babysitting friday

We had a few kids here for the day, pretty fun.

As soon as t.c. got here he ran to Tim's room, "Tiiim! Get uuuup! I'm heeeere!"

Tim was up late last night playing Zoo Tycoon in bed on that old laptop. He was not planning on getting up for a long time.

t.c. had plans for him though, "We're going to clean out the dollhouse! You have to help me!"

Tim looked seriously annoyed. He finally did drag himself on out to the patio, but he did NOT want to sweep out the dollhouse. He said, "What's the point? This is going to take all day." (Untrue. Fifteen minutes maybe. Plus what's his busy schedule?)

He stood there frowning disgustedly as he watched t.c. throw everything out the door and take off sweeping. It is hard to wake up, that's for sure--and to wake up to an overly energetic nephew with big ideas? Oh, yeah.

Anyway, after he was fully awake they did have a good time, played with all the little guys and Legos and the castle.

Other kids played dress up and hide and seek, and there was a lot of running all over the house and shrieking. It was over 80 degrees today, so the game went in and out the doors, all over.

This is cute though--Dannell's niece m.c. has been staying with them, and she's intrigued by homeschool and asked if I'd make her a packet of work too.

I make each of them a packet of work every week, random pages from the dozens of workbooks in the file cabinet. There's no plan to it, just whatever catches my eye as I'm thumbing through the books. Today was Lincoln, the planet Uranus, the state of Georgia, Venice, some area problems.

Usually they work on them all week here and there when they're bored. The only thing I really care if they do or not is the math.


She and Kari spent hours up in Maria's room working on their packets. They came downstairs a couple times looking for encyclopedias. Around lunch time I went upstairs and teased her, "This is your day off of school, and here you are doing school work?" She was so enthusiastic about the packet it made me laugh. What a hard working kid.


Tonight Little Jay is home from the university for the weekend and he and Sumi, James and Maria all went to the homecoming game at the high school. Usually it's cold at homecoming, but not tonight--it's a perfect night to be at a football game.


Julia's here thinking about one-card poker. It's a good idea. This has been a weird week, with me gone a lot. She and I need to reconnect. Happy Friday. love, Val