Sweetness

It's been a week of sugar. Yeah, yeah, there has been Halloween. We know about that. Walter was a "rich man," perhaps Bill Gates--at least that's what is on his nametag at this party. Rutledge went from having a pirate costume to being afraid of it to getting back his devil costume from last year to finally declaring that he was going to be "A Star War." In the end, this meant that he would reuse Ollie's Jango Fett jumpsuit from last year and would wear the mask for a grand total of less than one minute. Frances made it easy on us by wearing an old tablecloth with two eye holes cut in it and going as a ghost. And Ollie was Freddy Kruger. We ran around like crazy people looking for a mask on Halloween morning, but since I wasn't willing to pay $20 for an ugly piece of rubber, he settled for using makeup. I think he looked fabulous!


But that doesn't really address the many roles sugar has played in our life this week. There was last week, when we made pyramids and then igloos out of sugar cubes. I determined that this whole Classical Education thing was not entirely working when I was benignly neglecting Frances. When the twins were her age, we were knee deep in listening to the Story of the World CDs and making models of the Nile and mummifying things and doing science experiments with bouncing eggs. But now we were forging forward with our own plans, and Frances wasn't getting to do the projects and the endless listening to the story of Tarak, eating his lizards that served as their foundation for the study of history. Let's just say that the pyramid went a lot better than the igloo. Someone was telling me this week that it is very expensive to build round rooms and round houses, and I can fully understand why. Plus glue plus sugar cubes often equals a puddle.

Then there was the "edible" cell models. We've been attempting to cover Biology in a rather schizophrenic way this year. I almost always refer to books and education materials as "resources" rather than curricula, and this is because my real problem is that I can't make decisions. I'm a low commitment kind of gal these days. I use a little of this, a little of that, and I'm constantly looking for something that will fill things out just a little bit further or offer just a tweak on the perspective. And that is my justification for using, ahem, three separate curricula so far for science this year, and it doesn't even touch on the other books I've pulled in on the side. We started with LifePac Science, which has a bit too fundamentalist bent for my comfort, but it does systematically cover the major topics that one might see on a 4th or 5th grade standardized test and has the kids writing down the vocabulary words that marginally literate people should know when it comes to basic sciences. Walter and Ollie find it deadly dull. I find it often lacking in depth, including even the basics of the type that you'd find in the generalist Seymour Simon or Gail Gibbons picture books. Not that we're not reading those as well, but it makes me realize how much we need to supplement in order for me to feel like we've done justice to the topics. Much of last month was spent on weather--causes of differing weather, fronts, heat and cold and their ups and downs, pressure of various kinds, instruments for measuring various things that affect weather. It was really boring! Now weather could be a very exciting topic, but not in a LifePac. I was eager to move on--draw some diagrams in their notebooks, take some quick tests that say they know enough not to be meteorologically ignorant, and then upward and onward. Back to Biology.

So the topic now is cells. Animal cells and plant cells. Another of our so-called curricula this year is the E=McQ free Life Sciences curricula that I downloaded and printed over the summer. This is much better suited to doing while including Frances, which is appealing, and it introduces just a few more terms than what we've seen elsewhere. So far we're not on cells there, but the focus on biotic vs. abiotic was a start. Then I popped over to my newest acquisition, Real Science 4 Kids Biology. We used this series for Chemistry a few years ago (two years too soon, but I digress...), and the Biology lives up so far to my expectations based on my past experience with this author. Since we've already chugged through quite a bit of the LifePac on cells and have rounded that out a bit with Time4Learning's segments on cells, organelles, and the "building blocks of life," the extra material and its lively presentation in the RS4K book went down well. Plus there was a pleasant diversion with an initial chapter on taxonomy. Ever the comedian, Walter had a great deal to say about old King Philip Came Over From Great Spain. The Kingdom was King Arthur's. What do we do to our nails? Phylum. The Order is a McRib. The Family is the Clendenons. The Genus has an IQ of 150. Ha ha.

