Well, we have successfully started school and are now doing Bible, Language Arts and Math daily.  (Pictures in the slide show are from our first day of school).  The first week was a little rough trying to get back into the routine, but I think we are pretty close to ironing that out and reminding the kids that God didn't create them to just sit around and play all day. 

Boy6's reading has improved in just the little break we had.  I got an idea from a friend on an online forum that I frequent  She made up her own Easy Reader stories for her kids.  She was gracious to post her stories online.  I took them and tweaked them, using my son's name and other members of our family.  Then I typed them up with plenty of space between sentences so that he can illustrate the stories himself.   Because of his love of drawing, he was all over this project.  The first story was "Boy6 has a red hat."  So I think I will stick with this type of reader for a while so he can continue to gain confidence before I bring back some "real" books. 

Girl7 has been begging to begin cursive so we have the Handwriting without Tears workbook and she is enjoying the feeling of being grown up and writing in cursive like some of her older friends - even though we are just making c's so far.

Girl4 is loving her Explode the Code workbooks and is actually blending as well as Boy6 right now - so amazing how different they each can be!

The girls, as you can also see from the slide show, have become so excited to have their hair curled.  Girl7 BEGGED me to buy some rollers at Wal-Mart last week and has had me put them in every night for about two weeks.  Girl4 doesn't like to sleep in them quite as much but in interest of matching her sister, she has resigned herself every few days.  Their interest in this might have to do with a new love for Shirley Temple movies.  We own 3 and they had never been much interested in them until now.  Funny how their tastes and interests change over time.  It has been funny to try to explain to them that the movies are not a series and why the same little girl has a different name, different mom or dad, etc in each movie.  Other than that the only drawback is that Girl4 seems suddenly quite concerned that we might die since Shirley Temple seems to have lost one or both parents in every movie. 

It's crunch time for BW as the last of his summer school class papers are due on Monday.  Not helpful for me(only because it is so convicting) that he is doing a counseling paper on what the Bible says about counseling Laziness/Slothfulness.  He also preached a great sermon last Sunday on the Good Shepherd from John 10.  What a blessing to hear such biblical truth from my own husband - God is so good!  We are looking forward to his head emerging from the books on Tuesday so that we can begin our family vacation time for a few weeks.  In the meantime, I am heading to my parents tomorrow so the kids can go swimming and I can have an extra set of eyes and ears for a day while BW spends the day in the library. 

Grace & peace!

-J