Ketchup

You can always tell when I am super busy, as my blog goes through droughts of posts. And even though it is summer, we have been busy.

We get outside for a little bit each day, either bike riding or to the pool. We are trying to teach the two middle girls to ride without training wheels. I have decided that's up there with potty training and phonics - my least favorite things I do as a parent. But since it would look funny for 12 year olds to ride with training wheels, I guess the middle girls need to learn before they get there. We had to get a couple more bikes too as we didn't even have enough for all the girls. Plus a couple of them had outgrown their bikes. So right after breakfast we go out until the heat drives us inside, roughly 45 minutes.

Then we come inside and deep clean one room of the house. We like it better on days when we clean first and then go to the pool. Instead of spring cleaning we summer clean. We have done the whole house except the kitchen so that's on the agenda for this week. Then I need to wash curtains and clean light fixtures and we are done!

The girls also do math and Latin one day a week. The three older girls are also taking piano lessons, so they practice every day on that too.

After lunch, I spend the afternoon doing lesson plans, running copies, gathering books, and just generally getting prepared for the next school year. I am hoping to complete that in June so I can take July and early August OFF and not even think about school for a while. I'm hoping to get a few rooms and maybe some trim painted during July.

I have also decided that shopping for and signing up for insurance is about my least favorite activity, next to cleaning my shower (uh-oh, I need to do that this week, too). Since Kelly changed jobs, we had to fill out all new health, vision, dental, and life insurance with the new company. At the same time, our homeowners insurance shot up, so I had to shop around and switch our homeowners and car insurance. Plus the new employer didn't offer enough life insurance so we've been shopping around for additional life insurance. Not fun.

We've also had some sick kids - a couple with tummy bugs and one trip to the urgent care clinic because Brynna dropped a griddle on her big toe. We thought it was broken but it is just a deep bruise. Her whole toe nail is navy blue. I told her we needed to get some polish to match and just paint all her toenails that color - people would just think she's being funky. I think it would go fabulously with her red hair.