But I digress again. The big adventure wasn't what we studied. It was what happened next. Last Thursday evening we made these jello cells. They involved a transparent shade of flavored jello, some Knox gelatine, and a variety of bad pre-Halloween candy.

First, Frances' animal cell cracked in half. So she ate it. Then Ollie's nucleus blew his animal cell apart. Walter had better luck, but overall, the plant cells went a bit more smoothly. For one, we had figured out a better system for implanting organelles at that point. And we also benefitted from the more rigid cell walls that distinguish the plant from the animal cell.

But the true excitement came in the morning, when Frances popped excitedly into my room and announced, while my eyes barely had the sleep rubbed out of them, that she had puked four times during the night. In her room. On the bed and the floor. And she had moved the sleeping Rutledge to the floor to get him out of the way. This followed right on the heels of vomit and dog poop all over Bilbo's crate and the living room floor from Hokie. Anyone who knows me know that this is way too much provoking to me! I responded by cancelling our plans to go to Inflation Nation, the indoor inflatable bouncy monstrosity place I had set up a trip to for our homeschool group. And then I began cleaning. Ten hours later, I was still disinfecting. And ten days later, we've managed to go unscathed by her illness. I'm almost certain that that gelatinous cytoplasm was at the root of the ordeal!

This weekend's sugary moment involved...drumroll please...twenty pounds of sugar. Nearly a cup of meringue powder. For the past two years, we have had a tradition of making sugar skulls to celebrate Day of the Dead. I couldn't let it go by this year without some royal icing, so this afternoon I bought my own sugar skull mold--an XL one--at World of Mirth. In the past, we've used Adena's, so I'm thrilled to have one of my own, but I think I preferred making the Large size instead of this gargantuan one, which takes a lot more raw material than I had bargained for!



This is my base of operations. A teaspoon of meringue powder and of water for every cup of sugar. I didn't have a bowl big enough to prepare the whole bag of sugar at once, so I kept it going six cups at a time.



The sandlike mixture is packed tightly into the skull mold--once for the front and once for the back. After I let them dry overnight on little squares of cardboard on the counter, I will scoop out some of the sugar mixture from the back of the pieces and then allow them to dry for another 12 hours. When that time is up, I'll use cement-like royal icing (powdered sugar, more meringue powder, and water) to glue the two parts together to make a 3-D sugar skull that we will then be able to decorate with more icing, pieces of colored foil, bottle caps, sequins, shells, or whatever we decide to use. When they are dry, they can last for years. If Rutledge hadn't made a snack of our previous ones, we would still have the ones we made at previous co-ops. Unfortunately, all I have left is a smeared half of one on my schoolroom bookshelf.



Here are the blanks, reposing on pizza boxes, stuffing boxes, cereal boxes, and whatever else I could scavenge. Our recycling was picked up on Wednesday, and any boxes that didn't go out with that are being saved to wrap Christmas presents in. I had to get creative!

While we weren't being artistic with sugar, we were on field trips this week. Tuesday we saw the play "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" at Theatre IV, which is the local theatre for children. It was pretty bad. Frances liked it--it was silly. But it completely lacked the spirit--and yea, the pun is intended--of Irving's original story. We've seen a few other live drama productions of Sleepy Hollow over the years, including an awesome one at Explore Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway that was done outdoors and included a great deal of memorable music. But this particular prodution belabored the less-important details of the story, took some liberties not exactly implied by the author, and most of all, wasn't creepy. Hmmm.

Thursday we traveled to Mount Vernon. Can you believe that I've lived in Virginia for 36 years and I've never been to Washington's home? It is a full-day affair. There was an engaging introductory movie, an anticipatory line to buy tickets to the whole shebang in the first place, and a pretty amazing model of Washington's actual house that had walls that moved up and down so that you could see the perfectly scaled and detailed interior. I think the kids enjoyed the food court most, with its historically accurate Pizza Hut and 32 ounce soft drinks. We added on a "National Treasure Tour" to our regular ticket, and this got us into the basement of Mount Vernon as well as took us on a walking tour of the grounds to all of the places where the movie was filmed, with commentary on the historical accuracy of what was portrayed, how the Mount Vernon Ladies Association or whatever it is called that owns the property communicated with the Walt Disney company about how they could use the property, and gave us stunning views of the Potomac.


