A day in the life of a crazy homeschool family...

Not really a typical Monday, but these things happen sometimes...usually not all in one morning!  Today was especially educational and exciting...

We've gone gang-busters on our vegetable and fruit garden this year.  With three acres, I think we probably have about 1/2 an acre of combined veggie/fruit garden area, not to mention the peach, pomegranate (in Oklahoma?!), fig, current, and apricot trees that we planted in both fall and spring over the past year.

We awoke this morning around 7am and I made sure to shut off the noises coming over baby monitor waves from the girls' room, and shut the master bedroom doors so that Max could sleep since he has a flight that will go into the wee hours of Tuesday morning.  Thankfully, that means we got him until about 2:30pm today before he had to go in and do paid work.

Today has been a beautiful day, starting out with overcast skies but still warm and breezy.  The kids and I made pancakes, which usually only happens on the weekend, but anytime Daddy is going to be with us in the morning is special, so we broke out the cast iron skillet.  While I was flipping pancakes, Gloria and JB went to "water" Biff (one of their morning chores now that we have a pet bull), now affectionately called "Lonesome Biff" (refer to picture on the right and/or the link above...if you are wondering).  The other day, Max, along with some help from friends and neighbors, drove Biff down Racetrack Road to the fenced area in front of our house, where he eats the grass and stares at us as we garden and do other crazy things, like 4-wheeler riding...and tipping.

After we ate breakfast, Evelyn was more than ready for her breakfast, which she generally gets on the couch in the side-lying position on my lap.  The kids wanted to learn UNO, so I explained it to them as they played on the coffee table.  To tell you the truth, I can't remember what Benaiah was doing at this point, but that might explain the pins stuck through the small plastic army man on the ironing board in the other room...it seems Ben Ben won...

The ironing board is low enough for benaiah to reach today because Gloria just got a new "Sew-Mini" sewing machine by Janome, which is perfect for Gloria to learn on (nice and slow!).  I put the ironing board low so that she could use her mini iron to eventually sew a "toy bag" for Evelyn on her mini sewing machine.  Gloria had finished her homeschooling early so I let her sew.  I ended up taking out a bunch of stitches though since I took a break from supervising her to change Evie's diaper.  She's back on track now though and doing very well for her first project.

Since Daddy was home this morning, he played marbles with JB and Ben Ben (Benaiah's preferred name these days), then did Bible Study with them, reading in a dramatic way the story of Benaiah (Kings and Chronicles in the Old Testament) and the lion in the pit as well as some stories about other really tough dudes of the Bible.  JB was fascinated the whole time, whereas Benaiah only listened when he heard "LION!" and "ROARRR!" and exciting words like that.  Otherwise Ben Ben was writhing and getting distracted (typical almost-three-year-old...he'll be three on Saturday!)

 Since JB was having fun with Daddy and listening to scary Bible stories, he didn't get his normal homeschooling done early this morning like Gloria did. I needed to stay in the house to help JB as he added two-digit numbers and carried ones (he actually didn't need help, but acted like he did) so I figured it would be a good time to supervise Gloria sewing since she had been begging to sew on her new machine.  She got the edges of the fabric sewn down after ironing them and that was about it for the baby toy bag this morning because I felt the urge to go out and garden especially since that was what Max was doing and it was a perfect morning for outdoor work.

Gloria's first creation on her new sewing machine...Evelyn's toy bag...

As we are trying to get the kids to understand that homeschooling work comes before fun play, indoors or outdoors, after a slow math morning I abandoned JB in the house to do his hand-writing.  I'm not sure what he was doing for about an hour in the house while I was making mounded rows for melons and squash seeds, but JB came out of the house with his handwriting book, not having done anything.  He ended up doing his handwriting, which also consisted of learning the different seasons, outside, as Max and I prepared the melon and squash patch for planting.

The other thing that happened today was that Benaiah rode Gloria's 4-wheeler all on his own for the first time after I thought he had just gone for a passenger ride.  *One can see the scheming look on his face in the photo to the right though...It was one of those times where I would've said "no" if Gloria had asked me if Benaiah could ride on his own, but all-of-a-sudden Benaiah came scooting around the corner driving the 4-wheeler with a huge smile on his face (and a bike helmet) with Gloria looking proud and saying "Look! Look at Benaiah!".  The over-protective parent in me (which does emerge occasionally) subsided. I just had to smile and go get the camera.  Ironically, I don't think I got a picture because I was so amused by just watching him.  I was amazed that at his age (almost three) he was so good at driving it...for his first time.  Now we definitely need a keep-Benaiah-on-the-property gate...otherwise we might someday see him driving down Racetrack Road on a mini 4-wheeler...not something I like to think about.

It was only 1 pm and along came another excitement.  Right when Max was about to get out the first aid kid for Benaiah's scrapes after having tipped the 4-wheeler over on himself a few times (it's a pretty light 4-wheeler), we heard a strange noise in the living room.  It sounded like someone madly typing on the keyboard one minute and bashing against the window the next (it couldn't have been me this time because I was in the kitchen).  Max checked it out and found a Swallow fluttering around the computer area apparently trying to get revenge on me for knocking down their nests a few weeks ago (that's what I get for leaving the front door open).  He was definitely threatening to poop on my keyboard.  Fortunately, he only managed to dirty the window sill.  Now I have swallow poo on both sides of the window!

Despite double-sided window poo, scraped knees and elbows from an adventurous little boy, and seam-ripping, days like today make me feel so blessed to be able to home school our kids on three acres in Oklahoma and blessed to have Max home this morning to share it!  Thank you for this season of our lives, Lord!