December 8, 2010 6:26 p.m.

Yes, folks, you wouldn’t know it from my lack of posting, but we are on a de facto summer break here.  Chips finished up his Calvert Fifth Grade course last Thursday.  We were very excited, and happily mailed the last test to his A.T.S. teacher.  All we need to do is wait until it is graded and returned to us, and then we will have an official Sixth Grader, a middle schooler!  How did this happen?!?!?

I boxed up the books he used, as we will not need them until Sweet Girl is ready for Fifth Grade (two years from now).  And I organized the cabinet to include all of the Sixth Grade materials.  Here are the results:

Above are the new books.  They completely fill the shelf, and they are impressive looking!

Here are Sweet Girl’s Third Grade books, on the right side of the divider:

Finally, here they are all together!

Yes, perhaps I am a little bit crazy for eagerly anticipating the new academic year.  Actually, I am a little intimidated by the workload.  Okay, a lot intimidated.  But I am so amazed at all that they will learn.  It doesn’t seem so long ago that Chips was learning to read.  Again, how did that happen?

Actually, it is good – very, very good – to be on school break this month.  It makes all that lesson work in the summer worthwhile.

Today, actually, is the first day since we finished up school that I have time to write, and that is only because two of today’s afternoon activities were cancelled.  This resulted in a completely unscheduled day, and I could tell that the children were having a bit of difficulty finding something to do all day long.  Imagine that!  They are not used to so much free time.

So, Sweet Girl helped me to wrap the Christmas presents that we need to ship out of town.  I always feel so good when I have wrapped, packed, and shipped all the out of town gifts, and we achieved that milestone today.