All circuits are busy, please hold...until September

Many summers ago, my mother hated to see her school-aged children waste time, so at the beginning of every summer we set goals in the back of our journals. These were about the number or specific books we hoped to read, a skill we wanted to learn, hygiene habits to improve, or ways we hoped to grow spiritually. I made cookies every Wednesday the summer I was ten, and my children find it very amusing to read in my journal the number of times I aimed to brush my teeth. However, I remember that as a kid during the summer, someone would ask me a question that required some thought and it took more than a few moments to sift through the cobwebs in my brain to respond.

And now, despite the attempts to keep things mentally challenging around here, my brain seems to have been put on pause too. Although I usually enjoy writing, there have to be more of the little gray cells present and accounted for at the time of composition than have been functioning lately. Hence, the blog has suffered. About a month ago, I decided to blog some past events in the attempt to record the happenings. Some of you may not have noticed because I entered them in the date approximate to when I ought to have posted them. (Trust me, they're not quality entries; don't bother to go back to sift through them in hopes of being entertained.) This experiment is my excuse for the lack of creative writing this summer. Behold.

While I sat at the computer, this is what my children did:

Katrina's swimsuit is revealed under her cover-up; it easily slips off the shoulder since she wears it constantly.

Matthew painted a wooden race car to be assembled later and saved for 4 years until he is old enough to legitimately enter a cub scout pinewood derby.

Meanwhile, Max took a fabulous nap.
And here are the finished products of their independent study time:

Felicity thought we needed oil in addition to butter and shortening. Those were probably the greasiest cookies ever. The cleanup was awful. By the way, we didn't even get 24 cookies out of that batch. What happened to all the dough? Did the Keebler elves sneak in and eat it while the girls were so busy putting ingredients away?

I cannot show a hundredth part of the mess here.

We had to send the artist outside with his painted arms to hose down. Unfortunately, some of the car pieces are AWOL.

But hey, have all the cookies you want!