Weekly Report
I can't remember if I did a report last week. I'm thinking that I'm only getting these done every other week.
Last week went rather well. I made a plan on Sunday and we followed it, for the most part. This week, well... I didn't do so great. Vern was home on Sunday and I had overdone it the day before, so I really wasn't in any sort of mindset or physical ability to do much of anything. So, I didn't. In fact, I dinked all of Sunday away after I took the girls to Hebrew.
Our van has been acting up. I figured it was the alternator, but I was trying to ignore it, ya know? Sunday, Vern started it up and it was making a weird noise, so I had to take his truck to Hebrew with the girls. Monday morning, we took the van to the shop. It stayed there until Thursday morning. The truck does not hold all of us in it. It's a 5 passenger vehicle (barely) and there are 6 of us. So we stayed home on Monday. Monday evening, Rosh Hashanah began, so I started to bake in the afternoon. I made honey cakes and apple crisp. We enjoyed a very nice Rosh Hashanah dinner. We'd kind of planned to go to services that evening, but we were stuck at home since we didn't have a vehicle that would take us all there.
Even though the girls did not have a plan for school on Monday, they still managed to get math and some history reading done.
Tuesday was a day off for the Holy Day. I slept in and didn't do a lot. Then, in the afternoon, I noticed it was very hot in the house. I kept turning down the thermostat. It didn't get any cooler. In fact, it was 86 F in the house. Not good. It was especially not good for a pregnant woman. Vern was working and I thought I might be able to catch him on his phone, so I called him to ask him what to do. I generally am quite adept at making decisions without him, but I was steaming hot and crabby and well, pregnant. So I called him. He has a co-worker that knew a guy that does hvac work. They showed up at 8:30 p.m.
The capacitor on the lower unit was dead. Did the hvac guy have one that fit my unit on his truck? No. However, in the heat of the afternoon, it never occurred to me that I could just go upstairs. That air conditioner was working just fine.
Wednesday morning my children still did not have a weekly plan for their schoolwork. I tried to rally them around to do some history reading and some math. I think I did FLL with the 7 yo. We have PE on Wednesdays. I had to take dh to work so I would have the truck. I left at 11 something to take him to work and had an email from my co-partner from PE. We'd been planning to meet with the folks at the PE facility before class to talk about starting another class. We were to meet at 1. I'd just gotten home for lunch and it was 10 minutes to 1. So I raced out the door and we got there about 10 minutes after 1. I hate being late for meetings.
Had PE. Came home. HVAC guy had been here and fixed the ac. I called and talked with him on the phone. He's really very nice and his prices are to my liking. I needed to pay him extra for the refrigerant that my a/c did not have in it, so I asked him to come back and look at both units to make sure that they were ok. I was worried that the other unit was going to break on me, since I hadn't had it checked out for a while.
I have to say that I'm very glad for air conditioning here in Texas.
Thursday, I had a midwife appointment. See, it just never ended this week. The car dude came and got me at 8:30 in order to pay him and bring my car back home. I directed the girls to start their history and went to get the car. Paid him a ton of money, but hopefully the car will keep on going for another 80K miles. I sure hope so. It has 194K miles on it now and I'd rather not buy something new at this moment in time. We bought the youngest a new car seat so that we can fit 3 in a row in the back without as much squishing. Got home and the girls were doing history. I read some to the youngest two. Then, we went to the midwife's office. It's an hour there and an hour back. In the interim, I'd also made an appointment with the hvac guy to come back at 2:30.
We barely made it back by 2:30. I read some more to the youngers and tried to direct the olders in some history. The hvac guy came and the units seem fine. I got some advice on how to help our electric bills. We'll see. I don't really want to spend any more $. I made our evening meal, which was super yummy. Peach chicken, fresh green beans steamed with butter and garlic/pepper seasoning, and green salad. Fell into bed.
This morning, I figured we would have a great day, getting up and actually having a full school day. Unfortunately, I slept in late and the girls seemed to think they had the entire week off, so we didn't get started until almost 10. Since then, we've gotten math done for the oldest. I've done FLL with the 10 yo and the 4 yo has cut and glued. Now, the 7 yo and the 10 yo are playing math card games. It's lunch time and I have no idea what we are having for lunch. I'm going to try and have the girls do some writing this afternoon, and maybe read aloud to them.
Next week, we need to finish our week on the Crusades and at least start our next week. Yom Kippur is next Wednesday evening and Thursday so we will have to spend time Wednesday evening getting ready and Thursday will be a day off. The two olders have art class on Thursday and I'm not sure if I will send them or not. They really love art class, but it is technically work, at least for the teacher, so I need to pray about that and see what I'm lead to do. I really want to finish Unit 1 of our history before this baby comes, so I want to keep trudging along with that. I think that I will be able to keep up with some math and some writing while I'm babymooning, but the history might be hard.
So, it's been quite the week. I guess this is an example of how things can go awry and we just try to go along with the flow, keeping things moving in a somewhat orderly direction. I need to find a way to help the girls keep on task even when things are chaotic here. They live much more by their schedules than I thought, and I am going to have to muse on how to work that through.