Mondays...

This Fall, Mondays are particularly busy. I think today was fairly typical in scheduling, but it was better than many of my typical Mondays of late. I think I might be getting my Monday-act together...

After everyone has been fed and watered and we shovel up the weekend clutter it's usually around 9a.m. Monday mornings give us only an hour or so for any bookwork we want to accomplish. It's not too difficult to get the kids to hit the books on Mondays. I have them start with their journals. The Girl Child writes copious amounts - her biographer is going to have lots to sift through! The Boy Child, not so much. He's more matter of fact. 'Required' journal writing for The Boy amounts to a sentence per 'grade' so he's up to 6 sentences per journal entry. And that's a very loose definition of 'sentence' I'm using.

At 11a.m. I start getting the afternoon set up. The kids are sent to grab themselves a snack and then they pack another for later. I prepare lunch for Mr. A and myself and set it aside. French books and skating things are gathered and packed into the car. Today I dressed for a run and dug out my iPod. We left the house at 11:45.

My very good friend has taken it upon herself to teach a group of homeschoolers - her two included - French this school year. She's gone to a huge amount of work to plan weekly lessons for 5 families of kids, ages 8 through 15. The kids spend an hour and a half doing games and activities, vocab and dialogue. The focus is on spending time speaking the language which is awesome for my two-kid crew. The Boy and The Girl are quite well versed in their vocab, writing and reading skills. The speaking-out-loud has been a bone of contention in our past school years.

Today was the first Monday I snuck away from the other moms at French. I went for a miserable little run. I haven't run since the summer, really, so I was speaking fairly sternly with myself about the degree of laziness and depression that was taking over. I went for half an hour, 'running' for 3 minutes then walking for 1. Once I was done, I was glad I had done it. It's amazing how long improved cardiovascular fitness can hang on. I never thought I'd get 6 intervals completed today. I zipped home to change my muddy, wet running pants. While there, I constructed lunch for Mr. A and delivered it to his basement office (he's programming today and tends to focus in on his work and forgets altogether about regular bodily routines like caloric intake) before heading back to pick up the kids.

After French, we trek over to the local rink and spend an hour skating. The local homeschoolers have sort of dominated the 'Parent & Tot' time slot for the past few years. It was a quiet takeover...beginning years ago when the children blended in with those every-other-day kindergartners. Today there were 15 homeschoolers plus a bunch of moms on the ice.

Once we're home things depend on The Boy Child's hockey schedule. If he plays early, at 4:30p.m., we usually relax and snack before heading out the door at 4:15p.m. There are beefits to living in the rink's backyard! Today he played late, at 5:30p.m., so we had time to focus on some geography for a half hour before snacking and re-packing the hockey bag. I cleaned the kitchen and The Girl made pizza crust which we left in the warm oven to rise while we were at the rink.

At home, after hockey, I focus on getting some sort of food on the table fairly immediately. The low blood sugar is pretty apparent by this time on Monday. It's nice when we sit down to eat. Everyone knows that their responsibilities have been taken care of for the day. Relax mode starts to kick in. I like hearing about the kids' day - even though I've been there for most of it. I find it terribly interesting how different our experiences are even though we share the same space and activities.

We had a nice family evening culminating in apple crisp before bedtime. I'm watching the results of the local election and will head off to bed shortly. Hopefully next Monday will go as smoothly as today. Methinks if I keep up with weekend laundry and regular meal planning like a good, responsible grown up, I shouldn't have any problems.

~Mrs. A.