What a Summer!

Whew! Even though I know that summer hasn't officially come to an end, I am going to declare it over at my house. Now that school has started back around us, and ballet lessons are on again, it is time to STOP all the hectic running around. I am ready for the cooler days were you stay inside and cook comfort food and have hot chocolate.

We have had a fabulous summer this year. We even got in some school work! When I decided that we would school year round, I didn't realize how hard that would be to do during the summer. The call of the outdoors is just too strong for in depth, serious studies. (That, or I am just a pushover for anything more fun. I'm blaming it on the outdoors.) We had our scheduled family vacation in Gulf Shores, AL, which was a BLAST! The girls are still bemoaning that we are here and not there. "I wish we were at the beach RIGHT NOW, Mom." Check out the pics by following the link on the side bar to our family photo album.

I had for almost a year been telling Michael (dh) about wanting to go to Little River Canyon in north east AL. For some reason, he had been resisting going, and then schedules get in the way, and weather... Last month I finally got him to go. Once there, you would have thought it was all his idea, and it was me, ME mind you, that had kept us from all the fun. It so inspired him that after our day trip, we came home, got tons of camping gear, and back to the canyon we went for an over-nighter. This was my first time camping, and the girls', and I have to say... They LOVED it! Me... not so much. Well, it was ok, I just didn't like the yellow-jackets landing on my food while I was cooking it (yes, that is WHILE it was being cooked), and then swarming us while we were trying to sit down and eat it. The girls and I took shelter in the tent to eat, and Michael stayed at the picnic table with the wasps. He was probably asking God why He thought it so funny to surround him with just girls. My husband is an Eagle Scout, and has a wife and two daughters. Poor him. The only other male in the family is a cat, and I don't see the scouts letting him in, no matter that he's male.

Anyway, after dinner, we sat down to have s'mores! Well, they had burned and/or undercooked marshmallows, and chocolate with gram crackers. Me, I had some Aleve, and a great desire to pack up and go home. I hate having headaches; they ruin all the fun. The girls loved "cooking" over the fire, and we had a time of telling them to stop running so close to it, "You're going to trip and fall into the fire!" Kirsten was bound and determined to do just that. She kept tripping over the big rocks of the fire pit and taking my heart with her.

Finally, it was time to go to bed. I don't sleep well in the best of circumstances, so being in a tent in the middle of the woods with all the BUGS around. Well, there was plenty of sleeping going on around me, at least. Then, the ants came. These big, black wood ants. I don't know if there were any around Kirsten, as she was on the other side of the tent, but Brianna was beside me, and I kept getting them off of her. I don't know if it was ten or the same one coming back for more, but it was annoying. I think it was just the one, because there ended up being one in the bed with me and Michael. It decided to have a taste of my leg, and the whole canyon got to hear me sing. It kinda got tore to pieces during all the limb flailing, and I didn't see anymore after that. Surprisingly, the girls just slept right on.

The next day, we packed up everything back into the car, and headed out to the swimin' hole. There are several places to go swimming down in the canyon, and we were fortunate to find the best one on the first try. It is about a 15 to 20 minute hike down, but so worth it. There is a pool about ten feet deep, and a huge rock to jump from. We have pictures, so check them out. We went up to the falls to swim, too, but the camera got left in the car. Bummer. We really did have a lot of fun, and I hope we can do some more camping before the weather gets too cold. If not, there is always the spring.

I finally got us back into some kind of schedule at school. I discovered a scheduling system through some of the homeschool forums and blogs that I follow called workboxes. I have set that up and it seems to be working very well for us. I will have to take pictures and post them on here. It has mostly solved the problem of when do I do what with which child. All the things that we do together are done first during a "Group Time", like singing our hymn of the month, Bible, memory work (right now it is still the pharaohs of ancient Egypt), history or science, a read aloud, and art if we have it that day. Then, we move to the workboxes. Those have the things they can do independently and those that have to be done with me. It took a while to figure out how to fill the boxes so that there wasn't an overlap of working with mom boxes, but for the most part I have that figured out. Not always, so I have to tell one or the other to do something else quietly (what's that?!), or move on to the next independent box. However, so far, we are getting a lot more accomplished and having fun doing it.

Well, now that summer is over here, and school is back in session, hopefully I will be able to keep up with the posting. We shall see!