Day 20

What a nice day today was. We had sort of a leisurely morning while I finished packing up a few packages to go to the post office. Then we dashed off to a service project led by youth from this area who do environmental service projects. It was at a really nice park and there were lots of kids around our kids' ages there. Xander and I helped plant two trees and then the kids had a nice free-for-all on the playground together. It was like recess. :)

We had barely arrived home when Erik drove up. He's been out of town this week for work and we were so happy to see him.

As for the Money Saving Mom challenge, I did 1) get dressed in something I felt great in.

When I tried to start a load of laundry this morning, our washing machine did not respond. Erik has been looking into it and so far there is no hint as to what is wrong. This could be bad, but I am keeping my rose-colored glasses on for now. (By the way, how awesome is my husband? He just walked in the door from a week out of town about half an hour ago, and he is already deep in research mode for fixing the washing machine.)

Update: How awesome is my husband? This is like five minutes later and the washing machine works.

2) I made a list of 10 goals for today. It seems too long, I know, but one of them was advent activities and one was to pick up Erik at the office, which didn't need doing after all.

The goals:

1. Tree planting service project.
2. Pick up Erik 5:00.
3. Homeschool.
4. 4 Weeks task: 3) organize and clean out medicine cabinets.
5. 4 Weeks post.
6. Drop off packages at post office.
7. Advent activities: bake more cookies, open advent calendars, light advent candle, read a selection from The Christmas Treasury.
8. Read Christmas books.
9. Make potpourri sacks.
10. Exercise videos at nap time.

Homeschooling we did not do. I've decided to take off the last three days of this week and make them up in the week after Christmas. However, we did do an outdoor service project which to me counts for a lot in terms of education. Also, we had a mini drawing lesson at Xander's request. He wanted help drawing a Star Wars Republic Attack Gunship. This is the result (I helped a bit):

4) Then I was supposed to take 15 minutes to do something relaxing that I enjoyed. I can count our service project for that enjoyment. I felt good doing something and was so happy to finally find something that my children can help with (okay, Xander was help, Nick was not). Getting outdoors always makes me feel better, too.

Our "medicine cabinets" - one is a children's medicine basket and one is an adults' medicine basket 

On left: the thumbprint Christmas lights by me and Xander
On right: Nick's paintings of monsters