Day ten...

I can hardly believe that the last day of this little challenge is here. And over. I stayed up too late last night, stress and coffee, so I slept in until all the children were up. I had Hannah serve breakfast while I hopped in the shower. My mother-in-law came today to oversee school because my friend needed someone to hang out with her at the hospital while her hubby got some business taken care of.

As soon as I got the children going on their school work I headed out to the hospital. I stopped for a coffee and grabbed a salad for lunch, not knowing the timing of the day ahead. Our kids don't have a cell phone, but my techie husband has my old iPhone set up through a Google number so that the kids can text me over wifi. While we do have a house phone, I have found that questions asked over text seem to get to the point faster, if they call me it takes twenty minutes to get off the phone because everyone wants to talk to me.

I got settled in my friend's room and her husband went off to do his errands and we chatted. And played with baby. We shared life, and we laughed as I received texts from my kids about what lessons they had finished and what they were going to work on next. I was impressed that my children used proper spelling and good punctuation on their texts. Makes a Momma proud. :)

After lunch came for my friend, I pulled the salad I had stowed away in my purse and began a new text-a-thon about lunch plans for home. My mother-in-law was making the kids leftovers in a new way, she really is Super Woman. And she gave them fruit snacks in the afternoon, the children were sufficiently Grandma spoiled. I am so glad she could come, the kids have missed her.

When my bedside friend services were not longer needed (a.k.a. my friend's husband returned) it was late in the afternoon. I said goodbye, and laid the baby down to sleep. As I walked to the shuttle for the parking garage, I texted a friend and asked if I could make a pit stop at her house. We had been trying to connect for a few weeks, she has some chalkboards her husband made out of old cabinet doors years and years ago, and I was wanting to take them off her hands. They were home, and just two blocks off the highway on my way back to my house.

What I thought would be a quick stop in turned into an absolutely unexpected precious visit with friends from far away... but that is for another post. :) Eventually, I gathered up my newly acquired chalkboards and headed home way later than I planned. I learned later that I made my kids worry by not telling them of my unexpected delay. Bad Mommy. However, when I got home and shared with them the reason for the delay there were squeals of joy and my iPhone was passed around for proof while they scrolled through the photos.

The kids showed me their schoolwork (which I have yet to catch up on grading), they also showed me some new tricks in the backyard. I realized that I had not been in the backyard recently, so I declared a doggie poopy pick-up for all the children. I should have been more specific with what to do with their gatherings because once they finished they all paraded their full bags into my living room to show me what a great job they did. I quickly sent them back out and we discovered someone's bag had a hole in it. Sigh. We had an indoor version of the pick-up project and then held a hand washing party.

Elliott orchestrated the kids making individual pizzas for dinner. I started working on the lesson plans for our preschool church time for Sunday. Kids showered. Dinner eaten. We all sat down to watch Undercover Boss, and by the end we were all sobbing. Kids played. I kept working on the preschool lesson. Bedtime routine. Back to preschool lesson. Elliott and I firmed up our plans for the weekend.

And that is it... two weeks of how we school in the moment-to-moment. Admittedly, this last week was unusual in some ways, but not in others... unusual that so many things collided into just a handful of days, but not unusual for us to drop our plans to help our friends in need, which is one of my favorite things about homeschooling. Looking ahead to next week, our schedule looks pretty normal... we shall see what Providence brings. :)