April 13

We packed this day full of stuff, and I am still reeling from all of it. 

I woke up early this morning, and the kids and I visited my friend Sara's Child Development classroom at a nearby high school. Her students typically visit a preschool at the end of the year, but Sara hasn't been able to work out the details this year. Instead, she invited my walking child development case studies into her classroom. Her 15-20 teenage students had planned all kinds of activities for my kids. They were overwhelmed at first, but soon settled in and had a fabulous time! Sara sent me these pictures:

Daisy was the only one of my children who braved the shaving cream table, and she loved it.

Lily was totally into the alphabet puzzle.

Look at her go! She also loved her teenage friends. Caleb and Daisy have both experienced preschool, and since their school is connected with our school district, they often had teenage visitors in the classroom. This was all new to Lily, and she loved it.

This was an awesome activity that worked on fine motor strength, which was great for Caleb. They mixed Kool-Aid into glue, so that it was colored and scented, and then the kids made pictures with it. I tried explaining this to the kids, but we hit a wall because they didn't know what Kool-Aid was. Caleb told Daisy, "I think it's a drink?"

They all had a lot of fun with the water table, too. Eli wasn't tall enough to really reach it on his own, so I had to boost him up on my lap. Then he splashed happily, and the teenagers didn't complain when he got them all wet.

We left a little before 9:00, and the kids raved about what fun they had. Lily told me that her favorite part was playing with Sara, which was just about the sweetest thing ever.

As a reward to my kids for behaving so well in Sara's classroom, I took them to visit Jenny at her restaurant for second breakfast. Caleb ate a mini breakfast sandwich (he called it a breakfast cheeseburger), biscuits and gravy, and bacon. That kid can pack away food, when it is processed and full of things that are terrible for him!

We got home with just enough time to give Eli a good morning nap, and then we all loaded into the van for Speech Club. While we were waiting for Caleb, I learned that a friend and her kids would be at a park near our house, so on our way home we stopped and played for 15 minutes. We got home, Lily and Daisy went down for naps, and Gayle came to get Caleb.

I tried mightily to put Eli down for his afternoon nap, but he just wasn't interested. Instead, we tried out our carry of the day.

I am not a fan of Secure High Back Carry.

Then it was time to make dinner, which we had to eat fast because Caleb and I had exactly thirty minutes for Training Run #13. 

It was a great run! Beautiful weather, good conversation, no complaining... we have reached the point where we start our run with 10 straight minutes of running, take a 1-minute walk break, then run 6 minutes, walk 1, run 6, walk 1, run 6. We are gradually building up the amount of time we run, with the goal of running for 30 straight minutes by the end of the month. I am starting to wonder if my plan is flawed, though. I assumed that we would definitely be able to cover 3 miles in 30 minutes, but so far the most we're getting is about 2.6 miles. It seems like a small difference, but it's about 15% of our distance, so I feel like we need to figure out a way to cover the whole distance. I may be reevaluating our plan.

We got home from our run and Caleb threw on his swim trunks, because tonight was the first night of swim lessons. While he swam, I hit the elliptical and Chris took the little three swimming. It was perfect.

Aren't they funny? I have no idea what they were doing, but Eli was really happy to see me. Now they are all sound asleep, exhausted from such a busy day. Thank goodness all days aren't like this, and thank goodness we have nothing on our calendar tomorrow!