After a break from the pool last year, we are back in the swim of things this year. Shelby, Dawson, Isabelle, & Tucker are Barracudas, swimming for our pool's summer swim team. It is Tucker's first year and after getting over a serious case of nerves, he is now quite the speedy little fish. We span the ages for practice, so we have a Rutherford in each and every practice session. Shelby and Dawson get dropped at the pool at 8:30 am and swim until 10. At that point, the rest of us have arrived for Isabelle to swim from 10 - 11:00 while the younger five run around the extensive and blessedly fenced in "non-pool" grounds. Tucker hits the water from 10:45 - 11:30. After he dries off a little, we head home for some lunch.
And, after lunch comes . . . SCHOOL. Yes, we school year-round. Yes, we've almost always schooled year round. And, yes, this is the first year EVER that any of the children have said, "I'm actually glad we go year round. It feels weird to not be learning." Cool. They started back up this Tuesday and we are taking it easy this week by just tackling math and American History, which only takes up about 1.5 hours of our day. Next week we shall be adding in science: Astronomy for most of us, Biology for highschooler (gasp!) Shelby. Then comes language arts/literature followed by ancient history. Somewhere in there we'll start back up with typing, art history, and music theory. Not to mention Shelby, Dawson, & Isabelle are beginning piano lessons after their camp season is over. And Dawson is helping Tucker with his reading. And Shelby and Isabelle are teaching Keats, Aidan, & Abigail using "Five in a Row." Productive productive!!
Once school is complete, we generally head back to the pool for some water fun for the littles, who are forced to go to the pool in the morning and never touch the beckoning blue waves of water. Poor kids. We are considering placing them into swim lessons the week after next so that Keats, Aidan, and Abigail could get some intensive swim learning in. Elias is just happy crawling every & any where.
Of course, Fridays mean that after school ends for the day, our bread baking begins for Saturday's Exeter Community Farmer's Market. This year is significantly simpler in that we are only baking 24 loaves of bread for now. We are praying that the amount increases since the more bread we sell, the more money goes to the charities and organizations we support throughout the summer. Last weeks total of $220 all went to the Exeter Community Library, which felt pretty doggone good.
So, if we're baking on Friday then we're selling on Saturday. Scott helps with the booth set-up on his way home from work. He joins us at home for our family Bible-study, shower, and much earned rest, the last of which is our cue to exit the premises. We head over to the market where the children use their charm to sell while also learning to make change and chat politely with adults.
And, this summer, just for fun we have thrown in a family service project largely managed by the children. We learned that Camp Manatawny wasn't recycling while we were attending family camp. After a family meeting and a conversation with the caretaker, we had found a cause to adopt! So, every Wednesday afternoon and Saturday after-Farmer's Market, we'll drive out to camp to collect recycling bags. Our community has a drop center and the larger the volume processed, the better for the township. My job is simply to drive the kids back and forth. Their job is to collect, load, and unload. Pretty simple stuff with a pretty big impact!
Then there is the annual pilgrimage those Rutherfords of age make to Camp Manatawny's hallowed grounds for a week of sleep-away camp. This year, four of our offspring will be slurping jello, wearing wet clothes, running unders up the flag-pole, and all in all enjoying life away from the townhouse.
Ahh, the gentle beckoning of Sir Elias waking up from his nap. Time to move onto our "next thing." (Which right now will be nursing Elias, waking Scott, and then heading over for our annual clean-up at the library grounds after which we'll eat some Taco Soup before going to the pool to cool off. And somewhere in there the children are hoping to meet our new dog, a chocolate lab named Bill.)
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