Super Cleaners to the Rescue?

Saturday morning is a time at our house when I insist on subjecting my children to work, responsibility, cleanliness, and organization. The kids all have their Saturday morning job charts, and I am usually busy with laundry or other housework that I've been trying to find a spare moment to attack.

Thus Saturday morning isn't always heralded with joy and rejoicing. Sometimes it seems the kids lay awake at night scheming new ways to whine and wheedle their way out of their jobs. And I wake up praying for the energy to survive it all.

So on a recent Saturday as I was walking Grace through the finer points of cleaning the kids' bathroom, I noticed how Jake was dressed.

Yep, Superman shirt on the front and Superman cape in the back. Perhaps he thought super powers would help him get through things a bit quicker?

The girls joined in, and it was just cute.

Perhaps the next time I need to do some deep cleaning, I'll borrow a cape. 

Spring Planting

Springtime in the Rockies arrived a bit early this year. With February days stretching into the 60s a few times, Cameron went out and bought a new rototiller and started planting some cold-weather crops. Gardening is exciting. We plant seeds, water, weed, cultivate, and dream of what our harvest will be.

In February we also had another Cupid Week with our family. The week before Valentine's Cameron took Abby and Grace to the annual Daddy Daughter dance, and Jake took me and Grace out for dinner. (Cameron made sure Jake had enough cash and instructed him to open my doors, and Jake was a thoughtful date. It was sweet.)

Then the Sunday before Valentine's Cameron and I opened our Cupid Week store, and each kid was invited in one at a time to draw a sibling's name and choose a couple items to give them during the week. We also talked to the kids at dinner a couple nights about other nice things they could do for each other as the week progressed.

As anything goes with a young family, the week had highs and lows. The kids were wonderful at sharing their treats with each other. And they would delightedly go tell each other, "Go look under your pillow!" when a treat had just been planted. But there were other moments when it seemed that all anybody cared about was consuming the most sugar possible instead of showing love for each other. A couple times I felt like throwing my hands in the air and scrapping it for next year.

Then the night before Valentine's Day I was reading to the girls in their room when I spotted this note that had been left on Grace's bed:

Sorry for the fuzzy pic...the heart reads "I love you...you are super"

Families are like gardens. We plant, nourish, love, pray, hope, and dream...and every once in a while our seedlings do even better than we thought.

Muddy But Perfect

Jake and Abby have been in swim lessons lately, and it's been wonderful. Jake and Abby can play in the pool for a half hour before and after their lesson, and Emma, Grace, and I are allowed to be in there playing with them. It's been delightful.

The kids love their goggles so much they wear them all over the house

Of course, I might also mention that trying to get four small children with their accompanying bags full of swim gear, towels, and clean underwear to the pool on time a couple times a week (after a full day of schoolwork) would make a great Olympic-level event for professional organizers.

So recently we had pulled into the pool parking lot and all the kids were running towards the pool. Jake dropped his towel on the way, and Grace picked it up and started running after him. Jake's beach towel is nearly twice as tall as Grace, so the edge of it started to drag on the ground.

I started to cringe at the thought of Jake drying off with a muddy towel. But then my heart took a step back and I viewed it through a different lens.

Ten years ago I would scarcely have dared dream that I would be so blessed--a wonderful husband and four delightful children. To top it all off, I get to stay home and homeschool them, and sometimes we end our days all playing at the pool together. Wow. Life doesn't get much better in my opinion.

Perfectly muddy or muddy but perfect? It's wonderful either way.

Making Family Dinner Fun

I'm pretty sure that my next statement doesn't apply to any other young families out there, but just bear with me. Ready? OK. Dinner at our house isn't always an oasis of peace, quiet, and pleasant conversation. Often it is punctuated by quarreling over who gets to share what details of the day with Dad, lacking manners, and toddler tantrums over what is or isn't on someone's plate. This never happens at your house, right?

We believe strongly in gathering our family together for dinner each night. There are lots of articles, research, and stats out there proving the importance of a pleasant family dinner each night. I reflect on this statement often:

"...the time a family spends together "eating meals at home [is] the strongest predictor of children's academic achievement and psychological adjustment." Family mealtimes have also been shown to be a strong bulwark against children's smoking, drinking, or using drugs. There is inspired wisdom in this advice to parents: what your children really want for dinner is you." --Dallin H. Oaks

So when family dinner becomes a battleground over behavior problems, I start to fret about how to make things better. We've tried a few things. I encourage the kids to tell Cameron about their day...but as mentioned earlier, sometimes this doesn't end peacefully. We've also tried asking each person to share something they are grateful for that day. Some days and some answers are better than others. And then I made a little jar of family dinner conversation starters.

I pulled ideas for this from a lot of different web sites and blogs out there. And I made up a lot of them myself. Some are funny and meant to be light hearted. Some are meant to be serious.

I have to say that pulling out this jar completely changes the dynamic of family dinner at our house. Everyone loves to participate in answering questions. And we get to know each other better as we discuss ideas.

I hope that in a couple decades my kids will still think fondly on some of our recipes. But if we can build beautiful memories laughing and talking together, my real goals will be accomplished.