Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

We arrived back home last Wednesday night from our 2-month cross-country camping trip. A great adventure but with very sparadic internet service at best I couldn’t blog. And without electricity my pc couldn’t run for me to journal and then transfer the stuff for you to read later. Oh well, I’ll bring up what we did and how it affected us over the coming weeks and months, maybe.

Coming into the house late Wednesday night we found some things better then I expected—the toilet did not need to be cleaned before we used it. That was a huge improvement over its condition when we returned from our last west trip. Some things were not quite as we expected either.

The kitchen, ahhh what a space. It is not completed but it is very functional. The to-do list is long and once I find my camera I’ll shoot some photos of the space. I do love the new counters, the tile floor, and appliances, and the extra-deep sink that you could bath a 5yo in. Not that I would bath a 5yo out in the open but it is that big. The cabinets are going to be beautiful once the shelves and doors are in place. And I love how the kitchen seems so much larger just because we moved the island 3′ away from the sink. It is going to be a fun place to cook in.

I didn’t waste anytime and spent Thursday and Friday cleaning the mud room. TWO days to clean the dust and dirt from the cabinets, walls and floor. OK, I did a few loads of laundry too but not much else. Saturday I cleaned the upstairs hallway, stairway, living room, and foyer. They weren’t as bad but if you’ve ever had drywall work done in your home then you know what kind of dust and dirt I was dealing with. Sunday I started in on the school room and finally today I am finished with this dumping-ground-room. Every book was dusted, 106 books were removed from the shelves and offered to some homeschool friends, and two huge trashbags of junk were removed. The room looks ready for school to begin.

School. It hit me though as I dusted off our books that this past winter/spring I hadn’t spent any time gazing through the Sonlight catalog or longingly searching hs sites for just the right history or science books for this coming year. I must have reached that old-homeschool-age where one knows that they have most everything they need or that everything will be alright if we don’t read or do what everyone else is raving about. Strange since I have never been in this spot before. It is a comfortable spot to be in, sure of what we are doing, aware that everything will be just fine if we don’t have the item on our shelf. Really, it will be.

Oh I did place a Rainbow Resource order but it was for a few workbooks that Michael (ScienceKid) had used and now I need a set for Mark (MilitaryKid) but there weren’t any other items in the order. No fluff, no books that I knew I just had to have to make this coming year just-right. Nope. Those days are past. The books we have will do just fine, we’ll make them work or do without. Flexibility, oh my, did we ever learn to be flexible on our trip. But that’s a post for another day. Michael has finished pulling the staples from the kitchen floor which means he is waiting for me to give him his next job.

The family room awaits us. All the furniture must be moved from the room—into my clean living room—the carpet pulled up so the hardwood floor that will run from the kitchen eating area into the family room can be laid.