Weekly Wrap-Up

On Friday and Saturday I see Weekly Wrap-Ups appearing in my Google Reader, and I invariably think, "What did we do all week? I have no idea." I forget by Saturday what we did on Tuesday, especially on weeks like this when we have one or two outside activities every single day.

The week started with our citrus order being delivered, and thus a semi-truck of fruit from Florida unloaded, on Sunday afternoon. Our AHG troop sold nearly $10K worth of fruit, which nets right at $6000 for our troop—a fantastic fundraiser! When the truck was unloaded we had a Family Game Night at church, which was lots of fun.

Monday we had our second-to-last co-op class of the fall, and then we headed over to church to help with fruit pick-up. About half of our girls picked up their orders, so I knew I'd have to head back over on Tuesday so the other half could pick up their orders. On Monday evening Laurel's girls' small group worked for a couple hours on a service project. They are going to be distributing boxes around town to collect pajamas for the local women's shelter. She had a great time doing this, and a photographer from the newspaper came and took their pictures. The article is supposed to be in Sunday's paper.

Tuesday and Thursday we did our regular bookwork: math, spelling, grammar, writing, science. We're halfway through The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Duncan is getting a big dose of boat this week, which is greatly enriching the book for him. Randy's going to be reading Carry On, Mr. Bowditch to him in the evenings. This was one of Jesse's favorite books when he was Duncan's age, but I knew Laurel wouldn't like it, so we skipped it last year.

On Wednesday our homeschooling group toured the Nina and Pinta replicas, which were docked in Knoxville. Again, this was perfect for Duncan's impromptu boat unit study.



The weather was absolutely perfect. I'm not sure the kids heard that much of the presentation, but they had a great time nonetheless.

Wednesday evening our church held a community Thanksgiving meal, open to anyone who needed a meal. We had about 150 people come to it from our community. It was a really awesome opportunity for service and sharing. By Wednesday of this week, Laurel had already logged 7 hours of community service!

Thursday afternoon Duncan had Cub Scouts, and our middle- and high-school AHG girls did a teamwork/leadership building course through Maryville College's Mountain Challenge. They did all kinds of exercises that required cooperation and leadership skills. We like to do this every two years for that age group, not only to promote teamwork but to help them with their own confidence issues.



I think the girls really enjoyed this—Laurel did, for sure. I love this age group! That evening our homeschooling group had a game night for teens, so we headed back out again for that. We had a great turn out and the kids seemed to have a great time.

Friday finally brought a bit of relief into our crazy schedule. Randy and Duncan left at 11 a.m. for a Boy Scout/Cub Scout trip to the USS Yorktown in Charleston. They'll spend 2 nights on the aircraft carrier, doing all kinds of activities. Again, the whole boat theme comes into play this week! Laurel and I just took the day to get caught up on housework and miscellaneous school work, and then she had yet another service project in the late afternoon/evening.

And now we're halfway through a quiet Saturday. My goal today is to get the living room cleaned, dead flowers taken away, surface dusted, and the carpet prepared: tonight, I'm getting out the steam vac. A weekend with the boys away seems to be the perfect time to shampoo the carpets, and as much as I dread doing it, I'm looking forward to getting rid of all the nasties.

Jesse comes home from college Monday evening for a full six days with us! I'm going to spend some time today and tomorrow preparing a menu and doing the grocery shopping so that I can be perfectly lazy next week.

Linked up with the Weekly Wrap Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.