Mr. Bean arriving for his summer holiday at Cannes after a whole lot of shenanigans. I think that sums it up pretty well.
I taught five students this year. We read Tennyson, Churchill, Twain, Pyle, Macdonald, Scott, White (both E. B. and T. H.). We heard the intrigues of the medieval English kings; the tales of Arthur; the stories of the unjust death of Walter Raleigh, and of the Gorgon knot; read the Magna Carta; discussed the controversy surrounding Richard III and the boys in the Tower. We studied the stars, dissected seedlings, made a barometer, mapped Europe and the Mississippi valley, learned to read, switched math curriculum. It was a full, good, interesting year.
The kids' favorite books of the year were Pinocchio, Watership Down, Ivanhoe, The Once and Future King, Men of Iron, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Charlotte's Web, and the Velveteen Rabbit.
We're going to take a complete break for about two weeks to give us all an opportunity to rest and relax and tackle other projects without competition for our attention. Then we will do some small amounts of academic work through the summer. Each kid will need to keep moving forward on their math, and they'll have reading goals to tackle. I think we're also going to attempt a few more personalized goals for each of us - skills and activities we hope to include in our summer plans. We have swimming lessons scheduled, and want to get a trip to South Dakota on the books. I'm looking forward to having time to plan the next school year and really noodle on it, instead of just catapulting myself into it like last year.
We are giving away rock to anyone and everyone we can.
We have a full summer ahead of us, but I genuinely can't wait. This house is built for outdoor living - the neighborhood, the deck, the fenced yard, the field - it all just makes it so easy to head outside. So I'm hoping to get the tan I've been missing for the last decade or two.
I'm looking forward to eating from our garden, and putting my hand to canning more produce. Maybe we could take a couple of trips to the Amish. This should be a really fun, relaxing, productive summer.
Anyway. Enough planning and speculating over the future - let's cover the past. The past week.
We really put our heads down to finish strong. We got wrapped up yesterday, so I'm wanting to find something fun to do today to celebrate. I'm thinking donuts and a picnic? We'll see how the day plays out.
Our biggest time-suck this week was the dishwasher. It started leaking like five weeks ago, but I didn't have time to get it looked at until Mother's Day. But then I tried pulling it out to look at it, it got jammed, and a friend had to come over and help us get it... unjammed. He leveled it and we thought it was fixed, but then it started leaking again, so we were back at square one.
Of course, the leak was coming from a hole on the very, very bottom, at the very, very back, so I had to turn it on its back side to reach what was going on.
Luckily, because it was no longer stuck in the cabinet, I was able to move it out myself and figure out exactly where the leak was coming from. Unluckily, I had to turn the water off to do so, and I busted the knob right off. (Did you know they make valve stems out of PLASTIC?! Whose moronic idea was that?!) So then Todd jumped in to help, and he replaced the valve and tried to help fix the leak, but to no avail. It is leaking at a spot where some electrical wires enter the main body of the dishwasher, and while it worked for us for a little while during our troubleshooting process, it seems it may have shorted out. It's a whole thing. But all that to say, we've been without a dishwasher for a long time, and I am ready to get this figured out, but I'm not quite ready to pay someone else yet.
Atticus also tried his hand at his own maintenance work this week. He ordered a tune up set for his weed trimmer, watched a quick YouTube video, and set to work getting the fuel and air filters changed out, as well as putting in a new fuel line. He is learning a lot this summer as he gets his mowing business up and running - he's learned how to change the mower blade and air filter, how to clean the engine and check the spark plugs, and now this project. And the hardest lesson of all: you have to spend money on things like tune up kits in order to make money.
That said, he has been making really, really good money. He has a few families at church, as well as our next door neighbors, as weekly clients, and he is getting better, more meticulous, and more efficient with each week.
He and the other kids decided to spend their earnings (the others having earned their money by household chores) on air soft guns.
They're all really excited and have been set up a small gun range in the backyard for target practice.
Other than that, the only other item of note is that Penelope and I have embarked on Trim Healthy Mama. (Her plan is set up to maintain/gain weight, mine is set up to hopefully lose some weight - my postpartum weight is so incredibly stubborn this time around! I just can't seem to get rid of it.) She has been feeling really unwell for a long time - we think it may be POTS or blood pressure related, or maybe hormonal/adrenal. So we're focusing on nourishing her, balancing her blood sugar, and maybe identifying patterns of what makes her feel worse. It has been incredible to see - we are just shy of two weeks in, and she already has so much more energy, can walk faster and longer on the treadmill, and her heart palpitations seem to have completely stopped after the first couple of days. She feels so much better already, so it seems there really is something that was needing to be balanced.
We accomplished so much this week - it feels like we have earned the upcoming rest!
