Since School Started

School has had a rough start. It's been a couple of weeks since we started, and ... yeah, it's been rough. I didn't think that adding just one kid into the mix (Jack) would make me so much busier... but I am SO MUCH BUSIER. It's actually crazy. School literally takes me all day to get done. Our schedule goes like this: 

• 5 minute cleanup of the basement (so that it doesn't get too messy to play in)
• Family prayer
• Read aloud for 10 or 15 minutes (we finished our collection of Beatrix Potter stories and started Gentle Ben) 
• Family history or science (we alternate between year 3 of the Good and the Beautiful history program and science; for science, we alternate between Science for Little Hands and Hearts, which is good for Jack's age, although the girls are enjoying it too, and Safety Science. After we finish safety, we'll move into space science, probably. This is how we are doing it this year) 
• Individual language arts and math lessons -- I work with Brooke first, because I have the least amount of hands on time with her; then I do a lesson with Camille, who has the MOST hands on time of all the kids, but who also had a decent amount of self-directed work; and then Jack, who I have to work with for most of his schooling. His lessons are really short, though, so he's doing the least amount of school. 

I think that, following this schedule, if my kids just buckle down and get their work done, we'd end with plenty of time at the end to do things we want to do. So far, this hasn't happened. They have complained a lot, and they mess around and don't get their stuff done, and then they complain when they are having to do school later in the day. It's frustrating to us all. 😒 I find that school takes us all day to get done, whereas in past years, we can get school done in just a handful of hours. It's been hard for me to find time to do anything else: laundry, making food, getting the house cleaned up, working out... I need to figure out a new way for this year. 

Sawyer and I joined a preschool Co-op with other families in the neighborhood. He loves going to preschool, and it's been fun for us to make new friends in the neighborhood. The week that I was in charge of preschool was CRAZY. So I'll just have to go into those weeks prepared that I'll get almost nothing done. 😆 I've needed to lower my expectations for myself this year, for sure. 

We were invited to join a homeschooling group for the girls. Melissa Millard is heading it up; her daughter Allie is planning all the activities around things she wants to do. It's been so fun for the girls. They get excited every week on Wednesdays when they have Girls Club. I think it's good for them to meet new people, make new friends and get out of the house to do things. All the girls in Girls Club are homeschooling girls in the neighborhood, so I'm hoping they make some good girlfriends that live close and also homeschool. 

Jack and Brooke are also doing soccer, which makes the evenings and Saturdays busy with practice and games. But I'm glad for the experience for them, to learn how to play, to have an opportunity to exercise and make new friends and learn to play on a team. 

We went to Cornbelly's on their opening night. It was freezing, and we didn't stay super long. But the kids are excited that Cornbelly's season is upon us. On one of our Fridays off, we went to the Sunflower Festival at the Spanish Fork location of Cornbelly's. The kids loved it. We went shopping beforehand for fun snacks, and we started there for a few hours. Brooke liked that it was smaller and way less crowded than the Lehi Cornbelly's; she asked if we could always go to that one. 😆 It's a little too far to go there every time, but I'm sure we'll go out there again. It was quite nice. 

 This week in school:

• We had a lesson about the tallest trees in the world, the redwood trees, and the kids drew trees on the driveway with sidewalk chalk.

• Jack and Camille made little forts out of the deck furniture to do their schoolwork in. We did a lot of schoolwork outside this week; the weather was beautiful. 

• We went to the Dino museum yesterday, and Jack had his first paint class today with the girls and Tenille. He loved it.
• This week Jack and Brooke started soccer. They have practice in the evenings, which is somewhat inconvenient. Jack was so excited to start soccer, and it was so fun to watch him running around on the field chasing the ball. They also both had games on Saturday. Both lost (Jack's team lost spectacularly... I'm not even sure they really kept score, that's how bad it was). But I think they both had fun. 