It was a chilly and windy day, but the turning leaves were inspiring.


But not quite as inspiring to 10 year old boys as this: a 3 person privy with wooden drawers underneath that could be taken out and emptied. This was a pretty state of the art privy for its day because it represented centralized sanitation set apart from the house. Their friend was especially repelled by the group aspect of the layout.


Everyone needs a photo prove that they were really there. In this one, the house looks more proportional than it does to me in real life. Up close, it looked a little, well...short. Like a model of a house instead of a whole one. It must have something to do with those second story windows that go right up to the roof. Some of the interior highlights include the very fashionable green room (I'm so glad that this is not the vogue these days--I can't stand when molding is painted as well as the walls!) and the bed where Washington died. We had just seen Jefferson Davis' house the week before, so the continual question the boys had, as they did there, was, "Is this the original ____." Imagine that repeated over and over and over again. What's neat is that Mount Vernon has been working tirelessly to acquire as many of the original items in the inventory in the house as possible--many were sold at estate sales when George and Martha died or were pilfered over the years.


The formal gardens and fruit orchard were not of interest to my world-weary historical house tourists. But they were heartily impressed by the very large trees, including some stunning tulip poplars on the property. When we were at a wedding reception at Washington's River Farm, which is down the street from Mount Vernon, there were only two trees there that were original to Washington's time, and both were the dreaded Black Walnut. I say dreaded because for several years I did battle with a large and violent black walnut in our yard on Sherwood Avenue. I hated that thing! Darn rock-hard nuts with sharp points that embed in your yard and stab your feet when you think you've picked every last one of them up!


And finally, we had a good time Saturday night at the fall festival held by our church. The site where it was held was perfect--many acres for hayrides behind the tractor (all you need is a 3 year old boy to access the deep appeal of this again!), a gladiator moon bounce that could hold about 30 kids at once (this is a church with about 25 kids ages 3-5, not to mention the many on either side of that), a chili cookoff, a bonfire and marshmallows, and plenty of friends. So even though we didn't make it to a pumpkin patch this year, I do feel like we lived fall to its fullest so far. Now if only the leaves would come off the trees!

Mini Semester Two

It seems like even though we aren't in "school," we do have a session demarcation that develops on its own. And this is the start of our new mini-semester, it would seem. Our Young Rembrandts art class is over and the 5 week pottery session is about to begin. The Edison Project class Walter was taking at www.quickstudylabs.com ended last week (but ended for him a mere two days ago because he was out of town for the final week of the distance learning class), and the new one begins tomorrow. And this week we sign up for the next session at the Richmond Enrichment Studio, which is a homeschool center. We still have two weeks left of the current 8 week session, but the changing of the guard is in sight.

It has finally been seasonal here. Tonight we expect a freeze, and because we're resistant to turning on our heater quite yet, it's a wee bit freezing here in our house. Walter, Rutledge, and I celebrated the season by going to Carter Mountain Orchard in Charlottesville. The orchard, which is about 90 seconds away from Monticello and Ashlawn-Highland, is your typical tourist craziness--thousands of families, well-coordinated and extensive parking direction, twenty checkouts, cutouts to stick your face in for pictures. You get the idea. We had a great time. And we came home with 20 pounds of apples. Tomorrow the big plan is to make an apple pie. Only 80 more apples to go after that!


The Fujis were especially elusive. What more excuse do you need to find in a niche in the canopy?


Apple cider doughnuts by the half-dozen, still warm. With apple slushies. With your 22 pounds of apples. Ahh, the good life.


