Yesterday was an awesome example of why I love home teaching, and how God is so kind to us as we do this. There were just a lot of ”I love this” moments. It was a pretty typical day in that I woke up late and we didn’t get started until around 10:00-10:30. Ya’ll realize I’m putting myself out there for ya, ’cause half the blogs I read are written by women who have circle time at 8:00 or are up milking cows at 5:00, so there’s no small amount of pressure here (not that any of those people read my blog 
)
Anyway, so there’s the normal shuffle to get Phonics and reading going and that runs pretty smoothly. Then math comes around and I find that we’re suposed to make Apple Jack Cookies for math, working on measurements and reading a recipe. Okay, I was planning on this when I bought my groceries, so we should be good. However, the day before when I was juicing I got a little carried away and used up all the apples. So here we are, with no math lesson and no apples and it simply wouldn’t do for me to move on to the next lesson. Besides, I don’t think I could have endured the pouting throughout the lesson if we’d done that.
We can’t go to the store because vehicle #2 is out of commission and the husband has vehicle #1, so we pull ourselves together and walk down to the We Willis where they almost always have some fruit (albeit questionable looking, but I figure I’m cooking it, so it can’t be THAT bad). It’s a beautiful day for a walk. This can’t be January we’re in the middle of. We get there and . . . no apples. Brown bananas and onions (because I often remember my need for an onion when I’m pumping gas), but no apples.
Of course, I’ve already promised to get them tic tacs, so we have to do that. Looks like this:
“I want orange!”
“Liiiiiiiiiiiaaaaammmmm! I was gonna get orange!!!!”
“Uh, you can both get orange.”
“They don’t have orange.”
“But it has to be orange!”
“Mom! please can we get Mentos instead.”
“No, we said tic tacs!”
“I want Mentos TOO!!!!!”
“Uh, well, sure I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Wait! Can we get chocolate then?
“NO!”
Dejectedly we trudge back down the street to stand at my neighbor’s door like little beggars asking for an apple. She doesn’t have any, but she’s golden and offers to stop at Walmart to grab us a couple on her way home from picking up her kids from school. Yes! Math will still happen.
In the mean time, it’s back to the marble run that we started building the day before. Inspired by Looledoo, this started as a science project, but it’s sort of morphed into a science/art/physics/environmental awareness/resourcefulness/attention retention lesson. I LOVE it when we stumble into a project that can teach so many things at one time!
After a couple of hours of that, the neighbor boy comes over with the apples and wants to stay to help make cookies. I probably got the bigger lesson trying to stay patient with the eight eager hands all reaching for baking ingredients at the same time. Not to mention all the “can I have a cookie” questions I’m going to have to deal with. That’s why I rarely bake cookies–I get tired of telling them they can’t have any. No, I’m not as mean as I sound. Gillian will ask for a cookie literally every ten minutes, so she gets some, but a mom’s got to draw the line somewhere.
Light bulb!
Taking dinner to some friends tonight! Dessert!
As andy walks in the door to find dinner coming out of the oven and the kids quietly reading on the couches he shakes his head in wonder at me and tells me I’m his hero. Not because they’re quiet and dinner’s ready, but because he knows I’ve been distractedly attempting to assemble that dinner for over two hours and he knows that five minutes prior to the quiet reading it was them running, screaming, whining, arguing, mommy loosing it and joining the screaming, kids crying, mommy apologizing then banishing them to the couches.
Ah, but it’s over and although it was exhausting, it was seriously a fun day with the kidlets and so fulfilling. That’s the biggest gift–the peace that comes in knowing this is where we’re supposed to be, me and my little monsters.
