An Afternoon of Lessons

It's hard for us to get school done around here. With a baby that isn't too fond of sleep, a preschooler that doesn't sit...ever, and girls that know every trick in the book for weaseling out of work, things tend to progress at a snails pace. My jobs seems to be that of a cattle driver...prod-prod, heyah! , move it-move it!  It's a good thing I'm not a cattle driver, because my version sounds more like "cattle nagging", instead of driving.  And it's probably about as effective on children as it would be on cattle.

On this particular day the girls went to a nature class in the morning and the boys and I went to Titus II (a women's group at church), so we were already behind schedule.  On the way home I was stressed and the kids were tired and hungry.  How were we going to get everything done?  It's difficult enough when we have the whole day to work on school, but I had squandered away the morning on something I wanted to do, so now we had even less time.  Spiraling into an ugly funk of self pity, I was about to start barking at the kids to start school when I remembered a verse from Proverbs 31 (My recent obsession.)

Pro 31:26  She opens her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

For some reason I never felt like this really applied to bugging the kids to get things done.  But I know I was being neither kind or wise in the way I was speaking to them.  We had also been talking about the tongue at Titus II, that very morning, and I had just kinda tuned it out.  Figuring that was for angrier people than me, or people that swear a lot.  How blinding that plank can be.

So with a new outlook on our day and hopefully on life, we ate a quick lunch and then...went outside to play.

We managed to have a snowball fight,

build a snow man,

make snow angels

and get school done all before dinner without any "cattle nagging" from me.  Granted dinner was at about 7:30 p.m., but no one went to bed hungry and we had a chance to make some great memories!