Every Waking Hour

Today we saw Sean off for his first regular day of school (yesterday was the frosh orientation, so not a “real” day of school) and then I brought Clare down to town for her orthodontist appointment (Aidan calls this the ‘orca-dentist’). Then we had a girls’ shopping trip, something that happens approximately four times a year. We went to Salvation Army and then to Target. I got the big boys some sweatshirts and socks and the little boys some shirts. Liam got a new wallet. Clare got some frames in which to put Memorable Pictures. She bought a hat for the sorely missed highschooler.

When we got home we both slept (!) and then I made some dinner. Sean came home on the late bus with loads of paperwork. About as much as Liam needed to apply for college, I think ;-). We signed and sorted and social-security-numbered and then we all looked through his homework and his textbooks with great interest.

Sean said he liked today better than yesterday, and he ate loads of baked potatoes and steak. He had lots of stories to tell.

OK, this is not really about homeschooling, is it? In the bigger picture, I guess we are all transitioning from being a homeschool family with 2 (make that 3 now) grads to being a homeschooling family with one school kid. It changes things in odd ways. My eyebrows really go up when I see the complicated way they do things — they have a point system, lists of rules, special bonuses, etc. The homework given today was that “getting to know you, getting to liiiike you” genre so familiar to us from confirmation class —”What celebrity do you admire and why?” “Make a pictorial map of your life story”. But I see why they do this type of thing, of course, and Sean did think it was really cool to get to choose Spanish nicknames — who would have thought it? He was even rehearsing Como te llama? and Donde vives? Clare is thinking about taking up Spanish so she can talk to him!