Our school year is quickly coming to an end and we are all twitchy with anticipation. Twitchy and snotty and grumpy. We all have head colds and it feels like it would be so much easier to just call this last week off and end school a week earlier than planned. But we press on.

The toddler wakes up ready to go. Ready to paint, ready to open Play Doh, ready to pull ornaments off the tree, all with one finger deep in her nostril. I am easily exasperated. My son reminds her of paci days gone by and sends her into a tailspin. Time out is required for both of us. But we press on.

Everybody  needs help! Including the almost 3 year old who doesn’t even have school work to do, but insists she get her books out anyway and I haven’t even had breakfast. The cat has been missing for over 24 hours, the rooster’s cage if flooded. There seem to be half-eaten Pop Tarts everywhere. The history page I assigned is frustratingly difficult, even for me. But we press on.

I eat breakfast, we find the cat locked in the storage building, we decide on a new history assignment. Then my morning glass of Coke slips out of my hand and crashes onto the tile. Glass, ice and Coke everywhere and no one to blame but me. The three year old has to run in to see what happens and skates across ice, glass, and Coke on bare feet with no injuries.

I wonder once again what’s the harm in cutting out of school one week early. But I clean up the mess, sweeping ice, Coke, and glass into the trash and refilling a fresh glass with my morning Coke, even though it is now well past morning. We press on.

Bed sheets are washing, history is finished, math done. My son reads without complaints, a whole story, a major accomplishment.

We can do this. Only a few more days to go.

My favorite science resource this year has been The History of Medicine by John Hudson Tiner. I highly recommend it. It has been an enjoyable and educational read-aloud for all of us.

We have marveled over the doctor’s stubbornness to believe that simply washing their hands could prevent patient death. We were relieved when they perfected anesthesia and no longer had to amputate limbs of awake patients. And now we have learned how scientists continued experiments with the glowing tubes of light without knowing what they were looking for until they stumbled upon incredible X-rays.

Adam, the first man, walked and talked with God and had marvelous knowledge about God’s awesome creation. After the fall of man, our minds deteriorated, so much knowledge was lost. We now fumble around in the dark amazing ourselves with the simplest revelations. There’s so much we’ll never understand this side of heaven.

In our chemistry experiment we watched tiny solid beads swell, when water is added, to 10 times their size. It has to do with molecules, things we can’t even see with our eyes.

Then we had a picnic and watched ants find our location within minutes and cart off chips 10 times their size.

We are constantly amazed.