Catch Up with MaestraMom

Hi y’all!  Remember me?  You might be thinking, “What happened to MaestraMom?” Let’s catch up!

You haven’t heard from me in a while, but there’s some good reasons for that! So let me catch you up on what’s been going on in my neck of the woods lately. And I’ve love to hear what’s been going on with YOU!

Surgery

I had surgery one month ago for pelvic organ prolapse.  Recovery was a little different than I had imagined!  I knew I was looking at a 6-week limited-physical-activity recovery, so I had planned ahead for that but had imagined myself blissfully lounging with extra time for blogging while recovering.

Wrong! 

For starters, I had a strange reaction to anesthesia that affected my vision, making it pretty difficult to use a computer for several weeks.  Goodbye, blogging. 

And recovery was a little more intense than I had imagined for the first several weeks.  Yikes.  Had to put the brakes on everything.

Planning our homeschool year

When I finally got my vision sorted out, I had some fast-approaching deadlines for homeschool co-op that I needed to address.  I’m planning to teach kindergarten next year for part of our homeschool co-op day and Middle School Spanish for another chunk and that required some careful consideration on my part. 

I’m planning to use the Easy Peasy Middle School Spanish as our foundation for the course. Check it out here.

But I also needed to put in the time planning out my at-home homeschooling for my three school-age kids for their core subjects. That takes hours and hours of careful prepping! 

I wrote a blog post about it! Catch a peak at how I plan for our homeschool year here.

Homeschool Classroom Make-over

And as I was thinking, planning, and scheming about homeschool curricula for my kiddos, I was also noticing how very much they have grown!  (Aww! Why do they have to grow?)

My two big kids no longer fit in their little school desks.  Not to mention how our books were no longer fitting on our shelves.  Plus, my little non-school age toddler was destroying everything she could now reach that she couldn’t reach last year.

Which led me to the conclusion that we needed to re-envision our school space to maximize learning for all four kids. 

So,…yep, we did an entire school classroom budget-friendly make-over.  And the best part?  Since I’m not allowed to lift anything over 10 lbs. post-surgery, my kids did ALL the work!  A-ma-zing! Thanks, kids!

Appointments & Shopping!

Did I mention how the kids had grown?  As Corona-quarantine began to ease up and we were allowed to leave the house, we realized no one had shoes to fit, or enough underwear, or modest shorts. 

Truth – the kids had mostly stayed barefoot in pajamas for months.  

Oh, dear.  If we were going to leave the house, these kids needed some STUFF.  So we knocked out some much-needed shopping.

Besides all that, once I got back on my feet, I’ve been trying to shuffle the kids through all the appointments that I prefer to do during summertime: eye doctor, well-child checks, and dentist visits. 

So, we’ve spent quite a bit of time in the waiting room making sure everyone is in tip-top shape before school starts again!  New glasses or contacts and sparkly teeth! Yay!

TNR (Trap-Neuter-Release)

What else have we been up to?  Trapping cats. 

We were adopted last year around Thanksgiving by two sweet little kittens, who took up residence in our back yard.  We had plans to try to catch them and get them fixed early this year, but COVID-19 prevented us from accomplishing it. 

Over the winter, my oldest daughter worked so hard to gain their trust and let her pet them!   Meanwhile, their mama started visiting more frequently and produced another litter of two more kittens, so we had a grand total of five in our little cat colony. 

Of those five, only one allows us to pet him and hold him so we knew capturing them would be quite the adventure.  Sadly, one of the newest little kittens died. 

But over the past week we were able to trap all the other four!  We found a loving home for the freshly weaned kitten and took mama cat and our two original adoptees in to be spayed/ neutered and vaccinated, then released them back outside.  What an adventure!  

And whew!  No more kittens.

Now back to blogging

So, that’s what I’ve been up to so far this summer.  A little bit of homeschool prep mixed in with a lot of bit of LIFE.  

I’m getting all geared up and back on track to blog about where teaching and mothering come together!

What about you?  I’d love to hear about what’s been going on for you lately!  Leave a comment below or shoot me an email!  I’d genuinely love to hear from you.

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