Aaaah!

Okay, so school starts tomorrow.

My list looks like this now...

• Make school shirts
• Gather materials for first month 
• Fill out lesson planner (almost done)
• Set up new school room (no comment)

I am an awesome procrastinator. But at least I got the shirts done!

Also a bunch of birds took over our yard...

 Little black dots= birds

After having an Alfred Hitchcock panic attack, I decided to get some pictures. Though it's tough to see in the photo, there are probably over 30 birds in our yard. I still have no idea why the bird convention happened.


Okay, back to homeschool...

We joined a preschool co-op that a friend of mine has graciously organized and lucky for us, the co-op is doing the catholicicing curriculum! Which, is the awesome curriculum we used last year for preschool (and planned on using this year again). Totally worked out. I love when that happens.

Then, I found out that Clifford got in to the 4-5 year old class offered once a week in the homeschool co-op we joined last year. So, we just got loads of busy over here.

Note to self: Do school in the summer so as to avoid start-of-fall-panic. 

That leaves us with 2.5 days a week of 4K and 1 "free" day. I'm really excited for our 4K curriculum, which includes-

•  Math (Saxon) 
• Reading (Little Angels Reader)
• Catholicism (Chats with God's Little Ones)
• Science (250 Preschool Science Activities)
• Art (TBD... yup, I know...) 

This is my first time trying out all of these books. Wish us luck!

Augusty

Basically, a whole bunch of August just happened...

We went to our local splash park. Turns out one of my kids isn't terrified of water sprinkling them. Which is an entire kid more than last summer (improvement!).

 Success! 

Luckily, there are three playgrounds next to the splash park. 

Too much excitement!

Besides taking a tour of our park system, I've been trying to get things organized around here for the start of the school year. 

I implemented a daily chore chart. 

So far the chart has acted like more of a "suggestion" chart. (And yes, I illustrated it... and yes that's the best I can draw).

But still on the list of things to do are-

• Make school shirts (I love this but it brings on the procrastinator in me) 
• Gather materials for the first month (I'm doing monthly this year, instead of weekly stuff gathering)
• Fill out lesson planner
• Set up new school room (this is school room #3, indecisive much?) 

In other news, Clifford has been honing in some new skills.

Most impressively is the pancake batter making skill.

Which comes in handy when I do this...

You'd think this is a thing you could only do once in life... apparently not. 

Clifford has also learned the art of funny face making while being photographed. 

Ya know, because getting a nice picture of the four kids wasn't hard enough. 

He has, however taken an interest in photography.

Hey look, it's me! 

Photo by Clifford. His favorite tree. 

So, that's what we've been up to.

Bye!

Kneelers

Approaching our last month of summer...

I didn't want to stay out of practice, so decided to do a craft that I found online with the kids.

They're portable kneelers for the kids!  Clifford and Maria enjoyed decorating theirs with markers and stickers.

The stickers I expected to fall off... but it turns out the marker also slides right off and on to all of our clothes... which Clifford thinks is fantastic.

 Clifford chose star and heart stickers.

 Maria's kneeler, decked out in smileys and automobiles.

The girls loved using these! 

 Maria helping Dolly pray with Emily. 

So, those are the pleasant things that happened this week. Maybe later I'll share about the bottle of vinegar that got dumped on our library books... or how I don't get to use the bathroom alone... or maybe I'll nap. 

I'll probably nap.

Procrastinating

It's getting to be that time again. Time to plan more seriously for the next school year!

I'm so excited that I've been unable to decide what to do first... certainly not procrastinating... just too excited, really. (Don't believe me? Good.)

Honestly, I am really excited about the upcoming school year. There's just so much summer fun left to have. Also, there's that baby who keeps me from sleeping.

Sure is cute, though. 

But mainly, I'm just great at procrastinating. 

Great thing about procrastinating is you can do it anywhere... 

 

So, I took the kids and procrastinated at the Historical Museum. 

 We've procrastinated at a playgroup, a library, and a park...  I'm running out of ideas, which means I might actually get something school related done this week.

Bye!

Newborns

 

"Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward." - Psalm 127:3 


"If you want to know what it's like to have a fourth, just imagine you're drowning... and someone hands you a baby." - Jim Gaffigan


Newborns-

The best thing about newborns is that, if you wait awhile, they eventually stop being newborns.

At their most excellent our newborns are sweet and innocent little people who have robbed us of sleep in the most gentle way possible.

 At their worst, they have screamed so loudly and in such a terrifying manner that we might just have considered exorcism.

Right now, we have a little boy who pulls a Jekyll and Hyde on us.

Calm, well mannered boy by day...

 howling banshee by night.


 So, what do we do to cope?

In the "pleasant side" of life, when we have it more together we utilize our amazingly well oiled teamwork to get through newbornhood and spend the parts of our nights with the new one in prayer.

But, life isn't always pleasant and sometimes we don't have it "more together". So, sometimes we drag ourselves like zombies through the days and nights and wait for death. We become increasingly less patient with everything and everyone around us... and fantasize about converting to Buddhism (we won't, don't worry... probably).

Summerings

Happy 4th of July!... a week ago. 

Okay, I'm a bit behind. We've been having a lot of stuff happening over here.

We went to our local gardens and enjoyed the flowers.

Clifford got his picture taken in front of some of his favorite flowers... sort of like most "normal" people might with their favorite, famous actors.

 Then, my papa and brother came over and set up a swing set in our back yard. 

While we were out there, I (really, grandma Crystal) discovered we have raspberries growing in our garden... like, a lot of them.
 

So that's neat.

The next day geeklet #4 got Catholic'd! I forgot the camera, because I can apparently be on top of taking pictures of berries and flowers but not important holy sacraments (sigh).

But here's a picture of him for reference.

And I came up with his is blog name! Peter!

So that stuff happened... and our basement flooded

And our air conditioner broke, got repaired, broke again, fixed, broke again... it's been kind of toasty here.

Bye!