Study Hall and hanging on to summer!

I have been trying to decide what to do about a  homework place for the girls since last spring.  We have a playroom and a workout room.  In the spring I moved all of the baby dolls, baby crib, little kitchen etc. into our workout room.  I thought we would use the playroom as the homework room or study room.  But what we really ended up with was two playrooms.  Now, not only was I complaining about picking up the playroom, but now there were two.

We had been using our kitchen table for homework, but with our varied schedule someone was always working there and then their stuff had to be moved to eat dinner.  Then it would just get stacked up on the kitchen counter, which then really frustrated me.

So with the  school year starting and knowing how much more work 3rd grade is, and now it is independent work (mostly), we needed to find a place that was quiet for the girls to work, but not too far away.  When I taught 3rd grade that was one of the first things I told the students to do.  Find a homework station.

When Kami and Meghan were little, we bought desks for them and they each had them in their own room.  With two girls sharing a room now there just isn't any room for a desks.  Plus, their rooms are upstairs and too far away.

When we bought this house it was something like 2700 square feet. (I am not really good with numbers so this is approximate, and it was a long time ago1)  We were a family of four and we had come from a smaller house, so it felt huge.  We had 3 bedrooms, and an office that could be a fourth.  We had 3 bathrooms.

After several years, we added a little on to the laundry room, downstairs bath, and added a workout room that could also be a bedroom if needed.  Now our house was 3200 feet.

After we adopted Emma and Meilynn we added on to our house again.  If you have been reading my blog a long time that was when we lived in the motorhome at the beach with two three year olds while our house was  being remodeled.  (A very challenging time, but now I look back with such fond memories of that  time.)  We added on a playroom, converted our old bedroom into a guest bath with a bathroom, and added on a huge master suite and bathroom.  Now our house is 4300 square feet or maybe 4700 square feet.  I don't know and that is not the point.

But with all of this adding on, the girls are in Kami and Meghan's old rooms sharing, because we now have a guest room for when the older girls come home or for guests.  Mike still has his office, we have the gym or playroom and the playroom.

Mike and I decided that even though the gym was further away, it would be the better place to set up the girls homework area.  So I found some cute desks, moved all of the playroom baby stuff out, and have started setting the room up for studying.

 I couldn't believe how fast the desks came.  Jilliana was home and the girls were at their second day of school, so she helped Daddy put the chairs and desks together.

 Jilliana loves helping Daddy

 Mine is the first one done!  I love it!

 Adjusting Lily's chair.

 It was over 100 degrees, so we set up the fan while we worked.  Guess who got too close to the fan after just telling Jilliana not to get too close.

 Yup, me!  It pulled my necklace right off my neck.  Mike was able to put it back together.

The girls home from  school and so excited!

 Back to ballet after being off all summer.

 Back to "real foods".  I made homemade ice cream for dessert.

Emma eating hers just before swimming.  We are trying to get as much swimming in as we can.

Jilliana enjoying hers.

Meilynn ready to swim.

 Peach smoothies to freeze for school this week.

Yummy!