Vacation is almost over

I am so ready for vacation to be over and to get back to real life.

But in the meantime, today we practiced piano.  Andrew and I played our piano games which are really helping him.  Skylar finished writing her composition piece for her recital and Cairn worked on her songs when she felt up to it.

N and C spent the day with us too.  C and Skylar worked on writing their Thank you notes.  I tried to get Andrew to write his but he was too busy with N.  I will let it slide for a couple days since N hasn't been over for awhile.

Dad worked on cleaning the laundry room which is a big help for me.  A lot of the stuff in their was his so now I can go back in and organize my stuff and then we will have a cleaner and fewer items room to start us off on our minimizing theme this year.

I also worked on cleaning out underneath the kitchen desk.  The area was meant to be a place for the kids to find materials to do arts and crafts projects when they wanted too.  They could pull out stuff when they wanted without needing me.  They never really did anything so I cleaned it out, reorganized and now I will do more guiding toward using the area.  We have tons of arts and craft materials that I always seem to be saving for that perfect project.  Which is really backfiring on me because instead of doing perfect projects we aren't doing anything.  That is going to change.  All the kids have done wonderful things with the little projects I have given them lately.

Dinner was taco stuff.  I usually just make it and serve it but tonight I tried something different.  I gave everyone a choice between 2 ways I could serve dinner - either burritos or taco salad.  Everyone picked what they wanted and then ate it.  There was little complaining and lots of eating going on.  I am not a short order cook and never have been but I do hate the complaining.  This was an easy way to offer a choice and not be a short order cook and not have to listen to a lot of complaining.  I will try to do this more often but I won't be able to do it every night.

Bedtime routine started at 7:15 and everyone was in bed by 8 PM - even Dad.  Me - I am up working on getting school ready.  I have decided to do 6 weeks on, 1 week off rotation for this year to try it out.  I have scheduled 2 weeks off in July and then the entire month of December again.  So I am trying to plan for the next 6 weeks before we start school full force on Monday again.  With 7 school sections I hope to develop some themes to study and really delve into a subject but this first one will be just the basics.