Weekly Wrap-Up: June 29

For a week that I expected to be quiet, it sure flew by!  I can't say that we were really that busy, but we still managed to be out and about every day.  As the girls get older, they get busier, happily for them, not necessarily so happily for mom who gets to chauffeur them around.

We had a get-together at my sister's house, about two hours away, on Sunday.  I am the youngest of six, and all six of us were there.  That doesn't happen very often!  Just the four youngest (of twelve) grandchildren were there (the youngest being Turtlegirl).

Monday, the girls started volunteering at the nature center in a neighboring town.  I expected it to take longer than it did, so I did a couple of errands and went home, thinking that I would have an hour or so at home before I had to go back to get them.  But I was only home about ten minutes when Swimmah called to say they were done.  Next time I'll hang out at the Barnes & Noble that's about 5 minutes from the nature center while I'm waiting.

I thought we were going to have a day at home on Tuesday, but Turtlegirl was invited to a friend's house.  After I got back from dropping her off, Swimmah and I started watching Romeo and Juliet.  Then she got a phone call from the library about the volunteer application she filled out and could she come talk to them?  So out we went to the library where she had her first "interview" (good practice!).  She will help out shelving books in the young adult section, as well as anything else they may need help with (and possibly making suggestions for books for purchase!) for an hour or so on Friday afternoons.  We'll have to get back to Romeo and Juliet another time.

A friend of mine has been coordinating hikes every week for homeschooled teens and their families.  If you're in Connecticut and would like to join us, you can check that out here.  The day varies based on her schedule as well as the other regulars.  This week we met on Thursday afternoon.  It was a short hike out to the legendary (in this area) Indian Council Caves.  Apparently there is no evidence that Native Americans held council meetings there, but there have been numerous Native American artifacts found at the caves, so I guess it sounds more romantic to think of big council meetings being held there than just using it as a shelter while out hunting and gathering.

It's really huge boulders coming together to form a sheltered area, rather than what I usually think of as a "cave".

But it was pretty cool, and we could climb around and on top of the boulders, although there were too many trees around for much of a view.

So then Swimmah had her first day volunteering at the library on Friday.  I thought she was only going to be about an hour, so I decided to hang out at the library while waiting for her.  This time she was longer than I expected, so I ended up going out to the store to buy cups for the fruit salad I volunteered to make for the swim team concession stand and then came back for her.  If I had known she was going to be that long, I would have run another errand I still need to do...but that's the way it goes sometimes, huh?

Back home, we still had to do our weekly chores and I had to make that fruit salad, and the girls had to get ready for the swim meet scheduled for the evening.  Both girls swam well, there were a couple of personal best times, but Swimmah was disappointed that the 500 yard freestyle was cut from the meet because of time constraints.  I guess she has taken about 10 seconds off her time in practice, but it doesn't count because she hasn't done it in a meet in a while.  Oh well, hopefully next time.

Oh, I also found out that we've been missing the Olympic swim trials all week!  That's what comes of not watching network TV, I guess.  We've been streaming episodes of Merlin all week, and before that there was...something...and before that, Dr. Who, and so we haven't watched anything on NBC in ages.  I think there's one more night of trials tonight.

So there's our "quiet" week.  I have a feeling this is how it's going to be for a while now - until they can start driving themselves around, anyway.

This post is linked to Weekly Wrap-Up.