Fall is for hayrides. You know, I think that when I was growing up I might never have been on a hayride. Or maybe once at a weekend camp I went to at a horse ranch. But I don't even remember. My kids? They're on a hayride every time they turn around in the fall and spring. Walter and Rutledge especially enjoyed seeing the top-secret apples not for public picking and consumption. I vetoed walking a mile with three elbow-wrenching bags of Granny Smith's to try to sneak a few contraband pieces of fruit.



Overall, though, this was a relaxing weekend at home. Walter and Frances went to a sleepover at a neighbor's house, and Frances went to watch her friend cheerleading and her friend's brother playing football. She went to a mock-sleepover birthday party on Friday night. In the midst of the playing, we also managed to read two short but satisfying stories about the Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving, numerous picture books, a short book about George Washington, and more than half of the Great Illustrated Classics _Captains Courageous_. Ollie and I are still in the middle of _Five Children and It_, Ollie is reading the second in the Gregor the Overlander series, and we have _The Cat Who Went to Heaven_, another Newbery winner, on the docket for tomorrow night. Frances rewrote, in her own special way, the story of Rumplestiltskin, which I transcribed onto notecards that she bound together and plans to illustrate.

Walter and Ollie worked together to make a "sweeper," which is the first project in the new Lego Science and Technology set that came in the mail last week. I'll have to write more later about what a cooperative venture looks like between the two of them.



This particular project was called "Circus Magna." Two different circus tricks are either "attractive" or "repellant." In the first, a man flips from a platform on the tower and lands on a target after the car drives through. In the second, which you see above and below, a jump seat is picked up by a car as it drives under the tower. The next step was to build a counter that will record the number of times the trick is performed.

I think it's official--Suburban Season is over for me.  I played my last game of the fall season this morning, and, well...the less said the better.  I was on a total winning streak at our new B3 level, which was a considerable jump from our previous C1 Bumped To C2.  For the first three engagements, I was on top of the world--doubling up playing both singles and doubles and winning both.  Then, a combination of Peter Principling and tougher opponents knocked me back into my place.  This morning I lost 8-2 to a very nice woman.  And then Kate and I lost 10-5 in doubles.  I had a migraine last night and this morning, and I took Maxalt and was far-off spacey, had spots in front of my eyes, and didn't have the oomph to get the ball over the net during my first match this morning.  Things were better, but obviously not good enough in the second match.  Next week we are going to the Museum of the Confederacy for a program on daily life for soldiers and on medical procedures, including amputation.  I'm really excited, and the kids will have a great time, too, but it does go to show that my motto is mostly true:  "Every week is special."  You can try not to book too many things, but special opportunities will come up, and sure enough, they do!

I'm doing my darndest to potty train Rutledge now.  I've been on a bit of a low lately--wallowing a little more than is mentally healthy in my "We've been rejected by our families."  I've also been feeling my lack of wage earning and the social status of stay at home mothers--I'm feeling like I've taken a heavy dose of not being a wage earner, not having a very attractive resume, and not contributing to my community.  And a bit of self-pity because my children are numerous and challenging.  We're not at our personal best these days--loud toddler, sullen or bored ten year olds, impatient 7 year old.  And then me.  

My emotions have also been given a churn by the death of our neighbor across the street during the night on Monday.  I woke up at 2:45 a.m. to the sound of a generator on fire engines and ambulances.  Two fire engines (including a hook and ladder arriving more than 45 minutes after the ambulance), two ambulances, and three police cars ended up on the scene before all of the lights and sounds left.  I realized the next morning that perhaps why it affected me so much, since I didn't know the woman at all, not even her name, was that it was the exact day of the 6th anniversary of my Mom's death.  Which would probably explain why I was so unexpectedly broken up by some random song on XM Village about "wanting to see my mother's smile again."  And it's probably behind some of my questioning of whether she'd be ashamed of what I've done with my life or proud of me.  I suspect she would at least act as if she was proud of me, even if deep down she was thinking, "What a miserable waste of space!  Playing tennis and taking kids to the park and driving back and forth to a zillion activities that aren't even her own!"  I miss having that kind of at-least-on-the-surface nonjudgmental support from someone who loves me just the way I am.  

