Back to reality.

Monday morning I found myself tossed back into our normal routine. Rob went back to work so I had to go back to doing everything with a fussy, teething, baby on my hip. I missed our camping trip. It was so nice not having to do everything with a baby on my hip all weekend long!


If you homeschool and have a hard time working around the little ones (the big challenge for me) here are a few things that are working for me.



Demi has this large art case. I ONLY pull it out when I need to instruct Travis. Travis can do most of his lessons on his own but I still need to teach some of his English lessons, listen to his reading lessons (his grade level reader) to make sure he is pronouncing the words right, and give an occasional Math lesson. This is her "big girl" art kit. It works great at keeping my 3 year old busy so I can do the teaching I need to do. OH! She also uses it for our art class.


Here is one way I have found to keep Zehira busy, quiet, and happy so I can work with Travis. It is a tiny dish of yogurt. She eats, and paints with it.
I did need to give her a bath afterwards but that was no big deal. I put her in the baby tub in our kitchen sink and gave Travis his spelling words (a pretest) and washed her up all at the same time.


Here is a picture of Travis starting our second week of school. It is a nicer picture than the one I took our first day of school. I hope to get some pictures of him smiling at school time soon. He did smile a lot this week but I was so busy with the little ones and housework I didn't think to grab the camera.Travis started the new soccer season on Monday. I was SOOOO EXCITED to see one of my very best friends! Vicky's girl is on the same team as Travis!!!! I got to sit and visit with her and my sister's best friend while our children all played soccer. This is going to be a great soccer season for me! I don't know how Travis likes it but I know for me being able to visit with Vicky 3 times a week is wonderful!!!! Travis is playing on a team with almost all girls. I was so busy visiting with Vicky on Monday I never noticed all the girls. At Wed.'s practice my hubby said something about 3 boys and the rest was all girls for me to notice. LOL! For any of you who don't know Vicky is a homeschooling mom who lives down the road from me. She has 4 children, she sews, knits, and does tons of other crafty things. She is a lot of fun and on some weeks my only source of adult conversation. I usually like to see the end of the soccer seasons. This year I will be sad when it ends.

OH! I wanted to say we overall had a good school week but we did have one big bump in the road. Travis was careless in writing his spelling words. He copied them wrong! He had Rob and I worried he might have an undiagnosed learning disability. I had him go and write all his words another 5 times (he was not happy) and I noticed he was able to do it without a problem. I then had him go fix all his mistakes from his first try. I guess he was just being careless and trying to see if I would notice if he didn't try. I don't think he will have a problem with that again any time soon. For right now our school seems to be happy and on track. I hope we have most of the bumps worked out for this year. I can hope/dream can't I?