free time

Now that we are up at the farm with a diminishing schoolwork load and no electronic/media devices, the children must come up with their own entertainment. On Thursday the girls were gone all afternoon, having ridden their bikes 5 miles to the town library (to sit at the computer, but at least they got some exercise before and after) and Julia Ellen was asleep on the couch for several hours.

 Charlie just loves building models and found in our extensive book collection a paper model book of boats. Most of the pieces had already been taken out, but he traced the outline of each piece onto typing paper and constructed rather crude models of a submarine and viking longboats, complete with oars. For upwards of 3 hours Timmy and Charlie quietly constructed their boats out of paper and copious amounts of scotch tape and recreated scenes from Homer's The Odyssey which we watched for movie night a few weeks back.

I was able to spend a long drizzly afternoon sewing quilt blocks in absolute peace. Yes, there was a background noise of shooting and bad guys dying violent deaths, but it was a total respite from bickering, fighting,  tattling, and complaining. I'm thinking that our next movie night selection when we go back to the other house in a few weeks is The Hunt for Red October, Charlie already has his submarines at the ready to play Sean Connery and Alex Baldwin fighting it out.