I am sitting down to type this at the end of a long day where I am asked to give my late afternoon/early evening/date night for the church...which is simultaneously an honor and a little sad for this mama's/wife's heart. To be with people in crisis - it is the honor and work of a pastor. It is also the sacrifice of his wife and family. Living in that place tonight. I am neither trying to exalt us or play the martyr...it's just part of my day, so I thought I would share where I am at the end of my Monday.
There is a bright side. Donny is on his way home with Outback...including a bloomin' onion (Thanks, Ryan Newman for your top ten finish yesterday). I am thankful for a husband who is committed to his church but is also committed to his wife and is willing to stop for a nice "stay date" dinner for us. He must be so tired. Did I mention it's snowing, and he's driving home at that dangerous point when they haven't cleared the roads yet? BUT...there's a bloomin' onion coming. Love him.
So...back to my day.
6:45 a.m. Woke up, poured my coffee into my Dunkin Donuts styrofoam cup that I got over the weekend and washed...because I discovered that I really like drinking my coffee from a styrofoam cup. I read my devotion and also read/prepared for my Bible Study that I lead with some women from the church on Tuesday mornings. Tomorrow is our last day of our year-long study on prayer. Prayers of the Bible by Susan Hunt. Great in a group or on your own. I have really enjoyed it.
7:30 a.m. Millie came down, showed me the newest fashion for her stuffed bear, and told me she couldn't find her notebook. I went upstairs to find it had fallen off the end of her bed. She only had one easy worksheet and a new calendar to fill out for March, so she sat in my blue chair downstairs and did it while I did a few things on the computer.
8:00 a.m. Oatmeal on its way, Will gets up, and I call Hunter for breakfast. Hunter comes down on the verge of tears. He told me he woke up and felt tired, so he only got his meeting strip and math worksheet done. He still had quite a bit of memory work to review. He looked a little pale and felt a little warm. No temperature, but he went back upstairs to "rest" (also known as laying in bed reading Calvin and Hobbes). Millie, Will, Donny and I enjoyed breakfast together. Since I wasn't going to be hitting the ground running with school with Hunter feeling ill, Donny and I got a few minutes to talk. That was nice.
By 9:00, Donny was off to work, and Hunter came down for some toast. It was hard to tell the severity of his sickness. Gonna need patience and discernment all day.
Confession: It's 7:19 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I didn't get quite get this finished yesterday, so we'll see how much I remember.
While Hunter, Millie, and Will ate toast, I read more from Ruth and prayed for our day.
At 9:30 I turned Elmo on for Will, and Hunter, Millie and I sat at the dining room table for grammar. I could tell it was pushing Hunter a little too much to be sitting up for so long (Bible and then grammar), so he went to sit in the den with Will. Millie and I then did reading and her spelling bee.
10:00 a.m. - My school morning moved in here:
There is a bright side. Donny is on his way home with Outback...including a bloomin' onion (Thanks, Ryan Newman for your top ten finish yesterday). I am thankful for a husband who is committed to his church but is also committed to his wife and is willing to stop for a nice "stay date" dinner for us. He must be so tired. Did I mention it's snowing, and he's driving home at that dangerous point when they haven't cleared the roads yet? BUT...there's a bloomin' onion coming. Love him.
So...back to my day.
6:45 a.m. Woke up, poured my coffee into my Dunkin Donuts styrofoam cup that I got over the weekend and washed...because I discovered that I really like drinking my coffee from a styrofoam cup. I read my devotion and also read/prepared for my Bible Study that I lead with some women from the church on Tuesday mornings. Tomorrow is our last day of our year-long study on prayer. Prayers of the Bible by Susan Hunt. Great in a group or on your own. I have really enjoyed it.
7:30 a.m. Millie came down, showed me the newest fashion for her stuffed bear, and told me she couldn't find her notebook. I went upstairs to find it had fallen off the end of her bed. She only had one easy worksheet and a new calendar to fill out for March, so she sat in my blue chair downstairs and did it while I did a few things on the computer.
