Make a List with Me #2 ~ After School

Hope you'll join me in this on-going meme. Link back to me and grab my image and Make a List with Me!

List the things you used to do when you got home from school.

1. Pets -Play with, love and kiss our dogs. We had poodles, a lhasa apso, a maltese and a golden. I imagined that they were heartbroken without us all day.

2. Snack - I liked an apple with peanut butter. I only remember what my brother ate because it was so weird...grape jelly mixed into cottage cheese!! Remember being famished!

3. Outside - nice weather would find us biking, taking jumps of the mounds by sides of trees like Evil Knievel. Often, we played team games with some neighbors, like capture the flag, wiffle ball, ghost-ghost-midnight-ghost or kickball.

If kids weren't around, my brother would beg me to play sports with him and I would capitalize on his need and use it as a bargaining chip...allowing him only 1 out to my 5. Man, was I mean! I am sure that what I see my kids do to each other, in the way of teasing, I deserve as a consequence!

Sometimes my siblings and I would imagine we were the Wilderness Family amongst the trees in the woods. This movie really lasted for us. I want to rent it again...and they were homeschoolers!

4. Inside, for cold or rain - we watched every episode of The Brady Bunch! Sometimes we watched The Merv Griffin Show or The Mike Douglas Show. (Other favorites, Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, the Jetsons, the Flintstones and we only had like 6 channels but always found a great show to watch.)

5. Barbies/imagination - mostly I liked making their homes and placing their furniture.

6. Reading - I remember reading the Little House series, Nancy Drews, The Bobbsey Twins, library books and Little Women.... even books from my Father's library, like Hemingway!

7. Redecorating my room. When I was older I sometimes got on a kick where I'd move all the furniture around into different configurations while playing records.

8. Piano. Especially if I was in a bad mood, my soul was soothed by working it out on the piano. (I write this as I listen to my oldest working on learning a guitar song... but he'll play regardless of mood.)

9. Homework usually came after dinner. Procrastinator.

10. Chores. We had them directly after dinner. There was a rotating assignment. One night you were Dishes, another night you were Floors & Tables and then, Pots and it started all over again.

I can't help but contrast my after school life today to what it seems to be for some kids today. I left school behind, for the most part. Maybe in my later teen years there were phone calls but not the amount of interaction I suspect there is today with texting. Music lessons came to the house and somehow sports did not involve everyone tagging along in the car.

We interacted with our parents and always had a family meal together. My father was a partner in a law firm and somehow was still home for a formal dinner in the dining room every night. Conversation was expected.

And back then, there was certainly time to PLAY...there was even some silence to lose yourself in.

Idyllic as it was, I think that my children have less stress with certain factors not in their equation...homework, not enough sleep, social and clothing worries....

For my homeschooled children, what we do during the day IS homework and they have time to use their minds in a whole other way when school is over....that's made a calming difference in our family life. Happy to say that we too have dinner together as a family.

I see the juggling of personal interests as a challenge that will grow. Currently we have ice hockey on weekends that pull 2 of us away and soon my youngest son will start little league. Should I have something for my daughter to participate in? And what about my one son who sees it all as a disruption?

No routine lasts forever. But I pray that though it all we keep our peace and discern God's will.

What do you remember, after school?