This week Melissa at Adventuroo is once again hosting Week in My Life, and I’m trying to participate. I took notes throughout the week for my 2011 Week in My Life posts. Yesterday was pretty busy, though, and I didn’t take any notes. I also didn’t take my camera out quite as often as I’d planned. Today won’t be as busy, so I’m going to try to have more pictures for you tomorrow. Hopefully there will be plenty of cat photos to share.

First things first: Breakfast

Pete is our early riser, and he usually heads straight to the kitchen for his breakfast when he wakes up. So I set out a bowl, a spoon and a box of Froot Loops and filled the little pitcher with milk for him on Sunday night. I don’t always remember to do that, but he’s less likely to dig through the pantry for treats when I put something out for him.

Poppy usually sleeps until 8 or 8:30, but yesterday she was up around 7:45. I’d made some applesauce muffins on Sunday night, and I tried to give her one for breakfast. She was not a fan of the muffins, though, so she had an Eggo waffle with peanut butter instead. I read this week’s chapter of “Story of the World” to her while she ate her waffle and Pete — who’s always famished in the morning — ate a muffin.

A little bit of schoolwork

The kids get 30 minutes of computer time every day. Sometimes they wait until the afternoon, but lately I’ve been letting Pete do his while I perform the daily ablutions. Then the kids got dressed, Poppy took over the computer and Pete joined me at the dining room table for his math and reading lessons.

A short break

And then the kids watched an episode of “Phineas and Ferb” while I gathered my wits about me before we had to leave the house.

Homeschool co-op & Odyssey of the Mind

We spend a few hours on Monday at a homeschool co-op. In the first hour Pete takes a class on dinosaurs and Poppy has an art class. Pete tells me he played Memory yesterday, and Poppy’s class talked about Georgia O’Keeffe and did some watercolor painting. One of the regular teachers was sick today, so I filled in as the assistant in her class, where much Twister was played by a group of 9(ish)-year-old boys.

Every now and again Rockford drives over and has lunch with us at co-op. And today was one of those days! It’s always nice to see him in the middle of the day. The kids played for awhile after Rockford went back to work, and then it was time for the second hour of class. Poppy does “performing arts” in the afternoon, and Pete has “Exploring Clay.” I’m the assistant in Pete’s class, but I was primary yesterday because that teacher was also sick. It’s that time of year. There are four 4- to 5-year-old boys in the class, and I set them loose on a giant bag of PlayDoh and related accessories.

Poppy joined our homeschool group’s Odyssey of the Mind team this year, and she had a meeting right after co-op yesterday. Pete and I spent about half of the hour hanging out in the car (playing Angry Birds, listening to Led Zeppelin and eating Goldfish crackers) and the rest of the time taking a walk and doing an impromptu Letter Hunt.

You may have noticed earlier that Poppy hardly did any schoolwork at home yesterday. That trend continues for the remainder of the day.

The bibliothèque

A couple of my holds were in at the library, so we trekked over there after co-op. I regretted it as soon as I pulled into the tiny parking lot. Our library is connected to the community center where early voting is taking place, and one could concur by the state of the parking lot yesterday afternoon that people who vote early are also people who cannot successfully pull into a parking spot. It was chaos.

We eventually managed to find a spot between two relatively straight cars, and we were in and out in about half an hour.

Home again, home again

Once we finally got home, Pete took a nap and Poppy retired to her room to read “Kit’s Surprise” while I made some cupcakes for today’s End of Soccer Season party and next week’s homeschool Halloween fest (those ones are in the freezer now) and put some chicken in the pressure cooker for dinner. Then we headed out to the backyard to play a little soccer before Rockford came home from work.

The rest of the day

Then we:

ate dinner.

dealt with a meltdown over dinner.

jammied up.

put small people in bed.

watched the debate.

wrote this while watching “The Walking Dead.” (I wrote; Rockford watched.)

edited this while watching the Lions/Bears game. (Ditto.)