Mad Science

The other day Eliza really wanted to do some science experiments.  I let her go for it.  Outside.  She was mostly using water, dirt, baking soda, and vinegar, but she loved it, and Cat and Luke enjoyed getting in on the action too.

Just because these pictures make me happy.

Jedi Wrap

This is a little late, but I wanted to post anyway.  Over the summer, Cat wanted me to put a Jedi Wrap in her hair.  She had one that never got finished that she wore for several weeks.  When it was time to get rid of that one, I did another one and actually finished it.  It was a fun little keep-in accessory that made me happy when I saw it, and reminded me that the hours of time it took to make it happen were completely worth it.

Thank you for the tomatoes.

Our neighbors still get a kick out of bringing Jack tomatoes from their
gardens.  He still absolutely loves them and our friends love seeing his face
when they share.  One family brought us a particularly large bunch of tomatoes,
so we had Jack make a thank you card for them.

He drew a picture on the front of his card, then explained it on the inside.

Translation:

Our car got stuck on mud!  There was a hole that I fell into.

It was soooo dark!  I couldn't see!  Then I could see tomatoes!!!!

I was so happy.  Then a Switch-N-Go Dino jumped in!

Love, Jack

This is fiction.

Thanks for my tomatoes.

They're so good!

8 Skirts + 5 Dresses

Team Camp Out

Cat's soccer team had a game in a small town a couple of weeks ago so the coach proposed that everybody camp out at a friend's house in the area.  We brought the whole family and had fun hanging out with the team and getting to know the girls and their families better.

That night we set up camp, had a picnic dinner, roasted marshmallows and Starburst around a campfire, and I led the group in a little singalong.

In the morning, those of us who didn't freeze to death revived as much as we could by the fire, with the help of some hot chocolate.  Then it was breakfast and taking down camp, followed by cleaning up the host's yard and doing all the girls' hair.  We played a getting-to-know-you game, then drove a local business to do a service project before going to the game.

It was a fun weekend with everybody!  We were gone 24 hours - almost to the minute - so it was a bit crazy, but we're glad we went.  Oh yeah, and the game went well, too.  Cat's team won 9-0 and Cat scored two goals.

I didn't take this picture.  I grabbed it from the internet.
But the area we were in was so rural that the sky really did look like this.

Conversations of a Different Nature and How to Put Toys Away

Luke and I usually have a conversation that follows this pattern at least once a day, if not multiple times a day.

"Can I watch a show today?"

"No, you can't watch a show today."

"Mom, you're STUPID!  You're so STUPID, Mom!"

................................

Luke is on a mess-making kick.  Even more than normal.  And he's an equal-opportunity mess-maker.  In the last week he's created messes, seemingly for the fun of it, of (clean) diapers, tiny dried leaves that he brought into the house, Feta cheese, clean kitchen items, clean laundry, toys, shoes, and more.  I suppose I should be glad that he feels comfortable enough in his environment to explore and satisfy his curiosity, but there's this one little hang-up.  Luke has an aversion to cleaning up after himself.

The other evening, I'd told Luke repeatedly to put his toys away.  This was at the end of a day when I'd helped him clean up multiple messes throughout the day (which pretty much means I'd been cleaning up after him all day long), and I just didn't have it in me to clean up any more.  He had dumped out all of the millions of cars/trucks/trains in the family room and had no interest in putting them in their designated receptacles.

Finally, after trying many ways to get him to clean up the toys, I told him that I was going to take away whatever toys he didn't clean up after a short period of time.  He made no effort to clean up in the allotted time, so I stuffed two grocery bags full of cars/trucks/trains.  He was sad, but not nearly as upset as I'd hoped he'd be.

The next evening, he didn't feel like cleaning up the few cars/trucks/trains that were still available for play in the family room, so he told me to take them.  "Mom, can you take these toys?"

(Side Note: Luke also used this tactic when I was helping him clean up the tiny dried leaves he dropped on the floor of the living room.  "Mom, just take the leaves away."  Backfire.)

Let it be known.  I have declared war on our sizable collection of All Wheeled Toys.  If we have too many for the kids to clean up, we have too many.  And the kids haven't missed them since they've been hidden away.  Anybody want some??

