August

August feels like it was a long month with not a whole lot of anything interesting happening.  Mike and I went on some hikes this month.  I liked them both and liked not having complaining kids on the hike with us.  Haha.  I also got asked to take a few senior photos so I had Eli go through poses with me.  Since he hates getting photos taken I offered to pay him $5 an hour.  I have only done one of the photo sessions so far but honestly, Eli's posing helped me feel prepared so I knew what poses to do without much thought.  Also in August, we started school.  It is going.  Not bad, not exceptional.  Just going, which I think is just fine and probably pretty normal.  I spend a lot of my time with Piper doing school and some time with Felicity and then the boys all come and interrupt us a billion times throughout the day--which is expected and normal.  All of the boys are doing really well in school so far.  They all have their moments of feeling stressed out about their workload.  Both Isaac and Will have a lot of schoolwork.  They have seminary at 7 and then start on school immediately after and besides the small break here or there, they don't generally get done until 5--but they don't have homework after 5 and don't do school on the weekends so they have some full, busy days in a row and then a break.  Felicity is doing a preschool co-op.  Two of the mom's have offered to teach double and I only have to teach one day a month.  I feel a bit guilty about it honestly because I'm not a user but I honestly don't know that we would participate if I had to teach more.  I am considering offering to teach more but we will see how I feel after I teach for my first time.  I was really close to saying, "No" but Felicity really needs some friends and work on her letters and numbers.  So far she loves it. Piper and Eli are doing the homeschool school again and they both are really happy with their classes and teachers.  Piper gets to take sewing this month and she loves that.  There is only one other girl in her grade and I'm bummed about it but she gets along fine with boys too.  Most of the other families did not return this year so all her friends from last year are not there.  I think everyone decided to do straight up homeschool for fear that it would get canceled again and we would end up having to do online school.  I chose to take the risk and hope we don't close down.  I won't do online school with Piper so if they close the school I'll just pull her completely and do all homeschool with her.  She still has a hard time with being timid and shy and she sat by herself at lunch the first day, which just made me sad so we did a bunch of role-playing at dinner the night before she went back again.  She reported that she sat by the other girl at lunch and I'm hoping that helps her for future school days.  Well, I think that's all I've got for now.