Screen-Free Summer!

We're off to a great start for our screen-free summer: my kids are watching Super Why on the TV while I type up a blog post. So much for TV- and Computer-free summer starting June 1st, right?

I was without phone/internet for a few days last week and didn't have a chance to finish this over the weekend. So, I opted for one more morning in front of media screens. But this is it! Our rules for this summer ("our" being the kids and me during the day):

• email checking in the morning only
• no blog surfing, recipe surfing, blog reading, blog posting, web surfing,....
• business transactions allowed (we bank online, do library stuff online, etc.)
• TV will be an event in which all will participate, not an activity to keep kids occupied while Mommy cleans up the kitchen, types a blog post (ahem...), or other worthwhile pursuits
• some blog maintenance will be done (indexes updated and so forth; if you subscribe, you may receive these updated indexes.... I don't know).

I hope everyone who reads this little blog of ours has a wonderful summer. Carrie may post some things (and there are a few posts of mine still in draft form that I may get around to), but it will most likely be pretty "quiet" on the teapot. Check back once a month or so. Maybe we'll get enough free time come August (ha ha ha ha ha... nearly spit my tea out on that one) to post on a more regular basis.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to get back to the basics this summer with your family. A friend of mine and I are studying the Westminster Confession of Faith together (we're such nerds, aren't we!?), and it's been a rich, rich study of the fundamentals of the Reformed faith I claim to believe. I'm enjoying working through the Children's Catechism with my children. We've been learning the great memory verses on Steve Green's Hide 'Em in Your Heart CD's and learning some of the older Bible songs that I learned as a kid ("Joy, Joy, Joy Down in my Heart" anyone? How about "I am a C-" or "Deep and Wide" or "The B-I-B-L-E"?). We've also been spending some great family time eating ice cream (in a cone!) on the back porch, singing while my husband plays the piano (in the midst of his vast, beautiful repertoire of Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Gershwin, Joplin, Bach, Beethoven, etc., he plays a great "Jesus Loves Me"), and going on walks/hikes together (sometimes we even take our 100-pound laboradors!).