PrincipledMom™

Just an update on the activities at our house. We watched a lot of coverage that morning. I pointed out different officials to Gabrielle, who kept asking when we could go play. We discussed voting and how important this day was in our representative form of government. We also discussed how leaders were shown respect and the etiquette of the day in general, which she thought was pretty cool. So we stood when the crowd did and bowed our heads in prayer to feel more a part.

The parade followed lunch, and then she drew a picture of the day from her perspective. We estimated and then timed the speech and the swearing in and recorded those in her notebook.For dinner we dressed in our Sunday best and had dinner by candlelight: "chicken a la Italia" on a bed of white rice, steamed broccoli and chocolate cake with a dusting of powdered sugar. (The menu I quickly printed up also went into her notebook.) We ended the evening with dancing in the great room to a selection of classical favorites (a local classical station). All in all I think it was a great success.

Keep in mind that I woke up that morning with no inaugural plans. I just thought as I was getting out of bed that it would be fun to do some inaugural day stuff instead of our daily lessons. I grabbed my Bible and researched some principles and then just created a fun day from there. I spent a total of 30 minutes planning everything. Nothing fancy or overprepared, just a day of fun with what we had on hand. I just don't want you to think that this had been planned for weeks. I'm not that good!

I didn't make frosting, I made the cake from scratch because I had no mix (Or I would have done it that way!) and the little flags they carried at the parade were flag stickers that my husband's label company created and we had on hand. The costumes we already had on hand and the parade floats were just crepe paper streamers tied to our strollers. The menu was printed in Word in 5 minutes on my computer (one page of cardstock cut in 1/2). But they day was a lot of fun. I share all of this to let you know that it wasn't perfect. I would have liked to make it a lot fancier but the girls had so much fun that it didn't matter. Anything else would have just been for me, to make me feel better. But I think it was just right. They still talk about how much fun that day was. And that's why I homeschool--to share these moments with my children and to pass on these Biblical Principles and values.

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