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

I always seem to have the same number of posts every time I manage to make one. So here's to #66...again.

What's been going on?

* Just moved Frances to a new gymnastics program. It's a big transition for everyone, but ultimately is much closer to home (10 minutes or so), has better timing logistics (we eat dinner together!), and most of the kids there live right near us.

* Working on getting speech evaluations set up for Frances and Rutledge. Frances simply sounds like she's from Boston. Rutledge sounds unclear. An SLP said that the biggies at his age are the "G" and "K" sounds, neither of which he can do.

* The twins turned 10 last week. Unbelievable. We had a pool party with about 20 kids and then a sleepover for 7.

* The boys went to Lynchburg for the weekend. They went to a skateboard park, saw the new Batman movie, harvested potatoes, and went biking.

* Frances and Rutledge went to Inflation Nation, which is located in the previous location of Frances' new gym. They had so much fun, and wimpy Rutledge made so much progress during the four hours we were there--from not getting anywhere near any of the inflatables to playing on almost all of them (in his own way, at his own pace...).

* We've had a lot of sleepovers. I feel like I don't see my children any more.

* All all of my children have many friends now right in our neighborhood. It's both comforting and energy draining. I'm used to keeping to ourselves, having lots of time for our own things. Now we have convenience and fun right at our door, but it's morning until night. I'm going to need to figure out some parameters, but I feel like as soon as I get this figured out, school will be back in, and none of it will matter. So I think we're just going to continue our Ultimate Party Summer.

* I'm just about ready for school stuff to start up again. We just got a Lego Mindstorms Robotics kit, which is really exciting. Unfortunately, we haven't had any time because of the weekend trip and then the lengthy playdates and sleepovers. I'm still planning to do a smaller Lego Education program with them before getting too deep into the NXT stuff.

* We now have every video gaming system out there. Thanks to the birthday and a husband who is a teenager in sheep's clothing, we now have a PS3, an XBox360, Wii, Nintendo DS, and Gameboy. Not to mention the compatibility of these systems with PS2, regular Xbox, Gamecube, etc. This has also meant that we now have Halo 3 in our life :(

* Stitches came out today. Into a little plastic jar that is now rolling around some sofa here.

* We bought a new washing machine...and then returned it 8 hours later. T-minus one day and counting until I leave for the tennis tournament and four days until Ollie leaves for camp, and our washing machine had some problem with the hose not draining. Clothes were piling into, if not Everest, at least a K2. After wasting a few hours waiting for phonecalls from service providers who ended up not working on our brand of washer or who would have to wait a week for parts, we weighed the hundreds for a service call against the thousand for a new machine and went for the latter. And then, like a charm, our old washing started working. Yeah, our clothes don't always come out all that clean, and they don't always smell great, but we're $1500 richer for the return.

* Ollie made Champs for the summer dive team. We thought about switching his camp week to week after next, but then realized that he'll be back in time for Champs and he'll have the time open for All-Stars if he makes it that far. Not bad for someone's first year diving. And both Ollie and Frances learned new dives today. Ollie's Reverse is going to premiere at tomorrow night's meet, and Frances is still working on her inward.

* It finally rained. Many times today. Hard at times.

* Ollie and I finished _I Am a Star_ about the Holocaust and Terezin holding camp, and yesterday we finished _Sign of the Beaver_, which is such a great book. We started _Island of the Blue Dolphins_ today. Unfortunately, with me leaving tomorrow and Ollie leaving Sunday, we're not likely to finish it for another 12 days.

Loss tonight. Carol Beth and I had our combo match a few days early because many of us will be at the beach this weekend, and we lost badly in the first set and then lost the second set, a big comeback, in a 8-6 tie-break. Call it heartbreak, if you will. I was playing slowly and languidly, taking my cues from the weather. It was sticky when we arrived, then overcast with menacing black clouds overhead, then solidly windy, then an owl flew by, and finally it cooled, with some wetness to the air. When we arrived back in Woodlake, it was raining. Better luck next time.

Hilary and her gang we back. We got on the subject of how homeschoolers always talk shop. It's true. It's our life. Or maybe no one else wants to hear that part of our life, so we have no choice but to chatter to each other about it. Heather was there as well, and we were talking about how much work it is--the constant reassessing, second-guessing, the processing of new information every time we bump into someone else we know who starts talking shop. Are we doing enough? Should we be doing what they are doing? Like tennis, it's largely a confidence game. You can't do it all. You just can't. You just need to keep your eyes on your own ball and determine that maybe it'll be a short match and maybe it will go on into three sets sometimes, but you're going to come out of this where you want to be.

So today I was, in this vein, looking through someone's blog and found myself spending too much time on a website with language arts curricula for "gifted elementary students." I'm wondering if this would be interesting to Walter. Ollie would likely find it rather cheesy, but I do like the grammar and the poetry books, which seem to be manageable but at the same time substantive. That's kind of the benchmark for what I seek now: easy to engage with and not too time-consuming, cuts to the chase, covers the material I need covered without a lot of excess. Now how to come up with $100 or so. Good thing Kerry has that contract renewal for his second job.

I'm actually feeling really good about the fall, at least for the twins. I have picked up a lot of material at the used curriculum fairs so far, and I think we'll make real progress. Here's what I have:

Math: Saxon 6/5, and I'm still waiting to find a Math-U-See Delta or Epsilon
Language arts: Easy Grammar Systems, both the full deal and Daily Grams; a Classical roots program;
Latin: Latina Christiana through a class we're taking at RES
History/Reading: Sonlight Alt-4, which is the combined 3-4 American history list
Critical Thinking: Building Thinking Skills from The Critical Thinking Company. This should be a nice fun diversion.
Science: LifePak science books. I need a second set.

