If you call before 11 I won't be answering until September

popsicle jobs have a chore written on the end of the stick. I vary the jobs, and I repeat them too, so over the course of the summer the kids will do the same things just a few times. I introduce new jobs each summer depending on the ages of our kids. This year Mason is excused-he has a real part time job now, and he works for me when he's not there. And Lucy will begin her popsicle jobs next summer after she can read.

Porter does his math page. I'm not as strict as his teacher, as you can see he is adding with magic marker in hand instead of pencil and eraser...

the weekly "check list" which includes a room in our house which the children are to "keep up" each morning. Piano practicing is part of the weekly check list...

one of several pages injected into the summer journals, poems, sayings and scriptures the kids can memorize. I am shameless with this one; the kids earn full size candy bars for every two things they memorize. But I'm pretty difficult too, they have to say it to me, word perfect, an hour after they think they have it down...this way they keep repeating it in their heads over that long hour, and then I know for sure it is woven into the fabric of who they will become.

this is the 10th anniversary of our summer journal writing. It has been a hard year to keep this tradition going, but it is something I believe in, and something I want them to have for themselves as they walk forward into their adulthood.

every summer for the last 10 I have organized for my children a morning routine. It involves daily regular chores (make your bed, pick up your floor), a "popsicle job" which helps our family keep things running with everyone home (weed the garden 20 minutes or wipe down all the stainless in the kitchen or empty and load the dishwasher...). They write one page in their summer journal, which is full of prompts for them to write in (tell us about a perfect ski day...or write about why you admire your sister...things I want them to think about and record for their future enjoyment). There are book lists from which they read daily, and quotes and scriptures for them to memorize.

We make a family "summer fun list" that the kids keep in their journal as a reference. Then we try and do the fun things on the list. Today, for example, was "Baskin Robbins Day". Which meant that Porter got to use his "free single scoop ice cream" coupon that he's been holding carefully since before the end of school. All the kids who are home right now enjoyed single scoops. Ice cream trip; check.

And there is a place where the kids set goals for them to work on in the summer. One to improve their mind. One to improve their bodies. And one to improve and strengthen their spirit. And I set goals right along with them...

we all are home in the house on summer mornings, working and writing. I have the chance to train our kids (those popsicle jobs help me teach them things like how to weed or harvest a garden, and how to sort the laundry-not to mention how to clean the bathroom). This is my golden instruction time. I have taken it seriously for a decade of my summer life.

only this year my routines have been truly interrupted, with plumbing and swimming and general contracting of teenage hard labor. And I have felt ripped off. I want this time with my children. I need this time with them. To feel I am giving them what they will need to be good and useful adults. And for me to feel that while summer is free and fun and lazy and laid back, it is always good to develop our abilities and to become better individuals too.

So, for the rest of summer, our mornings will be like they used to. No phone calls before the summer work is done, no games or dance or swimming. No plumbers or carpet layers. No computer or blogging.

I'm claiming my summer again.