Planning Summer Days

This Tree was in the Middle of our Walk!

Summer is here!  The kids finally got done with school last Thursday.  We spent Friday playing video games, taking Alex to a party, and going shopping for a new marche pied as we lost ours at the park.  We took the Pamplona trip for the first adventure.  Yesterday we spent the day playing video games, taking Alex to another party, and going shopping for groceries.  

However, I don't want to spend the whole summer playing videogames, taking Alex to parties, and shopping with Will.  So, today, we implemented a new regimen.  

• Play Video Games
• Breakfast
• Exercise
• Write
• Lunch
• Nothing Time
• Go Outside
• Chores
• Summer Goals
• FREE TIME
• Dishes - Set Table
• Dinner
• Shower
• Cuddle (Alex insisted it be on the list)
• Sleep

The video game before breakfast part worked pretty well.  Normally the kids wake up at 6am anyway, so if they have something to do that is quiet and doesn't wake me up at that hour, everyone is happy.  Breakfast makes a good break as they are usually hungry when I wake up anyway.  The kids are used to turning off electronics during school hours, even on weekends.  

For breakfast, we made French Toast (not called that in France, btw).  Typically we buy "pain au lait" for use as hot dog buns.  However, there are different versions of it.  Once, we accidentally bought some that had chocolate in it.  And recently, we bought some that has bits of honey inside it.  It's delicious.  But not really with hot dogs.  Turns out, it makes great French Toast!

Miel = Honey

Deliberate exercise was a newly added thing.  At school they go out and run around, but for us all together, we needed to make a plan.  I started the negotiating high at 5 loops around the park.  The park is 1km around.  They countered with 1 loop.  I said we needed to meet somewhere in the middle.  So I counter-countered with 4 loops.  Will countered again with 2.5, exactly in the middle of zero and 5.  I said that works for me, but then how would we get back home?  So we decided to cut across the middle of the park, then do one loop clockwise, then do one loop counterclockwise, then cut back across to get home.  

I ended up traveling nearly 3 kilometers.  The boys took breaks in a tree and cut some corners, but tried to make up for it by running part of the way and meeting me back on my path.  Fairly successful.  



The only whiny part was right at the beginning where Alex decided that his knee was super injured for no reason.  Fortunately he sucked it up and got back on track.  I told him that he clearly needs intense training so he can go beyond a 0.1 km walk before whining.  Maybe tomorrow we can do better!

I asked the boys what we should do on our next walk to make it more challenging:

• Walk further
• Walk with arm weights
• Run the same distance

Alex proposed that we add 0.5km each day to the walk.  Will quickly did the math and determined that would get kind of far, pretty quickly.  I suggested that we reset every week to the base 2.5km.  Alex added that we should add 0.5km to the base kilometers every 2 weeks.  Will decided to write a Scratch program that does these calculations for us.  

And now we are writing... 

The boys are composing music while I do the blogging.  

Anyone for Lunch yet?