I just think it's so wonderful that I can leave on a 5-day trip, leaving half of the kids at home, and I come home to a house that's cleaner than I left it (WAY cleaner!), bouquets of flowers, and happy children! My husband rocks! :)

I had a wonderful time in NYC with my "bookend children", visiting my sister & BIL. Almost-7-yr-old E got to see almost everything in his New York book, took lots of pictures, played with his dog-cousin, and in general had a great time. The baby did great traveling, and had fun flirting with waitresses, flight attendants, and BIL's family. She's a big ham! We all had a wonderful time, and packed a lot into 4 1/2 days: a picnic upstate, Times Square, Central Park, American Museum of Natural History, riding the subway, the Aquarium, Coney Island, touching the Atlantic Ocean, seeing the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge (for some reason, E thought that was really cool!), and Long Island. The weather was lovely too!

It was neat to play tourist, but I'm glad to be home. I really missed my sweet husband, and it's nice for E to be able to play with his sisters again. The nice thing about vacations is that they make you realize the blessings you have at home: other children, my own bed & pillow, and nice roads!

Now back to school. We're on week 29 of our 36 week curriculum, and I'm looking forward to ordering the next year's materials. Our local homeschool expo is this wknd, and I'm really looking forward to it. My parents will come to care for the kids so that dh & I can go with just the baby, and enjoy that time of refreshment together.

I haven't decided yet what we're going to do schedule-wise for the summer. I don't want to take the whole summer off because of information retention issues, so we'll probably just take a 5 wk break or so, to accomodate our vacation plans. I need the break, that's for sure!