Today was one of those days when I left the house at quarter til nine in the morning and didn't return until 8:15.  It's rough being away for almost 12 hours.  I found myself at our Community Group still in my Cheeto-stained tennis clothes.  It was all good stuff--3 hours of tennis, 1 hour of travel time and lunch, 2.25 hours at the park, 1.5 hours knitting at gymnastics, 1 hour of travel time picking up Ollie and buying some supplies for a history project, a plant, and dinner, and then 30 minutes of travel slush time, a little over an hour at Community Group.  But I'm exhausted.  

We're back on task at Latin class tomorrow.  It's always a little bit stressful because the boys' behavior in there hasn't been the best in the past.  But we waded through the homework from the week they missed and I think they're picking up the concept of person and number.  I hadn't remembered how new those concepts felt to me even as far as 8th grade, when I first started in Latin and realized that I don't think we had ever covered names for the pronouns or nouns that the verbs were agreeing with.  It was eye opening.  So I'm sympathetic with Walter and Ollie's initial confusion.  Alas, this coming week we have both the irregular verb "to be" to learn and the endings for first declension.  I anticipate lots of memorization singing in the next few days.

And we are woefully behind on our online German program at www.livemocha.com.  They really like the visual aspect of it, and I think it's a great way to begin learning a language without feeling a burden of heavy grammar concepts.  That's on the growing list of plans I have for what I'd like for us to keep up with that I'm not quite keeping up with.  Our Lego Science and Technology set came on Monday, and I haven't even had time to look at it.  I think it will take about 45 minutes to do a lesson, but we need to find a 45 minute time block somewhere that isn't spoken for.  And amazingly, that's increasingly difficult to do.  

This reminds me that I need to RSVP for a birthday party Frances has been invited to for Friday.  And I need to get a gift.  And I need to get the twins started on making their cars for the Cub Scout Derby Saturday.  

Boy have we been busy!  I had a more supposedly more stringent Fewer-Field-Trips stance this year, but lo and behold, we haven't stuck very well to it.

For the past 11 days, the boys have been out of town riding the Virginia Creeper Trail, going to a barn party, camping at Hungry Mother State Park, and skating at the skate park in Lynchburg.  Annie and Tim came to get them last weekend, and despite a minor episode of a stomach bug earlier in the week, it seems like everyone had a great time.  I'll probably be getting some pictures soon, but the highlight of the trip seemed to be seeing a very cute dachshund puppy on the drillfield at Virginia Tech.  Some other moments I've heard about:  a strange conversation with a women at the state park whose husband has depression issues; a head-on car crash that they witnessed; not liking beets (too sweet, Walter said); a bike debacle involving a large rock; 17 miles "all downhill," in their words.  I'm just glad to have them back.

Frances and I have been doing a lot of reading, which explains why I haven't done a lot of blogging.  The days just aren't long enough.  With the lesser chaos of only two children this week, the focus turned from the twins to Frances.  I had never read a chapter book with her, and to exonerate myself somewhat, I should mention that she has never shown interest in joining our nightly reading.  In fact, it's just in the past two or three weeks that Walter has started participating.  In the past, he has gone off to play with his Legos or has simply been in some kind of brown study, not listening or paying attention.  I've had to change my book selection a little bit in order to keep him and now Frances with us, but it's a change for the good, and perhaps it will spur Ollie to do more reading on his own, which it has (he just finished the 4th in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series, _Outcast_).   

