Buddies and Rental Properties

Has it been mentioned anywhere in this blog that Papa and Mom own a rental property business? They own it jointly with Mom's parents, Grandpa and Grandma Davis. At the moment they own three houses, and one of them they just bought and Papa has been fixing up. There's still quite a bit of work to be done, and the renters want to move in on Monday! Papa has been working like mad this week to get it finished on time, and Knut, Cecily, Thor, and I were over there this afternoon helping do some painting.

One of the neat things about homeschooling in a big family is that the older students get teaching experience by helping with the younger kids. For example, this morning Gloria did all of her schoolwork with me. She needs pretty close supervision on all of her work, so she gets lots of breaks in between the times when Mom is available to help her. When she's with me, though, she has to buckle down and do it all! She doesn't mind, though. She was very excited today because she finished her reading lesson book! Now she'll start reading various short books that Mom picks for her, or maybe even just any book she chooses. Or, Mom might turn her reading lessons over to me, and then I get to choose the book! I think I'll ask Mom about that.

We use a sort of buddy system, switching buddies for different occasions. Gloria and I are buddies at home, I making sure she gets up on time, does all of her chores (brush teeth, make bed, get dressed, etc.) in the morning and before bed, praying with her before bed, doing her hair in the morning, and as I said before, helping her with her schoolwork. We share a room, which is why I am her buddy instead of Knut or Cecily. Cecily shares a room with little Bjorn, so she is his buddy. She helps him get dressed in the morning and do his chores, and she's especially helpful at night. He's just finished potty training, but still requires some assistance. He also needs help brushing his teeth, but his favorite part is when Cecily sings him a song and prays with him before he goes to sleep at night. Sometimes she also tells him a story and acts it out with his stuffed animals.

Thor is Knut's buddy. Although he's officially one of the 'big kids', he requires some reminders about finishing his chores in the morning, and since Knut is the one with the alarm clock, Knut has to wake him up in time for school. Knut's real buddies are the kitties, since he's in charge of feeding and watering them. They're not considered part of the family, though, and Knut does not consider them his 'buddies', just his charges. (They've been misbehaving lately.) :)

When we go on an adventure, we usually have different buddies. For example, when we went to the St. Louis City Museum with our homeschool group, Bjorn and Gloria were both my buddies, and Knut, Cecily, and Thor stayed together. For other things, we have other buddies. And sometimes we just forget about the buddy system and do whatever we want!

Hopefully I'll get some pictures posts here soon. I can't take pictures at Lyceum, but I'll try to arrange for some pictures to be taken at the conference on Saturday during our performance. If I can't get any of our performance, at least I'll get the rest of the conference!