Easing back into school

Our formal studies always kind of peter out in the spring when life starts getting busy.  This spring and summer we had Mike out of work for several weeks, seven kids born (and one mama died), several animals sold, lots of repairs done around the house, out of town guests on at least three occasions, one music recital, two concerts, two auditions, traveling. . . . .  Lots of traveling.  Three of the children and I spent almost the entire month of July out town between the CiRCE conference in Houston and visiting [nearly] all our friends and relations along the way.  Oh, and my 15 year old daughter, the violinist, had her first paying gig -- playing in the pit orchestra for a local production of The Music Man.

Writing it out like that makes me feel less bad about not doing "school" for so many weeks.  Do y'all struggle with that kind of guilt, too?

Also we joined the Y and Mike and #1Son have been taking the kids swimming nearly every day for the past few weeks.  I wish we done this years ago!

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Pictorial Interlude

I traveled half-way across the country, saw practically everyone I love,
and this is the best picture I took.
There's a reason I'm not a photoblogger.

Memphis

Oh, and this one.  It's the radiator hose in my van, which ruptured on the first day of the journey.

Thankfully it happened just before we pulled into Kelly Rose's driveway where we were spending the night.  (I mean, spend the night with them at their house, not in the driveway.)

Her husband took care of the repairs for me -- such wonderful friends!

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So this morning we had our first official school day in about twelve weeks, if my notes are correct, opening with Morning Prayers and our Bible reading (picking up where we left off in Luke and the Psalms), followed by a poem by Tennyson ("Crossing the Bar," which was the last one in this collection, so now I need to pick a new poet to begin reading tomorrow), and the next chapter in Rosemary Sutcliff's The Wanderings of Odysseus. That took an hour and half because we had to stop and find the calamine lotion to put one one child who got into the poison ivy, and then we had to stop and find out why the dog was barking -- it was the Blackhawks.  He hates helicopters. Never a dull moment.

This time last year we were starting Black Ships Before Troy, so it's taken us an awful long time to get to this point, but we were interrupted by reading The Ballad of the White Horse, and then Fierce Wars and Faithful Loves, followed by Mary Macleod's Stories from the Faerie Queene (which I highly recommend).  I'd intended to pick up there, but my Kindle was dead this morning.  It's had so many near-death experiences that I expect it'll revive presently, but I suppose one of these it'll be the real thing.  It's a first generation Kindle so it's had a good long life -- it's seven years old, which is, like 105 in technology years. ;-)