Swimming

I really want to post some pictures of what Emily and Grace have been painting, but maybe I will get a chance tomorrow. So anyway, today was open swim for the homeschoolers. At the beginning of the week I told the girls that if they got all of their Thursday work done, that we could go to swimming on Thursday. Grace managed to get her school done. Brooke would have been able to finish this morning. But Emily was just overloaded. By bedtime last night, she still had to finish taking notes on Science and had a History quiz to attempt again for the THIRD time. And that was still Wednesday's school. I didn't have anyone to watch Allison, which would have made swimming difficult. I mean, I'm not big into everything having to be fair all of the time, because I am rather mean, but I just couldn't see letting everyone else swim and making her stand there and watch for an hour. So as of last night I decided we just couldn't go. So this morning (I woke up to the smell of pancakes made by Brooke, by the way!) I thought I would let Grace bake cookies to make up for not going swimming since she had worked ahead. All was well. But then I remembered that I needed to get dog food and a prescription refilled so I decided we would go swimming. I was going to take Brooke up on her offer to stay home with Sophia and Allison and let Em and Grace go swimming. So into the shower because we leave in an hour. Okay, so out of the shower and I discover Emily and Grace haven't even made their beds yet. After a more critical look at things, they hadn't done a very good job on their other chores either. So as much as I didn't want to, I told them no swimming. Tears. Guilt. Alright, meeting in the living room. After a big discussion and some added chores, we are once again going swimming. Maybe I am getting soft, I don't know. In then end things went as scheduled. Emily and Grace made it just in time for swimming and had so much fun swimming with their friends. I was able to visit with some moms I haven't seen in so long and even meet some new homeschooling moms. Of course my favorite part in being around other homeschool moms is that I can bring up something I am struggling with in our schooling and someone always seems to have some idea to try that I just can't seem to think of myself. So, I left with new ideas on how to help Emily with her quizzes and tests. Some things are so obvious, I don't know why it take someone else saying it for me to see the answers. In the end I was glad I decided to go. Of course by the time I got out of Wal Mart (Remember the starving dog?) Emily and Grace were arguing again and all of their promises of good behavior were forgotten. And now as I sit here tonight I don't even remember what chores they promised me they would do! Oh well, so it goes. Atleast we came home to fresh baked chocolate chip cookies! Doesn't that just make everything okay?