Don't hate me because I'm ahead of schedule

Today is our last "regular" day of school for the 2012-2013 school year -- yea!!

I say "regular" because we've already finished up all of our curriculum for the year and logged over 100 extra hours (the state requires 700 total), but we're still two days short of the 175-day minimum requirement.  So our last two days will include listening to podcasts (that do tie into what we've been studying recently), doing community service work, our annual book-throwing celebration, and minimal bookwork.

"But wait, it's only April!" you say.  In-joy-oh-deed, it is.  Actually our last day will be May 3 (Yes, we're taking a week-long break for a visit from Grandpa and Grandma, two days before the end of the school year -- hey, we're homeschoolers, it's what we do).

How did we manage to pull off this feat of early dismissal?  I asked myself this too, and came to the conclusion that all year I was over-compensating for last year when we were running behind schedule and found ourselves doing Saturday school more often than we liked (okay, one day of Saturday school is more than we would have liked, but this was several days and was rather painful for all of us).  And it worked.

Thanks to logging loads of science and PE hours and a few math and Spanish hours during the summer; and to working through all the minor holidays; and to making some vacation days count as school days by visiting museums and historical sites; and to not taking as many visitor/visiting breaks as anticipated, our day and hour tallies climbed quickly to their government-stipulated heights.

So here we are, the end in sight, giddy for summer and gardening and sprinklers and fun and... there are still spots of snow dotting my flowerbeds.  Oh well.  I'm starting summer vacation next week, whether the weather is ready or not!