Summer holidays begin...

And guess what the younger kids did this morning?  They played school! I don't get that.  Anyway, they happily occupied themselves in the basement, taking paper and fistfuls of pencils down with them while I worked through a stack of marking.  Ahh...marking. That's one job that I'll be pleased to put aside for a few months. 

Here's a shot of Emily last week when she was supposed to be doing her math lesson...

 Naughty girl! It must have been a good book. :)

Every year I fool myself into believing that summer will be a time to slow down and relax.  It never is.  If anything, the pace picks up.  But it's a nice change of routine and it's good to get caught up on a number of things. 

When I do find time to relax I'm hoping to indulge in some reading.  For pleasure I started Little Women.  We have the movie and I've watched it several times over the  years.  We just finished listening to a radio theatre production of the story by Focus on the Family.  It was enjoyable but a little disappointing. Some of the voices just didn't seem right. We had been expecting something really great after having listened to their production of the Chronicles of Narnia and the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which were amazing.  The  girls said that the book was better than both the movie and the CDs (isn't that always the case?) so I've set out to read the book at last. Also on my list is Making Sense of Your World (Biblical Worldview) which looks very interesting and intellectually stimulating.  And of course, as the mood stikes I'm reading A Charlotte Mason Companion.

I've been trying to figure out Photoshop Elements.  I've watched most of the free on-line tutorials but still have not figured out how to do what I really want to do with it.  Mostly my time spent on it so far has been late evenings when my brain is getting very tired - not the best time to be learning something new.  I'm hopeful that I will make better progress if I can spend time on it during the day.

Speaking of tired brains, it's getting late and it's been a busy day.  Before I sign off, I want to share this picture of two of my favourite men...