Snapshot

If I had had my camera handy, I would post an image here of a treasured moment from my day. But since it wasn't handy, I'll just have to describe it. A big, strong daddy, with his grinning little blond boy on his lap, driving an old red tractor (1957 Farmall Cub). The little boy's hands are on the wheel, and he is steering the tractor, weaving from side to side around the yard, with a bit of guidance from Daddy now and then. The air smells like pine trees and freshly mowed grass. The weather is perfect, just a bit cool, a relief from days and days of oppressive heat and humidity.

Today was an all around good day. Nothing special, just a nice, laid-back day of all of us hanging out together in the yard. Max had a great time this weekend helping Daddy do all kinds of "man stuff" - yesterday they finished planting the garden together, and today Max hung out around the garage while Shane tinkered around, and then they collected sticks and loaded them into the tractor cart, then unloaded them by the fire ring. Max watched as Shane built a bonfire and then helped toss sticks onto it. While they were doing that, I strolled around our property with Emmett in his spiffy new (to us) backpack carrier, given to us by a new friend from one of the homeschool groups we joined. We have just over three acres, and it's sort of shaped like a bowling alley; it's about as wide as a good-sized double city lot, but it goes really far back, and is partly wooded with some winding paths, so it feels very private and peaceful and secluded. It's what most attracted us to this place when we bought it. The house is kind of small and just OK... but the yard is paradise. I know my boys are going to have all kinds of fun together here as they get older. Eventually we'd like to build a tree house in "the far back" as we call it. I've always wanted one myself, and they are gonna have to kick me out of it often! Anyways, after Em & I took our mini-hike, it was getting late, and he was getting tired and fussy, so I put him to bed. I came back out and we made an exception and let Max stay up well past his bedtime, the three of us just sitting by the fire watching the sky getting darker and the moon rising and getting brighter.

It makes me so happy that Max - and Em too, when he's bigger - are going to grow up with all of these wonderful memories of living here, surrounded by nature, hanging out with Daddy and learning how to be men. They really are lucky, lucky boys. I am especially thankful today because Shane hasn't been feeling great lately - he's been struggling with chronic pain issues for years and has been exceptionally miserable for the past few weeks - but yesterday and today he's had a couple of much-needed good days. Hopefully this trend will continue!

Guest Post - Jim Gilliam "The Internet is My Religion"

Came across this today and just had to share it. It's so beautiful and thought provoking. Just... wow.



(via The Friendly Atheist)

Dear Metro Park System: I love you!

In the past week, we have availed ourselves of our local Metro Park System three times; twice we went walking at two different parks, and today we went to one of their free "Nature for Kids" programs and it was absolutely wonderful. Today's topic was pond creatures. After a brief instructional / safety lecture, we were given long-handled nets, colanders, and little tubs of water. We scooped our nets in the pond, then dumped the contents into the colanders and poked around in them with plastic spoons to see what kinds of creatures we had captured. Any creatures were then gently picked up with the spoons and put into the tubs of water. We were given laminated cards with pictures to identify our finds. Each group quickly collected lots of interesting specimens! Here's our tub (Sorry for the low-res photos - I have got to start remembering to bring the good camera with me instead of relying on the cell!):


We collected snails, tadpoles at various stages of development, dragonfly larvae, damselfly larvae, water boatmen, fishing spiders, and our most exciting find: a water scorpion! Here he is:


After everyone had time to collect their critters, the volunteer had us all bring our tubs together so we could all inspect each others' finds while he told us a little bit about each creature. From him we learned that the water scorpion got its name from its long thin tail - but it doesn't use it to sting, it's actually a tube which is used like a snorkel! It just hangs in the water with its snorkel butt tube sticking out, and waits for yummy things to swim by underneath it and then it grabs them and sucks their blood out. As the volunteer was explaining this to us, our water scorpion had captured our poor dragonfly larva and was having it for a snack. Max thought this was very cool. Here you can see the predator and his prey:

"nom nom nom..."

Here's Max scooping up a snail to investigate.

And this little girl found this a ginormous fishing spider!

All I can think about right now is how my best childhood friend and I used to go swimming in this murky pond on her parents' farm all the time... the gunk at the bottom was so thick, you would sink to your shins with each step. I can still smell the funky smell that the water left on us, that we would immediately have to go shower off. Anyways, I knew there were lots of things living in ponds, but now I can't believe we were swimming with all of THESE guys, and more!

Every so often, I feel like the picture I have in my head of how we are going to "do" homeschooling comes into sharper focus, and I definitely see us spending a LOT of time in our Metro Parks! Today I sat down with my "Programs & Events Guide" and a pen, and circled many more fun things for us to do. I also have a goal of seeing every park - there are 15 of them - and when the boys are older, I really want to do a "Walk in the Woods" - style trek along the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail, (nearly completed) which stretches about 100 miles, from Cleveland to New Philadelphia.

It's funny - this is the time of year when school is just about out for the summer, and here we are - on a Sunday no less - going out and learning stuff! How crazy is that?

ACKKKKK! Quick rant...

