Our House is Now Our Home

It has been one heck of a week here at Homeschool Campers! My back is sore, Daddy's knees ache worse than ever, and my shoulder is acting up. However, it's all worth it because we've turned our house of one year into a home finally!! Each little camper has a room they are absolutely in love with now and our living areas are so much brighter and more comfortable.

Before

After

Last week's weekly wrap up I shared pictures of ECJ's new room, since he switched rooms with YCJ during the past week or so. Here's a refresher of what the before (her room) and after (his room) look like... We were given the Futon for free on Wednesday morning and ECJ decided he'd like that instead of having Daddy build him a bed.

I'd also mentioned that we began work on YCJ's new room (ECJ's old room) on Saturday. We didn't get even half finished because of some paint issues and our exhaustion. Sunday was one of the seldom seen campers Confirmation (Yay Buddy!), which involved a 5 hour round trip car ride and three hours of mass due to several parishes combining into the largest church for the event. We didn't get home until late so we didn't work on her room that night. We did get some wonderful outside time in somehow though and had a wonderful time seeing our Buddy being recognized by the Church as a young man.



Monday amidst some rain showers, outside time, a knee specialist appointment for Daddy (we got some hopeful news but I'll wait to share if it's good or not until we get the results of two more tests), visiting with Grandma and Papa, and two hours worth of driving we managed to get all of the painting finished in YCJ's room! Whew! Looking back on that day's schedule it's amazing we fit all that in to 24 hours and still got sleep! We had thought about laying her carpeting that night as well but figured it would be better to do so with a bit of sleep.


So, on Tuesday we went for a couple of walks, put the carpeting in YCJ's room, put all of her belongings (plus the china cabinet with school supplies) in her room, played in the rain, watched several episodes of Magic School Bus and Veggie Tales on Netflix, and laid carpeting in the hallway! ECJ helped a lot with the carpet on this day while the girls watched Netflix. On our walks I was able to hear about everything they had learned from Magic School Bus (everything from white cells fighting germs to Pluto being the 9th planet from the sun and having to explain that Pluto has been "downgraded" to Dwarf status) and listen to the morals they'd had reinforced by Veggie Tales. 

So here are some photos of YCJ's finished room and our hallway. As you can see not only is she ecstatic to have her room finished, but the dogs are enjoying the carpeting!!

Shadow is back there behind Moragon but you can barely see him!

YCJ enjoying the "squishy" carpet

With all that accomplished you'd think we'd have taken a day to rest. Nope! We were ready to be finished with all this carpet and linoleum laying, painting, rearranging, and things spread throughout the house. So, on Wednesday, all of us got into the act and finished carpeting the living room, placed linoleum by the sliding side door, and put linoleum down in the dining room. The campers did get to enjoy several hours outside after us parents went grocery shopping, picked up ECJ's new futon, and shoved everything from the living room and school area into the kitchen. After supper the girls went to bed and Daddy and I finished the rest of it with some help from ECJ. We finished at 6:22 AM Thursday morning!!

Sometimes you have to make a big mess
when "fixing" things...

Mommy cutting carpeting

Our living room carpeting finished!!

Dining room with linoleum

School area (rearranged and with carpet)

Daddy took a nap right after we finished and Mommy stayed up to try to catch up on a week's worth of laundry that I hadn't found time for during all this remodeling. The first camper woke up at 9:14 AM (they went to sleep late last night) and of course that was YCJ, I was about half finished with the laundry and the dishes from the night before had just finished in the dishwasher. 

OH! I'd forgotten to add that we'd laid down some carpeting in Peanut's room (over her nice new hardwood floors) so that she'd have something comfy to kneel on when she was playing too! She was so excited that for most of Wednesday evening she played with her small dolls and houses in a "village" she made all by herself! She even made a little reading room out of the play tent in the corner of her room!


The rest of the day (Thursday) you'll have to find out a little later as I'm going to be writing about it in one of the "day in the life posts". As for Friday Noni will be showing up around noon for us to go out to lunch and go shopping for our spring/summer clothing, and of course to visit! There's no telling how long she'll be here, but we're not planning on doing lessons on Friday. We will be stopping by the library at some point during Friday, but when and for how long I just couldn't tell you. 

It's been one heck of a week! We got so very much done and our house now really feels like a home! ECJ has moved his desk back into his room in an effort for more peaceful lessons for himself (I'm checking on him frequently so far). We do our devotionals, Bible readings, and rosaries each day all week long. Of course we're always taking advantage of every learning opportunity that we happen to come across. 

We've tossed out tons of bags of carpet scraps, linoleum scraps, paint odds and ends ... So our 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge is continuing just fine. There are a few odds and end spots that need to be organized around here but they'll get finished on time.
I've also lost five pounds in the past month!!!! That makes 7 total pounds lost since the beginning of the year and that many more close to my ultimate goal. I've been working on shedding this last weight for a few years now and to see some of it finally come off is making me very happy.

Random pictures of the week:    

This was smoke rising from some control fires over in Canada that we stopped and watched on the way home on Sunday. It looked so interesting for so long and had that clean wood burning smell to it. That little dot on that semi-thin ice is an ice fisherman waving to us!!

Posts you may have missed this week:   
*none this week, we were too busy working on the house for me to have the energy to post* I'll be back to my regular schedule for posting this upcoming week and plan to share the next part in the series on how I choose our curriculum, to read how I choose our math check out this post.

Who I'm linking up with this week:     
Squishable Baby
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Faithful Mom of 9
Homegrown Learners
and
Great Peace Academy

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