First Day of School

From Deb:

We had a good First Day of School. Not a to-die-for day, with wild enthusiasm for every new idea presented to them, not a my-god-I'm-the-best-mother-educator-in-the-whole-freaking-world kind of day, not a can't-wait-to-get-to-this-new-work kind of day, but a solid day of education and (mostly) snuggles. Ella has a new attitude that she is trying on, a cranky one, but it won't work, trust me. She just needs a few days for that fact to sink in.

In between reading, handwriting, math, and logic, we pulled all of the remaining carrots we planted in the spring (a motley crop of mostly small, hairy, bitter carrots) and put them into a stew that cooked all day in the crock pot. The cooking didn't improve their taste too much, so even Ella, who is wild for carrots when I slow-cook them with my Brazilian beef stew (apple cider vinegar and cumin flavoring), didn't like them come dinnertime. We worked on the Frontier Team (Raymond will be happy to know we're about done with Chapter 3) and I had my interview with Sue Shellenbarger in peace for 40 minutes. Plus I got some work done for, well, my own work. "Real" work. And I have a loose outline for the rest of the week.

Some day, maybe my own real work will be the Frontier Team. God, that would be great. Given focus, Madison and I could probably churn out two or three per year. She LOVES writing with me.

We're going to take off all of next week and travel to various northeast friends and relatives for about 10 days. We'll make it all the way up to northern Connecticut where we'll stay with a colleague of mine and visit...yes, really!...the Gertrude Chandler Warner Boxcar Children Museum. I found out about it today, and Madison is REALLY excited about going.

And just to top it all off, heck, maybe I'll take the girls to the beach on Friday. It's not like we're going to be anywhere near a beach when we live in Rochester. Why not, we'll just go to the darned beach. TWPFFFTT to the school officials.