What We've Been Up To--the Photo Catch-Up Extravaganza

I have been intermittent about blogging for the past few months.  Didn't mean to be--but life has been hard!

And I mean hard in that totally pampered stay-at-home-mom who is ridiculously blessed with a stable husband and four healthy kids kind of way. 

But still, things have been hard for me.  I'll try to blog about it more, as I think this hard season is coming to an end and hopefully I'll have the luxury of more time (and hopefully brain function) for writing.  To sum up these months, I thought I'd make a little series--hopefully more easily digestible bits than what I usually throw at you when I am in "catching up" mode.  With lots of photos, 'cause a picture's worth a thousand words, right?

So here's the first one, which I do think speaks volumes about my life recently:

I don't know how well you can read it even if you click on the image to embiggen.  But you'll get the idea.  This simple piece of notebook paper was my careful plan for our school time these past two and a half months.  We had so many big, important deadlines that I had to write those down and then start working backwards from each, figuring out how much time we should dedicate to each project.  And then, while we were in the midst of it all, this notebook page was my exterior brain.  I have been so ridiculously thick-brained this Spring--from allergies and lingering (and reoccurring!) illness, and who knows probably the onset of old age just for fun--and so it has truly been hard to keep track of what who should be doing when.  So I frequently, if not daily, found myself grabbing this notebook to see what the heck we were supposed to be doing on any given day, or so I could reassure myself we were on task and not forgetting something important.

Just a few of the big deadlines I had to plan months in advance for, and which took a lot of my time to execute:
--STAR test preparation (something I care about only because DH uses it as a scoring tool to measure the success of our homeschooling)
--An area-wide homeschool kids art show I curated at the Abbey Coffee Lounge
--Book projects for the annual county Author's Fair


And there are so many things not on the schedule above, too, but which took lots of time and energy:
--A child-led theatre production of Peter Pan
--martial arts testing and demonstrations
--the usual weekly classes


And then there were things that were not school related, and which were important and good too, but which also took time:
--Being asked to serve on our church's Jr. High Parent's Board, which necessitated meetings
--Selling outgrown kids' clothes on eBay, to start clearing out the bins under the house


 But now we are over all the deadlines--in that second to last row in the chart up there, about to get into the pale yellow zone that represents "Finishing."  That is, seeing if we can relaxedly wrap up the school units we have been working on all year--mainly California History, the Solar System/Space Exploration, and the Civil War/Westward Expansion. 

[And typing that just now, I realized what a connection there is between the last two--the drive to seek new lands and overcome obstacles is somehow written into the American psyche, and with the West conquered, we turned our attention to where new lands (or, planetary bodies, as the case may be) are waiting to be discovered (and exploited).  And look what an important role California plays in those two as well!  I love seeing connections between seemingly unrelated things.]

ANYWAY, I'm pretty tired at this point.  Tired of planning, tired of keeping children on track, tired of putting a lot of effort into things for other people and tired of feeling like I'm never enough for people.  I'm kinda spirit weary, and I'm ready for a break.

So, for the next week--easy school!  Math. Music. Finish a collaborative art project.  Finish some documentaries and movies that wrap up our school units.  That's.  It.  Then, we will take a week off.  Maybe two.  But then we will dive right back into summer school--because I have found that we do so much better a family when we school year round and take the breaks when we need them and not break too long at any one time.  The operative term there being "when we need them"--so we shall see how long this first "Summer break" lasts.

I get the feeling lots of other people out there are also in busy/stressful/full seasons!  How about you? What's this season  been like for you?

Pt. 2 in the series tomorrow! : )