Waving the checkered flag

Our seventh year of homeschooling -- the best yet (I said that last year on this blog, too) -- is winding down. The girls and I are just about ready to cross the finish line.

Meelyn and Aisling have finished all their books. The only things we've left to do are their research papers, which they are writing now, and the reading of Kidnapped for the afterARCHES Book Discussion Group. The girls have their thesis statements, outlines and source cards done; they are currently going through their library books and internet sites and gathering information to use in the actual writing of their papers which commenced today with the first draft of their opening paragraphs.

We're halfway through Kidnapped and are all three glad that it is more entertaining that Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. My group co-sponsor, Jane, liked Nat Bowditch, and my friend Cam, who sat in on the last meeting of the Book Discussion Group, really liked Nat Bowditch, but I disliked him from about Chapter 3 onwards and was reluctant to give up my annoyance at his insistence that mathematics solves all the world's problems even when the book concluded with a relatively happy ending.

Achievement tests are still to be done, but we've run into a slight snafu in the ordering of the tests: My husband went online to the government website where citizens can find out when their tax stimulus checks will be directly deposited into their bank accounts and assured me that our large sum of money would be delivered last Friday. Well, Friday came and went and I was chewing on my fingernails: we have a lot of stuff coming up that puts us in need of that money. One night, I was wide awake worrying about where our stimulus check could be and I padded quietly downstairs to visit this website and found out that my husband didn't read the paragraph directly beneath the chart that outlined when our check would arrive according to the last four digits of his social security number.

The paragraph beneath the chart stated that if you have had the tax preparer's fees automatically deducted from your income tax return, you would not be getting a direct deposit; you would be receiving a paper check in the mail. So we have gone from yearning for that money that we knew would be available within a few days to yearning for money that we won't have until somewhere around the second week of July. I'm so happy, happy, happeeeeeeeee!!!!

%$#&.

Anyhoo, it looks as if the girls will be doing their achievement testing in late July, which will probably make them say %$#&. Only if they say it, I can ground them. Which I will.