Waiting For UPS

com·pul·sive [ kəm púlssiv ] : adjective. Definition: 1. driven to do something: driven by an irresistible inner force to do something. Example: Shawna has a compulsive desire to check the status of her UPS delivery.

Yep, that pretty much describes it. I was later than usual ordering our school books this year and I have been compulsively checking the UPS website to see where my books are. They trudged down from Illinois, through Missouri, into Arkansas and are finally headed here today. "In Transit" and "On Time" are lovely phrases aren't they? "Scheduled For Delivery Today" is a pretty good one too.

We "started school" this week by finishing up some things from last year. Shh!!! Don't tell my kids, but we weren't official this week. I told them that a week early so we could be in the groove a little better by next week. Perhaps this bit of mental subterfuge was more for me than them, but it worked. I was not stressed about getting it all done and they have settled into a nice routine.

If we apply ourselves in the morning, all homework should be done by noon or shortly there after, leaving plenty of time for play, nature time, music, and such. (This applies to Grace and Bitsy.) I am very excited about school this year. I have finally decided to throw myself into the Charlotte Mason educational style and see how it goes.

We have been listening to our classical music each day as we do other things; our composer this term is Vivaldi. We (I) picked our artist for the fall term, Mary Cassatt, and checked out several books about her. I hope to review some of those here as we go through them. I was so impressed by one book of her art that I ordered my own copy from the used book section on Amazon. By the way, I found out that you can search by ISBN number on Amazon and it is more efficient than entering either the author, title or subject.

Oh! Oh! I just heard a horn! That may be the UPS man....