A heaping helping of randomness

Pin It Our homeschool co-op began for the 2009-2010 school year today. I had two very excited children and one velcro child. I told Gabbi that she was way too big for me to carry around, and that she MUST go to her own class. :-P Okay, so Gabbi was actually one of the excited children. Very excited. Like woke up on her own at 7 am excited. Every time I decide that it's too much work and I'd rather just sleep late on Mondays (HA! Like that would actually happen!) I remember how much my children (most of them anyway) love co-op, and really, how much I do too. It's a lot of work ... a LOT of work ... but it's so nice to connect with the other moms. I have a basic syllabus planned for the class I'm teaching, but this week I'm going to write up specific lesson plans week by week which will hopefully allow me to enjoy my Sunday nights.

Speaking of Sunday nights ... I'm no longer working in AWANAs. After six years, I'm taking a year off. It was just plain WEIRD to drop my kids off last night and leave! (Although - I did have one child at home last night because Gabbi was still running fever on Saturday, so I didn't let her go.) I'm planning to use that time to plan our school week. I really hope I will have the self-discipline to actually do that.

Speaking of self-discipline ... I have found that I'm a very goal-oriented type person. If I have an attainable short-term goal, I do much better. I have set myself an exercise goal for September, and it's going well. Possibly going a little too well. I made myself get up early to exercise before co-op this morning. Bizarre, I tell you. I'm thinking that maybe that time might have been better spent waking up and becoming functional. At least it would likely have put me in a better mood this evening, when I hit the point of exhaustion long before my kids did.

I also discovered something eye-opening about myself. If I eat lunch later in the day, I'm not ravenous in the afternoon. Imagine that. May seem like an obvious thing to ... well, everyone else in the world, but it's helping me. At least for now. I've been doing well not eating at night and not being hungry in the mornings, but by about mid-afternoon, I was hitting near starvation. We'll see how it goes ...

by the way ... I just saw a soup commercial and now I'd like some soup. See, I warned you in advance that this was random.

My plan for tomorrow during Mother's Day Out time is to *really* clean the floor in the kitchen. I have a brush and pine-sol ready to go. I got busy today and cleaned the corners in the kitchen, the places where I hide things. Now that the counters are all gleaming, the floors really look pathetic. Feel free to ask me tomorrow how much progress I've made. The family room needs to be done too ... but that room is about 600 square feet, so I'm in no hurry to get busy in there. One room at a time.

Oh - one more thing - everyone within about twenty miles from my house will hear a loud celebration at about 10:00 tomorrow morning. This is the approximate time at which Madelyn will finish second grade math. Yes, I know, she's a month into third grade. Last spring was a little crazy around here, so cut us some slack, okay? I am debating over what to do for third grade math. I have the curriculum we were planning to use all ready to go, but Teaching Textbooks is calling to me. We're using that with Gabbi and I'm REALLY liking it. Third grade TT hasn't actually been released yet, but it's coming "Fall 2009" so should be soon. I was thinking of just doing flash cards and introducing some multiplication while we wait. But then I remember that we have what we were going to use all ready to go and could just jump in. Decisions, decisions!

Okay, I think that's it for my random thoughts this evening. I know you're all glad you took the time to read through them.