Here is a list of what Frances and I read while the boys were gone:

*  My Father's Dragon

*  Elmer and the Dragon

*  The Dragons of Blueland

*  The Mouse and the Motorcycle

*  The Magic Finger

*  Gloria Rising

Now we're reading _George's Marvelous Medicine_, which she is loving.  Prior to the Annie and Tim trip, we were on a Henry Huggins streak here, following a long spate of Ramona books.  We're also in the midst of Old Yeller, which was for the book club that we can't seem to get to because it falls on the week of each month that we've managed to be out of town.

Yesterday was a PauWau in Powhatan, which was both interesting in itself and interesting in my children's response.  Now Rutledge's opinion doesn't count for much--he's just along for the ride.  But Frances was ready to go almost from the moment we arrived.  I have to find myself wondering whether they've been jaded by too many field trips.  Pau Waus (what's up with the spelling?), dance festivals, theatre performances, historic houses, Colonial towns, museums, classes on science, art, music, etc., etc.--they've just seen it all, often multiple times.  Their primary question now tends to center around how long it's going to take to get to the location of whatever it is.  Annoying.  Though maybe it's good to be so immersed in so many experiences that they start to feel very "normal."  

I was pleased to hear that Ollie watched the presidential debate on Tuesday evening.  The whole time I was watching it, I was thinking that Ollie needed to be in on this, and I missed being able to talk to him about it.

Thursday Rutledge, Frances, David, and I went on a tour of the Bon Air Fire Station.  I've seen tons of fire stations in my time, so it was interesting but not earth-shattering to me.  I think David had the best time of all.  Rutledge was a bit nervous...fire departments do have this thing about water, you know.  

Alas, I did not have our new telephoto and macro lens for our camera when we went to all of these events.  And I did not take it along to the Richmond Folk Festival when we went last night.  I wanted to travel exceptionally lightly--my only concession was for our water bottles.

This might be a good moment to say how easy it is to have only two children!  Unbelievable.  It's hard to even begin to say where the comparative simplicity begins.  Less noise.  Even with Rutledge being in a generalized bad place with frustration tolerance and anger management, it was still so much quieter and more calm with just two children.  There was less fighting, less intentional aggravation of each other.  When I was trying to read, there was infinitely less disruption.  I was on top of the laundry, on top of the dishes, and the house was relatively clean.  I had some extra time and energy for larger scale cleaning projects (putting out of season or hand me downs that are too big into plastic tubs, cleaning the twins' room).  I just felt more sane.  And let me say now, the moment the twins came back the mess began.  The kitchen was pretty spotless.  They came, and suddenly there was doughnut powder all over the floor, stuff all over the counters, spilled food, clothes dumped here and there, and plastic weapons in all the wrong rooms.  And the bickering, antagonizing, and general noise level...yikes!

Kerry is out of town at the Men's Retreat at the new church we've been attending.  I am so guilty of always looking for greener pastures, and I'm kind of hating myself right now for putting myself in this position again.  Our old church misses us, but for whatever reason, I've found myself searching out other options for years while we were there, and I'm sure there's no perfect place, but I feel like my roving nature is probably some cover for some deeper character flaw.  I hope Kerry is having a good time, though.  He'll be home tomorrow.

Tomorrow is incredibly full--church in the morning, dive practice in the early afternoon, I need to figure out how to get a birthday gift for a party we're going to at 5, and I'd like to get the other kids to the folk festival again for part of the afternoon.  I don't know when Kerry will be back, and he's out of cell phone range, so I'll have to see how it all pans out in terms of logistics.

Right now I'm watching a show on Animal Planet called Dogs 101, and I'm finding, as always, that I wish that the boys were awake.  They would love this!  And although we have a DVR downstairs, I can barely figure out how to even turn on our complicated TV/Fios/Playstation 3 system, so I doubt I'll ever figure out how to put something semi-permanently in the electronic ether on the fly.  

Oh, I forgot--the most exciting part of the week for Ollie was shooting a real BB gun.  If he can take a hunting safety course, WT will take him hunting this year.  He has declared that he's not too interested in pheasant, but is feeling ready to confront a deer or a bear.  Hmmm.  We'll see how that goes.

