Let's See Now...Where Were We?

Hello, virtual friends! Please don't think that because I haven't written a doggone thing that I haven't been thinking of you with fondness. Because I have. A lot. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's been my problem. I'm so stinkin' fond of every last one of your blessed little souls that I can't bring myself to type out the drivelly mush that's been swimming in my brain. But then I missed you. So I visited your blogs, commented a little here and there and I felt better. For a while. And now I just feel like having a good old-fashioned one-sided chat. You know, like the kind we have with palaverous 4-year-olds who talk without taking a breath. Those are fun. So I'll chatter away, and you can pretend to pay attention and do other things and we'll get along just fine.

Summer has come to the middle of the country, and it's a beautiful thing. If, by "beautiful thing", I am understood to mean "thank God for swimming pools, air conditioning and snow cones." The homeschooling schedule has loosened up a bit, though the three older kids have a few academic goals they're still working on. Mostly, they all need to really cover some ground, math-wise. Progress is being made, so we just need to keep plugging.

We're also continuing to read. The two older girls belong to mother/daughter book clubs, so we just keep on reading all summer long. I can't say enough good things about our book clubs. I've read some of the most wonderful and challenging literature with my girls over the last few years. We've had really fascinating discussions both at home and in the book club meetings, and we've formed some of the sweetest friendships with these moms and daughters. Right now we're working on Pride and Prejudice for the middle school group and Around the World in 80 Days and The Silver Chalice for the high school group. When I look back over the last 3 years at the list of books we've read, I'm amazed and so, so grateful

In other reading news, Seth is now picking up books to read on his own. As you all know, Seth has autism and all language is a challenge for him. It has been a special joy to watch him develop a love for reading. He is so sweet when he reads things to/for Claire that it just melts my heart. Then I find the cup hook he screwed into the middle of the wall in the living room and that brings the melting to a screeching halt. For what it's worth, if I had been designing little boys, I'd have put an OFF switch on that rascally Y chromosome. I'm waiting for that upgrade.

Oh, you should probably know that this post is brought to you by my sweet husband and his resurrected PowerBook. It's not as nifty as my little MacBook, but I'm as grateful as I can be to have it. You see (public service announcement), laptop computers do not, in fact, fare well when doused in ramen soup. Stupid health food. So Dan graciously took all my remotely backed up (the man's a genius!!) data and now this old PowerBook has all my old MacBook stuff on it and the clouds parted and the angels sang and I think I even heard KC and the Sunshine Band. That's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh. The only drawback is that my photos are now all on the desktop computer, so adding them to blog posts won't be easy. What that means for you is that you will not be subjected to macro-lens photos of things I'm scouring Google for a diagnosis for. You're welcome.

Tomorrow is Father's Day. My husband is an exceptional father. The best. And that blesses me in ways that are hard to describe. And that's all I have to say about that.