Year 4, April 22nd-24th, 2019: The Week In Between

Ah, the calm days during the week between the hectic weekends.  What bliss!  It's been absolutely gorgeous out, so we've skipped out on the book work and did a ton of yard work instead!  Well, Justin and I did.  Mostly mowing and trimming.  I just didn't want to teach, so I didn't.  That's how done I am with the school year.  After talking about finances in our Rooted group this week, I'm ready to tackle my purging projects.  Our income and expenditures are fairly stable and in check, but I'm a borderline hoarder and that's an unhealthy way to deal with our resources.  So, I'm getting ready to switch gears.  I'm ready, but I'm not.  It takes me so much mental energy to do this.  But I can do it!  One category at a time.  I wrote down that I would "tithe" whatever I was working on, so I have to get rid of at least 10% of say a bookshelf worth of books or 10% of unused toiletries or 10% of Abishai's massive amount of cars (if I can sneak them out of the house, lol).  Maybe I'll even start that dreaded project of writing down all the DVD's we have owned and then get rid of the ones I know we can get at the library or free on a streaming service.  Hm,...or pay the kids to write down the info!  Those are the categories that I will work on this summer.  The books alone will take a long, long time.  It's a category I have never really gone through before in the three moves we did.  So, it's time.

Anyway, I've enjoyed being outside but it doesn't always agree with me.  The sun does something to my head and stomach so I have to be careful.  But Abishai loves being out there and being a sidekick.  Keturah couldn't care any less and spends her days on her bed reading with the window open and calls it her outdoor time.  *facepalm*  Justin mowed both Gpa's yard and ours in the last two days, so he's been outside plenty.  Benaiah hasn't been around, so he's gotten zero sunshine.  Jared's seasonal allergies are at their peak, so now he should stay inside and I shouldn't open windows anymore.  It's going to rain, again, over the next couple of days, so maybe it will keep the pollen down, but it will also cause the plants to grow quickly like they did over the weekend.  Eek!  Poor Justin has to keep up with all the mowing!

That's about it so far for Monday and Tuesday.

Grandma babysat as usual during my appointment and she drooled over a cookie cookbook with Keturah.  #twins

I love that along with a clock, kleenix and a trash can in every room, we seem to also have Hot Wheel cars, Legos, and toy weapons in each room because of this little guy.  He basically has his own stations set up so wherever I'm at, he can play nearby.  He's working on his Lego police station here.

Playing outside in the evening while Mommy worked in the garage to tidy it up a bit (not a full overhaul, just some moving around of a few things back to their proper places and sweeping the floor).  The sword is Benaiah's.  I bought it at the homeschool convention two years ago.

Always dueling.

We can blame YouTube on this one, or those videos on the library's kid computers.  He watches a ton of various cartoon and vlog type videos and I'm sure he's come across people talking about kindergarten.  And to be honest, I know he already has a few pre kindergarten skills.  We haven't worked on letters or cutting yet, but we will.  He's got the social and language skills of a kindergartner. He also has all the gross motor skills.  He has some fine motor skills, but not writing or tying shoes yet because I haven't taught him.  But yes, he definitely is well on his way.

A little cheap project.  I hope that I didn't overlook this for too long, but because we have to really yank on the silverware drawer (original wooden cabinets from the '50's), it shoves the items and the silverware rack back and forth a ton.  I do have textured shelf liners underneath the rack.  And every time we do that, the end of the knives and the forks make dents in the ends!  We literally had this fine sawdust that would get all over the utensils.  Eek!  No one wants to eat sawdust!  So, I quickly and cheaply came up with a solution.

I had the felt on hand and of course a glue gun!  Bam! A felt lined drawer for $0.  I'm a genius (sometimes).

"I don't want you to go to work, so I'll try to tag along."  He even locked the door to the backseat!

Hehe! You can't catch me!

Aww, so sweet!

