A fun and productive day.

 I loved today! It was one of the first Saturdays for quite a while that we have all been able to just stay home (well I guess Ken and the girls did make a trip to the hardware store but that went pretty quick). It was a a lazy day in some ways like sleeping in, rainy weather, some time online and reading but parts of the day were very productive and we had a lot of fun too.

 Because I enjoyed it I decided that I will create a Journal entry of it here. This may be long and not so interesting to you (you don't have to read it if you don't want to) but maybe you would like to have a glimpse of a Saturday at our house. If so read on.

 On Saturdays Ken and I give ourselves the okay to sleep in. We often stay up rather late on Friday nights and don't mind getting some extra sleep on Saturday mornings. The kids (especially the boys) tend to get up even earlier than usual on Saturdays. I find that funny since I have to encourage them (well not usually Jonathan, but the other three) to get out of bed on school days but on Saturday they are up and busy around 7 am. The kids generally just play in their rooms Legos or geckos are fun and Mara likes to lay in bed and read, this morning they had the train set spread all over when I got up there. Their rooms are above ours and so I start hearing them and slowly waking up but we didn't actually get up until around 9 am.

After getting up I had my prayer and bible reading time while Ken exercised and showered. Then we had breakfast of sausage (that is a treat and the kids were excited!) and a Serbian Pancake. I had found the recipe in the book that we recently read about Serbia. It is rather like a Crepe and we enjoyed them with raspberries and powdered sugar.

 Ken took a quick trip to Ace to get some parts for putting in my new kitchen faucet (the old one had a bad drip problem). Mara went with him (later he had to make another trip and took Megan- he prefers to take one child at a time on shopping trips so that he can still think). Ken and Jonathan worked hard and got the faucet installed and I am so delighted! I love the way it works. The sprayer is the end of the faucet so you can pull it out and have the same pressure as the normal faucet but you can reach up high enough to fill a large kettle or five gallon bucket. There is also a handy dandy soap dispenser which looks so classy for holding my dish soap. :-)

 Ken is not all that fond of plumbing but I am so thankful that he is able to work at it and get it done. We are hoping that Jonathan might take a liking to it (Ken thinks he has a knack for it) and before long he can do all the faucet replacing and such that needs done.

Some of the other things we were able to get done today were:

• Aaron and I cleaned up the compost bin. I was working on it in the rain and having a ton of fun which Ken found very humorous. He has a hard time understanding how I can enjoy tossing old egg shells, peelings, dirt and manure around. I just love knowing the potential of helping my garden that it has and I am so enjoying getting to work in the garden again!
• The kids and I also worked at cleaning up the garden in a beginning preparation for planting.
• Jonathan and I cleaned the bathrooms.
• Ken fixed the bathroom closet door.
• Ken and Jonathan replaced the toilet seat.
• I swept and mopped our very dirty floors.
• Mara worked at sewing a raincoat for her doll.
• Megan cleaned her room.
• I worked at cleaning up and out the files on our computer.
• Ken worked on some business on his laptop.
• I answered some e-mails.
• I cleaned out the cupboard under the sink.

Besides the fun working we did together we also did some fun playing together.

The girls and I had a fun walk in the rain down by the swamp. It is pretty full right now and looked pretty in the rain. The girls were looking pretty too! The picture of Mara at the top of this post is from when we were down there.

The real treat of the walk was getting to see a beaver. Mara noticed it swimming and eating and alerted me to it and then it came over fairly near to where Mara was up on a log fallen into the swamp (I wish she would have had the camera) and it got up on a log too and did some eating/cleaning up there. It was so cute. I did take a picture but my zoom didn't really allow me to capture a very good picture. You will have to work hard to see him in the photo below.

We had lunch (leftovers) at around 2pm and then I read to the kids though the boys skipped out on some of it to go outside and play catch with Ken. The girls and I had a fun time reading the Keeper of the Bees together and then had a quick nap.

We worked on more of the stuff I mentioned above in the afternoon and then I made a beef stew and biscuits for supper.

After supper the boys really wanted to play a family game of baseball. The girls weren't interested (Mara wanted to sew and Megan wanted a bath) but Ken and I did join them. Megan did end up watching from the living room window. She told me she was on my team and she cheered and danced quite enthusiastically! We had fun hitting some balls and running around the bases. It was good exercise and quite a  bit of fun. I was amazed at how much the boys have improved. They have been practicing a lot lately.

Tonight was when I finally mopped. It was nice to get that done. The whole day felt very satisfactory as far as getting things done. There are still oodles of things that could be done (the windows are really dirty, the living room needs vacuumed, there are a few dirty dishes on the counter) but I am so thankful for what God did help us to do and am looking forward to more fun days of work and play next week.

 What do you usually do on a Saturday?