Weekly Report 2008:4

Jeff was away this week and it was really hot and I will freely admit that I let myself get caught up with non-homeschool stuff (like reading Nahum and Wuthering Heights). Despite this, we almost kept up with our Circle Time (Joshua did a careful water-colour for his latest memory verse, Mark 1:17-18):And we did manage a few Literacy lessons, so Anna has completed her introduction to the alphabet:I'm pretty happy that the Play School inspired activities I helped Joshua with more than made up for any delay in our academic progress.

We also socialised! On Tuesday afternoon I left the bigger kids playing with the T family for an hour while I went and visited Mrs T in hospital to meet the newest Miss T. Born after a quick labour on Sunday after church, she was just beautiful already, not at all scrunched!

On Thursday I left all four kids with the L family, to be babysat by the two older daughters. I read a newspaper (I am sooo bored with details of ex-Perth actor Heath Ledger's death) and went to the Koorong Cafe for a delicious slice of berry crumble, a mocha and time on my own to read my Bible without interruption! I worked out a plan to read through the stories of 1 and 2 Kings and the later OT historical books, interspersed with the prophets who wrote at each time. Then I went back to pick up the kids and chatted with Mrs L for an hour. This conversation was really encouraging to me particularly because Jeff is about to begin his third year at Theological College, and it helps me to see that others value our committment to the rigours of student life.

On Friday I cleaned the house - including doing five loads of laundry - before we collected Jeff from the airport. It was, and is, lovely to have my husband back. I just love being able to talk to him face-to-face instead of over a crackly phone connection. Even though I know he's starting back at college in a week, I'm very thankful to also know that he'll not be travelling anywhere without us anytime soon, because we missed him a lot.