Our Week Outdoors - The End

The last day of our week outdoors started with me making the ‘trail mix macaroni salad’ – pasta, bacon, raisins, grated carrot, sunflower seeds, and salad dressing (I used ranch).

The flavour was good but I’m still not a fan of pasta salads — it is the texture of cold pasta that I don’t like.  The children all ate it but no one begged for more.

I received some gifts from the children when they arrived;

When we got outside I set up the tunnels.  There were several items I had handy just in case the children got bored – they rarely get bored outside so most of the items didn’t get used.  I wanted to get the tunnels out because we haven’t used them for a long time.  The children cheered;

I left them out all day and they were used for a variety of activities but the favorite one involved the balls – of course;

We also did some crafts — these children prefer active play so getting them interested in crafts is sometimes a challenge — messy crafts are the best.  I suggested that these might make good Father’s day gifts but left the decision up to them;

Later in the afternoon I noticed that there were pieces of bark neatly arranged in the tipi;

When I asked what the bark was for they informed me that it was ‘jail’ and they continued playing.  Some arrests were made, there was an attempted jailbreak – involving a pinecone ‘knife’ – everything ended peacefully.

So, here’s the evaluation of spending one whole week outdoors;

• Nap time outdoors is AWESOME even (especially) in the rain.
• Eating meals outdoors is ok occaisionally but eating every meal for a week outdoors is tiresome.
• No one complains about being bored.  No one misses the indoor toys.
• I discovered that I would not survive if I had to work any place that required me to wear shoes all day.
• All the ‘little things’ I normally do in spare minutes throughout the day – loading/unloading the dishwasher, checking/responding to email, miscellaneous paperwork, prepwork and cleaning-up etc don’t get done during the day.  They add an hour or two to my workday after the children leave — I normally only work 12 hours a day, this week it was closer to 14 hours per day.
• I miss my coffee pot.
• I have absolutely no trouble falling asleep at night.

I highly recommend it!