We started school today.

I know it’s a little early, but we’re taking a week off in September and I didn’t want to start on Nathanael’s birthday (one week from today).  Plus, I’m tired of the endless quandaries of what can I do???.  And I want to feel like summer might actually be wrapping up.  And I want my hopes of finishing up the school year by the end of May to have a possibility of not being in vain.  So we started today, bumps and roadblocks and bad attitudes, and all.

I want to make excuses for why this summer hasn’t been “productive” by most people’s standards.  I cringe at the list of projects that never got touched.  I feel a bit hopeless that some of them will ever get done.  But what I’ve been realizing these past couple months is that I don’t have to live up to someone else’s standard – and that the standard we have set for ourselves and our families doesn’t give project completion high priority.

So, our house projects are mostly untouched…except for Tim making a large dent in framing and drywalling an area in the attic for kids to have as a rec-room.  Instead, we decided to get pigs, because our twelve-year old wanted to buy one and raise it for meat.  So while Caedmon researched and made phone calls about piglet prices and breeds, feed costs and pasture needs, Tim researched and planned how to keep 2 pigs on our property a few miles down the road that had a well, but little else.  So shed-building and fence-building and solar panel-installing and electricity converting and feed-hopper building all took precedence for weeks – so that we could help Caedmon pursue this small dream of his, which we chose to prioritize over house projects.

And there were other things.  A gymnastics camp for Bethany, and VBS.  A visit from my sister and her family, and a visit from my parents and another sister.  A trip to an amusement park and a night at the drive-in.  Swimming lessons and weed-pulling and ice-cream eating (which can consume quite a lot of time when the summer is as hot as this one’s been).  DIY car repairs and a ton of curriculum researching.

I know it doesn’t necessarily sound like much, but in truth, I’m not cut out for hyper-productivity.  Most times, it comes with a cost that is just too high.  So this summer has also been moments of purposing to pull my littlest girl close with a stack of books.  It has been kneeling on the floor doing puzzles with my Ava Grace.  It has been saying yes to making funnel cakes and running around in the rain (what little we’ve had).  It has been trying harder to inspect chores.  It has just been trying desperately to not let the little things fall to the wayside.

And here we are.  Not where I’d thought we would be at the start of the new school year, but that’s okay.