Beautiful day!

I've been trying some new things this week.  We are still using our workboxes.  I love that they help *me* with planning.  The time it takes for me to fill the boxes has decreased significantly from when we started with them too!

What I was finding though is that *my* time wasn't being used as effectively as I wanted.  I didn't feel that I had enough time with my older children and wanted to correct that.  So, what I did was outline a scheulde to go along with our workboxes.  It's mainly a schedule of where *I'm* spending my time.  I divided up my time with the children and am trying to work with the boxes so that when they are with me we are covering the things that they need help doing. 

I've also scheduled Eliana's time so that its a little more structured which I think will be good for her.  The last piece was doing a little more scheduling of our chores.  Not all of them as I'm taking baby steps.  We are working on morning chores and helping in the kitchen.  We'll add to this as we go hopefully!

The verdict so far - after just 3 days - is good.  I think it is helping me to get more done and balance my time.  Now, I realize that 3 days is not a huge success, but we'll take what we can get.  It's hardest on the days when I'm out of the home for a large chunk of the day, but since that isn't changing, we'll learn to work with that too.

Today we had therapy for two of the younger kids.  I had a good talk with one of the therapists about goals which was good for *me* as I want to know what we are doing and where we are heading.  By the time we got home, it was still early in the day - and beautiful!  I decided that we would we'd do what we needed to indoors and then move outside.  The kids were all for this!

I don't have any pictures of our outside schooling as we were just busy enjoying it.  Isaiah came up with his own way of doing math today. He asked if he could do a problem and then ride his bike down the street and then come back and do another problem and ride his bike again.  I agreed and thought this was a super idea!  It really worked for him too!  No complaining about math.  He worked more quickly than usual and got it all correct too.  I think we may be doing this more often.

We have been working more on our nature journals this spring.  I've always been sporadic with this, but do enjoy what we are doing.  I love looking back on some of their earlier entries too and seeing the handwriting and pictures from years gone past.  We have had a treat this week as a couple of wrens are building a nest on our front porch on top of one of the columns.

We have been watching them flying to and from the nest with twigs and things.  I tried to get a closer peek into the nest, but can't really see anything in there yet.

It will be fun to watch for the baby birds.  This is a great protected spot for a nest - and not the first year we've had birds there.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch outside too and then did some yardwork.  It was a productive day. 

We had a treat this afternoon as Rebecca planned a tea party.  She sent us each lovely invitations and we arrived at 3:30 to find this scene.  (Yes, I realize that our Christmas tree doesn't add a lot to the spring scene and hopefully it will find it's way off of the porch soon! lol) 

She had been baking and preparing for us and even made placecards (which I saved in case she wants to do this again).  We had popovers with jam and butter, ham and turkey roll-ups (no carbs!), snickerdoodles and lemonade.

Everything was delicious and we all had a great time together.  (Eliana was napping and Christopher was running but they each got some goodies later.)

Thank you Rebecca for a wonderful time!  You are such a sweet sister/daughter!  I often tell the boys that they have the best big sister.  I hope they realize how wonderful she is to them!

We are looking forward to a fun day tomorrow with our FIAR group.  I hope you are having beautiful weather and able to enjoy it too.  God has placed so many beautiful and interesting things in nature for us to enjoy and learn about.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to spend time outside (especially before it gets too hot!). 

Oh, I almost forgot!  One more fun thing to share today.  Eliana used the potty!  Yippee!  It was after her nap and I just sat her down and encouraged her to stay until she went.  I'm not sure she "gets" it, but hopefully it's a start.  She liked the cookie she got afterwards.  I think she will be a girl that is motivated by treats.  lol  So, while I'm not sure if this is the official start of potty-training for us (I really don't like potty training!!!), it just might be.  We'll see how it goes. 

Blessings

Leslie