Now that fall's here, it's time to talk about summer!
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| this was supposed to be our nice, calm, month "off" |
Summer was... tiring.
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| we heard fussing at the top of the stairs, and then suddenly we didn't |
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| Tiger Swallowtail (our state insect) on the hydrangeas. The plants are in a sorry condition now, but they were lovely in June. |
We took forever to finish school this year. I hate leaving things undone, because I feel like we might miss something important, plus there's a certain satisfaction in having mastered an entire book. So we were still doing school well into July, which really ended up being a mistake, as anyone who has tried it knows. Miriam's community college classes started halfway thru August, poor kid, so she didn't get much of a break at all.
At any rate, in Geography the big boys learned about several countries together and made "passports" with pictures of themselves in native costume. ...Well, native-ish.
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| el matador was having an emotionally difficult day, I guess |
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| los hombres de España son solemnes |
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| ...más o menos |
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| the 4th |
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| I hope I live a long, long life so I can enjoy 43 more years of this |
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| this boy loves him some math puzzles |
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| Library Day. (quietest day in the week) |
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| good big sister -- doing her homework outside so the little boys have company |
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| he is amazingly trusting that we won't step on him, considering he is covering the ENTIRE step |
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| guess who was accepted to Steubenville!! |
We didn't really take a family vacation this summer -- our road trip to Ohio was as much as we got together. Otherwise we all split up -- Katie had had her week of horse camp in Ohio, Miriam went to her mission trip to the Dominican Republic (rumor has it she's working on a blog post about it), I went to California for a week to make sure my parents didn't starve after my mom's knee surgery, and Mr. Pickles had a stats conference in Denver. The boys spent pretty much every waking moment playing with the neighbors -- either the house was really quiet, or really loud.
The girls were super busy. Miriam was still working at the parish in the music ministry office twice a week, plus getting together with her friends every chance she got. Once her classes started she had to stop working -- now the poor music director is scrambling to find someone as awesome as Miriam was. :) Katie once again helped out with summer camps, teaching kids how to make their own pac-man games and such. She worked a ton -- the director of the program can't pay her actual money, but as a "token of her appreciation" will give her gift cards to the vendor of her choice. She earned so much that she was able to buy herself a laptop. Miriam is a little jealous.
When I wasn't driving various teenagers to their various jobs and activities, we spent as much time as we could totally vegging out. The kids hardly made it to the pool at all -- I wasn't in the mood to do any more driving than was absolutely necessary. (Has anyone else noticed an exponential increase in the nastiness of drivers lately?) Miriam and I read a ton of Dorothy Sayers. There's nothing like a good murder mystery to help you relax -- why is that??
I wasn't ready to start planning the school year until the last possible second -- I wanted to extract every moment of goofing off that I legitimately could before I had to pretend once again to be a productive member of society. But now it's back to the grind!
