Take it Outside!

Our days usually all start off the same way...coffee, breakfast, chores, school, lunch then freetime. Lately in between these times seems to be "argue with the closest sibling" time. Yesterday, however, I decided to cut into their argue time and make them all go outside. Your thinking that this isn't odd, but trust me, it is! We homeschool remember?? We don't go outside until around 2:30 to not give the neighbors anything to wag their tongues about. Well, it was 12:11 and they were out!

It started out kinda rocky, they still wanted their argue/fight time. So now I have to go out. Put the dishes down and go out. Close the laundry room door and go out. In other words, my "chore" time had to have a time out. So, I decide to build a fire in our fire pit. This of coarse encourages my boys to help me find sticks to burn. All three very happily help me collect dried leaves and small twigs to get things started. I'm very proud to say that I started a very nice fire without the help of gasoline! Not to say that anyone in our house does that! {clears throat and does NOT look towards her husband} Yet one of our lovely boys still wants some fight time. So now he has to go sit in the kitchen and watch us from there, being sure to let me know which sticks are really his carved weapons that he's made and that, "please mom don't burn those". He makes sure over and over that I don't touch "his" sticks. Eventually he calms down and can join us in our stick hunt to keep the fire going.

At this point, I'm not even sure why I built a fire. But now they are all distracted and swinging and laughing and getting along! Amazing. So, I text (I'm quite savvy!) my dear hubby to pick up buns from the store and I get a plan together. He shows up at 2 and our fire is roaring. We decide to grill burgers and hot dogs right there over the open flame. We even throw a couple of peaches on. The kids absolutely love doing this. They were so yummy! So there we were, eating our burgers, peaches, grapes and cucumbers. Getting along.

The afternoon continued quite nicely. I even got a hot bath! Weird! Kids were all out the door with dad at 5 for football with just Bells and I left home in a very quiet house. She played, I read. Oh what an afternoon of fresh air can do!