School

Molly is sitting next to me reading this because she refuses to do her language arts assignment. For some reason she hates writing and refuses to practice as well. She can talk the hind leg off a donkey, but if you ask her to come up with sentences for a writing assignment she claims she can't think. Personally I think she's just being lazy. This is the only class that challenges her and the one reason she repeats she can't do it is that because she taught herself how to write letters she can only write upper case. So I'm going to have to supplement writing practice.
I don't know what to do about the "thinking problem". Is it a disciplinary issue? Do I spank her for it, since I know if she focused she'd do fine? Do I lead her with questions? I don't want to do all the thinking for her - then I'd be doing her assignment. The frustrating thing is that I know she is perfectly capable of doing this assignment with minimal help from me (and in a short amount of time as well) and she sits around whining and complaining and wasting time. It just makes me want to smack her.
On another note... Molly needs a haircut. Her bangs are in her eyes.
This morning I wanted the kids to get a chance to play outside so I could get things done in here, but I thought "I'll just take the opportunity" (I hadn't had a shower yet.) "to clean up the pool that has been sitting with stagnant water in it for over a month." So I pulled up the pool and there was a snake underneath! Well, I got a shovel to pick up the snake and put it over the fence, but it slithered into the long grass that had been around the pool. Well, that just freaked me out because I didn't want the kids coming across it later. So I decided to mow the backyard. I got the push mower out, but I couldn't get it started so I tried the riding mower. I finally got that started (and out of the barn, which was no small feat) and mowed. Then we cleaned up all the toys and washed off the concrete and I pulled some weeds and just generally straightened. It looks SO much better! I don't exactly know what time I started, but it was no later than nine, I'm sure. We finally came in at 11 because the kids had gotten soaked and were cold and Liam and Lorelei were tired.
The girls were all excited because I decided to take a shower with them. :) After I got out, I filled the tub and they played while I put Liam to sleep and then got Lorelei out and put her to sleep and then got them out and came down to start lunch and school. The dishes still are not done.
And now it's already 2:30 and we're still not done with school and the only "cleaning" I've gotten done (in the house) is vacuuming. I wanted to mop the floors, clean the bathroom and get the basement cleaned up as well (in case the guys wanted to play rock band), but I'm not sure that's going to get done. I guess I could clean up the basement while the guys are doing their RPG (I'm pretty sure they're doing that first.).
And I've gotten a bare minimum of things going for the yard sale. I really need to get working on that. I've missed every single day of my scheduled rooms to go through. Part of it is because I really feel like Bob and I need to do it together since it's his stuff too and I don't want to pull a bunch of stuff out that I'm going to have to put back if he doesn't agree to get rid of it.

~Long break in which I did dishes, among a lot of other things...