We slept in, this morning. Then a few kids went to the pool for a hour with Aaron and a few stayed home to puzzle and do some clean up with me.
We ate lunch at home and watched Bride Wars, then drove to Cape Canaveral/Cocoa Beach, where we found a 7-11 for Slurpees and a few hours of PERFECT warm ocean water, shells, and a wonderful afternoon/evening at the beach. Is there anywhere better in the world than the beach? It is forever my happy place, and Aaron’s happy place, and Quincy’s, and Sloane’s happy place, for sure. Sloane grabbed a boogie board and made a beeline for the water. I’ve never seen her move so fast. Ever. She likes pools and lakes but she dove right into the waves without so much as a glance back.
One of our favorite shells to find when we go to Destin/Navarre are the auger “unicorn” shells. Today we found several that were still alive-a first for us! We loved watching them burrow into the tide pools Bear built after every wave. We stopped for dinner at Portillos (soooooo good!!!) and after the littles went to bed the big kids ate ice cream and watched a movie. The 3 little guys are working shifts waking up during the night, so this little moment to watch a show with just the big kids while all 3 were asleep was great! Sloane was up within 30 minutes after and the graveyard shift began haha!
We tried two new things today to try to curb some behavior/attitude concerns. The first is Aaron and I each chose a child to show extra love snd patience to for the entire day. At the end of the day we report back to each other with 3 positive experiences, interactions, or qualities about that child. There was no difference in behavior, but this exercise did help with our feelings about them. We will each choose another child to focus positive thoughts and energy on today.
The other new thing I came up with is to play some behavior mod/connection games. The goal of the one we played yesterday was to encourage more listening and less talking over one another. It’s called 5 Seconds. We played this on the hour+ drive over to the beach and it was so fun!
It started with me as prompt giver, but eventually the kids came up with prompts. You take turns being asked a prompt. You have 5 seconds to “name 3”. It just gets your mind thinking, but the answers were pretty funny under the pressure of only having 5-4-3-2-1 seconds to answer. Examples of prompts were: name 3 foods, 3 things you wear, 3 things you do when you wake up, 3 colors, 3 cold foods, 3 reasons to be late to church, 3 reasons to miss school, 3 countries, 3 months of the year, 3 things that fit under your bed, 3 bands, 3 foods you don’t like etc.
We laughed a LOT. It was a good day.
Every day at the beach with my family is a good day.
They could have stayed for hours more.
Quotes from the day:
Esme name 3 things that fit under your bed. “Underwear!”
Bear: what happens when you win this hook game? What do you get?
Aaron: you get to be obedient all day.
Bear: it looks like you’re supposed to drink that cup.
Aaron: the cup is obedience.
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