8:00 a.m. Oatmeal on its way, Will gets up, and I call Hunter for breakfast. Hunter comes down on the verge of tears. He told me he woke up and felt tired, so he only got his meeting strip and math worksheet done. He still had quite a bit of memory work to review. He looked a little pale and felt a little warm. No temperature, but he went back upstairs to "rest" (also known as laying in bed reading Calvin and Hobbes). Millie, Will, Donny and I enjoyed breakfast together. Since I wasn't going to be hitting the ground running with school with Hunter feeling ill, Donny and I got a few minutes to talk. That was nice.
By 9:00, Donny was off to work, and Hunter came down for some toast. It was hard to tell the severity of his sickness. Gonna need patience and discernment all day.
Confession: It's 7:19 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I didn't get quite get this finished yesterday, so we'll see how much I remember.
While Hunter, Millie, and Will ate toast, I read more from Ruth and prayed for our day.
At 9:30 I turned Elmo on for Will, and Hunter, Millie and I sat at the dining room table for grammar. I could tell it was pushing Hunter a little too much to be sitting up for so long (Bible and then grammar), so he went to sit in the den with Will. Millie and I then did reading and her spelling bee.
10:00 a.m. - My school morning moved in here:
Hunter felt most comfortable sitting/laying down, and Millie built a fort right next to us. Thankfully, Will and Millie played happily in the fort while I sat on the little green stool next to Hunter and went through math and memory work with him.
11:00 a.m. - I took Will up to his room for pack n play time and a snack. Hunter, Millie and I grabbed a snack as well and went back into the den to read our history lesson on the Crusades. I left Hunter with a math worksheet on subtraction. It was supposed to be a timed test, but it was clear that Hunter wasn't going to be doing anything very quickly today, so I just let him work through the facts (there were 100 of them) on his own pace. This is one of those times when I am thankful my math curriculum is so repetitive, because I know that this timed test on subtraction will appear again (and again) in the next week or two.
Millie and I headed downstairs to the school room to do her math lesson on tallying and counting by 5s. She also had an oral assessment on counting pennies and dimes and telling me the days of the week. The lesson today proves again why I love Classical Conversations. She learned to skip count the 5s earlier in the year, so the lesson was a breeze, because she was already so confident with what was being introduced.
At 12:00 we headed upstairs for lunch. The lunch hour is a blur.
At 1:30 I took Will up for his nap, gave Hunter his spelling test, and finished quizzing him on his memory work. Doing the spelling may have been too much for him, but oh well. We survived.
Today was one of those days when I wanted to quiz him through all of his memory work with CC. He has seven subjects of memory work:
- Math
- Geography
- History
- English Grammar
- Latin
- History Timeline
- Science
He has 24 weeks of memory work in each subject. It takes a while to get through (like 1 1/2 to 2 hours), but he is doing great. He is going for "Memory Masters" where he has to recite every single piece of it. The first round starts this week, and he is allowed to miss 3 per subject in round one. Once he gets to round 2 he can only miss one per subject. By Round 4 he can't miss anything. Today he did great. He made the goal of less than 3 mistakes in all subjects except history, so I put history flash cards in his folder for tomorrow's notebook work. It's a lot of hard work for my eight year old, but it's fun seeing all of this information become second nature to him.
2:45 - Book time for the big kids - I took a shower, grabbed some lunch, and I really can't remember what else I did.
I guess the biggest lesson from my day was to be flexible when the moving parts of children and homeschooling change. Being willing to do school on the couch and do almost everything orally still allowed Hunter to do what he could without pushing him too hard. It's really one of the reasons I love homeschooling. We can tailor our days to fit the needs of our family. While it required patience and flexibility on my part (which is hard sometimes), it also was nice to feel like we were a little more relaxed just sitting around learning together.
Ok (since it's Tuesday morning at 7:48 a.m.), time to start Day 4!!!
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