And we've had a lot of hamster drama (or, as Rutledge calls them, Hampers).  For Frances' 7th birthday two weeks ago, I got her the world's cutest hamster.  She really was adorable--small, fuzzy, and even Ollie, who isn't prone to this type of thing, said we should call it "Ms. Snugglewumps."  Well, to make a long story short, Ms. Snugglewumps, quickly renamed "Screamy," had some serious anxiety and defensiveness issues.  We endured three very difficult days with her--I never knew that a hamster could scream!  The final straw was a four hour stalking in my bedroom, including deep under the bed chase.  She was shrieking, expressing her scent glands, and prepared to bite the heck out of our fingers.  Not surprisingly, it was Walter who eventually caught her, and when he did, we sent her right back to Petco where we had bought her.  It turned out that Petco had been having some strong responses to this particular litter of hamsters, and the very knowledgeable small animal representative there suggested we go to Petsmart, which she said had more child-friendly rodents.  Enter Hamster #2, whose lack of a name constitutes some foreshadowing.  This charming male, who loved being handled and was friendly and kind, suddenly and unexpectedly kicked the bucket two days ago.  He was given a proper burial in the backyard in our, alas, growing animal graveyard, only to be dug up again today by Bilbo.  Sigh.  Meanwhile, we have hamster #3, who I am terrified about at this point.  We have an increasingly shocking track record with small animals.  I fear that one of our hermet crabs has expired now, and I'm not sure why--I can see they aren't thriving, but I'm at a loss in figuring out what to do about it.  They have a new cage, plenty of stimulating things to do, two different kinds of hermit crab "variety" meal, fresh vegetables at times, water, a sponge, have been given baths, and yet they aren't moving unless we poke at them.  I want our pets to be happy, and I worry that something about us is simply toxic.

And in the meantime, Bilbo ate a chunk out of our older leather sofa today.  Older means 6 years, not ancient.  And it was already falling apart on its own and Bilbo has enjoyed pulling the stuffing out of the open area in the past.  Today added in the ripping of, as Ollie calls it, genuine cowhide.  

And this is probably enough for now.  We've been out and about as much as ever, and yet at the same time trying to balance out some time at home for playing as well.  October is always not exactly the cruellest month, but it is probably yearly our busiest.

What have we been up to lately?

Starting school. We've been way on track for the first week and a day. There's something even to be said for that in the homeschooling world. I was so hardass tonight that I made them do math for tomorrow because I know that tomorrow is not going to be productive as far as academic work goes. We have a LLL meeting at 9 a.m., then at 12:30 we have art class, and by the time we leave, it will be evening. Full day, but not high pressure. I'm probably rock climbing in the evening.

Not Back to School Picnic. It was at a member's house, and the kids had a great time playing in the lake, canoeing, kayaking, and jumping on the water trampoline.





Camping at Camp Bethel. Every Labor Day they have their annual Family Camp Weekend. We caught up with our friends Rachel and Angie. Highlights included catching probably 100 salamanders, having a funeral and woodland burial for a dead trout, and being mere yards away sleeping when a cow dropped her calf with no fanfare in the early hours of the morning. Oh, and a whopping case of chiggers.



We bought a new canoe and a two person sit-on-top kayak. We've been out a few times on them, but I have to say that I'm really quite done with loading them onto the van. The canoe especially is a total pain to lug around and left a gouge on the back of our still kind of new van. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get it squared away at its new spot at the T-bars near the reservoir. Then, when we need to take a quick trip out to some desert island in Midlothian, we'll just need to drag it 20 feet or so.

This coming Thursday, we are heading to Isle of Palms, SC for a family reunion.  I surely hope that all of the hurricanes can hold off so that we don't end up staying home!

