Thursdays at Our House

I've come to love Thursdays lately. Why? Mostly because we spend the entire day at home. And it feels nice. Actually, let me correct myself here. We do spend a whole lot of time in the house on Thursdays, but we spend even more time out in the yard.

That's because Thursday is a garbage pick-up day in our neighborhood. So first thing in the morning, right after breakfast and home school we rush into the front yard. From that moment we have about 4 hours to spend outside. Yes, that's a lot of time, so we try to make the most of it. 

We do a whole lot of weeding, picking up pine cones and sweet gumballs and battling with crabgrass. We've also been busy clearing the wooded part of our yard overgrown with ivy. My secret plan is to hang a hammock and hang some solar lanterns too. When it's done, I will be able to supervise M waiting for garbage trucks from the comfort of my hammock.

Of course, weeding doesn't take up 4 hours (not if you do it every single week). So for the last hour or so we end up just waiting... M busies himself with his toy garbage trucks; the cat lazies in the sun; and I try to read a book while simultaneously answering M's "is the truck going to be here soon?" questions.

Do you believe me when I say that the garbage truck drivers know M, wave at him, get out of the truck to talk to him and, whenever possible, get the crusher blade working  to smash-mash-crash all that trash? You better believe me.

The last truck usually comes by around 2-2:30pm. That's when we head back inside for a quick lunch. And then our fantastic speech therapist, Natalia, comes over. I can't believe my luck finally finding a speech therapist that a) my son adores, b) I like, c) is very effective, d) believes in holistic approach and e) is a native Russian speaker. 

Then later in the evening we now join a group of other Russian moms and children for a Russian story and tea time. And that's our Thursdays. Somehow we still end up staying busy. But at least it's a no-driving-around busy which I do like for a change.