Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Grilled Apples and Peaches, and Silverwood

Sometime this past summer we were having grilled cheese sandwiches with apple slices for lunch, and the kids wondered what the apple slices would taste like if they were toasted on the griddle.  We tried them, we loved them, and now we can't have grilled cheese sandwiches without the kids asking for grilled apples.  Today we tried some white peaches along with them, and they were super yummy.

We're just taking it easy today.  I take Fridays off from running, to rest up for my long run on Saturdays.  So today we slept in, had smoothies for breakfast, cleaned the school room to get it ready for school to start next week, then had lunch.  For the most part, the house has been quiet, which has been really nice.  Alyssa's been in her room reading, and the boys have been doing various activities that involve couch cushions, which they had to put away before lunch.

Brian got Rebecca when she woke up from her nap, then he fell asleep with her.

Brian has Fridays off from work, so he's home today as well.  I'm very thankful for that right now.  With our busy fall schedule, combined with evening meetings and visits for church that he has to go to, we're not going to see much of him for a while, so I'm glad that we get to see him on Fridays.  I also feel blessed that we'' be able to at least eat dinner together as a family each evening.  Some days are going to need crock pot meals, so they'll be ready the minute we walk in the door so we can eat and kick Brian out the door, but even if dinner might be rushed, we will at least be together.

Brian also took Wednesday off so we could use Alyssa and Ethan's Silverwood tickets they earned through a reading program at school.  We wanted to go on a Wednesday to avoid the weekend crowds, but it turns out that Spokane's schools haven't started yet, so everyone was there trying to get their last fill of summer.  It wasn't too crowded, though, and we had fun.

We did a few of the rides, but then spent the rest of the time in the water park.  The kids loved the wave pool, and they ended up loving the slides.  Ethan and I were the first to give the slides a try, and when we reached the top of the platform, Ethan said, "This is high.  I'm not so sure about this," and wanted to go back down.  After a few minutes of watching everyone else go down the slides, he said he'd give them a try.  By the time we reached the bottom, even before our inner tube hit the water in the pool, he yelled, "Let's do it again!"  Becca slept on Brian's lap for most of the afternoon, then we took turns playing with her while the others went on the slides.

Tilt-a-Whirl

Alyssa, Marcus, Brian, and Ethan.  They came off this ride soaking wet.

Alyssa, with a new friend, Ava.  This ride needed two people, and they both needed a partner.  They ended up spending quite a bit of time together throughout the day.

Almost Over

Holy cow!  Where has the summer gone?

I went with Christina and Tallia today to the Learning Plan meeting at Mid Columbia Partnership, then came home and started filling out the learning plan forms on the MCP website.  I also sat down with my planner and wrote down all of Alyssa's ballet classes, Ethan's gymnastics classes, mostly so I know which days are vacation days when I don't have to take them to those classes.  We've heard from Alyssa's soccer coach, so we know she's on a team, but we're still waiting to hear about Ethan.  The last we heard, they didn't have enough coaches, and if they didn't get enough, not all the kids would be able to play.  I sent an email saying, "I know next to nothing about soccer, but I'm willing to learn IF no one else volunteers."  After pushing send I immediately thought, "Why did I do that?!?"  I haven't heard back from them, so I'm hoping they don't want me, but I also haven't heard from Ethan's coach.  I don't know.  So this fall we're going to have MCP on Mondays, ballet, gymnastics, soccer, and piano lessons.  It's going to be jam packed!

I've meant to blog a lot more than I've ended up actually blogging, so there's a lot of summer that I have to catch up on.

Brian's Grandpa Jacks and his Grandma Orton both passed away this summer.  Grandpa Jacks in July, and Grandma Orton just a couple of weeks ago.  They are both greatly missed, but it's nice to know that they are now free from pain and with their spouses again.  When Brian and I went to visit Grandma Orton at the end, I kept wondering if her husband, Jim, was sitting beside her, just waiting until they could be together again.

We went to the Oregon Coast for Brian's family reunion, which deserves a whole post of its own, but we all know that at this point, that's not going to happen.  One of my favorite things about the reunion was running on the beach.  I had signed up to run my first 10k the week after the reunion, so I knew I couldn't take the week off from running, but at first I wasn't brave enough to run down on the beach.  I had planned on just running along the streets like I do at home, but once I saw how hilly the roads were, I opted for the flatness of the beach, and it was beautiful!

The week before, right after Grandpa Jacks' funeral, we were visiting with Brian's reletives, and Ethan rode a horse for the first time.  The whole time he was on top of that huge horse, he kept saying, "I"m riding a horse! I'm riding a horse!"  The first morning of the reunion, when I woke up and went down to the beach, I kept thinking to myself, "I'm running on the beach!  I'm running on the beach!"  I was just so peaceful and invigorating at the same time.  I loved it!

We've spent a good portion of our summer at my parents' house, playing in the back yard and swimming.  The girl cousins have played Egyptians, Last Air Bender, Olympics, fairies, goddesses, Indians...you name it.  The boys have mostly ran around the yard, laughing and yelling.

