In the past week

I've always noticed that life is really chaotic when we don't adhere to a relatively strict daily schedule. For those of you who can fly by the seat of your pants with a large family, good job. I can't. I've been struck the past week with how tiring it is to not have the children know what to expect each day and have a grasp of what they should be spending their time on. I think the schedule is the key to making homeschooling work- for us anyway. I was just telling Pete yesterday that it isn't that I'm less busy now that we're taking a break from the books. I'm refereeing (is that a word??) more fights and hearing "I don't know what to do" quite often. I'm spending more time knitting which leads to losing track of time which leads to late breakfasts and lunches which leads to crabby little girls.
This past week was really busy and fun and exhausting. My mom and sister and the boys were here for a few days and we packed in a lot- garage sales Thursday morning, Trader Joe's Thursday night, strawberry picking Friday morning, and Kate's birthday date with daddy and mommy Friday night. I kind of feel like I lived in the van with all that driving!
Next week we're going camping for a few days so I'll spend the next two days getting ready for that. Then the following week the three oldest kids are going to be going to VBS at Nana and Papa's church which means lots of driving and more busyness. It's all good stuff, but I'm really feeling the need to slow it down and just be home for awhile after that!!