Road Trips

Yesterday the mailman brought our AAA triptik for our vacation to Phoenix. He also brought 2 money orders for some DVD's I sold, and a rebate check for our Tivo. Cool mail day! The boys ripped open the package for me, and weren't too excited about it until I explained what it was. The word "map" got them hooked! We looked through the triptik, then pulled down their dry-erase map of the United States. We just love that thing. We put it on the floor, carefully plotted out our route to Arizona, then drove it over and over again with Matchbox cars. Paxton decided it would be fun to take detours, so our little imaginery trip to the Southwest also took us to places like Canada, Alaska, and Africa (but we had to flip the map over for that.) We noticed that a lot of the state names and capitals were wearing off, so we fixed those, and added little notes along the way.... who lives where, we've been been, and where we want to go. We also had to freshen up our picture of the armadillo on Texas. We'd read that they live there awhile back, and for some reason the boys really enjoy that fact. I'm not 100% certain, but I'm really pretty sure that I didn't know that at their age.

Derbies and Birthday Parties

It's funny to me how our weekends seem to be one extreme or the other lately... either very lazy without any plans at all, or insanely busy. This past weekend was of the insanely busy variety, but I think I can speak for everyone when I say that it was a great one. Saturday was Spencer's pinewood derby finals. We had a good time, and were unbelievably proud of our little scout. He had a great attitude, and wonderful sportsmanship, and wasn't upset in the least that his car ended up 34th out of 34! All the boys took home special badges, medals, and t-shirts. It was neat to just be there, especially knowing that so many of the boys in his troop did not qualify. After the race we went out to lunch with Maba and Pop (who were kind enough to come up for the day to support Spencer in his race), then came back home for root beer floats. Sunday was lunch at Aunt Didi and Uncle Mich's, then play time for the boys while the girls all went out to enjoy a live showing of "The Full Monty" - just about the funniest thing I've ever seen. After the show I met the guys at Spencer's friend's birthday party. It was a space theme, and they happily played with frisbees, threw a hover craft around, and shot marshmellow "asteroids" out of homemade shooters. I love watching the boys run around with other kids.... it always makes me laugh inside, as I hear other people's inane concerns about "socialization" running around in my head. There were actually a lot of other homeschooled kids there, and amazingly enough, they too knew how to socialize appropriately. Even Everett joined in the fun, crawling around on the grass, waving at everyone, and pulling himself up on everything he could find. The only thing marring the otherwise perfect day was the ignorant, and somewhat insulting, comments I received from another mother about homeschooling. I just nodded and smiled a lot, and went home secure in the knowledge that I am doing what is absolutely and 100% right for us and our kids.

Happy days are here again

This has been a very long winter. We've been sick more often than not, and after this last bout of sicknesses, we were all left in a funk of epic proportions. This week, the cloud finally lifted. Our days have some rhythym to them again, we're all feeling connected, and the boys are happy and active. Today we spent most of the morning playing card games, and then headed out to the grocery store to get the ingredients for a frozen dessert they wanted to make. Everyone's been sick so often that even getting out to the grocery store was a big deal! We got our strawberries, watermelon, and yogurt, and Spencer chatted up one of the employees about the number codes that she was putting on the apples. We were in such a great mood that no one even stressed about the half a bottle of orange soda that spilled all over the back of the 4Runner. After we got home and had lunch, it was a time for a whirlwind cleaning of the house, because we had someone coming to give us an estimate on replacement windows. After he left, we all went outside to fetch the dog from the neighbor's house (we think something happened to her fence when part of the driveway washed away) and found CROCUSES BLOOMING!!! My favorite, no-question-about-it, official sign of spring. We decided we had to celebrate, so the whole family walked to the corner store - going by way of the old covered bridge where we stopped and threw rocks in the river - and got icecream sandwiches for after dinner. Paxton got tired on the way home, so I gave him a piggy-back ride while he caught his breath, and he hopped down in time to collect pine cones before we made it back to the house. Happy, happy Spring!!!