Winners Only

I was pleasantly surprised at our co-op Field Day. I figured we'd just follow the rest of the country and award everyone so our children's self-esteem would stay intact. However, with the exception of the very youngest competitors, only those kids/teams who won an event received a medal or ribbon. Only the winners win. What a novel idea.

It was a fun day, and the wonderful lady who put the day all together did a fabulous job. There were team events like the ball relay and the race to fill the team bucket with spongefuls of water. There were also individal events like the frisbee throw, the limbo, and the beanbag throw.

I was assigned to the boys team, so I only got little glimpses of my girls. Michael took home the first place ribbon in the limbo, and Alex had two second place ribbons, one for the beanbag throw, and one for the frisbee throw. They all earned at least one ribbon because their teams won at least one event each.

It was a fun day under a beautiful sun.

Awards, a Project, and a Traffic Jam

A Traffic Jam
Yesterday was a very busy day. It began with Bright Futures, and since Mark was home, I decided to leave the kids at home. As I sat in traffic for two hours, a few questions surfaced:

How do people do this everyday?

Why am I the only mini-van out here. Don't moms work for a living anymore?

Why didn't I bring my kids so I could cruise down the HOV lane?

How do people do this everyday?

What is the name of that movie with Michael Douglas where he gets so fed up with the traffic he just starts shooting?

Why didn't I bring my kids so I could cruise down the HOV lane?

A Project

I rushed home after BFA, gulped down a fast food lunch, loaded up the kids, and we headed to our last official co-op day of the year.

It was a fun day, but we still had the end-of-the-year celebration to come as well as the Geography Fair. While at co-op, I noticed some of the kids had already brought in their Geography Fair projects, and they were pretty grandiose. Since I hadn't pushed Alex to put a ton of effort into her project on deltas, I wanted Alex to add a few finishing touches on her project on deltas, so after co-op we rushed to Office Max, purchased a report display board, and basically started from scratch printed out a couple of things, glued a few papers, and enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment when we were done.

Our Her project turned out pretty well.

Not bad for 45 minutes work.

Let's see...what lessons did I teach my child through this project?

1) It pays to procrastinate.

2) Sometimes you have to compare yourself to others to get motivated to do well.

3) Mom enjoys doing projects.

OK, so I won't be writing a parenting or homeschooling book anytime soon.

Awards

At the end-of-the-year awards ceremony for co-op, the kids always receive certificates of completion. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I requested that mine say something along the lines of, Congratulations, you've passed the [number(th)] grade seeing as how we still have 55 school days to go, but anyway.

Some of the boys sat all together but, surprisingly, caused no trouble at all. What is funny is that Jacob began the evening with us. Then at one point we noticed he was gone--he had snuck over to sit with his friends. He sure has come a long way from the timid little guy he was a year or so ago!

After the ceremony, the kids all got to show off different projects they have worked on throughout the semester. Alex had made three bas relief clay pieces that were on display from her geography class. She also had a scrapbook to show off, but we forgot to bring it back for the ceremony.

Jacob showed off his Literature Pockets, which were all about Caldecott winners. Michael was also in this class.

Michael tried his best not to be a part of showing off his nutrition abacus, a class both boys were also in.

And Audrey showed Michael and her daddy her lapbook about the Five Senses.

Next and last for co-op for the 2009-2010 year: Field Day!

Chaos Culprit

This past week was an extremely disorganized week for us, for me, and I positively, unequivocally blame it on Laundry. Since we were waterfalling and pumpkining on Monday, I missed my Laundry Day. Tuesday rolled around with its usual Chaos, and I was only able to get a load or two done at day's end, leaving the rest of the chore for Wednesday. While the pile of dirty clothes did indeed begin to shrink by mid-day Wednesday, the pile of clothes-waiting-to-be-folded was growing as quickly as a herd of rabbits (did you know a group of rabbits is called a "herd"?).

Then my own Laundry Day was interrupted by my brother-in-law's Laundry. He moved out of his house in a record 3 days this week, and I thought he might like some clean clothes.

So as the Laundry Pile began to take over the house, the rest of our schedule went out the door. With interruptions of varying degrees and for a variety of reasons, our homeschooling this week became carschooling and schooling-out-of-a-bag-of-books. These kind of homeschooling days generally elicit little parental supervision, which may or may not result in mediocre work; the quality of said work has yet to be determined and will be once I have a moment to sit down with some Teacher's Manuals.

I have a good feeling about this next week because my Laundry Problem has been solved. My dear in-laws drove down yesterday afternoon to watch the children while I spent some Grown-Up Girl Time with my friends in the evening. My mother-in-law always insists that she enjoys folding laundry. While I am skeptical, who am I to argue? She folded it all while I was gone, so that all I had to do was sort it, one basket per kid. She's a lifesaver.

Despite our chaotic week, we did have some bright moments. One was our morning spent making cards for soldiers. A friend from co-op stuffs stockings for our troops...how great is that? Oh, and this is the same friend who brought in a live lobster for co-op on Tuesday.

So we had quite a group together for card-making, Christmas cookie eating, and general romping around. It was a good time, and I didn't think about the laundry once.

Of course I will be thinking about it again tomorrow morning because Monday is, once again, Laundry Day. And tomorrow the one interruption--dentist appointments for all the kids--takes place. Hopefully, though, the interruption paired with Laundry Day will not throw my whole week into Chaos again.