Vacation and School Daze

Hi, I'm back! We were on vacation last week, visiting family in Pennsylvania. We had a great time, and even got to go to Niagara Falls for a day! This is a picture of us AFTER riding on the "Maid of the Mist." Yes, this is my hair on waterfall. Pretty, isn't it? Notice that we are also drenched. In fact, Lily screamed during the entire ride, and I was so busy trying to hold on to her that I was unable to keep my garbage bag...er...raincoat down or up, so basically it ended up being a very large necklace. Rory loved it, though, and Mike even got through it, despite being afraid of drowning.

Now, we're trying to get the house in order for the next school year. We are starting next week! So, today, I found all of Rory's work from last year and got it into a box, and got his school drawer set up with his new books. We also moved all the kid books into the kids' room. Hopefully this will help the walking issue in the play/school room, as Lily has a tendency to pull many, many books off the shelves and strew them around the room. I suppose this will now happen in the bedroom, but at least you don't have to walk through that to get from the door to the kitchen!

I keep reminding myself that I have to get my education plan in to the school district by August 15 to remain in compliance for our state, so I guess I'd better get going. This is our second year, so I'm not nearly as frightened about the prospect as I was last year. At least I know that the paperwork I submitted last year was accepted, so if I do something similar, it should be okay. My other project is to get our time schedule set. Rory does much better if he knows how long he has to do things, and what order they are coming in. Of course, we have a different curriculum this year, and I am uncertain how long the assignments are going to take, but at least we'll have a starting point!  We also have a friend who's son is just a little older than Rory, and they will be using the same curriculum, Paths of Exploration from Geography Matters.  We plan to get the boys together for some of the activities, which should be fun for them, as T. is an only child, and Rory's little sister is a little young for school yet (though she sure tries)!  We are also trying a different math curriculum this year...I finally settled on Spectrum Math.  I'll let you know how it goes!