Get Outside and Do Something

I sometimes forget that the best way to have a good day with my kids is to wear them out. They behave better, go to bed better and are generally in better moods when they are worn out. After taking them fishing, metal detecting and then lake bottom hunting for shells and other treasures - I realized that I have gotten away from this practice as the kids have gotten older.

My New Year's resolution this year is to learn to use my Canon Rebel. So every weekend of this year we have done something physical:

Rock climbing.
3 miles nature hike.
2 hours spent at the lake.

But what about the weeknights? This is when we experience the most bad behavior. The most whining. The most sloth.

Every night this week I am going to try an experiment: Get my kids outside to play, go for a walk or just do something physical. 

What I Make Time For Is Changing

Everyday there are the mundane things that must be done, there are the things that pop up out of the blue and then there are the things that we make time for. 

This change started before Christmas. I worried over the things that I was leaning towards buying - books and games. I wanted my family to spend more time together. My kids on the other hand were asking to spending more and more time playing video games and watching TV.  So this year I fulfilled a few wishes in the electronic department but mainly I bought books and games. 

Each night before dinner I have been playing Battleship, Trouble and Uno Moo with the kids. It's amazing how much of a fight they put up when it's their turn to play but once they get into it...they always ask for a rematch. 

Each night before bed I have been making time for the older kids to read in bed. I read as many books as Madilyn asks for, then read four more chapters to Ethan. I was really excited to read him the series that I picked out as I had read it when I was a kid. The Boxcar Children. It was written by an elementary school teacher and used the 500 most common sight words in the English language. I didn't think that he was really liking it as the books that he picked out from the library (Captain Underpants and Diary of a Wimpy Kid) were a little more on the grotesque side. But he was so excited when we started reading the second book bouncing around on the couch and saying remember when from the first book. 

My DVR is really full because of what I am making time for but so is my heart. 

P.S. I suck at being unedited. I used the delete key and spell check the whole way through this. Is there a way to turn off the red squggly line under misspelled words so that they are not so apparent?