Lovely Day

This lovely past weekend the guys finished harvest and Knut got to come home.  They still have work to do, but the stress of the harvest is off his shoulders and it shows.  We had some family of mine come through town on Saturday night and stay with us and we stayed up late drinking coffee and just catching up.  What fun!  Stewart is my mother’s cousin, and I was the flower girl in Pam and his wedding 22 years ago.  I must admit, that made me feel a bit dated.  It was just the 2 of them at our house this time, and they were telling us of the busy-ness and rapid growth going on in the oil fields of North Dakota where they live.

They left Sunday morning, and Knut and I enjoyed a lovely morning at church, and then a lovely long nap in the afternoon.  Elias slept too, and Silje and David watch a movie quietly in the basement.  It was so peaceful.  Lovely.

This morning was “A Little Break” when traditionally I bring the kids to a local church once a month where they have a great program where you can drop off your babies through preschoolers for 2.5 hours and just leave and have some alone time, or get some errands done.  What’s even better is I can tell when I pick them up that they haven’t been attention deprived in the least!  It’s non-stop activities, almost like a once a month VBS.  They read books and sing songs and learn actions, and do crafts and have open play time.  They always come home exhausted!  I haven’t done it since we’ve started homeschooling Silje, so I was debating whether or not I should send the boys.  You see, we have a field trip tomorrow to the museum with our homeschool group.  Usually on homeschool group days we don’t get as much “school work” done in the mornings, and I thought if we missed school this morning, and didn’t do as much tomorrow we’d be starting 2 days in a row of bad habits.

I didn’t have that many errands to run in town…just a necessary trip to the post office. I was debating out loud to Knut if I should just run into town quick with all the kids to the post office, and then come back for school, or if I should drop the boys off for the morning, and find something to do with Silje in town and miss school this morning.  He then suggested that we bring our work along, and do school in a coffee shop this morning.  I thought that was a very fun idea, so that’s what we did!

I had a mocha and coffee cake, and Silje ordered herself some gingerbread spice tea and a chocolate brownie, and we sat and went through all of our science, history, geography, read alouds and math for the day.  That only left her English, Chinese, and a little more independent reading when she got home.

We had so much fun, and I think this will be a monthly occurrence.   I don’t remember the last time I had so much fun with her! 

This was the first time however, that I noticed people noticing us.  Besides the very sweet older man who came up to us there and was so pleased to see a mother reading to her daughter and spending quality time with her  (he went into this long tangent about how he feels hope for the world or something.  It was so sweet!) we got several other comments as we were at the post office, and a few other places. 

Silje is now big enough that she looks like she belongs in school.  People asked us if school was out today, or asked how old she was and were confused when she said “6.”  It was even funnier when she told people, yes, she does go to school and today it was at a coffee shop.  Some would persist and ask what she learned in the coffee shop, to which she would say something like “I learned that Venus is the hottest planet.  And did you know that on Venus, a day is longer than a year?  There are volcanoes erupting all the time, but there is never any ash because there is nothing there to burn up except rock!  So it just melts and cools and melts and cools, but never any ash like our fireplace!”

Yes, yes, my daughter is a genius.  Today was a lovely morning, and we’ve had so much fun so far today.  What’s even better is that Knut will be home tonight.  Probably even for supper.  (Well, I think he might have a meeting in town…but he’ll come home first!)  It’s the little things that bring so much joy.