I hate when I neglect things like this.  We left out most of the winter and it collected water, then froze, then left his nasty stuff that could be mold.  SO, I scrubbed with vinegar and baking soda, and then washed it with Thieves all purpose cleaner.  I know it will get dirty again, but I wouldn't to make sure it wasn't moldy to begin the season with.  I washed all the toys that way, too.  It was a pain, but I did it.  And then I remembered that the water from the hose is NOT hooked up to the water filter, so anytime I use it, there's still going to be a stain from the tanins.  Nuts!

Dandelions and _____ are wild FLOWERS so enjoy them!  Justin mowed this on Thursday, it's now Tuesday and it needs mowed again!  This is the view from the platform of the playground.

I'm glad it grows well, but then we have to mow and trim it all.

He was making up his own story, as usual, and it was adorable!  See the video below!

It's a perfect day for hanging out the laundry!  I don't do this often enough.  Although, it was a sock and underwear load and I ran out of clothespins so I had to go back and double up on some of them.  But there's a very big breeze so they dried quickly and without being too stiff.  Win!

Laundry and kids playing outside equals the perfect combination.  It was barely 70 degrees with a warm wind.  Ah!  That's why I spent a good amount of time weeding and trimming and piling up the stick piles better so Justin could mow better.  Sigh.

I love that this all came in a little kit.  The kids only like the gummies though.  And this is why I don't make pudding at home. I don't make Jello that often either.  Oh well.  It was simple and quick to make.

He did enjoy some of it.

Aww, a machine stitched quilt but it's beautiful!  Lots of gifts have been pouring in for Gary.  The problem is, where to put them all!  He's received so many of these types of things over the last 35 plus years in the ministry.  Lots of special framed pictures or wood cuttings, crosses, plaques, oh so many things.  Sigh.

And look who is on the cover of the magazine!  All of these ministers have retired/transitioned in the last 10 years or so.  What a great topic to address!  Remember, when Gary first sought out resources on how to transition well in ministry, there were 0 books on the subject.  So he researched it outside of the church and wrote a book on his findings.  He was just briefly mentioned in the magazine, but I'm glad that it's being talked about it.  The Christian Standard is the publication by and for the Restoration Movement churches.  e2 contributes a blog post every month/week in their email.

And then 5 megachurches were featured, and one was my old church, Manchester Christian Church.  4 campuses! And it's the same size as Indian Creek.  I'm not sure on what "decentralized" means or if it's a good thing or not, but it's something to read about and think about it.

Ok, so this was an awesome step forward!  Our weekly topic for Rooted was on finances, so Gary did a "quick" talk (an hour!) on it.  But, I thought he was going to be on stage live at Franklin Rd, not remembering that Shelby St. also has their own groups.  That's why we have the pre filmed mini intro videos every week featuring our staff members because it's being shown at both places.  So, instead of being live at Franklin Rd., Gary was live at Shelby St.!  That means they have the "live feed" going both ways now!  And that means, that Dan could preach live at Shelby St. sometimes and be piped back to Franklin Rd.  I think that would go a long way to making sure Shelby St. still felt like they were part of us.  Gary has gone done there when he's not preaching, and they do have a campus minister and some support staff.  But how cool is that technology!  I'm excited to see how it's utilized in the future.  Way to go Creative Arts team!

Oh....my.....word....I think my boy has fallen in love! Not sure they've said the "I love you's" yet, but still.  Ava was away for the Easter Holiday weekend, and although they saw each other last Thursday, they didn't see each other at church and they had school off on Monday.  Adorableness!  And no I won't stop documenting it.  It's an important part of his life, his maturing into a man, etc.  So cute!

I guess I walked a bunch on Tuesday because I was very active working on the yard going back and forth.  And then made the usual walking pattern at church.

Ignore the notification (I'm following the state legislatures) but that's been my typical step count all winter long.  You don't step much when you are going from room to room in your house!  I do try to keep my phone on my person at all times so it counts all my steps.  Gotta keep upping that number!

