One of my New Year's Resolution this year is to be a better mom.... not "super mom" better, but better according to how God wants ME to be as a mom to 3 awesome boys and 2 precious girls. Better to me this year means saying alot more NO to things that end up consuming my time and thoughts and make for a day without TRULY interacting with my girls during the day and my boys at night. I have recently been given a fabulous little toy for Christmas called the IPAD. I own an IPHONE also and if any of you have these wonderful devices, you know how addicting it can be to find various apps for various things in life. I found myself after Christmas spending a good amount of my day looking for various apps to help me be more organized, help me train for a 1/2 marathon, help me stay on a reasonable eating plan, a bible app to make my daily reading easier, and even help me organize chores for our kids.... As good as all of that CAN be, I found that the last 2 days of Christmas vacation was spent with girls watching too many " Go Diego Go" and boys playing WAY too much electronic games.... ALL because I was looking for the perfect APPs for my wonderful devices..... AND, ofcourse, our kids learn by watching so if mom is doing electronic stuff, why wouldn't they want to??? I know God loves me and forgives me if I wasted too much time with all that, so this is not about me being hard on myself as a terrible mother... it is more of a confession of my weaknesses and a hope that I will continually change into the kind of mother my heart longs to be, but my flesh fights against. I really do want to be a better mom and live with as little regret as possible...... So, today, rather than doing chores around the house upon awakening (I had PILES of laundry, a messy kitchen, an unorganized garage, dirty van and still Christmas decorations to put away), I chose to nourish the brains and emotions of our girls instead.... Here are some things we did. As hard as it was for me to shift gears and do things that seemed to be LESS of a priority, I had alot of fun. Can't promise EVERYDAY will be full of fun actitivities, but I am determined to TRY to say more" NO"s to unimportant things.
Girls doing puzzles (they LOVED this and was quiet for atleast 15-20 min... and they kept trading back and forth)
Girls doing pattern block boards... they struggled with this a bit more than the puzzles
Went on a nature walk in search of pinecones. Selah was really getting good at spotting pinecones... Anna was a bit frozen :) but still managed to find some pine cones... It was only about 25 degrees outside (could have been colder) so we didn't stay out too long
YUMMY hot chocolate and some candy canes to stir with after our VERY cold walk!
Gluing the pinecones on a sheet of white paper for fun
And, finally a fun "make your own pizza" fun! I had 2 eager helpers.... why don't I use them more often to make meals??
The girls are now napping, and I can begin my chores for the day :)
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