throw pillows?), and finding new places for all of it. It turned into, as it always does, one of those puzzles where you have to move 10 other squares before being able to put ONE square in its proper place.

Do I have a picture of her new setup? Of course not! I'll try to remember to take one tomorrow. I think tomorrow Lorelei will pressure me into tackling the playroom. We have a 6-cube shelf (removed from Syd's room today) that may be useful in there, and an activity table that may need to move OUT of the playroom and downstairs to a new place. First I'll have to convince the children to close down their grocery store, which seems to have been abandoned anyway.

We shall see.