Walter has been taking an online electronics class at www.quickstudylabs.com. I can't say enough good things so far. He has learned an incredible amount in just two week. The class uses the Electronic Snap Circuits 300 set as a base and then the teacher, who is a community college professor of Electronics, fleshes out the projects with much more explanation, small videos, and audio so that they really understand what the projects are teaching. I know for sure that I've learned so much already; I knew nothing about electronics before this. We've learned about how current is electron flow, how it flows from the negative terminal around to the positive terminal and out the negative one again, about how and why some people use conventional current and others use electron flow, about resistance, adding resistance, about the parts of a circuit, loads, parts of a DC engine and how it works as an electromagnet with its brushes, armature, and commutators, about LEDs and their differences from traditional light bulbs, about the parts of a lightbulb, about how speakers work, about series and parallel circuits, about branch points. This week there was a contest to see who could find the most LEDs in their home. Walter found 96! And he spelled nearly all of them correctly without help! The funniest was "knight light." He's been playing Runescape too much.

Ollie's diving schedule for the fall remains fraught with drama. It's a terrible shame. The dive coach that all of the competitive divers we know want did not seem to receive the contract with our local pool. This means that instead, practices will be at another pool 40 minutes away, up to four times a week (and we're already signed up for a weekly dive clinic there already, so that would make 4-5 days a week we'd be going there or arranging a carpool). All I'm looking for is a good quality instructor who takes safety seriously, is reliable, affordable, and preferably doesn't require several $60 tanks of gas a week to get to.

This morning we went to the Science Museum with Adena and her kids to see the Grand Canyon IMAX movie. It was really good. A little preachy, but the scenery was fabulous, and unlike many IMAX movies I've seen, it had a very good narrative with it that was much more coherent than most and taught both me and the kids a good deal about the changes the Colorado River has gone through in the past 150 years, about the repercussions of damming, about the desert biome, and about the native people who have lived in that area over the centuries. There was also inspiring whitewater rafting and kayaking footage. I was smart this time and took a Dramamine before it started, and I was fine.

Unfortunately, I've had a migraine for way over a day now. I took Maxalt this morning at around 6:15 a.m., and that kicked out the pain, but left behind a few hours of side-effect nausea. It was gross. Now the headache is making it's return. I'm so tired of hormonal problems.

Yesterday's playdate excitement was that a whole group of children seemed to stumble into a yellowjackets' nest. 4/7s of the kids were stung, including two of mine. Both Ollie and Rutledge were stung right on their eyes. I took them by the ped's office just to get it checked because their eyelids were swollen. Rutledge took some Benadryl and looked better in the evening, but this morning he woke up with a very puffy and nearly-closed eye again. More Benadryl did get it to go down finally, but it has still been unsettling.

Tomorrow we are supposed to leave for our annual Labor Day Family Camp trip to Camp Bethel. I'm not sure we'll get off to a good start. Ollie's stomach is bothering him tonight, and it has been very, very rainy for the past two days. Today was better, but there's still a good chance of scattered or isolated thundershowers both tomorrow and Saturday, and I'm not one of those diehard campers who will slop through any conditions. I have high standards. I like temperate readings on the thermometer and nothing falling from the sky.

Even though we have season passes and set what must be a record for number of visits to Busch Gardens last year, this year we've been sadly lagging. So this morning I packed up some willing and some unwilling children and we spent several hours there. The gas prices have been a sure downer, but swim team, the heat, and my tennis schedule have also put a damper on the theme park madness.

I think that Ollie is just bummed that he's not tall enough yet to go on the rides he really wants to experience. Walter, I suspect, feels so hopeless about his short stature that it isn't even worth his while to be bummed. My heart goes out to them.

Tomorrow morning I'm playing doubles with a pretty large group of friends. I'm also on the roster at #2 for our Combo League Saturday morning. CB and I are playing together, and I hope that it goes better than last time. This week's match is important because, well, it's an important match anyway, but also because we are defending our #1 position after a loss last week.

My goals for this weekend:

1. clean up the 'schoolroom'

2. put some kind of closet organizer in Fran's closet