• Daniel and I went on a birthday date Friday night. We left Brooke with the other kids 😬 and went to play racquetball at the American Fork recreation center. We hadn't played in at least a decade, so we felt very rusty at first. But after getting warmed up, we had a great time. And we went to zupas for dinner afterwards. 
• DeAnna, Sarah and I had a girls night Saturday night. We drove up the canyon and did a 2.5 mile hike in the mountains. It rained almost the entire time, but it was beautiful. The trees and the wildflowers, and the mist hanging above the mountains. It was so great. We went back down the mountain and to DeAnna's house to build a fire and roast hotdogs and rest great food and chat. We were going to do a fire in the canyon, but we were afraid it would get dark too soon. And it worked out just fine the way we did it. 

A few things this week: 

• It was a really rough week. We just started school midweek last week, so things are still new. It's still a new experience homeschooling THREE of my kids. But it was SUPER BUSY. It took pretty much all day to get school done for all the kids. It was made worse by the fact that it was my turn to do preschool this week. So Monday and Wednesday, I had 5 little 3 year olds over to my house to learn some things, have a snack and play. Which was totally fine! They are adorable, and I really actually like having little kids at my house at this point in my life. We have fun together! But it put us behind with schoolwork so much that it ended up being really frustrating. Same thing Tuesday and Thursday: Tuesday the girls have some of their activities, and Thursday morning we had doctors appointments for all the kids but Sawyer. Anyway. It was such a busy week keeping up with all this,  plus feeding everyone, plus doing some chores and keeping some semblance of house. Suffice to say, I was quite frustrated many days this week. And stressed. 
• Because of 👆🏽 the above, my children took note of my fatigue and frustration, and Camille made a plan to help me feel better. She made a spa for me. She had it all ready Thursday night. But by the time we were done with dinner and chores and all the things at the end of the day, it was way too late to do spa. She was really disappointed, but I was like, "please don't make me feel guilty for this. I can't have both of us staying up even later tonight to do spa. But Friday, late afternoon, when we FINALLY finished with all of our school stuff for the week, I asked if she wanted to go do spa. She took me to the kids bathroom upstairs, sat me in a chair, and asked what activities I wanted to do. First, she brushed and braided my hair (which felt like absolute heaven). Then she painted my nails, and I painted hers. And I didn't even know that that was exactly what I needed: just a few moments in a silent, peaceful place, with just Camille, relaxing and being pampered by her. It really felt so nice. 

• I'm still trying to get all my one-on-one mom dates in before the summer feels truly over. So today I took Brooke on her date while Daniel was with the other kids. She wanted to go to the pet store to see if there were any dogs and cats and to get Sammy a rope toy. As we were heading in that direction, first, I missed our exit, so I got off on the next exit. Since I'd taken the wrong path, I decided to cut through the shopping center to get there, instead of going around on the main streets. As we were passing target, I looked and there on the side of the road was a little kernel cage filled with puppies and a sign that said, "For sale". I pulled into the parking lot and we got out a cuddled the most adorable little cockapoo puppies. Brooke was in heaven! We stayed and cuddled and played with the puppies for at least 10 minutes. They were SO cute. Then, once we left and started heading in the direction we needed to, closer to Walmart, we AGAIN saw people selling puppies! This time, border collies. They were also so adorable; black and white and so sweet. We finally made it to the pet store and got to see some of the cats up for adoption. Brooke fell in love with a little orange tabby kitten named Cheddar. He was pretty cute. (And, incidentally, we were so preoccupied with puppies that we forgot to get the toy for Sammy) But then, what would you think? A little way off from the pet store was ANOTHER man selling puppies!! We walked over and cuddled and petted and played with golden doodles this time. Brooke could not get enough. It was SO fun! What are the chances that THREE puppy sellers were around the same area we were today, and that we happened to be passing by them! I kind of think it was a little tender mercy from Heavenly Father. Maybe He wanted to make Brooke happy today by seeing all those cute puppies. It just seems like more than coincidence that I missed the exit, and then decided to cut through the shopping center, and then that we saw 3 different sets of puppies. It made my heart so happy.