Another quiet morning

I am currently googling the health benefits of coconut oil. Madi and I both had some in our coffee this morning. Yes, coffee (Butter toffee coffee in the keurig), that machine is making coffee drinkers out of all of us. Jonathan came down this morning with his eyes half closed saying, "I'm not awake yet, I need a cafe mocha!" What he really needs is to not stay up until midnight (and I told him that) {But the next three nights he'll be at the theatre until almost midnight, so my point is pretty much moot}. Since I can't seem to skip lines on here anymore, I'm not going to worry too much about punctuation either and this will be like one really long boring run on stream of consciousness thought. Anyway back to coconut oil, I read yesterday about it's benefits for thyroid function (we are way overdue on checking Madi's, but last month the pediatrician agreed with our reasoning), and overall health, so we're adding it to our diet. If I could put it in those chocolate oatmeal peanut butter cookies I've been making every other day around here, we'd really be on to something! Our Chinese exchange student (her American name is Grace, her Chinese name is Zijun Yan {but doesn't sound anything like it looks}) had a friend over last night (her American name is Alice) and they cooked Chinese food for us. Real Chinese food, not the food we call Chinese food. One of the dishes was really good, it was pork, potatoes, and peppers. I think I'll be making it (I can stir fry it in coconut oil!), some of the other foods weren't as good, but mostly tolerable. Cucumbers in soy sauce, tofu and scallions in soy sauce (that was the cold, eat first food, Grace told us, like our salad), chinese noodles with more pork and tofu and egg (kinda blah, but ok (even Jake managed to eat a little, he played along well by using chop sticks and eating really slowly), and then this tomato and egg thing, that I didn't like at all, but Mike actually did. It had ketchup in it, and both girls kept calling it checkup. It was a funny night! I took some pictures and video, but the kids took the camera to theatre, so that's just one more thing on the "someday I'll catch up on..." list. Madi had a consultation with the oral surgeon yesterday, she will be getting her wisdom teeth out in September. She is dreading it! Jonathan did really well with his though and I love everyone in that office, so it shouldn't be too terrible. Jonathan had his out in October, and the docotor and all the staff remembered me, partly because of our name I think, but also because their clientel seem to mostly be people getting actual teeth removed (like elderly and sometimes not so elderly people). I am in total summer mode around here trying to tackle some bigger house jobs (like the pantry which is on my mental list for today). I'm also doing a lot of thinking about what our school year is going to look like. I can't believe that Jonathan has only 2 homeschool years left! And a large amount of that will probably take place at the local community college. We're pretty sure he's not going to start that until the spring though, so I've got one semester with him here anyway (here being a loose term since so much of his time is spent at the theatre anyway). Madi is most likely going to take a class at the local high school in the fall (fall being actual fall though, not when school starts because we first have a potential trip north in the works and then the wisdom teeth situation, so we may just put her in a month into the school year), we'll see. With all this brick and mortar school talk, sometimes I think maybe Jake could/should go to school too. Then I remember a few things... just because I feel that it's necessary for my high schoolers to take the same classes (more or less) as their college bound building school peers, that is not the case with 4th grade. My high school kids are a good example of that. Plus Jake is more academically advanced and behaviorally challenged than the other two anyway. At church a few weeks ago the principal of the closest (still far) Catholic school talked about what a great place it is. She had me thinking for a few minutes then I thought better of it, in addition to the LONG bus ride, time spent waiting for kids to take out pencils, lack of one on one/ teaching to the majority, trying to get Jake to fit into a box, etc, etc, oh, and we'd have to pay a lot of money for this... nevermind! I'll take my quiet mornings in the summer when the kids are creatively engaged at theatre camp, and I can go out for coffee and lunch and tackle projects, and read in peace, etc etc and I'll be more than happy to have the kids back for the start of school. You know those commercials about where the mom can't wait to send their kid to school as "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is playing, well, the start of school with all of my kids (mostly) home is the start of the most wonderful time of the year! And reason 101 to homeschool comes from a local news story about how so many Central Florida schools are going to add an hour of extra reading instruction to the school day because of low FCAT scores. Mike and I had a good laugh about that, the premise being "What we're doing isn't working, so let's do more of it".