August Wrap Up: Puppy, Raspberries to Give Away, Timers for Effectiveness

• 
• Tweet
• Sumo

• 
• Tweet

Sparky, our new puppy

In our lives this month…

So, here we are at the end of another month full of sunshine, rain, fun, and work.   August’s highlight was our new puppy, the sweetest little fellow with such soft ears and a great desire to please…most of the time.  He is difficult to photograph, though.

In our homeschool …

We did do some studying most of the summer, just to make up for time we missed last year, and I think we’re ready to start school on Monday.  I have some more reading to do, a few things to tweak on the first trimester lists, a book to find, and some maps to print out, and then we’re ready to head into a year of grade 7, 9, and 12.  Time does go so quickly!

Miss 12 worked hard on math all summer and has learned a lot.  She is still not where I hoped she would be, but we’ll just keep on working.

Miss 14 completed Streams of Civilization 1 as well as Apologia’s Physical Science, both left over from last year.

Miss 16 volunteered, worked, painted her room a lovely light lilac (after patching all the nail holes in the walls), finished Apologia’s Chemistry, started Physics, and worked on her ambitious essays on Dante’s Divine Comedy.  We’ve also done some quick essays as subject tests and as preparation for the SAT.

In our gluten free kitchen… We ate lots from the garden and lots from the grocery store.  I cannot remember a whole month’s worth of eating, but fresh salads, cucumbers, raspberries, barbequed meat and zucchini, and some dramatic cakes stand out.

In our gardens and yard…

Everything is late.  We have not had any ripe tomatoes except cherry tomatoes.  Even so, life has been so busy that I need to weed the garden before the weeds reseed themselves.

For the first time ever I have decided not to pick our huge raspberry patch and only concentrate on the little patch.  So, if you live in the Ottawa area and want raspberries, just let me know and we’ll arrange a time when you can pick the large patch.  The only thing is that I’ll probably need to be busy with other tasks and won’t be able to pick with you.

Some of my favorite things were…

• Hanging out with my family.
• Hanging out with friends.
• Sunshine, rain, and swimming.
• Watching Ottawa’s Company of Fools perform As You Like It.

Questions/thoughts I have…   If our days are so full now, how will we possibly manage once our school year begins?

Fitness… I managed to average around 10,000 steps, but have let the other exercises go.  Sometimes life just gets in the way, but as I told Miss 16, exercise is simply something you restart over and over your whole life long.  In the last few days I’ve been restarting again.

Some of the things I’ve been working on…

• Planning for next year.
• Keeping up with the garden.
• Reading all sorts of non-fiction; I have several reviews written up and ready to post over the next month.
• Straightening out the house for fall.

I’m reading… Ephesians.   This month I read the The Slight Edge, Home to Chicory Lane, The Smartest Kids in the World, Crazy Busy, As You Like It, and The Good News about Marriage, and am reading Mendeleyev’s Dream, Pascal’s Pensees, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A Man Called Intrepid, 52 Weeks of Family French, and The Meaning of Marriage.

Reading Aloud… In the middle of Hosea we switched to Mark.  Spending too much time in the prophets gets gloomy, and we’ve been reading prophets for months.

When my husband is home for meals, we read Isaiah.

I’m grateful for ….  Life, both the earthly kind and the heavenly kind.  Family and friends.

Quote or link to share…. There’s this idea that people are most effective if they work hard for a timed 25 minutes and then take a timed 5 minute break.  If the work involves sitting and the break involves getting up and moving around, then this is apparently also a good health practice.  There’s even an online timer for this purpose.

—

This post is linked to Kris’s Weekly Wrap Up .