Times Are Tough

Sunday afternoon was the Pumpkin Festival Parade to usher in the West Virginia Pumpkin Festival here in our town. It's a small, small town and the parade doesn't have much going for it. It usually consists of the local high school marching band, a few fire trucks, politicians, floats (usually a trailer pulled by a truck or tractor) decorated by local businesses and churches or filled with kids. But the highlight of the parade, for those under 13, is the candy. All those politicians, local businesses, and kids on horse trailers throw candy. The streets become covered in candy and kids dodge the fire engines to grab tootsie rolls from the gutter. It's all great fun.

Except yesterday, the candy was lame. We were about 1/3 of the way down the parade route and the floats were already out of candy or they were throwing one piece at a time. I was standing with my three kids (Rye was on a float) and two friends and their five kids. One pixie stick doesn't stretch that far! I guess the banking crisis is farther reaching than I realized. ;)

A Day Out

Yesterday was homeschool day at The Clay Center, so we packed up and headed for the capital city. It wasn't extremely early but still early enough that the fog hadn't burned off yet. Charleston looked like Cloud City. The mist was all entwined with the big buildings and the mountains. It was so beautiful; I gave my camera to Adam to take some pictures. What I ended up with were several shots of the van's interior and some blurry buildings. I guess it didn't help that we were traveling at 60mph.

We arrived just in time for a movie in the Electric Sky Theatre. They play movies in the planetarium. very. cool. The film of the day was Journey Into Amazing Caves. It truly was amazing. But the coolest thing for the boys was that the film was narrated by Qui-Gon-Jin, aka Liam Neeson.

After the movie we played in the science galleries. We made some stop-action movies, built an arch, played the drums, a ukelele, and a giant floor piano, and lots of other fun stuff. Daddy met us for lunch and then we played some more.


We ended the day in Stuffee's Kitchen. We were the only people there for the 2pm show but we almost filled up the front row, with Matthew taking a seat in the very back, just like an unsocialized home schooler. LOL We spent months last spring learning about the human body. My boys could name every organ in the digestive system. So, you'd think when the intructor started pulling out Stuffee's organs that they'd be calling out the answers while I basked in the rays of their intelligence. Instead they sat there and stared. I think their mouths were even hanging open a bit and maybe one of them was drooling. Then Adam decided it would be funny to call out the wrong answers. I elbowed him and, finally, they started giving the right answers. The show ended with free water bottles and Matthew slinked up front to grab one and then hurried back to his corner. He's been drinking water from that bottle all day. I'm just waiting for him to pee in the floor.

Evan Is Seven!

I can't let the month slip by without wishing Evan a Happy Birthday -- even if his birthday was a

couple weeks ago! LOL

So, here he is blowing out the candles on the WalMart bakery cake that I promised myself I'd never buy again. We even had to get chocolate frosting for the football so it wasn't as good as it could have been. I'm usually a chocolate freak but I can't resist white buttercream bakery frosting. Evan loved his football cupcakes and all the Sonic games and videos he received. Now, I have to somehow come up with a Sonic the Hedgehog costume for Trick-or-Treat.

I know I've been posting about Evan a lot lately. But I did refrain from posting about his behaviour yesterday. It's a day I'd rather forget!

Scientific Error

Evan always comes up with good questions when we're in the van far from my friend, Google. Last week his question was why do plants drink water instead of milk. I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce the scientific process. And, besides, I didn't really have a good answer (I do now!).

So we set up the experiment....

First, we punched drainage holes in two identical egg cartons and filled them with equal amounts of potting soil.

Then we planted exactly 1/8 cup of grass seed in each egg carton.

We added exactly one half cup water to one egg carton...

... and one half cup milk to the other egg carton.

Then we set the egg cartons together in a bright sunny window, which happens to be by my computer desk. We gave them equal amounts of water and milk again the next day.

It was later that day that things started happening. I'm not talking about sprouting grass seeds. Have you ever lost a sippy cup of milk in your van? I had that happening in my family room. Unfortunately for the rest of the family, I have a very bad sense of smell. I didn't smell it. And Jeff didn't know there was anything but water in those egg cartons. So, they sat there for a few more days baking in the bright sunny window... until I eventually smelled it. And I recognized that smell immediately! b/c I have lost many sippy cups under the seats in my van.

My science experiments NEVER work... though I should have seen this one coming.

Fall Sports

Fall Sports are in full swing. I should have posted yesterday when I could have told you Ryan's football team was undefeated, not just winning all their games but winning all their games by 20-30 points! That was until this morning when they got beat 44-24! But even losing big is better than watching. Which is to say that Ryan is getting WAY more playing time this year. He's starting on the offense and playing a bit of defense too. I'm loving football this year!

I just wish football didn't overlap fall soccer season. Adam and Evan are both playing soccer. The middle school league has been playing for a few weeks now. Adam's team is not doing well. They won their only JV game but have lost all the regular games. It's painful to watch!

But even more painful to watch was Evan's first game this morning. In past years, he's played 3 against 3. But this year he's moved up to a bigger field and they're playing 5 against 5. So, this morning we had 10 kids running in a pack, chasing the ball. Someone is going to get hurt! We've only had one practice so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and just pray they start teaching positions.

Now, just for fun.. let's look at my weekly schedule:

Monday: R homeschool band, 4pm
R football practice, 5:30pm
A soccer game, 5:30pm
or 6:45pm
Tuesday: homeschool co-op,
10am (alternating
Tuesdays)
R football practice,
5:30pm
A soccer practice 6:45pm (alternating
Tuesdays)
E soccer practice 6:00pm
Wednesday: A soccer practice 4:30pm
church/AWANA 6:45pm
Thursday: A
piano lesson, 2pm
R football practice,
5:30pm
Friday: R football practice
5:30
A soccr practice 5:30
Saturday: R football game 10:00am
E soccer game times vary
A soccer game times vary

Throw in an occasional field trip, roller skating, and grocery shopping and I may as well sleep in the car. LOL

Motivation

"Spelling and Language are DESTROYING my life."

After much whining, crying and complaining this week, Evan finished his first ever spelling unit with a 100% on today's test. He whizzed through rhyming words and syllables in Language today. In fact, he finished every bit of his schoolwork, including reading, Bible, math, language, spelling, and social studies, in 40 minutes today. All in an effort to get to his new Sonic Leapster game. And since it's a Leapster game, it's educational. LOL He's been working on math skills for an hour now.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

We've finally got tomatoes! Aren't they pretty? I've had a few ripe here and there and I've eaten WAY more bacon and tomato sandwiches than is healthy. I actually switched to turkey bacon after eating a couple pounds of bacon by myself. That wasn't in one meal, of course, though I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. I do love bacon. But now, the real harvest begins!

All six of my plants survived this year so we are swimming in tomatoes! I picked almost 20 lbs of tomatoes yesterday! I just weighed them. I'm not exaggerating. That's more tomatoes than I've ever had at once and there's more on the vines that will be ripe this week.

Unfortunately, I'm the only person in this house who likes tomatoes. The guys will eat them in sauces but they don't like them raw, unless it's on a taco and we can only eat so many tacos! So, this year, I'm going to try freezing them. It seems easy enough. Wish me luck!