One of Those (Good) Days

Have you ever had one of those days were at the end, you sighed and thought "Today was a good day!" That was today. Nothing too exciting, but all good. I spent the morning taking care of some business type work. Then the German Post arrived with a box of insulin pump supplies. It was a first getting a package through them, so it was slightly cool.

Then we began school at 11am. We always pray and then do the Pledge. My kids got a huge kick when we stood to do the Pledge and I said "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." haha! Our first subject was Religion, where we were talking about the Beatitudes. ::Sigh:: the Beatitudes. Is it wrong of me to say I'm not a fan? Why? Because I have a hard time understanding them and get lost in the whole thing. So to then teach them to my three very  young children, ahh! Well, I'll just say religion was not very successful. They stopped listening about the 2nd Beatitude. I had a craft planned to help them get it more, but they had no care what so ever, so we moved on. I figured we can retry down the road.

Then we began handwriting. I clearly hadn't looked ahead in handwriting because normally it's just copywork, but Hannah brought hers to me and asked about it. OH FUN! HOMOPHONES! We had a lot of fun talking about this big word, and surprising daddy with our knowledge when he got home from work (Homophone- words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings). It was awesome seeing them come alive talking about it and engaging. Then Zach worked on math, where I showed him a neat addition trick with 9's. Hannah spent all of 2 minutes on her 2 pages of math. I tried to read the story of St. Peter to them today, but baby girl would have nothing to do with it. Then I also began looking through our syllabus and realized there are some things I should have been doing that I somehow have forgotten this year. Guess we'll be working on them the rest of the year. This reminds me of a story from last week. They were looking at a piece of art that had two scenes in one-Jesus preaching to the multitudes and Jesus calling Peter on to the water. My kids said "Yeah, there's two Jesus' to show that Jesus is everywhere." That had not been in our book or mentioned. I loved the way they saw the picture!

After school, we had lunch and I told the kids to get done quickly. The sun was shining beautifully, so even though it was like 37 degrees, we set out for a long walk. It was so wonderful. About an hour and a half later, we returned and headed to the grocery store. The grocery store consisted of me using my mommy talents to nurse Beka while walking, while having 2 children push the grocery cart. (Keep in mind, in Europe, grocery carts go every way, not just straight...) I asked for a special meat I wanted, to be surprised at how expensive it was. I ended this trip by attempting to buy two bottles of lieblich (Sweet) wine and kinder eggs for the kids (Do you know what they are? Awesome chocolate eggs with a toy inside- illegal in the US bc of the small toys and huge fines are possible if we get caught sending them! Insane right? Gotta love America...)

We came home, to have our landlord (lives across the street) open her window and tell us "No electric" Apparently it was out for the whole neighborhood. WE went in the house and had a few fun moments of doing things with flashlights and candles. Husband was headed to a meeting, so I loaded the kids up, and we went out to eat at our favorite little Pizzaria (Where hubby would be going anyway after his meeting). I was impressed with my children. They were soooo well behaved and I managed all 4 at a nice restaurant alone. The baby was making this German couple giggle, esp when she got hiccups. We came home to the electric being back on, and the kids being very disappointed. Maybe one night this week we'll have a pretend-the-electric-is-out night for them. ;-)

In other news, while i have free hands and arms, and I'm using the chance to make a blog post, yesterday was our 7th Anniversary. My husband, who does not believe in cards and flowers, surprised me with both. Seven (for our 7th year) Gerbera Daisies (my favorite flower). He's good! And the card... well, it said exactly what I needed to hear. We actually celebrated on Sat. with a sitter for the older three. We went to see "Saving Mr. Banks"- oh my! GREAT MOVIE. I told hubby we must buy it. Right up there with the Blindside for me. THen we went and ate dinner (8:30 reservations- we're becoming German!) at a castle, where he had lobster soup and deer steak, and I had DELICIOUS pumpkin soup and salmon. We then talked about every year we've been together and discussed some memory from each year, aside from kids' births and moving, since we've done a lot of those in 7 yrs (4 kids, 5 moves).

There were other small details about today that I wanted to put in this post, but I can't remember any of them. I have started a new chore system that I'm excited about and I think will work for us. I've really been struggling trying to keep up on the house and need some kind of way to keep them responsible for chores, but I needed a way to get chores that NEED to be done, done. Each kid has one laminated sheet with their name and 1 through 31 across the top. On the side is a list of all kinds of possible chores for them. The rule is they have to do 3 a day (Except today thanks to walk and lack of electricity), and they can earn an extra quarter if they do more than 3 in a day. We did this for one month and it worked wonderfully, but that was a one month chart. With this laminated, I can use dry erase each month. We're all pretty excited about it and I got them all to do some chores this morning before school. Unfortunately the dishes are still waiting for me at 9:15pm! Boo! So with that, and free arms... I have dishes to do and laundry to fold. Good night world!