Outside Is Good

Life has been more hectic than usual; between chicken pox, fleas, and lice, I've felt rather as if I should be best friends with Moses.

We don't have lice.  But our neighbor's daughter does, and my kids played with her the day before my neighbor found the lice.  We've been acting as if we have lice--washing, washing, washing, and treating kids' heads with vinegar and olive oil.

We do have fleas.  They are gross.  I have been washing, washing, washing every single day.  I vacuum 2-3 times a day.  I put down pesticide every night.  When I find a flea on my baby I am so horrified that I wash, vacuum, and spray with even greater urgency.

We do have chicken pox.  3 out of 7.  I keep waiting for the other 4.

But today we took a vacation.  I left the laundry and the vacuum and the pesticides and the schoolwork behind, and we took a family hike.  Little I.10 giggled from his backpack perch almost the whole time.  Kids ran and yelled and jumped and climbed, and I felt the weight of my germy, bug-infested house leave my shoulders for just a little while.

When we got home so that Daddy could sleep before working all night at the hospital, the kids played outside some more.

Then we cooked dinner together: Spicy Bean Soup, Homemade Tortillas, Honey Candy.

Now the kids are playing outside again.

I have to do laundry.  I have to vacuum.  I have to put down some pesticides.

But now I am calm instead of tense.  Now I am happy to work instead of frantic with worry.

A day spent outside is not only good . . . it is essential.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anne's Day in the Life: 17, 16, 12, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 5, & 5

Image
This is my crew last summer--the day we said goodbye to Pixie as she headed off to college. I actually have all 12 of my children home right now. Rose Red is nearly 20, graduated from our homeschool a year and a half ago, lives at home, and is working as a server at Applebee's as she tries to understand what it means to be an adult. Pixie is newly 18, graduated from our homeschool almost a year ago, is a dance major at BYUI, and is spending her off-track semester working full-time in the 1-year-old room at a daycare. These two still are part of our family days, and their schedules directly impact the rest of us, but I am no longer responsible for their day-to-day educational needs. The remaining 10 are still under my educational supervision.  Among these 10 children we are schooling while we cope with anxiety, depression, FASD, ADHD, DMDD, ODD, ASD, PTSD, and Intellectual Disability. Here is a February Wednesday in our lives. 5:04 am :  Sir Walter Scott's al
Read more

Review: Drive Thru History® – “The Gospels”

Image
We are total Drive Thru History® fans around here.  We discovered Dave Stotts and his awesome video series years ago, and we've watched them enthusiastically ever since.  The videos are informative, interesting, and funny, so we jumped quickly at the opportunity to review the newest series:   Drive Thru History® – “The Gospels." And it definitely makes the grade. Because this new series focuses on the gospels, we opted to make watching it the focus of our Family Home Evening on Sundays. The timing of our review period was such that we were enjoying the lessons in the weeks leading to Easter. How cool is that!?! The series has 18 episodes, beginning with background information about Judea before Christ's birth, exploring the annunciation, His birth, His childhood, all kinds of aspects of His ministry, through His trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, finally ending with a summary of the prophecies and power of His ministry and thought-provoking qu
Read more

The Second Week

Image
This week was a lot like last week. We didn't make any progress introducing new subjects, but we got better at what we are already doing. We got better at listening to music--3 times this week!  We don't much like Bach's St. Matthew Passion, but we are quite fond of the Brandenburg Concertos .  (This could be my influence, as I've always preferred a concerto to a cantata.) We got better at reviewing our bulletin boards. (Now I need to get new board information ready!) We finished How to Behave and Why on Monday, and we read this book several times during the week.  Along with our readings, we had discussions about the lessons taught and the values of the culture represented in the story.  I also began to pause in places and turn over the storytelling to the kids. For zoology, we watched a great video about elephants .   And we started this book. We're only 30-ish pages into it, but we're really curious about where it's going. I assigned the kids to researc
Read more