Great news. CAT scores came back this week, and Frances only missed two on the entire test (should have been none, but couldn't get to her slow down or review what she marked). She was in the 98th percentile for reading and similar for math (don't have it right on hand). The twins both were in the 99th percentile in their overall composite score for the test. Yahoo! Now I'm waiting on the IOWA scores and the CogAt to come back. I'm wondering if Bob Jones is withholding things until I pay for the test books I got mustard and water on.

I'm so bad about actually posting what I write. Much of it ends up transferred elsewhere more private because it's unfinished.

Summer is fleeting right by. Here's what I'm doing:

* Outrageous numbers of crosswords. My friend Kate took the twins home from the tennis courts one day while I was playing an important tournament match, and when I went to pick them up I noticed a half-finished crossword puzzle on her breakfast bar. I could barely resist the temptation to fill in the blanks, so I went home and printed one out for myself, and I've been addicted ever since. I haven't done a crossword since I was lying in bed for who knows how many weeks, pregnant with the twins. It was an addiction then, too.

* My 3.0 USTA women's team is going to the State Tournament in Newport News, VA this coming weekend. We rock! And it looks likely that I'll be bumped up to a 3.5. In preparation for both that and for the tourney, I have been playing with a bunch of the 3.5 ladies, and with the exception of today, when I got eaten for lunch by an about-to-be-bumped to 4.0 singles player, I've been holding my own fairly decently. Carol Beth and I are teaming for doubles tomorrow night at our combo (6.5) match at Raintree, and if our practice yesterday was an indication, we're going to be just fine.

* I finally earned my A in Big Brain Academy. Kerry says that A is for Loser, but I think I'm immensely smarter for all my hard work. Now I'm obsessed with the Crosswords game he brought home for me last night, partly because it has a word search component, which is very like the identification game on BBA.

* The twins have new friends. Grayson, who lives around the corner, spent the night here last night. There was nasty fallout for all children of ours this morning after a late night, but overall it was a smooth event. My wish for the summer was that swim team and the pool would introduce them to some kids in the neighborhood. This is our 5th summer here, and it hasn't happened before now, but swim team forces a camaraderie that chance encounters can't quite match. Success. Yesterday we spent most of the afternoon and evening with 3 extra boys in the house who live right here in Fiddlers Ridge. And then there are the ones who call Walter "Wal-Turd" at dive practice and the Runescape junkies who congregate after swim team is over. Can you believe that sometimes other families actually take my children to the pool?

* Ollie demoed a new dive team this afternoon. It's a year-round practice (sigh...another nearly $200 a month and mega-commitment of nearly 8 hours a week, I think), but the good news is that it's right here at our own indoor pool. Though he came in with rather rudimentary skills--his hurdle approach is choppy and not up to Mr. Bill's standards--he learned a stunning amount in just 2.5 hours today. Now he's smoothly approaching the end of the board and he also has a pretty good tuck now on his front, back, and somersault dives. I think his scores will go up quite a bit at this weeks' meet. The Clendenons had a pretty good sweep last week at the meet: Ollie won 1st place in Boys' Mites, Walter won 3rd place in Boy's Mites, and Frances won 2nd place in Girls' Mini-Mites. Coach Bill wants all three of them, but we're not totally made of money ;) His program has produced a lot of successful divers, and he claims that all of the divers who have worked with him have gone to "to the college of their choice, without exception." Now with Title IX, there aren't really going to be scholarships for male divers, but admission is still a pretty attractive perk. I'm not ready to count my chickens before they hatch--he's only been to one practice, but he seems to have some real talent, and the coach was begging for him to return in the fall and is eager to work with him.

* Rutledge got a pile of stitches in his head on Wednesday. We're not quite sure what happened, but he claims that he fell out of Christi's van in front of our house. Walter did a serious job of CSI, but couldn't find any clues or extra blood, so we'll probably never know. Just as Christi and the kids were getting ready to leave, Walter came dashing into the house saying that Rutledge was bleeding. Someone is always bleeding at my house. But he was really, really bleeding (it was "weeely, weely scawee," in Rutledge-speak). There was blood cascading down his face, all over his arms, hands, shirt, the doorknob, across the floor, and there was a gaping hole that looked like a musket ball had hit him over his left eye. We took him to Dr. Clark right away, and he got 3 internal stitches, about 6 external ones (he's pulled a few out, so I'm not sure what the original count was), and a popsicle. I swear we weren't home 10 minutes before I heard someone yelling, "Mom! Rutledge is rollerblading down the steps!" Sigh. And not only that, but this all happened two hours before we were supposed to go to an open casting call for models for a stock photographer. Needless to say, no callbacks.

* We've been reading a lot of books. Okay, Ollie and I have. Rutledge has been really into Madeline. Ollie and I are reading Sign of the Beaver right now, and we just finished The Apprentice. Before that was The Penderwicks, Fever 1793, and a selection of Clyde Robert Bulla books. Holes is our next book club book; only Walter is making any progress at all through it. I'm going to have to crack the whip.

* Ollie is getting ready to go to sleepaway camp next weekend. He's leaving while I'm probably still playing tennis. Frances does dance camp at Woodlake in the afternoons that week. And Walter goes to Slippery, Slimy, Odd Pets and Electric Gadgets camp the week after