Mental Aerobics

We have just two more days of school left for the year!  We are all anxious to spend some time doing the fun things that come our way this summer, and I'm anxious to get caught up on my house projects.

I've been doing a lot of thinking and evaluating over the last few days.  What worked this year?  What didn't work?  How can I streamline my tasks?  How can I be more organized?  What should I plan for next year?

One thing is certain.  With four students in three grades, I spend the day jumping mentally from...

...short and long vowels
...to division of decimals
...to botany
...to synonyms
...to Psalms and the attributes of God
...to prepositional phrases and dependent clauses
...to printing letters and numbers
...to the causes of the Revolutionary War
...to syllables
...to Bob Books
...to 3-digit addition
...to the Westminster Shorter Catechism
...and on and on and on!

The mental aerobics are exhausting and challenging to my feeble brain!  Now if I could just burn as many calories with the mental aerobics as I would with regular aerobics.  Wouldn't that be grand!

The World is in Bloom

I absolutely love the moment when the stark, drab gray of winter is gone and spring makes its long-awaited arrival in my yard.  Right now I have red tulips, yellow daffodils, pink and white bleeding hearts, and grape hyacinths blooming!  Our pear tree and cherry tree are filled with beautiful white blooms, and an ornamental crabapple is right on the cusp of bursting out into a bright pink, breathtaking display.  I could stand and look at these flowers all day long.  What a lovely reminder of the paintbrush of God.

I wonder if He looks at the flowers blooming and laughs with great joy in the colors that He made?  I am made in His image, and I find such pleasure in the hues and blooms, so I think He must.  I can only imagine His happiness as He holds His glorious paintbrush and says to a tulip, "Here, little one.  I'm going to paint you with orange and yellow, and the one who sees you will marvel at My design!"

Oh, how I love the spring!

I've come to realize...

...several things in the last week.

1.  Paper plates are worth the money.  I would rather play a game of "Sorry" with my eight-year old on a Sunday afternoon instead of washing dishes.
2.  It is bittersweet when your baby turns six.
3.  It is even more bittersweet when that six year old loses his first tooth.
4.  The thing I like most about my home is being there with the five people I love most in this world.
5.  I need to focus more time and energy on the things that are unseen and eternal in my home instead of the visible and temporal.  Laundry waits, hearts don't.

Lord, let me see what is important, and help me not to stress about the unimportant.