School Uniforms

For our homeschool Ruth and Kate requested that we make school uniforms mandatory. Since I already bought a lot of school clothes (really just winter clothes), we will make school uniforms optional.

Pretzels on the Trail

Some day my kids may kill me. But I do delight in embarrassing them :)!

Donut Falls

We made it back to Donut Falls and I remembered the camera! I love it in the mountains! It is so beautiful. I love the trees and the rivers and the smell of pine. I love the rockiness of the Rocky Mountains. I feel the majesty of God's creations when I am in the mountains.

Beautiful Donut Falls

Hiking Up

2 year old trooper that hiked the whole way there and most of the way back!

The beautiful River

feeling a little tired and cold just before leaving the falls

I sure am a lucky Mom to have been blessed with all of these!

On the way back

Creativity

 My cute kids created in their spare time rather than just watching. Rachel, Anya, and Johnny made little plays by drawing pictures, cutting them out and preforming a sort of paper doll show for us. They each did their very own, they made these while, Ruth, Kate, and I cleaned the bathrooms.

 Adam built with blocks. He made a track to send his cars down.

 I am glad that my kids took some of their free time to create.

Of course, creativity does cause more clean up.

Becca's Experience

My cute sister in law, Becca. (You should all be reading her blog. She is the best of young moms.) Wrote about her Wal-mart experience on her blog. This is what happened to her:

I was just walking around Wal-Mart doing my shopping, I was in the process of picking out some Q-tips, when an elderly man, 75-80 yrs of age I'd say, crosses the main aisleway to come over to speak to me specifically. The conversation went something like this:

"Are you the mother of these {points to my kids sitting in my cart} children?"
"Yes..."
"Ok, well, I'm just an old man, but I'm trying to figure something out. I just am trying to understand...."
"Ok...?"
"I just want to know if you have the time to do her hair so pretty..." he grabs one of Graces braids and pulls on it a bit... "How do you not have the time to make yourself look pretty?"

Anyway she went on to say how upset this made her feel (of course). How she suddenly felt rude to other people (she wasn't). I know I would feel the same way. It did make me think that while so many people go out of their way to say rude things. Wouldn't it be nice if more people went out of their way to say nice things. So that is what I am going to do-- probably to the embarrassment of  my own children-- every time I shop, I am going to go out of my way to say something nice to at least one person. I think it is just a nice simple way to make other people feel happy and to spread a bit of sunshine. Thanks for sharing your tragedy, Becca. And by the way 99% of the time I see Becca, she is absolutely beautiful and stylish and poised. I look like white trash compared to Becca.

Focus

Too often I find my focus is on my older children. They are the ones doing the neat things. They are busier. They have clever, fun things to say, and they are much better at securing my attention at appropriate times. Too often my little kids are left in the lurch. I do play and read to them, but they don't receive the special treatment the older kids. do I have realized that I need to fix this. My older kids had my undevided attention when they were young. Obviously, I cannot start ignoring my older kids, but I need to make sure I am making the little kids feel special and not just in a catergory of "sorry, you are too young."

In the last week, John and I have been trying to fix this. After I bought the older kids some music they wanted, I bought the little kids, Raffi's Singable Songs. I had a tape of this that the older kids listened to a ton in the car when they were toddlers. The little kids loved it. The older kids basked in nastalgia, and whenever we play the music, Anya and Rachel begin to dance and happily declare, "this is for me." John took Adam, and Rachel, and Anya out to ice cream and to the special art store we never bring them too. They came home happy and proud.

This is something I need to think about as a parent of many children. All of my children are special to me, and I want them all to feel that way. So I need to remember to shift my focus from the older kids to the younger kids some each day.

Joining Up with Latter Day Homeschooling

I am joining up with the Latter Day Homeschool bloggers. 

 

 

This is a group of blogging LDS homeschool moms. Some of them take turns writing about family life and homeschool and everyone else gets to add their blog to the blog roll. By deciding to homeschool I have decided to leave my comfort zone and meet strangers who homeschool their kids too. My kids insisted on this particular. So welcome me. I am here to get ideas and meet other moms who do what we are about to embark on.