I was just watching one of those cheesy crime dramas - I'm generally not a fan of them, but I somehow got sucked into this one. Anyway, the serial killer in this show turned out to be a homeschooled teenage boy. The investigator says to the killer's mother in a voice dripping with shock and contempt, "Mrs. So-and-so, do you KNOW what social isolation can DO to a child?" I was still sitting there with my mouth dropped open about a full minute later, well into the commercial break. There really aren't words to express my indignation... just, frickin WOW.

Memorial Day thoughts...

I must admit that military service is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around. It's something I could never do. Just signing myself away to the government and saying, "Ok, I'm yours - do with me what you will." and then being handed weapons, trained how to use them, and given orders to end the lives of other humans. And what gets me is that every soldier on every side has the same perspective - he is the good guy and the others (as he's been told by his authority figures) are the bad guys. But the guys on the other side - they're not evil monsters. They're people. Just other people. They have people they love, and people who love them back. Perhaps they have been born into a culture that has brainwashed them to hate other cultures and to love causing death - but this doesn't make me hate them, it just makes me so very sad for them. I don't know what the answer is, but it doesn't seem like my country's current course of action is moving the world any closer to peace.

Although I am deeply grateful to the fighters throughout the course of history who have made the ultimate sacrifice for my country, today I keep thinking of the generations of mothers, wives, and families who have had to experience that unimaginably awful knock on the door. When a soldier has died, his problems and pain are over... but theirs goes on, every day, for the rest of their lives, while they continue on without their precious loved ones. I would like to thank them today, and say that my heart hurts for what they've had to endure. I desperately hope that the various colonies of ants on this anthill called Earth can somehow, someday figure out how to coexist without killing each other.

EDIT:
PS. I don't mean to sound un-patriotic, and I mean no disrespect to our soldiers... just sharing my honest thoughts on things.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha....

Great article from The Onion: "Increasing Number of Parents Opting To Have Children School-Homed". (Just in case you've been living under a rock, The Onion is a joke news site - it's satire, not real!) The very last line is the best part...

Random tidbits from my day...

So I'm kind of an atypical homeschooler. Besides the other stuff I've talked about, I also generally hate cooking and detest gardening. But I DO like making my own bread from time to time (it's practially a law that you must do this if you're a homeschooler), so I did that today. It was an enormously exhausting amount of work to dump those ingredients into the bread machine, but I did it. Whew! *wipes brow*


Ta-da! Be very jealous, because this bread is super yummy and my house smells SO good! I used my favorite recipe out of my beloved bread machine cookbook which I discovered at a used bookstore for $4. Here 'tis (adapted for a 2 lb loaf):

Oatmeal Bread
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups water
2 Tbsp oil
3 Tbsp maple syrup
3 cups bread flour
1 cup wheat flour
2/3 cup oats
2 1/2 Tbsp powdered milk
2 tsp sea salt
1 Tbsp active dry yeast

Instructions:
Dump the stuff in the machine, in the order listed. Turn on machine (basic 2 lb setting). Go do other stuff for about 3 hours. Take bread out & let cool. Eat bread.

This type of cooking is just perfect for my skill level and attention span. Actually that's my real problem with cooking; I get bored waiting for things to cook so I go do something else to kill time and then forget I was cooking. I could probably do a whole other blog called "Sh*t I've ruined in the kitchen" or something to that effect.

Another cool thing that happened today was that we met this guy while we were out cruisin' around:



He was strolling across the road, and being that we're homeschoolers, and on no one's schedule but our own, we were able to take the time to stop and rescue him from the fate of becoming a turtle pancake. I brought him over to the van to let Max see him up close, and he was fascinated. He noticed the plates on the top of its shell and gingerly felt them as well as the smooth underside. (Don't worry, I made sure he stayed clear of the head area, lest his poor little digits become turtle treats.) He checked out how its legs were all tucked in and also noticed the long "fingernails" and was very respectful of them. For a moment I was tempted to bring Mr. Turtle home, but we don't have anywhere to keep him, plus it just seems mean to capture a wild creature to turn it into a pet - and he'd already had enough stress for one day, wondering if these weird, pale two-legged monsters were gonna eat him. Once we completed our turtle inspection, I gently placed him in the weeds far off the side of the road.


Bye Mister Turtle! Nice to meetcha! Now stay away from the roads ok? I definitely see some more in-depth turtle studies in our near future...

Oh yeah - moments before we discovered the turtle, a deer had jumped out in front of us and ran in a straight line up the road ahead of us. I slowed down to keep a safe distance and we followed him for a few moments before he zigged... then zagged... then did one of those graceful, slow-motion-looking leaps they do, and disappeared into the brush. I have a thing for deer - I just love when I get to have a peek at one! It constantly amazes me that such large animals live so closely among us yet stay nearly invisible most of the time.

Finally we passed a guy walking along the side of the road with a red bandanna on his head. Naturally, Max decided he must be a pirate. When we got home, he excitedly told Daddy, "DAD! We saw a DEER and a TURTLE and a TRAIN (yeah we saw one of those too) and a PIRATE today!!!" Many people think we live in a boring little small town, but they have no idea how exciting this place really is!