 It's already Wednesday?!  Eeek!  This week is going by super fast!  And so is this month!  Because it was cooler and we had a few rainy sprinkles, we stayed home and inside today.  We worked on a lot of history, some math and grammar.  And that's pretty much what we are doing this week and next week to finish up.  It's so freeing to just let other things go and do what needs or should be done outside in the spring, instead of waiting until after the school year and being too late.  Melinda, take note for next year!  Plus winding down like we slowly wound up to full time schoolwork load in August has just been plain easier to handle than jumping into everything straight away.  Whatever we don't finish in history and grammar will carry over into August/September.  Justin will finish his pre-algebra math book so he's ready for Algebra 1 in the fall and Keturah will continue math all summer so she can catch up.  She is catching on to a lot of the things she was struggling with a couple of years ago, so I'm just going to skim through her multiplication and division Math U See books to make sure we covered it all.  We might not even do the tests.  If I can get her through her Saxon book, and those two books, by August, we'll be caught up.  And since Saxon has already covered some parts about fractions and decimals, we should be on track to start the fractions book this fall.  Math U See divides up their books by topic, so one book is strictly on multiplication, one on division, one on fractions, one on decimals, and then pre algebra, algebra 1, etc. Totally different approach, but now that she's older, I think we can switch back.  We'll see.

Abishai puttered around in different rooms with his different toy set ups.  He has several cars and some kind of set like the Little People castle, or today it was the Monopoly Junior game, and he plays different stories on each toy in each room and bounces between them all.  Oh and his Lego "police station" he keeps rebuilding on the kitchen table.  He and I snuggled and played all day.  I also taught school, obviously, ran two loads of laundry, put away the clean laundry from yesterday, and cleaned the rest of the outdoor toys and the winter boots that had gotten muddy, yes 3 months ago, inside in the bathroom tub.  Have I mentioned that I don't mind organizing or folding laundry, but I hate cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning?  I could easily pay someone to do that part!  Hm,....maybe it's time to enlist the kids some more.  I've just been hesitant because I don't like that they still won't do their current chores well.  I think it's time to do some switching up of things because maybe they are just bored.  Hm,....

Benaiah had school, leadership group, and normal small group, Justin had his 2nd to last Bible Bowl practice, Jared had work.  Straight forward day for them.  Tomorrow, I think I'm going to take the kids to the Children's Museum after Bible class because I promised them we would go back and soon.  The weather is going to be iffy tomorrow, and we can rest on Friday before the open house on Saturday and big day on Sunday.  That's another reason why we focused on school today.  I love that we can do that!  Schools shouldn't be out doing field trips yet and it's a Thursday, not a Saturday, so it shouldn't be too busy.  But who knows!  We will get done what we get done.  Yeah!

Mixing Playmobile with old school Little People castle.  Love it!  All the bad guys were in jail, i.e. the dungeon.

He loves Monopoly but I don't have time to play with him and his silbings won't play.  So I told him that I loved it, too, and when my siblings wouldn't play with me, I would play by myself as fairly as I could.  I seriously did!  As Jared says, it's more about the luck of the draw/dice and a game of chance and less about strategy.

Abishai wanted the guys from Justin's game to play on his game board. This Monopoly Junior is from my childhood.

I love how Abishai mixes the elements.  The ticket booths were trash cans and the real pawns for the games (the colored cars) were trash trucks.

He used the castle of Mordor and things from the other game to make fortresses for his guys.

I forgot to take a picture yesterday when we had blue skies, but there's one of our pretty trees in the backyard.  I love how we have such a huge variety of flora and fauna in our yard and how they bloom at all different times in the spring and summer.  That's why I'm trying to be careful with the plants in the front garden.  I like how they grow and bloom.

Playing pirates before Dad gets home.

 Abishai just randomly started talking about having a sleepover with Ron, Nina and Luke and he thought it was tonight!  He was very disappointed when it wasn't.  We are going up to Ron and Nina's cabin in late May, so I know he picked up that idea probably from our conversations about it.  But aww that he misses Ron, Nina, and Luke so much that he wants to do a sleepover with them!

Fine motor skils? Check! No worries here!  The 4 yr old can put regular sized Lego bricks (not the larger Duplos) together very well, even getting them to tightly lock in place.  He purposefully made these steps for his police station.

Putting the finishing touches on his Lego police station!

The End.