A day in the life

Thursday morning, I was sitting in my red chair with my coffee, when I realized this might be our last normal school day for a long time.  I have wanted to do a "day in the life" post for years and it has never happened...for silly reasons really.  I guess perfection is my enemy and I kept waiting for the perfect day, which never happens.  We are supposed to have one more week of school before life becomes INSANE and we travel/have family visit for the holiday/move.  We will be taking at least 2 months off, although I hope to have the kids do a little work to keep the wheels turning during that time.  Thus, I followed my instinct and documented what has been our normal life.

 I'm always up at 6:00.  I have a deep love for quiet mornings with coffee and reading.  My day goes exponentially better when I start with coffee, Jesus and praying over our day and my family.

Every morning I am reminded how deep mother's intuit runs; I can hear ever foot step out of bed and I can always tell who is up.  

Ben gets up first and will let Maya out of her crate, who sprints down stairs and shoves her head in my lap to be smothered in love.  It's a pretty great way to start the day.  

7:00, my boys come downstairs for snuggles.  This has happened every morning for 8 years and I'm not sure how life will go on when it stops.

Ben dishes out hugs, leaves for work and Maya will steal the warm spot while I go get ready for a run.

Then she'll follow me around, licking me, begging me to take her.

{She gets walked after I run or in the afternoon}

When I get back, it's time for breakfast (Alison usually wakes up while I'm out).  Usually, Alison and Colin will have a granola bar and a piece of fruit and Eli will eat whatever I eat, plus a bowl of cereal. But once a week, we do a bigger breakfast.  Their favorite is French toast :)

 

The kids do their morning chores while I clean up and then it's time for math!  Of course the day I document is not normal...we are usually at our desks, but there have been some grumbling attitudes about "our boring schoolroom", so we sat outside at the picnic table this day.  It worked wonders for those grumbles!

After math, we planned our third annual 'Falloween Party'.

Then it was time for grammar.  Again, usually we're at our desks...but Colin and I laid on the floor of the school room and petted Maya while doing his lesson.  He's learning about common and proper nouns and the lesson was on animals and pets proper names.

While I give Eli his lessons and check Alisons work, Colin can do ABC Mouse.

Then it's time for lunch.  A favorite school day lunch is cheese and crackers, with veggies and fruit.

We are at the library at least once a week, if not more.  However, this week, I only had time to drop off the stack that was due and thankfully, the kids still have plenty of reading material.

(P.S. this Danny McGee book is weird.  don't get it)

In the afternoon, we do science or history.  We were learning about homogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures this week.  This lesson was on suspensions and we did a little experiment:

I am loving this science book so far; I love that I can use it for all 3 kids and it makes the lessons easy to understand, with simple experiments.  However, not one experiment has worked!  The raisins were supposed to eventually rise to the top, but they did not.

Then we have reading time.  I'll read some out loud, then work with Colin and then they all go to their beds to read independently.

We finished the Mouse and the Motorcycle this day!

Alison read this book 4 years ago, but she has still enjoyed listening to it.

After reading time, the kids go out and play with the neighbors.  The timing works out nicely as they are coming home from school and we are done with all our work.  Lately, they have been playing until it's dark and time to come in for dinner; just the way the life of a kid should be.

Colin has been asking to do the slip in slide for a week.  It's been in the 90's, so why not?  Before he played with the neighbors, he got in some splash time and had a blast.  This may be the last time in his life that he plays in water on October 25th.

In my perfect schedule world, we also do afternoon chores, they help cook dinner and practice piano, but perfect doesn't always happen when the weather has FINALLY cooled off and you can be outside.

My suspicions were right and that day was our last day of normal.  The next day, 2 of the 3 kids were feeling under the weather and next week, I'm heading to California to finalize things on our new house.  Ben will do some school with the kids and we'll have our party, but it won't be our simple, normal days. 

I like our normal.  Maybe too much.  I sure am curious what our new normal will look like in a few months...