Friday 7 Quick Takes {July 17, 2015}

1) Reflection . . . . there had been a lot of that lately. Finishing up the last details for the new school year has been extremely difficult this year. I'm checking things off the list, yet coming up with new things to add. I'm almost there though and looking forward to moving ahead with our new year very soon.

2) Enjoy some Fourth of July pictures. I didn't take any of the fireworks this year.

 

3) Last weekend the boys braved flooding and went on a fishing trip at Roaring River (state park in Missouri-close to Arkansas). By the time they got there the flooding was over and the park was back open. I think they had a good time.

Lucy and I stayed home. I worked on school planning and relaxed via HGTV on Netflix. Lucy destroyed toys!

4)How's that summer to-do list going? you ask. Well, it started out great . . . . . and that is about it. All the bedrooms need a good deep cleaning. The kind of cleaning when you move the bed and sweep under it. That is something that is not done much here since we store stuff under the bed. The boy's closets needs a good cleaning too. I just keep putting it off! 

5)I talked earlier about how difficult planning this school year has been. Planning for Tyler has been much easier than usual. Caleb was tough this year. Most of my difficulties come from not being able to focus on our goals for high school. That is because our goals are completely different than most. You can feel yourself starting to drown at times. I've talked about this in other post, so it's something I've struggled with a while. I think the best thing is prayer. It really helps. It's a constant thing or otherwise I start to sink and once I start sinking I forget about praying with all the clamorous disorder that I've sunken to. Prayer must be constant and never ending. 


6) I've been reading some books that the boys will be starting soon for school. I've also been reading Charlotte Mason's sixth book. I'm getting towards the end and hope to finish it up in the next two weeks. I have read this book before and parts of it several times. I always pick up new things. I'm really just reading it for some inspiration of the upcoming new school year. As usual, my to-read pile is over flowing!

7)I know I haven't been blogging much lately and I think that will change next month. We've been keeping it pretty simple around here (in other words not much is going on)and I haven't felt pulled to write. Thanks for checking in on me though! I plan to pick things up next month.

 Just sharing 7 things I'm thinking about. What about you?

School Planning Progress {sort of}

Things are moving along here. A bit of an odd summer for us, but all is great.

Thursday evening before the storm. Those ruts were a foot deep when we came out Sunday.

We enjoyed two trips out to the family farm on last Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon. Pictures are from the family farm visits.

Very wet at the family farm!

Thursday night we just needed to get the dog out to run. We had to pay close attention to the weather since we were expecting severe weather, but we had a couple hours before it was in our area. (We were in the basement later that evening under a tornado warning.) Lucy got to practice retrieving in the lake. It wasn't her first time, yet she was uncertain at first but then was thoroughly enjoying it afterwards. She tends to run, full speed, crazy like, after she is done swimming (I assume to dry off). Of course, she was darting around us and ran into me. Thankfully she was mid turn so I didn't get knocked over. But, my leg was throbbing the next morning. Some pain reliever and it was all fine the next day.

It's hard to take a picture in a moving car, with a moving puppy, and no one would look at the camera.

This was the best one!

On Sunday, we went out to the farm with my parents, my aunt, and my nephew. My nephew spent the night at my parents for the first time by himself and this was his first fishing trip at the farm. He caught his first fish and ate it too! My aunt caught the biggest fish (she always does), a catfish, even though her pole broke. I didn't get a picture of that. Scott caught the smallest. I sat in my hammock and read and almost fell asleep . . . . almost as with a 4 year old nearby makes it tough to fall asleep.

I've been steadily working along to get ready for the start of school. It seems never ending! I've hit a few snags and I'm not sure what to do about them . . . . so I put them off. One is Spanish for Caleb and the other is science for Caleb. Tyler has been easy!

Waiting for someone to catch a fish.

Summer break is tough on us. It seems everyone's brain turns to mush. We enjoy the freedom but fail at staying organized because we don't have that dependable schedule in place. This works fine the first couple of weeks but at this point it is miserable! This is one reason I think a short summer break is mandatory for us. Yet, it is so hard for me to get started again and those boys have been brain washed  and they really don't understand why they can't just run wild for three months. ; )

Lucy loves fishing!

She was so excited to go fishing that she fell head first into the lake. She wasn't sure what to think of that.

I'm the only one who knows it, but we are going to start back to school next week. It will be a gradual thing but we need the schedule in place to function. We will just have about an hour of Morning Basket next week and around Thursday I will add back in grammar (because I have a new program that I want to give a test run). The next week we will continue with those two and add in math about mid-week. The week after that we are going to half days. My goal is to be done with school around lunch time each day and get a weeks worth of school done in two weeks.

Other homeschoolers do this gradual thing and I've always wanted to but didn't know how to do it. It came to me that I needed to start with subjects that were independent of other subjects and that is why I picked the ones I did. We will see how that goes!

My goals to have completed by Sunday include having Morning Basket ready to start along with grammar and math. I need to finalize our daily schedule . . . . I'm thinking a simple schedule this year term. I'm using Celeste's @ Joyous Lessons weekly schedule template for the boys to keep track of their lessons. Of course, this has the weekly lessons (not broken down into daily) and I'm curious to see how this plays out. Easier for me! I'm hoping it's not a fail for the boys though. I also need to get some papers printed, things arranged, notebooks arranged, and really what seems like an endless list of things to get done. It always comes together in the end though.

Some post I have been enjoying while planning include:
Celeste @ Joyous Lessons As mentioned above and she had some more planning post.
Brandy @ Afterthoughts has several new planning post. 
Ambleside Online  forum and really their whole site has been outstanding in helping me to get our first year in AO under control.