Here are the littles as they got ready to march in their parade!  I am not sure why one wears left over party hats to march in a Flag Day parade but I was informed by both of them that this was a necessity. LOL  We hummed Souza type marches and marched around the house with each person taking turns being a leader.  KC would flourish his flag and bellow "to the kitchen" and off we would go. Then Lissa would take a turn and holler "to the dining room" and we would march there.  Finally we all wound up in our front hall where we marched in time and pretended we were playing musical instruments like a band in a parade.

Then we went to the park and ran around like crazy people because we are finally seeing sun again.  Once the wiggles were out, we played in the sand box and became paleontologists looking for dino bones.  KC is big into dinos and we just read about the discovery of the T Rex named Sue.  Some day we hope to go back to Chicago so we can visit the Field Museum and see her.  The 2 older boys actually saw her when she was on loan to a museum in the Big City near us years ago.  We will however make a trek in our state to see a  collection of dinosaur tracks and that will be exciting enough for now!

. . . And No One Came to Tea!

OK, politics are murky and I try veeeeery hard to be politically correct. Or at least not to offend too many people.  But I'll never be all that welcome as a member of the Tea Party.  Let's face it, middle aged lesbians are not their target audience.  I am thankful to be married, thank you very much.  That said, despite our political differences I think the movement is interesting and its grassroots initiative has much to recommend it. We just don't see eye to eye on politics, but the methodology is kind of cool.

Anyway, one of the neat things the local Tea Party society did was to have a demonstration  today of the flags that our country has used throughout its history.  I think that is kind of neat.  Flag Day is Monday and while we have been busy making flag decorations and spinners and a red white and blue Jello poke cake--well the actual knowledge about the other variations of our flag would be cool for the kids to see first hand. 

They were on the common when I drove home from church.  We walked down shortly thereafter--basically hitched up our fat pooch in his harness and the kids and I set off.  It was yucky weather. Foggy, drizzly.  The drizzle rapidly becoming more wet and less merely dampish.  And when we arrived--the Tea Party folk had folded their flags and departed.  Sigh.

It was a nice walk though.  If you like pretending you live in Seattle.

Cloudburst Picnic

Yesterday our city was supposed to have its annual music and fireworks festival. We go every year.  The venue is about 3/4  a mile from our home and we typically walk down (In years past I have done this wearing children in slings, wearing children on my back and pushing children in double strollers.  I am clearly insane but trust me the traffic AFTER the event is much more insane if you are trying to drive!)

At any rate, yesterday the weather did not cooperate.  It rained, essentially all day long.  And since KC had all ready warned me that he was planning on crying if we could not go. (I am laughing here but he was serious) I needed something fun.

I don't usually let the kids eat meals in the living room.  So I suggested we have a picnic in the living room and watch a movie together.  It took about 30 minutes just to decide on a movie everyone liked.  LOL  Then we set out the quilt. KC and Lissa helped make popcorn and put cheese curls in bowls and carry them in.  I cooked veggie burgers and brought in the sweet tea.  (my new addiction incidently) And we ate and watched Cars.

I wrote to my mom and told her about our picnic because I thought it was fun and cute.  She wrote back a snarky comment that implied that I had no rules for my children.  Sigh.  I am glad at this moment we live 2 states away from each other.

Winning Again!

Back in April, I won a copy of a book written my my friend and awesome author Loree Griffen Burns.  I had been going to buy the book so when I won it I took the money allocated for the book and "paid it forward."  Loree had a link on her blog  to a book drive that brought books to kids and  schools on a reservation in NM.  I had so much fun choosing books from the kids wish lists.  Ultimately I decided on one fantasy novel to feed the artistic spirit and one scientific one to feed questing minds. 

It wasn't more than a few weeks later when I got my first letter.  Hand written by a child I have never met.  Thanking me for that sci fi book and saying how excited she was that she would have a book to read during the months when school was out.  OMG, my kids and i go to the library every. single. week.  We go to Barnes and Noble just to hang out.  I was humbled by that note.  But also so very touched that a child who had never met me would write a note.

This week, I got a second note.  It thanks me for sending the book Extreme Scientists  to the school and says how much it is appreciated.  In the grand scheme of things, I spent about $20.00.  And touched who knows how many lives.  But my life was touched too.  There is so much about life that sometimes just feels awful. 

