We had the best weekend. It was my (un)official kickoff to the spring/summer season, where we power wash all the outside surfaces of our home, pull up dead weeds from last year’s growth, and bring up all the outdoor cushions out of storage. And then I hang two ferns on the porch, step back barefoot on the grass in our front yard, feel the fresh callouses on my hands and breathe in spring's return with tired legs and a smile on my face.
We celebrated a day's work with our first backyard fire of the season, our little family huddled around a roaring fire taking turns picking song requests. The sky felt so big and the stars shined so bright and I couldn’t help but think everything was just breathing out one great big exhale. The Great Pause is what I’ve seen this period of our lives called – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see what would happen if the world just stopped. If humans were forced to slow down enough to see the people they share a home with in a new way and to see the world heal without our pace. We've been given the opportunity to pull the curtain back to see a world in its plainest view. And this year, on earth day, while home from school and work, we stopped to see this beautiful earth in a whole new way. We saw not one, but two double rainbows in the sky to begin and end our day. We hiked through Hartman Reserve and took note of the first signs of spring all around us. We made friends with a mother duck and her TWELVE baby ducklings who spent the afternoon at our house. We noticed how pretty God paints the sky over a pond right before sunset, and watched with a beaver swimming across to home he was working on building. We filled a bagful of trash at a roadside park in about twenty minutes' time and felt even more committed to do our part to preserve the beauty of this place we live.
Celebrating Earth Week at Jorgensen Academy of Excellence...
Nature walks at Hartman, exploring and writing about the ecosystem we live in. We noted mushrooms growing on trees, worms living underground, woodpeckers causing havoc on the trees, and a group of wild geese causing havoc on Cruz's peaceful trip to Lake Honeybee. He takes after his Uncle Jordan!
A basement campout. Our newest research project is on the great National Parks of the USA. We watched a wonderful documentary on Netflix, learned about President Teddy Roosevelt camping in the woods with John Muir and first deciding to protect these beautiful places, and then discussed our favorite parks over inside s'mores. The kids slept in the tent for three nights in a row and decided it was a pretty great place for home-school, too.
We ate lots of yummy snacks. Monkey bread and hot cocoa, rice krispie treats in the shape of Earth, and dirt cups and grilled burgers on the deck.
We learned about the four Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Renew, and brainstormed ways we could incorporate all four of these principles here at home. We started seeds in recycled egg shells, did an experiment to see how much water gets wasted in our house just by brushing our teeth, compared a homemade lunch to a Happy Meal lunch from McDonalds, and made plans to create some art with recycled boxes and tin cans.
And when we weren't creating our own Earth day fun, Mother Nature was doing it for us! We saw rainbows and sunsets, a family of baby ducks and a sky filled with stars. God sure created a beautiful place for us to call home.
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