Breaking Radio Silence... Briefly

It's been a couple of weeks of radio silence here on the blog. I basically fell off the edge of the earth for a bit and into my crazy full life. All things are good here, just the usual busy of a large family. We had school, I had my 37th birthday, Rebekah turned 3 months old, hubby had a minor surgery, and we've been doing recovery and family fun while he is off work. We met friends for bowling, we went to the zoo with cousins and other extended family, and I braved taking 9 of the 10 kids to the science center alone while Daddy hung out at home resting with baby Rebekah as his company. Friday morning I gave haircuts to all 7 of my sons - one of these days my hair clippers will burn out, but for now they are going strong.

On the homeschool front things are winding down for the school year. It's a sweet time where we look back at what we have accomplished and forward at what comes next. I need to get each child's portfolio prepared for our evaluator and sent off. My goal is to have it ready to go in the mail June 1st.

As summer approaches I have started thinking of simple fun we can have as a family. One idea that came to mind is free and I thought other families might enjoy it as well, so I'm sharing it here. I started looking around and noticed all the board and card games in my home. We love games and have collected a lot. This week I made a list of ALL our games and printed it out. We have 83 games - not counting card games we can play with a regular deck of cards. My goal is to play every single game with the kids between now and the end of summer. As a game gets played we cross it off the list. Yesterday I played Uno Moo with some of my younger children. 82 games to go!

One other thing I'm working on is re-working our chore distribution. Each summer kids get a new chore room to be responsible for. The idea is that by the end of their time in our home they will have personally cared for each area of the home for a year, truly mastering the tasks for that area. It has worked well for several years. I am considering mixing things up a bit for the coming 6 months. We shall see!