The mess in the Gulf that may change our lives and our planet forever in grim ways we can not yet wrap our minds fully around.  Monetary worries and relationship issues.  But the notes?  Good stuff.  Right down to the core because despite the fact that I have never met these children or been to their school, we are connected.  By caring,and the written word.

Death of a dishwasher

Sigh.  Two nights ago I found our dishwasher flashing an odd light sequence when I went into the kitchen about 10:30 p.m.  Worried about an electrical fire I opened the door so it would definately not be running.  It had drained, the dishes were both hot and clean, so all seemed okay. 

Sadly, this was not true.  It was the final gasp of our nearly 10 year old dishwasher.  Last night, it refused to do anything except fill with water.  Not especially helpful.  Also not helpful is the fact that we always run the dishwasher late at night so it really was not the time to start washing dishes.

I can't complain. This dishwasher has been a real workhorse.  The catch on the door has been broken for nearly a year now, but we figured out that propping it with our mop kept the connection and it would still run just fine.  But this, this is not an easy fix like that.  And since it costs $95.00 an hour for a repairman, it is actually going to be cheaper given the age of the appliance, to buy a new one.

It is a task both K and I loathe.  The space for the dishwasher is an inch narrower than the industry standard (gotta love old houses) and it is always a challenge finding one that fits the spot.  Wish us luck!

Lissa gets a trophy and KC does math!

Sunday was Lissa's first gymnastics "show" and she wasn't there.  We have only done gymnastics for 3 weeks and her class was going to march around the gym and then do an obstacle course.  I had a committment to chair a meeting at church and had no way to get her there without going insane.  I opted for sanity and skipped it as she at this point has no real clue what a show entails and wasn't upsetting. To her, gymnastics happens on Wednesday and it isn't even on her radar on  a Sunday afternoon.

So yesterday we trucked over to the gym.  She did awesome, her fearless drive to try the apparatus amazes me.  One of the skills they worked on was standing on the low bar of the unevens, reaching out to grab the high bar and then letting go, to practice sticking the landing.  She did great, falling the first two times, sticking the last two.  Then at the end of class they gave her a trophy, which would have been given at the show.  Thankfully there were 2 other classmates who also were not there and received their participation trophy in class as well. 

We came home and I discovered our home school curriculum had arrived.  I had just ordered this on Tuesday so the speed amazed me.  Rob's going to be in grade 9 and KC in first grade, the first year we have to "officially" home school him and file a letter of intent with the city.  I am pretty familiar with Rob's courses so I started looking at the first grade curriculum.  I have never homeschooled a first grader.  I discovered that in the math section, he is all ready beyond this curriculum.  They have the kids grouping manipulatives to add and nothing they add comes to a sum greater than 10. He stopped using manipulatives for addition at about 4.  KC counts to 100 by 1's, counts to 100 by 10's and is learning counting by 2's.  He does addition with use of a number line and adds numbers by ones and twos but the sums can total up to 30.  This is via a Kunan math workbook I found at a bookstore!  So we are going to skip the math component in Oak Meadow and keep working with the Kunan system.  I do love the way Oak Meadow does their science, social studies and english components though.  KC was ticked this morning though to find out he wasn't getting  a "new" math book!  Too funny!

Hopefully not offensive humor

I first need to write a disclaimer.  I have a warped sense of humor.  I also often read email late at night when I am tired.  So a few nights back I read an email from my mother.  She said that she was concerned about the frequency of our trips to the Big City.  She reads the Big City's major newspaper once a week and had seen comprehensive stories on the uptick in violence and drive by shootings.  (all of which is true but not really in the area where we are when we go into the Big City.) But the next sentence in her email was "You are have black children."  I will give you that the upsurge in violence has really impacted African Americans and not any other racial or ethnic group.  However there are also socio-economic reasons and the  behaviors that result from this which cause the situation.  The simple sentence "they are black" in no way accurately and fairly describes the situation. 

So did I write this down in a friendly and informative way?  Did I utilize this teachable moment to help mom see things in a new light?  I wrote back: " my kids are black?  I thought they were just dirty from playing outside!"