Where has the summer gone?

I guess if you take a 17-day trip across the country, preparing for it, taking it and recovering from it will pretty much consume the whole summer!  Somehow the summer is almost over...Monday morning, Lukas and I start first grade at home (two weeks later, he'll go to his first day of school with the homeschool co-op, and Natalie also goes to her first day of school).

Yes, I thought we had another whole week of summer break, but, no, school starts on Monday.  Of course, since I'm homeschooling, I could blow that off and start later if I wanted to, but why not just start next week?  This week, on Monday, I worked on re-establishing our morning schedule, which then is followed by play and more play all day long.  Since Natalie is now going to therapy in the afternoon (hallelujah!) we don't have to be out of the house by 8 a.m., and we'll pretty much have the same morning schedule every day except Tuesdays, when Lukas goes to school.

The major improvement of our morning schedule is for Lukas to do more of his chores before he eats breakfast (more of an incentive for him to complete them in a timely manner).  Then after breakfast we have Bible time, and hopefully as we all get more efficient in our morning routine, this will happen with plenty of time before Natalie gets on the bus (right now, we're not quite there...but three more weeks to practice, right?)

And Monday, we'll add first grade to our schedule right after Bible time.  I have been looking forward to doing school with Lukas while Natalie is also at school.  Don't get me wrong, she does a good job sitting at the table and working on her projects while I work with Lukas, and so does Konrad...but with only one of them--and Dominik!--I am looking forward to being able to concentrate on Lukas more.  But for the first two weeks of homeschool, I will also have Natalie at home, so the timing is not lining up perfectly for me to have an easier start.

And Konrad is potty training very well!  I'm still reminding him to go, but he has gone when it's his own idea too (I think because he wants a treat, but we'll take it!)  I think it's been a few days now since an accident...

But hey, at least I'm not a mother dove.  We came back from our vacation to find that they had nested a second time!  And now she's feeding her second batch of babies.  Praise God for four babies in 6 years, not four babies in four months!