Alyssa had an Ancient Egyptian birthday party where we played Pin the Beard on Tutenkamen, musical chairs to the song, "My Mummy and Me," ate River Nile Silt Cake (dirt cake), and went swimming.  She invited a few friends from school and the cousins her age.

I was going to put up a bunch of pictures, but it looks like I need to do some unloading of my camera.  I guess I'll just end the post by saying: Next week is our last week of summer, and right now I'm stuck between being sad that summer is over and being excited for the fall.
+

You Think I Would Have Learned By Now

We didn't have summer school during all of July.  It started when Brian's grandpa passed away, and I started cleaning my house like a mad woman to be prepared for out of town visitors.  While I cleaned, the kids played and made messes, so I would clean upstairs while they played downstairs, then the next day I would work downstairs while they messed up their rooms, and it went back and forth until I caught up to their madness.  Yes, I did have the kids help me for some of it, and they aren't exactly the tornadoes I make them out to be, but you have to admit that kids are very good at making messes.

Then came packing for the Jacks Family Reunion.  The funeral was on Saturday, and we were leaving for the reunion Tuesday morning.  Then came the reunion itself (a whole week!) then recovering from the reunion while keeping up with the normal housework while the "tornadoes" were still running around.  Yesterday I just barely put away the suitcase we used for Becca .  It had been sitting on the floor of her room, open and halfway full, this whole time.

Throughout the past two weeks, sometimes this little voice in the back of my mind would say, "We should start summer school again," but then I would think, "As soon as I have things under control, we will."  I really felt discouraged this last weekend, because the kids and I made sure that our bedrooms and the family room and kitchen were clean before we went swimming at my parents' house each day, but I still came downstairs on Saturday morning to what I felt was an absolute disaster area.  I said to Brian, "If we cleaned each morning, then spent the entire day away from the house, how on earth did it get so messy?!?  It's so frustrating!"  That's still a mystery I'm trying to figure out.  I know part of it is that even though I was doing a good job of washing the laundry, I wasn't folding and putting clothes away, and that made for baskets of clean laundry in random places around the house.  Then Saturday was pretty jam packed with a long run in the morning, then making a quadruple batch of dirt cake for Alyssa's birthday party and not cleaning up after myself, then heading to run errands and such and have the birthday party, then coming home and collapsing in bed.  So maybe it was a bunch of little messes and then running out the door before cleaning them that made things get out of control.  I really do wish we had a robotic maid or something, because keeping the house clean is such a pain!

So here's the lesson I learned...AGAIN!  I know I keep blogging about this, and everyone's probably tired of hearing it, but I'm hoping that if I keep writing it down, then maybe it will finally stick in my head.  When we have summer school and follow our routine, the house stays clean, I spend quality time with the kids, and we finish with plenty of time left over to just have fun.  Why do I keep having to learn this lesson over and over again?  I think it's something that I just need to drill into my brain before school starts. I also think that if a lot of people knew about this cycle ( I am now going to call it the Cycle of Productivity) that they wouldn't be so intimidated by homeschooling.  I've had a lot of people tell me that they would love to homeschool, but they knew they couldn't because they had such a hard time keeping up with just the housework, let alone throwing teaching their children into the mix.  I think if more people knew that if they followed the routine, not only would their kids get a quality education by someone who loved them, but the household chores, for the most part, would just fall into place.

And it's not like we're skipping school for frivolous things.  It's not like I'm saying, "Oh, let's not have school this morning.  I'd really like to read my book."  Or make crafts.  Or watch t.v.  What I keep telling myself is:  If we just take the morning off from school, then I can get things put away.  Or catch up on the laundry.  Or scrub the kitchen.  In reality, it's when we have school that I seem to have more time to get those things done anyway.  It's like that object lesson we get a million times at church.  You put the rocks in the jar, then the sand, then the water...and it all fits!  It really does!  Maybe that's why we have that lesson so often - it's true!  And I need to stop learning it the hard way.

So here are my goals:

1.  Keep the school room clean, so that even if we get behind on the house, we can just shut the school room door and have a clean place to work.  The sub-goal here is to bring down some crafting supplies for the kids, like glue and paper and such, and having them do their fun projects downstairs, so we don't have paper clippings and broken crayons strewn about their desks.

2. Have school every weekday, no matter what chores need to be done.  Every day!  No talking myself out of it!

3. Make sure things are under control during the weekend.  I have the tendency to not do any cleaning during the weekends.  Sometimes it's because I want to relax, and sometimes it's like this last weekend where we were running around too much to clean up after ourselves.  That should not be happening.  Usually it would just put us behind five minutes or so if we would just stop and clean up our mess before running out the door.

There.  Rant over.  I promise I'll stop talking about this.  And just to let you know, please don't think my house is sparkling clean.  It's not, but it is under control, which is nice.