I Wish All Weeks Had Ten Days.

We have been at school all week. Up at 8, 8:30 and into the books by 9:00. The kids did ask me if they could please have breakfast before we started. Geesh. I reluctantly agreed. So, now we have Hot Chocolate and an egg and some fruit before we open a book: and I've found that things really run much more smoothly--even with significant sleep deprivation which worsened as the week progressed.

The playground program is still running and that has helped us finish in decent time every day. The city hires a bunch of University students to provide supervision at local parks in the summer. Grace and Megan have managed an excellent program and my daughter has met so many of the neighbourhood children that it has truly been wonderful! My social butterfly is thus also highly motivated to get her work done quickly so she can get to the park.

Today we made a balloon model of the Solar System. It's designed to show relative size--NOT distance. We had an extraordinarily hard time blowing up balloons only 2 1/4" or so. You'll notice that our Solar System is missing Venus and Mars. Somehow, even though they were teeny tiny, they popped. (Earth, is, unfortunately, pink.)



So, we have been doing school by day...and by night I have been planning. Lots of planning. Tons of planning. So much planning, I don't really even want to talk about it.

Oh and did I mention, it is Birthday Week? It isn't enough for a child to have a family party on the day of his or her actual birthday, you know. Not anymore. No, you have to offer something on the weekend as well. For children. From 1 to 4 pm tomorrow, we'll feed seven little eight and nine year old girls lots of sugar and then do our best to corral that energy into lots of games and activities. And that's why these balloons are up.



Of course, for me, whose living room furniture has been topsy turvey and in the middle of the room for the last month until this morning, this last week also saw the ceiling painted...and the coving touched up with the same paint as before. (Someone suggested doing something like this in the comments, and I thought, hey, I already have that and it looks half decent, so why not?) The profound and exciting change happened, though, with the first swath of the lighter ceiling paint. That's what lifted the room and completed its metamorphosis from dark and cave-like to airy and open. I am so happy with my vanilla walls and cloud white ceiling that I want to take some time selecting the artwork for the walls and other doodads.

And yes, I cooked. Every night but tonight. Tonight I caved and let the local pizzeria provide dinner.

They do it well.