Gifts That Keep Giving- Part One

Early January brings the after-Christmas-toys-everywhere blues. As if it's not enough to ward off the dim Winter skies, the weariness of Holiday activity and removal of all the twinkle-lights.

But now, there are exactly 32,734 new little teeny ever so important toys sprinkled on the floor. This makes me anxious. My perfectionism kicks in, I don't want pieces to be separated from their home-toy. When we're talking about Legos, Playmobile, sigh. 32,734 pieces.

So this is what I've done this year. While my boys, who were very happily playing with ONE of the thousands of toys they've accumulated, were occupied, I snuck around the house and collected the new & overwhelming toys and have put them away. The new toys haven't been missed. I will give it a few weeks and then sneak one toy out and put it on a sleeping boys' bed so they can wake up to Christmas all over again.

Really, I think it's going to work! My boys have a million new things, and half a million old things (going through those too). They don't miss a thing yet.

Truthfully, the weeks sneaking up to Christmas this year were painful. The boys were living in such anticipation of all the excitement that lands on one day. It was a miserable time for them.

A day after Christmas, I sat visiting with my Mother-In-Law and noticed that my cranky-anticipating-boys were happily off playing make believe with NO toys at all.

I'll be darned if they weren't just relieved.

...and I just made it better. I put away more than half of the gobs of toys, PEACE again.

Peaceful home, peaceful home....

Moving Days

I thought I'd sit down for a minutes and drop a line. We are thrilled to say we got the keys to the house; the movers came Sunday and now the unpacking begins

We're loving the new house. Every.little.thing. Even the creeking of old floors and mysteries that are yet tobe solved, mysteries of a new home. (Does the hot tub work? Where does this door lead to? Was this a laundry chute once upon a time?) The boys are relishing the space, running from their top floor bedrooms to basement and outside. This morning I was getting ready to shower, I peeked into the backyard to see Nate out on his bike jumping a ramp Ralph made on the bb court. At 7:00 a.m. The space is just simply divine.

Of course, my nose has been to the grindstone, emptying boxes as fast as I can and finding places for each thing....everything else goes in the basement for now. A little school here and there but I started early to give grace to these next weeks.

My mom came up to help empty boxes, the boys and I are delighted to have the company (and help!)

I'll be back, posting again sometime soon. Until then...enjoy your almost Autumn! Until then, I found this photo of Eli helping out with our move from VA to OR. He's a little bigger now but man, babies are cute!!...and I wouldn't dare post that one without this sweet photo taken of the boys that same month. Just 4 short years ago. Cutie boys, don't you think?

Outdoor School Week

This week has been one of those weeks. One of those I-am-not-wanting-to-sit-down-to-schoolwork weeks and quite frankly, neither do the kids.

Do you ever have those weeks? Just those days when school seems to be the last thing on the list.

However, this is the job. So I got up Monday and pushed through,not yet hearing my instincts to change things up. I can be slow that way. I was pulling teeth all around the table, my own included. Tuesday started the same way. I let up mid-school and finally shifted gears to be the teacher I want to be.

So I dug through some old books and pulled out new material. Then I took school outside. The best move I've made in awhile.

With a lot of encouragement from a blogging friend Barb, I've been teaching my boys just about enjoying nature through observation and art. So I was thrilled today, the boys and I took a hike into the canyon. Every few minutes the boys were excitedly calling out "Mom! Look, it's yellow lichen! And red!" They identified dandelions by their leaves alone and we observed that the dandy's we saw in the canyon weren't blooming, in fact there weren't flowers at all, just leaves. We looked for wildflowers (tough to come by in the desert) and treasured each tiny bloom.


So we'll get past this funk (would-rather-do-anything-but-paper-school) yet. In the meantime we'll hike, we'll read, we'll play games and learn...away from the desk.

And I really, really want to hear....what do you do when you just don't want to do paper school? School proper?