The Boys' Accomplishments

I've been writing up all the things I've done for Money Saving Mom's online challenge, but Nick and Xander have really been pulling their own weight around here, too.

Yesterday, Xander wiped all the switch plates for me, which was a Money Saving Mom task. I got to mop the kitchen floor while he was doing that.

Nick has been making his own peanut butter honey sandwiches.

They have both been great at doing their Morning Cards, which includes wiping down the counter, sink, and toilet or potty chair in the hall bathroom. I adore walking by and smelling the fresh scent of disinfecting wipes when I haven't used them myself. It's like magic!

Then he celebrated being done with chores by listening to audiobooks

Erik worked from home today. When he was done, I was able to go to the post office and gas station by myself. Errands are much quicker without the kids. He wiped the living room ceiling fan blades for me, because I cannot reach them due to their height.

Before all that happened, I, of course, got dressed and made my list of daily goals.

Then I wrote down Xander's list for today. It's a lot shorter than normal because it's a special Friday routine. Two of the activities, Nature Walk and Journal and Tea Time, take time to prepare, do, and follow up on, so other activities are not done this day. It's a routine very similar to what Lindafay posted on Charlotte Mason Help.

One thing I added was spelling work. On Monday, Xander saw his spelling words for the week: boy, girl, man, woman, baby. He wrote two of them in sidewalk chalk outside and one of them with Do-a-Dot markers. Later in the week, he wrote one on a small chalk board. Today, I gave him a test. He got boy and man correct and did a good job trying the others. I made index cards of the ones he did not get right and we will look at them next week along with the new words. I was proud of him, mainly because he has inherited my tendencies to anxiety, and we both kept it calm while he tried spelling these words. I gave him encouragement and praise for what he did right and simply showed him the correct spelling when he had not written the correct one.

Recorder practice went well today. He had been wanting to skip it and feeling (I think) a little overwhelmed as the lessons progressed. I let him go back to previous lessons a lot and also let him skip some days. Today he did really well (and I allowed him to play songs he made up with the notes he knows). His dad was very impressed. Xander showed Erik how to play the notes he has learned so far: B, A, G, and C.

We all went to a nice county park for our nature walk. It was a beautiful day, sunny and almost 60 degrees. Erik went disc golfing while the boys and I went for a hike on the trail. We saw rocks, flowers, butterflies, wasps, birds, quartz, and other things, but we were not able to stay quiet to try to find animals. Nick did not want to do that. Then we joined Erik on the disc golf course. Everyone tried their hand at it. Nick did a lot of jogging and throwing and is now in his bed for a nap that will probably be a long one.

Xander took several of these photos 

And I took several

Later, I picked up some supplies we needed, including two new light bulbs for our living room light fixture. I cleaned the other ceiling fans. Oops! I just remembered I never did Nick's, because he was taking his nap while I did this task. Someday soon. :)

I spent 15 minutes or so laying on my bed, reading Elizabeth & Mary and eating a snack.

Last night, we had the most amazing family time. Erik had the idea of lighting a fire in our fireplace and reading Shel Silverstein poems to each other. Before that, we practiced our manners eating Chicago-style hot dogs (okay, I tried, but they weren't perfectly Chicago hot dogs) and french fries. The boys have very good manners! I mean extremely good manners. I have to expect more of them from now on!

Then Erik started the fire and got out the poetry books. Xander presented himself with professionalism and asked for our attention, please. We listened to him playing a song of his own composing (on the spot) on the recorder, using the notes he has learned. Then Nick played some things for us on the flutophone. We each took turns reading poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends. Even Nick took his turns "reading" to us. We ate pieces of a pecan pie that I had picked up at the grocery store.

We also put leaves on our Thankful Tree. We tried turning out all the lights in the house and just watching the fire. The evening ended with the kids watching a little bit of a Pokemon movie before we all went to bed early. We are  now up very early (for Xander and Erik, at least) so we can go to this local 5K. I'm going to take the plunge and run my first one in many years. Oh my gosh, it's been 17 or so years, now that I think about it. I think I'll stop doing the math on that in future.