Diary of a Homeschool Dad - Week 40

We're racing ahead towards the school year finish line!  For some reason I didn't take many pictures of anything this week, so it's going to be a fairly text-heavy post this week. 

Sunday - Mother's Day at church is always nice, and I was fortunate enough to have mine and my children's with me.  We waited too long to nail down details, unfortunately, so we were stuck going to a restaurant without a reservation.  I was actually glad to see the wait, however, because I've been told this is one of two days where food service will make or break their years (think of it like a culinary Black Friday).  So many good eateries have gone away during the past year.  No evening church activities meant we were free to wrap up our day without the extra trip across town, which I'm sure the car would have appreciated if it had thoughts or feelings about such things. 

Monday - Each of the girls has been gradually wrapping up some of their school subjects for 2020-21.  This week, Girly had a few tests to determine whether or not she'd be exempt from specific course finals, and ended up only having to take three.  Curly actually had all of her final exams this week, leaving next week to be filled with parties, project presentations, field day, and movies.  Whirly doesn't have that sort of finals testing scheduled, so she just drops classes off the schedule as she finishes them.  By the last day of school she'll only have three brief reading assignments!  After school Girly drove herself to another cello lesson, leaving her with only 4 more permit hours before she's ready to wrap up her driver's license requirements.  I'm finally getting to the point where it's not as critical for me to watch her every move, and the way she's getting the hang of things makes me think she'll be a pretty good driver. 

Tuesday - Sometimes we accuse our martial arts instructor of being cruel.  The first lesson of this week involved a ton of push-ups, planks, and bear crawls.  Ouch!  It was enough to make the next lesson two days later very sore throughout the chest and arms, no matter what we did (although it also involved a heavy dose of arm work).  Curly logged on to her clarinet lesson after school, and then we took full advantage of Taco Tuesday by trying out a new street track joint (well, new to us anyway).  It sits directly across the street from a church where I used to have Cub Scout activities many years ago, probably around the time I was as young as my most junior kiddo.  Quite a little trip down memory lane! 

Wednesday - Hump Day is becoming the slowest day on our schedule as we approach summer.  Typically the girls' school will not assign homework on a night where churches have midweek events, but now that those have wrapped up we're able to take things much more casually.  It also gives me a chance to spend some time cooking dinner, although several times we have the sort of "breakfast for dinner" meal that we enjoyed this particular date.  Biscuits with sausage gravy is never a bad idea, especially when there's bacon on the side! 

Thursday - Office requests started to pick up but, even though we stayed busy, it wasn't yet approaching the typical "red line" level of work quantity.  While we were able to finish up Whirly's schoolwork in a timely fashion, even with our lunchtime martial arts lesson, there unfortunately wasn't enough time to cook or go out without making it a particularly late meal.  And do you know what that means?  Pizza night!  Too bad Curly had to wait around until after he piano lesson to join in.

Friday - I'm glad when Whirly is able to humor herself during busy work days.  We didn't even get into any serious coursework until it was nearly lunchtime, just because I was getting hammered by work deadlines.  Eventually I got a handle on everything and she was able to finish up her week's work.  Dinner was a little crazy as the seafood restaurant we visited had a computer system failure that led them to start having guests fill out forms to pay their bills, but not knowing exactly what the final price would be.  We did a bit of celebrating the last real week of school by picking up ice cream, and then seeing by our old house to take out the last of the trash.  The next time we go should be simply to drop off keys and handle our final steps to vacate the property. 

Saturday - It was an early morning on the mat for Whirly as she had martial arts curriculum training while I handled some necessary yard work back home.  Mrs. Geo went to the north side of town to have lunch with her sister and mother, so my brother-in-law came down to hang out with me and the girls.  He got the grand tour of the new house, we grabbed wings for lunch, and we discussed his upcoming move as well as our planned family vacation.  Eventually our wives made their way back to our side of town, so we all went out for burgers to wrap up the day and end the week on a high note. 

Come back next week to find out how we cross the (scholastic) finish line!