I don't normally enjoy the heat. I'm not fond of blazing sun or sweltery humidity. But on the first really hot day of the year -- like today, with a "feels like" of 40C -- I enjoy the fact that the air in the house is still cool, so when we come back in from outside, it's actually a bit refreshing.
I haven't been too quick in the morning for a while. We always start school late, and now that I'm hanging laundry and keeping seeds evenly moist and taking kids out with me to do these outdoor chores, we're starting even later, sometimes shifting school to after lunch. That's what we did today. Laundry, exercise, eating, cleaning up, outdoor work in the morning. I sent D out to mow at the front of the house just after 8, but the grass is already too thick out there for the reel mower.
For lunch, I made artichoke dip for the first time. The kids all hated it, but I liked it. I had toasted bagels for "dipping," but the kids ended up just having theirs with butter or cream cheese.
After lunch, I played a simple math game with the kids. I took a rook deck, dealt out two cards at a time, and D or S had to multiply them. For M, it was adding. Then we played Lingua Fun!, a game for learning French. There are three types of cards in the deck, and you can make sentences with them by placing them in the right order -- a red card, then a white, then a blue. The red cards have something like I want, we will, etc.; the white cards say to go, to eat pizza, etc.; the blue cards say today, on Wednesday, with my sister, etc. It didn't go too well because half of the people playing were not too interested in the game, and R and A both wanted to get in on the action. But I like the game.
I read to D a bit from "A Splendid Exchange" and I helped the other kids with various things they were working on. The boys spent a little while outside before dinner, but it was still pretty hot and sunny.
We had pasta with a tomato & cheese sauce and squash for dinner. A likes to sit up at the table with everyone and rushes to make sure that he has a plate and the same kind of cutlery as everyone else. Today, he ate two plates of pasta entirely with his fork; his hands were spotless after dinner. His face was a mess, but I'll take what I can get.
N took the older three out after dinner and A conveniently fell asleep. R and I (and the baby monitor) headed outside to play and mow the lawn. I tried the grass at the front but didn't have any more success with it than D had. The grass at the back is much more sparse, due to all the shade, though it does get long fairly quickly. So I mowed there while R played with the faucet and a watering can and a boat and a ladder (flat on the ground). We watched a spider in the garden -- one seems to have taken up residence in my sorrel.
After dinner, I made a batch of cookie dough to be eaten "raw." I left out the eggs and baking soda. It was OK, but I think if I make it again, I'll reduce the flour. It seems pretty crumbly.
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