Weekly Wrap-Up: The week I finally realized that I can't just skip school because I want to

Don't get me wrong.  I'm still very flexible when it comes to our school schedule.  But in years past I've been known to wake up and be like, "Meh, I don't feel like doing school.  No school today!"  And I really wanted to do that this past week because we were pretty busy, but school with the older two has gotten to the point that if we skip a day that just means more work later on to catch up, and it's not really worth it as much anymore.  Don't get too excited though.  As I sit here and realize that we still have another two weeks to go before our Christmas break, I'm working hard to figure out what I can push to next semester so that we can finish a day or two earlier.  Purely for the girls of course, they deserve the break!

There was a lot of shopping, cleaning, and baking going on last week.  Shopping because we got a paycheck and thus the groceries for two weeks needed to be bought.  But also the kind of shopping that happened online because IEW had their clearance items 50% off.  I didn't get everything I wanted, but I still got some awesome deals.  No Christmas shopping though.  I've got everything for everyone except Hubby who won't tell me what he actually wants (hint, hint Baby!)  and my sister-in-law whose name I drew for my family's Christmas that isn't happening until after the first of the year.

This is what happens when the 6 year old want to help.  Red sugar on the floor.  Thankful for tile floors!

The cleaning and baking were happening because we had our open house for the church here on Saturday.  I didn't take a single picture, which I'm really bummed about because I had an awesome spread!  We had about 30 people in and out of the house and we enjoyed all of it.  I couldn't have done it without Hubby of course.  I may make all the food, but he takes the bulk of the cleaning and child care so I don't have to worry about it.  And I think while everyone was here he filled more cups with cider and coffee than I did.  In retrospect, I could have baked a little less and saved myself some time by having some fruit and veggie trays, but that didn't occur to me until the day of.  Maybe I'll remember next year!

One picture of my decorations.  Christmas is the only holiday I decorate for so I do it up well!

We were also able to go to one of the girls' friend's choir performance Friday night.  It was very impressive.  Exactly the sort of experience I want for my girls.  I'm still working towards starting a homeschool choir, but if that doesn't pan out I'm thinking this choir is the one we would pick for the girls to be in.  And we enjoyed spending time with our friends as well.  So much so that we didn't leave their house until 10.  We probably should have left sooner, but we lost track of the time.  We were enjoying ourselves! 

School wise we're got ourselves on track to finish where we need to at the end of the semester.  We were one week behind in history so we shelved geography for the rest of the semester and we're doubling up on history so we can get it done.  I gave the girls the option of only adding a couple lessons more for the next three weeks and then having their semester test at the end of a full week or doubling the lessons so they would have the entire last week to study and take the final test.  They chose to work harder for the first two weeks so they didn't have to stress about the test.  A decision I think they will be very happy with next week!

I also want to say that math finally seems to be clicking with #1.  Very rarely does she struggle with understanding her lessons anymore.  She still has a hard time with getting all her answers right when she does her lesson set, but that is more from the way Saxon sets up their problem sets to be a review of previous lessons.  She knows them all, but switching gears from problem to problem is hard for her.  So we focus a lot on reading each problem twice so she knows what she is supposed to do and checking her answer to make sure it makes sense before she writes it down to turn in.   When she remembers all that she does very well.

#3 is reading excellently now.  She is resisting my prompting to read harder books though
.  She likes the nice easy ones she's been on for a while.  But this last trip to the library I made her go to the older section and picked out most of her books for her.  I still let her get the easy ones, but she also has to read the more difficult ones as well.  I love seeing her get a book out and read it without any prompting. 

Speaking of the library, all that deep cleaning last week lost us two library books.  #4 is getting better about putting the books back in the library bag when she gets them out, but when she "helps" clean there is no telling where she'll put a book.  I estimate that we've donated about 5 of our books to the library because I didn't check the ones we were turning in well enough.  So hopefully those library books are at the bottom of the toy box.  Exactly where they should go according to her!