Town Days

I show pictures of our house and farm a lot, mostly because I feel silly with my big ol’ camera out in public.  I decided to bring it along anyway for one of our busy town days.  After some grocery shopping, we headed to the library, where David has his chess club, and the little girls like to play.  (I love it in the winter when I can get my grocery shopping out of the way first and nothing goes bad in my minivan.)  Silje picks out books for herself, (using the library-list perimeters found in The Well-Trained Mind book) and will often make piles of books for her siblings that she thinks they will really like.  The little kids are learning to love Silje’s recommend book piles…more so than any books I pick out for them.

In fact, if I tell the younger kids that Silje picked it out, they will grab it faster than if I said I picked it out.  (They don’t know that she’s just picking her favorites of the ones I picked out for her when she was really little.)  She moves them beyond the “My Little Pony” and “Transformers” shelf, which I’m grateful for.  Silje loves being in charge of picking out books.  Really she loves being in charge of anything.  Since she’s so good at it and so well read, it’s been a good arrangement.

Then we play drop the kids off, and pick them up, sort of game of tag, with Elias and Silje.  (Elias has to be picked up from choir at the same exact time Silje needs to be dropped off for choir, but at different locations.  I end up just dropping her off early, which she loves because then she gets to hang out with her public school friends for awhile and the choir teacher lets them draw on her white board.  But it’s a bit of a juggling act, when you take into account David needs to be picked up from chess club and dropped off at Tae Kwon Do within 15 minutes of the pick up/drop off of each of Silje and Elias’ choir.)  I’m glad the town is small.  This year I actually bought a dirt cheap prepaid cell phone for the older kids to share on our town days, so when I have sleeping little girls in the car, I can just call the phone and say, “I’m outside now.  Come on out and I’ll bring you to your next activity.”  It’s made things a bit easier, except I have to remember who should have the phone next, and actually remember to give it to them.  Actually, I feel like I’m conducting an orchestra on town days.

I drop the ball too.  This last week, I had missed Elias’ choir drop off time by about 20 minutes (it’s a 30 minute class) so we just skipped it and moved onto the next activity, which messed up my system a little, and he was disappointed.  Most weeks I can juggle pretty well, though.

David’s Tae Kwon Do is the last activity, and it’s been such a blessing that it’s at the YMCA, because the 3 little kids get to play in the child watch during that time (oh, they have a blast and burn off a ton of energy), and Silje gets to find a corner, read a book, and get some quiet time from her siblings.  I get to do whatever I want as long as I stay in the building, but on this particular town day I decided to sit in on David’s lesson and see what exactly he’s been learning.

We’ve been coming home from our town days a lot happier.  Now there’s something for everyone, instead of something for the oldest kids, and the younger ones just have to spend the whole afternoon in their carseats.

It makes play time with Daddy so much better once we get home.

I used to dread town days when the kids were really little.  I’m such a homebody, and running around with 5 kids is tough.  Honestly, they’re still hard for me but they are getting easier as the kids are getting older.  It’s actually becoming fun.