A Perfect Day

Our daughter gets 11 school days off for Christmas break. On the first day of her break (and all weekend before), she complained about how much she misses school, school friends, and even math.  So, instead of working through the unopened  $100 math curriculum supplement I purchased for her to use this year in our homeschool, she's been getting her math fix by solving Sudoku puzzles.  She also decided that she would tutor her brother to help home feel like school.  After teaching him about the Civil War, the human body's reflexes, earth's sister planet, and a lesson in his math book, she lost her only student because he was tired of being her pupil.

I planned a few surprises for Tuesday that week to help bring her out of her Christmas break doldrums.  It was cloudy day with pleasantly mild temperatures.  I took the kids downtown where we met lots of friends from their homeschool co-op group.  Even though the kids don't get to see their co-op friends very often now that our daughter attends school, they still consider their co-op friends to be their very best friends. 

The kids love their Spanish teacher and sneaked up behind her to give her big hugs as shown in the lower left & middle photos above.

We all had assigned tickets to see "The Nutcracker" ballet.   The kids were thrilled to discover that our assigned seats were right next to their BFFs' seats.

After a quick lunch, I took the kids on a hour-long drive out into the country where we arrived at a nice little horse farm.  I surprised our daughter with a horseback riding lesson as one of her Christmas gifts.  Her passion for horses runs deep into her soul, so she was on cloud nine for the rest of the day.

She spent the next few minutes meeting the horses, grooming a 34-year old horse named Newbie, and setting the blanket, saddle, bit, bridle, and reins.  She was quite comfortable in the saddle as always.  She and Newbie quickly went from walking to trotting and cantering to begging for more lessons (which I had already purchased and still remains a secret).  That right-brained child thinks so differently than I do, but when it comes to having a great love for horses, we are kindred spirits.

While she had her lesson, the farm owner's herd dog, Happy, kept bringing us slobbery pine cones.  He would drop them at our feet and look up at us with beggers' eyes.  Happy pleaded with my 5-year old first each time, but my boy would have nothing to do with that nasty pine cone.  So I kept throwing it high and far for Happy to fetch.  Happy seemed especially proud of himself when he would leap high into the air to catch the pine cone in mid-air.  We kept playing this game until the pine cone had fallen into 5 tiny bits which Happy happily coughed down and spit back up again.  Then he went searching for another pine cone to use in our game.

I had a leadership dinner to attend with dear friends from our co-op after our daughter's lesson.  (Perhaps one selfish reason for wanting to continue homeschooling at least one child might be so that I can remain a part of this awesome group of ladies!) So we met my husband at the restaurant, so he could then take our kids to Chick-Fil-A for dinner.  Santa Cow was there giving presents to kids, and since it was family night, CFA hosted special activities for kids.  It was the perfect end to a perfect day for our not quite perfect kids.