Tag: music

Trip Planning

Ever wondered what kind of things Moms think about when they are planning to get in a vehicle? Length of trip doesn’t matter!

December 28, 2017

Trip Planning

We have to be at a distant location at a specific window of time on a specific day.  Easy enough, right?  Wrong!  Everything in our house is a sporadic adventure! 

Mom: It’s only an hour and two minute drive.

Christina: Then we leave at 8am.

(We are not supposed to arrive at said location until after 11am.)

Mom: Oh, no.  If we leave by 10, we go right by Grandma’s, pick her up, get lost, make 5 potty stops, and still have enough time to get you there.

Christina: Ahhhh! *facepalm*

(I think my teenager loves me.)

Seriously, I have learned a few things about planning trips with toddlers, teenagers, and husbands:

  • Plan to leave at least a half hour before you need to go (this allows for shoes tossed into the pond, a preteen sleepwalking back to bed four times, finishing any last-minute chore like making the list, and misplacing your keys which are already in the running vehicle)
  • Always pack like you will be gone for a week (diapers, wipes, four spare shirts, at least as many pants as diapers, spare shirts for anyone who may be carrying said baby, carrots and apples so you don’t get trapped by fast-food hunger, and 2 or 3 cases of bottled water should do it)
  • Whatever you do, plan 10 minutes extra to turn around (you forgot something you can’t leave home without – like baby’s special blanket, your toddler’s choice toy, your preteen’s library card, your sanity, or your husband’s totally non-standard phone charger)
  • Remember your wallet! (and make sure some toddler didn’t remove your license because he loves to play with mommy’s picture – that will be the day you will be pulled over for a faulty brake light or an oddly rocking vehicle)
  • Count heads (the children, toddler in carseat, hubby, take the dogs back inside, catch toddler who turned into carseat Houdini, now missing two! Oh yeah, hubby is unlocking the door for one who forgot to go potty)
  • Enjoy your 5 minute shopping trip! (or your entire day of travel)

Bonus fact: Music calms savage beasts and makes your vehicle a noisy dance-while-in-seatbelts rocking machine. Maybe DC Talk, Skillet, and Capital Kings are a bit rocky, but everyone dances to Deadmau5 and Disney.  As long as you have your license, roll down the windows, crank up the music, put on shades, and enjoy the ride!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Birthday Day Off

October 26, 2017

Birthday Day Off

We are a homeschool family.   Sometimes this means we goof off and play games on birthdays instead of do bookwork.  But consider how much learning is crammed into everyday life!

Money skills: Today’s practicum included working and saving (racing around to do enough chores to raise the difference from their savings to whatever toy they wanted to buy for birthday sister), budgeting (oops, that pony figure is outside of my budget!),figuring tax, and checking change received.

Math and Science Lab: This included addition (1 cup milk + 1 cup milk = 2 cups milk), subtraction (Lucas dropped an egg!), fractions (1/2 cup sugar, please?), chemistry (solution versus compound, various states of matter, and a lengthy comical discussion of how the ingredients became a cake!), and even biology (answering our first-grader’s question of “does the sun help grow sugar?”).  Finally, our “home economics laboratory” produced a gluten-free chocolate cake with buttercream icing as requested.

They brought home the “best addition” to the cake – a miniature model of the Millennium Falcon, birthday girl’s favorite Star Wars ship.   (It’s her dream to have the Millennium Falcon Lego set – oddly enough, same one Mom wanted as a teen!)  We perched this on a good spot.

Language and Creative Writing: (each student wrote and colored a birthday card for Rebeccah).

Pyrotechnics and Fire Safety followed.  (This is otherwise known as lighting candles and hearing Mom’s 275th lecture on keeping hair away from flame!)

Music: (where everyone tries to get “…and many more” in the lowest baritone possible and the kazoos attempt to play some tune!)

Now for the guinea pigs to taste the experimental laboratory creation!  (A+ everyone lived!)  Creativity flowed during Art – the party hats turned into eye patches, unicorn horns, and noses.

Sometimes life takes over our classwork.  That’s okay.  We get a lot of practical work done on “days off!”

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Power of Music

This is what music does…

October 15, 2017

Power of Music

Sometimes music is just the perfect thing to lift you up.  Today, I needed an energetic soundtrack for work.

I love how God seems to know exactly what to play and in what order.  It never matters what station: it’s always the right playlist!

So, my radio started with “That’s How You Change The World” by Newsboys.  (Absolutely perfect!   Skyrocket volume up, windows down!  I’m sure anyone outside on my road wondered if I was deaf.  My Daddy taught me to enjoy music by feeling it like a bass drum is your heartbeat.  Oh, I love that song too! Beckah Shae does it… But it wasn’t in the mix today.)

Just as that one is finished, I crawled to a halt at a red light and “The River” by Jordan Feliz started.   (Now in the middle of traffic, my hands stay on the wheel but my head is bobbing like a doggy on a dashboard so I’m pretty sure people think I’m crazy – but that’s perfectly fine for them to see me as I really am.)

This wonderful selection was finished with Britt Nicole’s “Amazing Life” (This one caused the volume to increase another notch) and “I Feel So Alive” by Capital Kings.  (Halfway through I had to turn this down to a manageable super-sensitive-ears-person-enjoying-music volume so I wouldn’t blow away my passenger.)

The power of music is to energize and refresh.  I love worship songs – I love songs I can make motions and signs to because that feels like dancing.  I imagine the music entering my body, refilling me with some kind of electron fuel, and exiting as a broad grin and my attempt at singing along. (At least, that’s what happens in a car… when my feet are free to dance?  “Shackles” by Mandisa; let the song do the talking!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

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