Precious Moments {20th May – 27th May}

This week has, yet again, been all about the children’s IGCSEs.  Thomas has been taking a past paper each day, and apart from yesterday’s paper has been scoring highly.  He doesn’t seem as worried now as he was for his first chemistry exam.  The twins have been doing a 2 hour 15 minute English paper each morning.  They will be taking their IGCSE two years early, and have never taken an exam before, so I am trying to teach them exam technique, such as spreading their time out evenly over the whole paper so they don’t finish section A and B and run out of time to even start section C (ahem…yes that happened here on Monday 🙂  )

Them sitting papers means I need to mark them, and as there is only one of me to three of them it takes a looong time each day.  Thomas’ papers are easier to mark as there is either a right or wrong answer; the English is another matter all together, being fairly subjective.  It took me three hours to mark their first paper and I was still unsure whether I was being too stingy or too generous with the marking.

Somewhere in between all the marking I am also teaching the littles.  I’d be lying if I tried to pretend I was super woman and therefore not struggling.  I am definitely struggling to get everything done and the littles have been the ones who are paying with the amount of work they are doing right now.  B6 helpfully came down with chicken pox (so we took a few sick days for her and A8 even though A does not have a spot in sight), and then our washing machine died.  Seriously, I need more than the 24 hours I currently have in the day to get everything which I think needs to be done, done.  The house looks like a bomb has gone off in it, and dinner time has arrived at least twice this week and there has been absolutely no food in the house to feed people with.  Gary is also working silly hours as course manager with a very understaffed team.  So together and as a family we are holding onto our ever tenuous sanity by a thread.  Fortunately, Gary’s team will be fully staffed soon, IGCSEs will be coming to an end and life may or may not return to some sort of normality.  Of course by then the men with the straight jackets may have come and taken me away….

Apart from work we have been enjoying the sun and even managed to school outside:

and inside:

play a few games together:

and even do a little bit of art:

Today I am home with my little ones, whilst Gary takes our older ones to Big Church Day Out:

I have planned our day meticulously.  We will be working in the house (to try to return it somewhat to its former glory) for half an hour, and the next half an hour the girls will be able to choose a goody from our goody stash to play with for half an hour whilst I work at the computer printing of more exam papers and planning some work for the littlies next week.  They are very excited about my stash and keep asking to do more chores so they can have the next treat 😉

Well, that’s it for this week.  I am posting a review on Wednesday and will hopefully post a Seasons of Joy post Monday and another Precious Moments post Friday.  Of course, I may not.  If the men in the little white coats come and get me there will be no more posts……