Impromptu Zoo Field Trip




I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't want a repeat of the last 26 days of school. Get up. Attempt to exercise (it's HARD to work out when you haven't done it in 3 years! Everything jiggles. But I digress). Make breakfast, chug my coffee (wouldn't it be nice to linger over a cup of coffee one day?), shower. Take Eden to the babysitter. And then be pulled 6 directions at once as I blunder to oversee sixth grade, K-5, and a household. Explain things, hold kids accountable, yell a few times. Pick Eden up. Make lunch, another cup of coffee, break up 4 fights in an hour, and go on multiple tirades until every last math problem is answered correctly.

Don't you wish I was your teacher? *Ahem.*

(I freely admit I'm going to need to fix some things!)

So last night, I decided we'd take a field trip to the zoo today. And we did. I homeschool, and it's good to take off the tunnel-vision-blinders every once in a while and remember that we can go places. We are the ones with the flexibility. This is my 5th year homeschooling, and I'm ashamed to tell you that we haven't taken a proper field trip in 3 years! It was high time; overdue, in fact.

I only took a few pictures of our outing, but I need to remember more about this day than staged poses. I need to remember that I actually like my kids. That they can get along. I need to remember to breathe, to laugh, and to point out often the marvels of everyday life. Seven miles from our house, monkeys live. Can you believe that? Today, we went to visit them. We took a morning to marvel at how God made monkeys hilarious. We fed the giraffes, touched a stingray, and gave nectar to some opulent lorikeets.  My kids didn't fill out a single worksheet, but we bonded a little in the intense heat of our 93 degree "autumn" day. We had ourselves a field trip.


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