Gloria in Excelsis Deo: {SQT} The Final Week of School

1. FSSP Ordinations and Visiting Family

My husband took our firstborn to Nebraska for four days to attend the ordinations of ten priests of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. We've long wanted to attend, but this year we had an actual friend of many years being ordained, so this was the year we finally made it happen. While there, John visited his great-grandfather John! You can read all about the trip by clicking here!

2. Homeschool Conference

One year, I went to the local homeschool conference, just to arrive and be called by my husband a few minutes later informing me that I needed to drive home immediately because one of our children had a concussion.

This year will go down in memory as the year I had a car accident on the way home from the conference!

I had decided to take my five-at-home kids to the conference without expectations: we'd last as long as we lasted.

We overall enjoyed perusing the vendor hall and buying some school books for next year. My dear Mary spent her own money and surprised me by buying me a beautiful little angel that says, "Mother is another word for love."

We played outside for 15 minutes to get our wiggles out, and then headed into the speaker's hall to hear a talk. I was grateful that the speaker was a mother of eight as, only ten minutes into her speech, I made the Walk of Shame out of the room because the youngest set could not stop fighting over the pens and coloring books I had brought to keep them peaceable and the un-napped two-year-old would not stop running maniacally in gleeful circles and climbing atop tables just to leap off of them.

One can only pack up a stroller and five kiddos so fast, and then it took us another 30 minutes out at the van to be ready to actually drive away. There was one child who had to go back in to buy something she'd forgotten, and another child who suddenly had to go potty, and so forth.

As we drove home in rush hour, the freeway was a sea of cars creeping along . . . stop and go . . . stop and go . . . stop and go and REAR END! Yup, I rear-ended somebody with five kids in my car and I just thank God and our guardian angels that it was a very minor affair. We did end up sitting on the side of the road for probably a cumulative hour while we waited to the police officer to arrive and take the report.

Maybe it's a Southern thing, but the man whose car I hit--his brand new car with dealer plates still on--and the police officer and later the insurance agent on the phone were all so jovial and kind to me. I was so grateful.

Nonetheless, I barely slept that night, full of anxiety and burden thinking of the terrible what ifs.

3. Gardening

The children and I began work on transforming our front bed, along the right side of the driveway. After three years of pruning away dead and diseased branches, I tore out the roses, having been informed by a landscaper that they have a virus--Rose Rosette Disease--which has no cure.

Disease

The 7- and 9-year-old girls used my loppers and pruners to cut the shrubs down to the bases, and then I dug out the root balls and scraped away all the moldy pine straw. As I finished the job, the children surprised me by making cold lemonade and bringing it to me at the job site.

Some kids from across the street came over to play, the baby napped all the while, and it was pretty much an idyllic morning.

My blank slate

Stay tuned for what I hope is a beautiful transformation of that bed!

4. Memorial Day 2018

We got rained out on Memorial Day Monday--in fact, it poured all week--so we did not do our annual tradition of praying and picnicking at a military cemetery. We stayed home, where the little boys played in the warm rain and got drenched.

5. Scottish Dance Recital

Click here to read all about the end-of-year dance recital!

6. Scholastic Scenes

I've made it a goal to read as many of the historic fiction novels as I can from those John will be assigned for his middle school program next year, so I'm starting over the summer. I've already read one and a half novels in the last two weeks but, you know, if this bookworm mama has a duty to fulfill that involves reading historic fiction, well, a mama's gotta do what a mama's gotta do.

The above four shelves in the boys' room are mostly comprised of all our history resources (excluding true textbooks), mainly from the book lists of Connecting with History.