Precious Moments

We have thoroughly enjoyed having Gary here the past two weeks! We’ve managed to get bits and pieces done around the house and I’ve also done school every day (more’s the miracle!). It’s half term next week, so I just wanted to finish up all the things we had started.

The biggest chunk of our time was taken up with workbooks. The girls only do maths and spelling workbooks each day, but on a Friday they do five pages each of their Science and Social Studies. This should mean that one workbook of each subject is still completed each month. We do this to give me a solid few hours to school plan each Friday. Having four teens in the house means that there are weeks when I have little free time because they need me in some capacity or another, so I’ve really needed to carve regular and specific time into my week to get that all important school planning done.

They’ve been learning all about the 1500’s in SS (Abigail) and map reading/globe reading (Becca) and in science it has been the water cycle and air properties (Becca) and sound, ear anatomy and hearing (Abigail). They both completed each of their books and took four tests each.

Other schooling has been finishing up our roots chapter in botany (we only had one more activity to do for that – regrowing a carrot just from its stub) and a camouflage experiment that I felt we should redo from last week, as I wasn’t entirely certain Abigail had fully understood it. Becca has almost finished Life of Fred: Goldfish, which she has pretty much been doing by herself.

The girls go running each day with one of their friends, whilst the twins and I look on wondering where on earth they get all their energy from!

Abigail has been trying to figure out if all the bones she found in the river over the summer are in fact dinosaur remains. I’m thinking not (they are big but not that big!), but she is convinced. It’s interesting, because the bones (whilst small) do actually match up to the Megalosaurus’ bones. Maybe it’s a baby…

Over the summer we had our kitchen tops replaced as the old ones were rotting around the sink area. We kept most of the wood because it is solid oak and really good wood. Yesterday, Gary replaced Abigail’s desk top in Ab’s Labs with the oak one and it looks so good. She needed a bigger work top so we could put up our old computer for the girls to use for their school work:

He also put up some more photos and tapestries in our living room:

Throughout the week we have various members of the family milling around. I love it, it is like the best of both worlds. Thomas works for a church now and is sometimes in his office at the church and sometimes working from his studio at home. It’s lovely bumping into him in the kitchen, or having a quick chat between activities:

Charlotte is nearly always here, beavering away in her office which her daddy made especially for her:

Lillie is at university one and a half days a week (due to Covid) and is usually to be found working in her art studio down the garden:

I will be writing a post about her over the weekend, but she be a very happy girl right now.

Becca is definitely following in her footsteps, possibly even more so. She spends hours upon hours in her art nook making home made presents and creating things left right and center:

Creativity oozes out of every pore in her body. Love it!

Little Abigail is no longer little and is growing into such a gentle spirited young lady. Everything she does is very understated and done with minimum of fuss:

She and Becca are such close friends, I am sure because she is so easy going! They adore each other, and literally spend every moment together, every day.

Each week we have organic boxes delivered to us. Each week it is delightful to find out what we have been given and plan ways to use it up. Thankfully, we didn’t get any kale this week. I’m not good at using up kale. Here is our bounty this week:

All organic and full of goodness.

Ads broke up from school for half term today, and Thomas’ church is in a tier 2 area (with regards to Covid) so he needs to work from home more next week. It will be lovely to have the boys around. I’m sure Charlotte will take some time away from her studies and book writing, and the littles are off for the week. Unfortunately, Lillie does not get a half term as she is at uni, so she must plod on as normal. And I shall be school planning and updating some of my old posts. I have already updated my Jesse Bear post and my Yellow Ball post, and it was such a joy to look back over all the wonderful times I spent with my two littlest when they were really really little. Ahhh, so blessed ❤