Week Off

I am enjoying this week off between classes. It's nice not having to worry about a paper I need to be writing, or research I need to be doing, when I have so much other stuff around home to worry about. I think that the first thing I'm going to do when I finish my degree (after resting, of course) is to finally finish taking care of things here around the house that I've been neglecting since we moved in. Mostly I have to finish organizing my bedroom and the bonus room upstairs. I worked on my bedroom some last week, so there's not a whole lot left to do in there, beyond getting rid of things I no longer need and hanging things on the walls. The bonus room, though, is a huge project. I had started in there several weeks ago, working a bit each day, but the kids have completely messed up what I started. Ah...the joy of kiddos!!

Tomorrow is my kids' last day of school for the first nine-week term. Starting tomorrow, they have three weeks off, not going back until October 9th. They're really looking forward to it. On a downside, I discovered last night that my son's been lying to me about his homework. I think he accidentally let me in on it. I trust my kids to bring home their homework assignments and do them the way they're supposed to. He told me last night that he didn't get to go to recess yesterday because he had to scan in his math. I asked why he had to miss recess for that, and he gave me some excuse that I can't remember right now. Basically what it boiled down to is that he hasn't been bringing his math home to complete his homework, so he had to miss recess yesterday because of it. I guess he thought I was going to give him some sympathy. Sorry, not gonna happen. So I lectured him, yet again, on the importance of doing his best in school and doing his homework. I think I scared him when I told him that if he didn't do his math homework and really apply himself (if you'll recall, math was the portion of the End of Grade test he had difficulty with last year in spite of the fact that he had As and Bs in class), he was going to end up failing and have to repeat fourth grade. Well, if scaring him was enough to make him take his homework seriously, then it was worth it. He also got grounded for the rest of this school week. He brought his math homework home and did it today, though. He also told me today that he's going to have to work on math over the break. I had intended to have him work on his multiplication tables anyway, since that's still an issue for him.

I'm getting to spend the entire week with my niece this week. My sister's mother-in-law is on vacation, so I get to have her all week. She's such a joy to have around, and a reminder of how fun babies are. She'll be 11 months old next weekend. So of course she's crawling everywhere, pulling up on everything, and seeing what she can get into without me telling her "no." She's getting to the age where she hears "no" a lot. She's such a good baby, and my sister is very blessed, but I keeping teasing her, telling her that her next baby is going to be a pill. After all, that's what happened for me...the boy was just about as close to being a perfect baby as possible, while my daughter was, well, NOT! I love her with all my heart, but she was a very difficult baby. She's mellowed as she's gotten older. She still has her moments, but they're very rare compared to her first years.

The hubby's been a bit under the weather this week. There's been some kind of virus going around. His 1SG had it last week, and apparently he picked it up from him. I just hope he doesn't give it to me. I am usually able to avoid getting these things...I guess my immune system has benefited from all my years of working in the health care system...but every now and then, a bug manages to get me down.

I guess that about covers it for what's going on here lately. My final course starts next Tuesday. Then five weeks later I'm done. REALLY done. I still don't really believe it.