The Circus and Some Thoughts

Sunday night Circus A’ La Whitings.  This kept them all busy for several hours of planning with relatively few fights between them—they mostly consisted of when Ella had to let the others have their turn to shine.  Of course, the circus performance itself lasted about 10 minutes total…

Crazy acrobats

Magic tricks (disappearing thumbs!)

Excited spectators

Tightrope!

Ballerinas (cause there must be a ballerina at our circus if Ella is involved)

 

Grand Finale!

And now some thoughts: 

I was thinking last night about expectations that I have for my children, and how as a mother I am always trying to keep that delicate balance between asking them to do too much, or asking them to do too little. (And how sometimes this balance can cause me to go a leetle bit insane..like the other night when I told them all that I was going crazy from repeating myself and that if I went crazy I was taking them all with me…and then they just laughed—what is up with that?  Anyway, back to the main point…. )  Since our school schedule is different this year and the kids get home at 3:00 and Angie at 4:00, I decided that they should have all chores done and one instrument practiced in the morning(Sunny is playing piano and clarinet) .  That way when they come home they basically only have homework to do—and Sunny has to practice her piano still.  Then they have more down time to play and read and whatever right? 

 

Well, for a while I was thinking it might have been too much.  Why you say? Because for the last several days my children have been running late every morning and we all were feeling rather disgruntled—Angie would be running out the door for her carpool while they were honking at her and I would send Logan and Sunny off on their bikes and pray they made it in time.  I must be giving them too much to do right?  But after school has been SO NICE with so much less stress, and I didn’t want to give that up.  So….new plan….

 

I decided to make a little check off list of all the stuff they had to do in the morning and a time it should be done.  And if they get it done on time they get tickets (it’s this reward thing we do).  I went over their lists with them last night and….low and behold..they were all done like 15 minutes EARLY this morning!  Okay, maybe the fact that we were having a yummy chocolate pastry for breakfast helped a  little as a motivation to get done, but it proved something to me….children CAN accomplish quite a bit.  And I think it is okay to let them do some hard work and get some things done—of course they need to have down time as well, but teaching priorities is a good thing.  And, let me tell you, having everyone ready early like that and not all stressed out and upset in the morning makes SUCH a difference in our home—Logan sat and read stories to Ella and Angie had plenty of time to make herself beautiful for the 7th grade jungle!  So, I just hope that this new  system will help—until it doesn’t anymore and then I have to try something new for motivation:) 

In the meantime, I will enjoy this memory of seeing a little bit of heaven in our home:

 

Okay, those were a lot of thoughts.

Oh, just one more cute picture: