It has been an excellent week, so far. Summer break began the week my two nieces came at the beginning of June. They defined our calendar school year by their presence. Those two weeks we accomplished nothing – no school, no housecleaning, just play. I had devoted those two weeks just for them. We took walks/adventures up the creek, went horseback riding together as much as they desired, took them out to eat at cute restaurants, and went shopping. I didn’t worry about the house, the laundry, or anything else. The only thing I concerned myself with was giving my two nieces a delightful stay at our home.

 

The following week, I was overwhelmed with laundry (gadzillions of it) and housework. I was playing catch-up the entire week.

 

The next week,  I was busy with a trip to Indianapolis, and a visit from my in-laws. I finally caught up with all the laundry and the house came back to normalcy.

 

Now this week, I feel that I have finally found balance, and it’s such a good feeling. We actually had a little school this week. I continued my reading lessons with Jacob (6), and worked with Joshua (12) accomplishing a chapter in his Saxon math book. I hope to continue this through the summer, and to also have Ruthie (8) do at least one page of math (Calvert) per day.

 

The two little ones went to a local church vacation Bible school. It is amazing what one can get done when half the children, especially the youngest ones, are absent for the morning.

 

My project for this week was to clean, organize, and declutter my bedroom. It is on the third floor of our home, and because of its location, it takes the last priority in our home. It is the first room to go to pot at Christmas time (presents), and when time gets short, things seem to accumulate in this room. It felt so good to tackle this room.

 

I put a higher priority this week on cooking good meals. We had some wonderful sit-down-together family meals, both at lunch and dinner. 

 

Our family got back into our nightly routine of reading a book together. We have been reading through the book, The Lord Is My Strength, Volume I of the series, Chronicles of the King (by Lynn Austin.)  When my  nieces  came, we had stopped our  nightly reading time   This week,  we finally got back into our routine. We often watch Fox News in the evening, and sometimes a bit of the Discovery or the History channel. Around 8:00 p.m. we turn it off and have everyone gets  ready for bed. Then we have our story time and I do the reading outloud. We usually read a couple of chapters.  Jacob almost always goes to sleep during the reading time. Since he is already for bed, we just carry him up and tuck him in.   The children have actually all heard these stories before during school time this last year. Once when daddy was home from work, he heard a chapter of what we were reading.  Ever since, he has requested that we have this reading time in the evening so that he can hear the stories, too!