Somehow during this period of time, Luke decided that there was a place that would be perfect for stashing things.  It had some spare room, so it must have been under-utilized.  It also offered secure storage in a climate-controlled environment.  Hence, we have found a variety of cars and markers in the refrigerator.  Of course, when he pulled random refrigerated grocery items out of the fridge, it took some coaxing to get him to put them back in.  But he had no problem placing Things Which Require No Refrigeration in the refrigerator.  What, I wonder, is going through his head?

Spoken Like a True American

I've been on a Revolutionary War kick lately, reading books, watching documentaries, and listening to music centered on that time period.  The other day, Eliza was asking me about a documentary I had from the library and I was telling her about it.  The conversation went something like this:

"This is about when our country separated from Great Britain."

"We became our own country?"

"Yes."

"So we aren't a part of Great Britain anymore?"

"No."

"YEAH!!!!!!"

Buffalo Peak 2.0

We hiked Buffalo Peak 5 years ago and decided it was time to give it another try.  This time we decided to encourage the kids to hike as much as possible, and didn't even bring a backpack for Luke.  The hike is only about 1/2 mile and most of the way it's level.  Once you get to the base of the "peak" (hill), then the trail becomes pretty steep, but it doesn't last for very long.  We talked to some adults at the top, and they said it took them 15-20 minutes to get from the trail head to the peak.

We were hiking on Labor Day, which was also Football Christmas, with an evening game for FSU, so we turned the hike into our Family Home Out Evening Mid-Day.  Once we were all at the top of the hill, we found a quiet spot to sit down and eat a snack while I shared this story I found in The Friend.  I liked that it had to do with having to climb mountains and taught the lesson that children may receive revelation just as well as adults.

Between the FOM lesson, the wrong turns (one in the name of "finding a shortcut," and another that we mistook for the right trail), trudging through the forest to get back on to the right trail, several minutes trying to find the wild turkeys which were reported to be nearby, some photo breaks, and the painstakingly slow pace of Luke's "hiking," we managed to turn a 30-minute round-trip hike into a 2.5-hour excursion.  I think we deserve a special award.

Cat brought Jack's US Army Survival Manual (guess which grandfather sent it to him
for Christmas) and tried to identify poisonous and edible plants throughout the excursion.
Is it any surprise that she wishes she could be a Boy Scout?

Just starting out, with the peak in the background.

Luke's preferred pace: sitting.

Photo op while we waited for Ben and Luke to catch up.

Wild turkeys!

Luke and Ben finally made it to the peak, with the parking area barely visible on the left side.

Luke walked almost the entire way,
once he was finished sitting.

The Views:

Here, Jack and Luke are looking over a big drop-off right beside the trail.
In this exact spot, Jack almost ran off the mountain last time we did this hike,
when he was 3.  He just started going down the steep part of the trail too fast and
could have gone right over, but some other hikers caught him.  We're so grateful
to those kind strangers!

Jack and Eliza had fun with these ramps (rocks) that were in the

experimental trail we took on the way back to the car.  Turns out, it

wasn't the best experiment.  But the rocks were fun to jump off of.

This picture doesn't do Luke's dirtiness justice.

MacGyver in Training

More Education Needed

Last night Luke went to bed early because he'd missed his nap, and Ben was out of town, so I enjoyed a fun game night with the kids.  I visited a new part of the library for the first time earlier in the week, with lots of educational resources for parents.  There I checked out three games my kids have never played before.  The first was Pizza Math, which reminded me of a game I had as a kid.  We also played Clue, Jr. and Outburst, Jr.

In the course of Outburst, Jr., which was the favorite of the three, we were to name states with two-word names.  I was trying to get Jack to say "West Virginia" and he came pretty close.  He guessed North Virginia (which some might argue really is a completely different place from the rest of the state), East Virginia (Virginia Beach??), and even Middle Virginia (I'm not even sure where the middle of Virginia is?) before I gave up.

I'm pretty sure Cat didn't study the states until 5th grade, so I'm not beating myself up too much about the whole thing...

Bonus Fun

We had even more fun than expected at Barnes and Noble recently.  We just stopped in to pick up the free books the kids earned from the summer reading program, and ended up staying and hanging out for a while.  Not only were the kids enamored with the books, toys, and other great products they have, but there were some fun photo ops too.  Because of the newest Harry Potter book, the store had a Forbidden Forest, a Whomping Willow, and Azkaban prison set up in various sections of the store.

Oh, and then there was an Incredible Hulk.