Goings on

H. got her first paycheck job at Starbucks! She's been babysitting for years but this is her first 'real' job. Congratulations H!

W is really into his guitar, but he's expanding his horizons to things outside the world of Led Zepplin and Eric Clapton. The other day I found him listening to Requiem by Faure! He thought it was cool!

J is winning the reading contest here. So far this summer he's read: The King's Fifth, Bud, Not Buddy, The Golden Goblet, a couple of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery books, Fahrenheit 451 and Watership Down. He's my reader, God bless him!

S has stopped his obsession with gymnastics. I don't think he's done one gymnastics move since the class stopped a month ago. Instead he is pouring all his obsessive tendencies into Super Smash Bros. On the way to music camp this a.m. (a full 35 minute drive), he kept up a non-stop monologue on the minutae of Super Smash Bros. Whew! However, he came home from camp with a flute. I see the beginnings of a new obsession!

B is enjoying music camp very much. She really loves her piano lessons there. She chatters nonstop on the ride home about every little thing that went on at the camp; new songs, new dances, what new things she learned in guitar and piano, what crafts they did, who she talked to at lunch, etc. etc.

Me - I'm trying to organize and clean up the house, but since I'm lazy and hate housework, I'm going about it in a very irresponsible way!

R - well he works and pays the bills and occasionally comes home for dinner and reads to the kids. He is reading the sequel to The Mysterious Benedict Society to J, S and B. He watches the Simpsons every night with W and J and sometimes H (if she's here.) We've both been really tired lately. Like bone-weary feeling. I don't think we've had an extended heart to heart kind of conversation in a couple of weeks!

I've decided that we are going to start school up Tuesday, August 12, that's right after we get back from the Outer Banks. We'll start out real slow and loose. I'll just do LCC with B and S. J can just get started on all that reading he'll need to do for Kolbe. W can decide when he wants to start. He can wait for H. Her first Spanish class is Monday 8/25, so I think I'll make that the first official day of high school for them both. But he can start earlier with the younger ones if he chooses.

Oh and we got a new toilet today! We've had a broken one for the last month. The new one flushes and everything!