Sharing My Day

Today was a relaxed day. The kids and I spent the morning with some homeschooling and I even got a little creative with their math and made a store for them. Both Faith and Elijah were working with money in their math books so I took a bunch of their toys and made them buy them with exact change. Faith struggles with adding quarters and tends to only pay with dimes so I had to be a mean store clerk and told her no dimes would be accepted for certain purchases. That worked!!! Naturally they had so much fun that they did not want to get back to regular school but wanted to play store for the rest of the morning. I'll have to remember to save my creative ideas for the end of school not the beginning, right!
Then we all went to tea time for a little morning break. When we finished our tea we went out to the playgroup and got all dirty in the sand box with the BG kids. The kids all love the sand boxes at Beautiful Gate and they sure can get messy. I had about 4 little girls and a little boy who I was tickling and chasing around when we were not in the sandbox. I love getting a good laugh out of the kids and they seem to like it too or they would not keep coming back for more! After playgroup, I made lunch and watched out the kitchen window as neighborhood kids ran and played outside the BG fence. There were about 8 girls who were swinging around and singing songs in Sesotho. Today I did not have my kids join them because yesterday I let them play out there for over 2 hours with a soccer ball and hula hoops and I did not have time to watch them again today (house needs to be picked up once in awhile right).

After lunch I read a few books with Faith and then had to help our roommate Laury unload groceries from the van. She shops for the children and staff at Beautiful Gate every two weeks. Then we unload the groceries and sort them into 4 piles for each house. Bryan, Laury and I fill up wheelbarrows and take the food to the houses. When the BG kids are outside, they often come up to the wheelbarrows and take things off so they can "help" and carry the items to the houses for us. They usually stop right in front of me and block my path for a long time, but they are so cute as they are eager to help with the "heavy load." After my last load of grocery deliveries, I stayed in the house for a few minutes chasing all the kids with some plastic animal toys and making the noises that the animals would make. I am not sure if the house mother appreciated me getting the kids all hyper, but I had fun ;)
I made dinner after that and then we ate dinner and all sat around (my family, Laury, Merline, and Jessica) talking and sharing a little dessert. We moved to the living room and talked a little while longer and Bryan, Jessica and I all had a kid cuddled up on our lap so we could keep warm. Mercy was so tired she fell asleep on Bryan while they cuddled. That was partly due to her playing rather than napping this afternoon. As I type this most people are in bed because I think they are so cold that going to bed is the easier thing to do so they can stay warm. It was 45.5 degrees Fahrenheit this morning and I think it is probably back to that now as I am writing because I have almost lost feeling in my fingers ;) I know this isn't an exciting post but I thought I would just share our day. It was a good day and I hope tomorrow will be good as well.
Good night,
Anita