Monday, June 1, 2009

Great Day!

I love the simple days, where things just flow one into the other, don't you?  We had one of those days today.   We're taking a brief summer break, probably starting back in July.  With nothing, or very little, on our plate right now, I'm enjoying some lazy, laid back time with my kids.

Today we started what I hope will be our daily routine.  We headed out the door for a walk around the neighborhood followed by swimming in our pool.  After swimming, we had a simple lunch and the kids went off to do their own thing for awhile. 

Leanne, on the FIAR boards, posted a Nature challenge to get outside and study your trees.  I thought this would be a perfect day for such a study.  I had the kids gather up their pencils (colored and regular) and some paper.  I grabbed my camera, the cd player and a classical music CD (and the baby of course ;- ) ) and followed them outside.  Their assignment was to pick one of the trees in our yard and document the changes it goes through throughout the summer.  They could document the tree throughout the months through drawings, poems, songs, pictures, whatever inspired them the most.  I encouraged them to look at all aspects of the tree.  Check out the bark, the leaves, the canopy, the color, the animals, etc.  Then I set them loose. 

One of our trees happens to be a lemon tree, which has provided us with so much wonderful lemonade this past spring.  I'm going to miss all those fresh lemons here pretty soon.  I grabbed five of our very ripe lemons and made some fresh squeezed lemonade.  Yum!  I filled up 6 glasses with ice, poured in the golden elixir and brought it out, along with some gingersnap cookies, to my budding naturalists.

What a beautiful picture to see all my little treasures out there enjoying God's glorious creation, in all its varied facets.

I'll share their drawings and poems as they come in throughout the summer, so stay tuned.

Fresh Squeezed Lemonade
16 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 5 lemons)
48 oz filtered water
~ 1.5 cups sugar

Stir and serve over glasses filled with ice.  Enjoy!

What did you do today to celebrate and rejoice in God's creation?

2 comments:

Jen Unsell said...

Sounds like a very beautiful day Linda!! I loved hearing about it. We had fun planting some lettuce, tomato, and cauliflower in the garden today. ;-)

deuteronomy649 said...

I love the lazy, hazy (or is it hazy, lazy? Oh, I don't know!) of summer. We woke up to snow here where we live. Actually, its still snowing! This morning though, I saw a pretty rosey house finch at my feeder and another blue-colored bird on my deck. I am thankful for these simple things (even though my peonies have frozen!!!).