A Day in the Life of the Regan Happy Homeschool

So what does life look like for a homeschool family?  Have you ever wondered what one of our days look like?  There are no bells ringing and no bomb threats (like in Penny's last school).  Most days we get up early, especially when Daddy has to get up early and go to work.  But, sometimes Penny sleeps in.  As those of you who are homeschooling families know, no two days are exactly like.  So, I'll just take you through one of our days this past week and attempt to give you a little glimpse into the life of the Regan family.



 The above picture is an idyllic image, captured by a portrait studio.  But, I'm going to show you  REAL life!  I didn't stage anything!  I will try to demonstrate for you what the life looked like for us on just one particular day. I didn't use fancy camera equipment or photoshop to edit any pictures.  What you see is what you get! 

 My day started out at 6:15 a.m. , when Jay's alarm went off so that he could make it to work on time.  He teaches elementary music.  I get up with him and typically the first thing I do is to let the cat out of her "prison", a.k.a, the basement.  We don't let her stay upstairs overnight, since she is known to prrr by our ears and lick our faces at 4 a.m. if we try that.  As usual, the cat "Jenny" followed her usual routine of thanking me profusely for releasing her, by hopping on my shoulder, so she could get a ride to the first floor of the house. 

Upon entering the kitchen, I was reminded that I had watched a movie with the family the night before, instead of cleaning up the kitchen. 

Oh well!  

Next, I fed the cat

and managed to clean up enough space on the kitchen counter to make Jay's lunch.

Penny got up at 7 a.m. and had a breakfast of eggs and bacon with rice. 

After that, I made my bed,

and went to the closet to pick out what clothes I was going to wear for the day.

  Penny proceeded to get ready for the day. 

And, when it was time for her to leave for her babysitting job, she yanked her coat out of the closet so hard, that she caught it on the bin full of cleaning supplies, dumping the entire contents on the floor. 

REAL LIFE, people!  That's what you get around here!  We got in the car and at 8:18 a.m., with K-Love on the radio, and headed out to take Penny to her weekly babysitting job. 

We had a nice, clear day to drive over to the church. 

I dropped off Penny at the church and embarrassed her sufficiently by asking to take her picture outside. 

Then I drove home

 and decided to go downstairs to get some food out of the freezer.  On the way down, I was pleased to see the wall that I had just finished painting the day before. 

I've been working on painting the wall going downstairs, as well as some doors at the top of the stairs and in the dining room and Penny's room.  

When I got down to the basement I was met with a horrific smell.  The night before Penny told me that the cat's litter box was smelling really bad.  That was the understatement of the century.  This past week, I had left the job of cleaning out the litter box to our lovely teenage daughter, and what she had not told me was that she had been collecting the bags of "hidden treasure" that she had mined from the litter box in the basement over the past week.  Let's just say that you are blessed to not be able to smell the aftermath through this blog post!  So, here is the freshened-up litter box in the basement that I definitely cleaned up and sprayed with air freshener! 

The next chore was to sort and begin doing laundry. 

After that, I decided to do aerobics. 

But, I had only been huffing and puffing for ten minutes, when the phone rang.  It was Penny, saying that the kids hadn't shown up and she wouldn't be babysitting, after all.  So, off I went to go pick her up.  So much for my workout on that day!  So, a little after 9:30 a.m. we were back home and I tackled the pile of dishes in the kitchen. 

It was turning out to be such a nice, sunny day that while Penny started doing a little homework, I decided to give Jenny a bath. 

She really did well.  It helped that this time it wasn't the same day that she had been to the vet to get shots and nine teeth extracted!  That last time, she wasn't quite so happy when I gave her a bath!  But, what was I to do?  The poor thing had lost it in her cat carrier on the way home, when I hit a bump in the road.  Well, this time the whole bath experience went MUCH smoother!  After giving the cat a bath, you'll want to clean the bath tub. 

If you clean the bath tub, you'll need to clean the rest of the bathroom, too! 

So, as I scrubbed to make the bathroom sparkle, I sent the cat outside with Penny, so that she could comb her. 

By the time they came in, the bathroom was looking  much cleaner

and we decided to have lunch.  I had some leftover vegetable spaghetti, that no one else in the family was too fond of. 

Then, we set about tackling Algebra 2.  Oh, boy!  Was that a chore!?!  We hit a very hard lesson on solving a system of three equations with three variables that you must solve first with substitution and next with elimination.  Thank God for the youtube tutorial that we found or we never could have made our way through that lesson!  It was a LONG 3 hours that we trudged through, but, Penny finally completed the lesson.  We needed a tea time that afternoon to help us through math! 

After that, it was time to fold laundry. 

Then, as she worked on some other homework, I went back to my painting project, by putting finishing touches on the door between the staircase and our sunporch,

besides the doors in the dining room and Penny's room.  Jay ended up coming home late that night, because he had to finish up his sub plans before heading out to a 3-day music conference.  So, I made a late dinner of chili for supper and then we played a game, watched a little of a video and headed to bed.  Sorry no pictures from the evening.  I think Penny was getting sick and tired of Mom playing with the camera and I was a little tired out from painting three doors and touching up paint on one wall in the kitchen, too.

 So, that's just a tiny view into what one day in the Regan household looks like.  As, I mentioned, no two days are alike around here.  Two days per week, Penny typically stays at home

 and works on homework and household chores while I work away from home as a church receptionist.  Onc day per week she goes to a home school group that meets at our church on Fridays.  Every other week, I just so happen to also be there, as I am answering the phones in the church office those days.  So, it works out well on those days when I'm in the church office, that Penny can just come into our church staff lounge

and work on homework after her home school group finishes.  On the two or three days per week when I'm at home, we typically do the tougher subjects like math or science.  Right now she's taking health and a class that I designed especially for her to learn about her native country of Thailand.  It's been fascinating to learn, along with Penny, about Thai history, geography and religion.  For English I give her books to read, from which I choose spelling/vocabulary words to learn.  We also study grammar and she's begun to learn about writing essays.  Lately, she's been learning about adjective clauses/phrases and how to diagram sentences with such clauses/phrases.  I think she is doing an amazing job, considering that when adopted her six years ago, from Thailand, she knew no English at that time, when she was 13 years old!  She's come so far, already!  Thanks for stopping by and taking a peek into our little world here at our Regan Happy Homeschool!  We are truly blessed!