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I could not think of a single good title, but wanted to give an update, so there you go.

We've had a bit of a hard time getting back in the swing of things since the hurricane. We took a week off (I was feeling whiny about having no power) and I think we're paying for it.

One thing I did was move us to a definite time schedule. As in, 8:30, 9:00, etc. You get the idea. It's had mixed results. Ruthie loves it. It keeps her moving and she has consistently gotten her schoolwork done. Robert fought it, but actually has gotten more work done. The big drawback with him is if we start school late for some reason. He cannot be convinced that we can just move everything back. We'll work on that.

Even with the new schedule, though, we've been lagging this week. One thing the new schedule showed me is that there is no way we can be done before 2:30 pm. That is not what I want for our school days. So, I'm making more changes.

The biggest change is to our Friday schedule. I dropped math. That was difficult to do because we haven't caught up to grade level since we switched to CLE. I also took science out of the daily schedule and put it in a block of time on Friday. I'll see if that works better. Overall, our Friday is now more of a project day (science, notebooking, art, etc.).

I also took out our read aloud time in the morning. We've been reading Inkheart. It's a good book, but it's not school related. It also means I haven't been doing Ruthie's Sonlight read-aloud like I should. So, it's been moved to a different time of day. Book Basket and instrument practice have also been moved off the schedule. I still expect them to do it, but as long as it's done sometime during the day, I'm okay with that.

In an effort to make sure they do things like reading and practice, and in an effort to work on attitudes around here, I'm creating a "nobility record" for the kids. I got the idea from Trivium Academy. If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out. It's a marvelous idea.

In other news, Ruthie and I went camping with her Girl Scout troop this past weekend. As the camp-trained person, I was in charge of the whole event. I do not like being in charge of things, so it was very stressful for me. We had a great time, though, and are already planning another trip for April.

Robert had a friend over for a late birthday celebration. They were originally going to see the new Star Wars animated movie, but it was no longer in theaters by the time the power came back on. So, Griff took them to play laser tag instead. We also took them out to lunch and had cake and ice cream at home. It was very low-key, but Robert enjoyed it. I'm thankful that both of my kids prefer smaller parties.

If I get it together, I'll post some pictures later. I make no promises, though.