Keeping Busy

Whew, I must say the last 3 weeks have flown by and we have no blog entries to prove just how busy we've been ;) When I say busy, I mean busy with non-school sorts of stuff. We have been making preparations to put our house on the market and it has been a whirlwind of "to-do" lists and projects around here!

While I've taken a break from the planning, the girls have taken a break from school-type activities and have been "helping" with the cleaning and organizing, and doing lots of plain old childhood PLAYING. Every morning after breakfast, Little Bear has been into acting out some of her favorite TV/movie characters like Dinosaur Train, Angelina Ballerina, and Strawberry Shortcake. She assigns the characters and we each act out the episode of her choosing. It's pretty entertaining to say the least. We've had our first adventure to the zoo this year (the indoor part only) and got to see baby jaguars, many other animals from the Amazon, and beautiful orchids. And thankfully, the weather is warming up so we've had a few opportunities to play outside and release LOTS of built up energy from our snowed-in days this winter :) Tiny is LOVING every minute of running around chasing her big sister outside! She's growing up WAY too fast!

An afternoon of puff-ball fun! This always keeps them busy for quite a while :)

This "break" has reminded me of one of the major reasons we have chosen to educate our children at home. While I'm sure I could have accomplished a great deal more in the way of house cleaning and getting everything ready without them around, I have so much enjoyed having my girls right beside me as I "tackled" all these projects. It made me slow down a bit to explain lots of "what" and "how to" questions I got along the way as well as let them know they are important in this whole process. Just as any homeschool family knows, sometimes school has to take a break when LIFE happens...and that's what we're doing these days! And I'm CERTAIN that's what will happen every time we bring a new little one into our family :)

I haven't had my camera out much, but the day I cleaned out the girls' closet and we saw the floor in there for the first time in, well, forever.....I had to catch a picture of them enjoying it together :) They would have played in there all day if I would have let them!

Sooner or later we'll get back to doing things a little more routinely or maybe we won't for a while. I figure I really don't want to burn myself (or them) out with "school" before we ever even HAVE to do it. They are learning so much just by being by my side and that is the MOST important place for them to be right now :)

I see signs of Spring heading our way...hope all of you are enjoying the more "seasonable" weather, as our weather man puts it. Get outside and PLAY!