Free Circus Tickets!

What is wrong with me? I used to be so responsible and reliable. But I did it again today. I knew Matthew and I had dentist appointments. I was filling out the paperwork when I looked at the calendar to check the date. It was 11:10 and we were supposed to be there at 11:00am. Ughh. I called and they graciously said we could still come. So we all hurried into clothes and then into the van.

Matthew did great for his first ever trip to the dentist. He charmed everyone and just loves his new Tigger toothbrush. I have a tiny cavity in my last remaining wisdom tooth. Good-bye tooth!

Here's where the day gets much, much better. A radio station was broadcasting from the parking lot so we stopped to spin their prize wheel on the way out. The boys all got can cozies with free pop to put in them. We also all got free lunch and toothbrushes. I made all the boys enter the drawing for free circus tickets. They drew while we were finishing our sandwiches and we won!!! Four free tickets to the circus! Thank you Magic 97.9! Even though you play too much Madonna, we'll enjoy your gift! I've even got two certificates for free tickets that I requested when Evan and Matthew were babies. So none of us will have to pay for tickets and we can spend our money on cotton candy and popcorn. :)

If your baby is under one year old, you can request a free circus ticket certificate, no expiration date. Just visit Ringling Brothers.

Matthew, Matthew, MATTHEW

Just say that title in your best Jan Brady whine.

Actually, all four boys and I were at the Pumpkin Festival this past weekend. But you get to enjoy pictures of Matthew. Most of the pictures were of him. Not only is he the cutest, but if I took my eyes off of him long enough to snap a picture of anyone else, he was GONE. I actually lost him a couple times.

Matthew with the pumpkin that he decorated. I helped. Adam actually won first place with his pumpkin but the picture wasn't as cute as this one.

Matthew eating roasted corn on the cob bigger than his face.
Matthew sitting on a tractor, his favorite part of the day.

Matthew making a candle. He's wearing Adam's first place pumpkin decorating medal.

Matthew with a dried turkey foot. Ewww.

Lookee....

Look who just got his very first library card!

And just in time, too! Unbeknownst to me, I have $20 worth of fines on my card. I'm not denying the fines. I'm sure they're mine. I just didn't have any money with me to pay them. So Evan put my Julie Garwood novels on his card. Velociraptors and historical romance on his brand new card, he's quite the eclectic reader, isn't he.

Uncle!

Our busy schedule is killing me. I've known for a long time that we need to cut back but there's just so much fun and educational stuff to do! We could be gone every day of the week if we did everything on my calendar... and that's just homeschool stuff. I'm not including sports. If there are any "unsocialized" homeschoolers around here, it's because of choice, not lack of opportunity!
But I just added up our gasoline spending for September. It's high... very high... higher than our house payment!! We spent $577 on gasoline in September. That's a problem b/c our gasoline budget is only $300/month. Something's got to give and I've decided it's going to be music. Isn't that the first place the public schools cut? LOL

It seems like a bad choice to keep football and cut band, or keep soccer and cut piano. But football is closer than band. And soccer is closer than piano. AND they actually enjoy football and soccer and put forth effort. They're not musical prodigies and they've gone as far as they want to go with the music lessons. Not only am I saving money but I'll also be saving time by not driving to lessons twice a week and energy by not having to force them to practice, though I do hope they'll keep their skills up so they rejoin later if the urge strikes them (or me). I'm not sure why I feel the need to justify my choices but there they are.

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!