Next week is my last week in the crazy busy-ness of the full-time music studio.
We have big plans for summer- projects, cooking, crafting, living . . .
And I'll be back to share with you June 1st. For now, I'm finishing up the school year session and making the adjustments we need to step forward into summer.
We'll see you in June!
I love music, I love the radio, I even love television. I am a movie and t.v. geek and I will certainly admit that.
But the day our t.v. broke was maybe the best day we've had this year.
Okay, no one was really happy on that particular day (because honestly it felt like just one more thing going wrong during a particularly trying month) but the affects of that event are still being felt today.
It wasn't even about the t.v. We actually watch very little t.v. while the boys are awake, and because we use a DVR to record the evening shows Superman and I want to watch, we made a decision quite awhile ago to "catch up" on everything on just one night a week so the other nights would be free for other things after the boys were asleep.
So if it wasn't about t.v. what was it about?
Noise.
I'm an introvert by nature and I dearly need quiet and solitude to feel up to my best. I was at a place where I felt like I couldn't put another foot in front of the other because of lacking that time. It couldn't be helped- was I going to ask my husband who was working 7 days a week and taking 21 credit hours at school to give me a break? Certainly not. I knew we'd be through this particularly difficult semester soon enough and surely I could wait . . .
Except that I couldn't. Not really. I wasn't myself, I felt like I was run ragged all the time, and it was starting to become a problem with my kids and my husband- and all because of being unable to find a bit of space.
So when the t.v. broke, it seemed like the perfect chance. We had no television, decided not to purchase a new one, and we silenced everything else too- no radio or music (not even K-love) and cell phones on silence at home. I check my work messages at particular times now and that is all- something about knowing there is an assigned time for the task keeps me from feeling the need to check the phone constantly.
It has been the best solution for our time-crunched family during this season. There are only 2 weeks left in our crazy spring semester and then we can adjust again. But for now the quiet is providing much need space.
** We did acquire a "new to us" t.v. from my brother-in-law who works for a moving company. He told us awhile ago that people leave things behind or give things to the movers quite frequently and when he came across a half-working t.v. he thought of us. The boys and I haven't used it at all, but Superman the baseball fan has caught a few games on it in the evenings. :)
We're generally a sugar-lite household, but ever since Easter it seems like candy is being requested at least 10 times a day around here. Having a Hershey's kiss after lunch is one thing, but using chocolate to fill in your nutrition quota is completely another.
Our solution?
Snack Cards!
The boys made some cards to show healthy food we had in the house at the time. We cut our cards from cardstock to about the size of index cards. They drew one food item per card and hung the cards on the fridge for an easy way to see what kinds of snacks are good snacks to ask for.
(**side note** I heart invented spelling! I tell Ender the correct spelling if he asks like he did with his "strawberry" card, but I love when he goes for it himself.)
We plan to add cards as our snacks change, so I imagine we have a lot of card making in our future!
We read Knight at Dawn in April as one of our chapter books at night, which led to a LOT of knight questions!
On our next trip to the library Ender found the knight and castle section and he picked a few books that he thought looked interesting. His selections included:
Castle by Richard Platt
A Day in the Life of a Knight by Andrea Hopkins
Castle and Knight by Fleur Starr
Stephen Biesty's Castles by Meredith Hooper
Knights and Castles by Judith Hindley
Castles by Stephanie Turnbull
If You Lived in the Days of the Knights by Ann McGovern
There is also a Knight lapbook available at homeschool Share, and we used a few pages from the lapbook or the links listed there as coloring pages. The boys colored knights and weapons and shields while I read. :)
Their favorite books were Day in the Life of a Knight and the Castle Cross-sections book (the first Castle book linked above). The first had a simple story line for Ender to follow, but also shared several interesting facts. The second has amazing pictures and Ender poured over those for many hours. I thought for awhile that it might turn into a drawing project, but he told me ysterday that the castle and knight books were ready to go back to the library without going any further with the project.
He hasn't yet made a step toward another project though, so our next project is still a mystery!
Superman came home from work last night and walked into a living room full of blanket/pillow/couch/chair forts, took one look at the very dirty boys hiding in them and asked, "long day?"
It had been indeed. Superman had been off to work early, I got up shortly after to try to get a head start on housework, and the boys? Well, they both got up too early for how much they'd been up over night. Ender has had a run of bad dreams lately, and Ezra has been up and down at night for a few weeks now. We were ready and on time for church, but the tears started in the car on the way back home, continuing into lunch (all because no one wanted the same thing as anyone else). There was no good solution for all the tearfulness, so we did what we always do in times of tears- we went outside.
It worked for awhile- there were rocks to move, flowers to plant, sidewalks to sweep. The boys are happiest when they are busy working.
The fresh air doesn't hurt either.
But eventually there were tears again over sharing tools, and then tears over going inside, even though going inside meant Daddy was on the way home (and dinner needed to be made). I promised fort building while I made dinner, and that calmed things down for a bit.
When dinner was ready, the tears came again and no one would sit long enough to pray much less eat. It took a few tries, but we finally made it respectfully through a prayer and through the meal. On to the bath tub, where the arguing and tears hit a crescendo. Superman asked if I knew why everything was going so strangely.
I was busy giving myself the "get through the bath, get them dressed, read, get them to bed" pep talk, because at that point I was pretty exhausted. It was quickly followed up by the "woe is me/tomorrow HAS to be better" talk.
After getting little boys into pajamas, combing hair and brushing teeth, we read together as we do every night. Everyone was quiet as I read, and if possible they grew even quieter as Daddy read. It was the first bit of peace we'd had all day. I carried Ezra to bed, and he was already half asleep as I put him down and sang to him. I prayed with him, then it was Superman's turn with Ezra. I went into Ender's room to rock with him and sing to him the song I've sung to him for almost 5 years now every night before bed.
I prayed with him, and together we thanked God for our family, for our church, for the blessings of our day and for strength and grace as we moved into the next day. I told him again for the millionth time how much I love him, how much Daddy loves him, but God's love for him is so great it is more than Mama and Daddy put together.
Ender said, "Tell me more about God."
I told him again about Jesus and his sacrifice, I told him again how God calls to us, how God loves us and wants us to walk with Him.
"I don't mean tell me the things I already know," Ender said. "I mean tell me more. There has to be more to know about God. I want to know everything about Him."
There is so much to know, Son.
We pray for you daily, often more. We pray that you follow His path and come to know Him for yourself. We pray for your redemption, we pray for your precious soul.
We pray that you will see that you cannot walk alone.
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