Tuesday, February 24, 2009

EC Web Show

I mentioned yesterday that the lighting on this video is poor, but I encouraged her to go ahead and post it. Hey - episode one is supposed to be rough, right??

Monday, February 23, 2009

Gaggle of Girls

So - we decided there had been far too many boys in the house lately and we needed to have a bunch of Chelsea's girlfriends over for a sleepover! She has a tight group of friends at school and they headed over hear Saturday afternoon after a car wash they had at the school as a fund raiser for the trip to Washington D.C. they are going on. They spent the afternoon performing bizarre operations on each other. Something about implanting bricks and making each other's hands go into a hole in the ground. It's better left at that! We had a nice dinner, then Andy took them down to the school for some night capture the flag (we did this at Patrick's birthday party and I knew it would become another sleepover tradition!). When they got home, they started watching The Sound of Music. A couple of them were getting tired and they really wanted to stay awake later, so they decided to fill the sink with ice water and dunk their heads in to wake themselves up. This turned into quite the activity! Unbelievably the noise this created didn't wake Andy up. Then they set the timer for an hour, so they could do it again. Matthew got some of the second round on video.

I wish I had pictures or videos of the other activity they kept going back to, but somehow I fell down on the job! They were swinging each other (one person at the hands and another at the feet) onto the couch. They took turns doing this for a long time! I wouldn't have wanted them doing it unsupervised, but I was actually really impressed with how safety conscious they were being without any prompting from me. They kept the back and arm of the couch padded with pillows and blankets, as well as the floor in front of the couch and they always had a spotter at the back of the couch to make sure the person tossed onto the couch didn't fly through the window behind it, LOL. No team of two could quite get either Patrick or me onto the couch. I think Patrick and I were able to get Matthew on there once, but it wasn't pretty!

I put a halt to head dunking and body throwing when I headed to bed and miraculously they kept things quiet enough for me to sleep (I'm a really light sleeper!) Chelsea and her friend Emily decided to try to start a little 'web show' and recorded a first episode in the morning before Emily went home. We didn't watch it back and find out the lighting was really poor until Emily had already left. I think Chelsea wants to get a better video before uploading to youtube, but I'm hoping I'll get her permission to post it here at least (stay tuned!)

Big sports week this week - Patrick has 3 soccer games (mon, tue, thurs) and then this weekend Matthew wraps up his basketball season and has the season opener of the baseball season all in one day. Then his advanced baseball team is playing 2 games in a mini-tournament on Sunday. I'll bring the camera!

Friday, February 20, 2009

A Couple of Quick Notes

We've been having fun with this little engineering game. And Matthew added to the nerf arsenal this week with the purchase of rifley looking thingy he calls an Air Blasters Double Shot.

Our Tuesday afternoons/evenings have evolved into insanity. Matthew has group violin lesson, while Patrick has a soccer game that Andy goes and helps coach. Meanwhile, I take Chelsea to gymnastics. My mom picks Matthew up at group lesson and brings him home so that he can do a quick change into his baseball gear for practice. Andy gets home from soccer with Patrick and heads right back out with Matthew to baseball practice (Andy coaches his team). Chelsea and I arrive home from gymnastics just in time to watch American Idol with Patrick. Matthew and Andy don't usually roll in until after 9. It actually all works out fairly well, the only problem for me is that my Tuesday yoga class was squeezed out. Tues/Thurs are my favorite classes, so that's a bummer. I've been substituting Wed nights...not quite as good, but it'll work for now.

We have a couple of boys sleeping over tonight, and had extra boys here every night of the kids' three day weekend last week, so we've declared tomorrow night a girls' night and Chelsea is having her gang of girls over. I'm charging the battery in my camera in the hopes that they'll provide some fun blogging material ;-)

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Weekend Rundown



The erector set emerged from the closet.



Friday night, while Matthew and his sleepover buddy collaborated on a master plan...





Patrick played teenager in the bedroom


Saturday night Patrick and his friend had a double date for Valentine's Day. Well, technically a triple date, because Andy and I went along, but we tried our best to hang back and be invisible. I spared him taking any pictures on this outing, so you'll just have to leave it to your imagination.

Afterward, his friend spent the night, and along with Matthew, they christened the swimming pool with the first swim of 2009!



You can tell how freezing they were if you click on the basketball picture!



Today was another baseball day.















No school tomorrow, so another couple of sleepover friends here tonight. I have to work in the morning, so they've sworn to keep it a quiet one, so that I can get some sleep. What are the odds??

Friday, February 13, 2009

How to work, sleep, and blog??

Wow - this is even harder than I thought to find time and energy for. But, it's only February, can't give up a new years resolution yet, can I?? I thought my problem would be spazzing over what I write - editing to get it just right in an attempt to come across as witty, intelligent and interesting. I vowed not to do that because I knew the only way there would be time to blog regularly would be to just throw stuff out there. I figured I'd make it sort of an online photo album/scrap book and not worry much about text....thinking this would make it less time consuming. Little did I know that uploading pictures and arranging them throughout the post would be the real time sucker.

Sunday was finally P's actual birthday. My mom always makes kids work for their presents! Patrick had to crack the code on the back of her card to find it this year.

We spent most of the day at the baseball field, because Matthew played in a double header. It was a beautiful day, so Patrick brought his book, and Chelsea practiced gymnastics and cheers with a gang of girls at the park while Andy and I enjoyed the baseball games. Then we all went out to TGIFriday's so that Patrick could have his favorite baby-back ribs for his birthday dinner.





Monday, Grammy and Matthew headed to the alligator pond for some bird watching. They caught an egret, a blue heron in flight, and a woodpecker in these pix. (click on the first one that just looks like a tree trunk and you can see the woodpecker's red head)

Okay, last picture.

Random Cuteness

Friday, February 6, 2009

Fantabulous Friday


Have I mentioned how much I love Fridays?? That's my day to play home school mom...my fantasy job :-) It means I have work hours to make up on the weekend, but it is well worth it!
Today started with building a fire - I was nice enough to do the outside work of gathering sticks/wood before waking Matthew (usually his job). We had breakfast by the fire and read Story of the World. We're on the second volume, and Robin Hood is in the picture on the cover, so we've been wondering when he'd appear in our story. Today was the day!

Next it was time to get dressed and head outside for some fresh air. Matthew said he'd like to go golfing, but knew I couldn't be away from my computer (work) for that long, so he settled for hitting balls into the net in the backyard.




We were taking turns hitting balls, and when I finished one of my turns, I couldn't find Matthew. Here's where he was....


(the roof of the garage)




Inspired by Robin Hood and his recent Medieval Faire experience, Matthew decided a little archery was in order.





He made this quiver last year after he got an archery set for Christmas. You see why we thought duct tape was appropriate for his stocking this year!



I guess the memory of making the quiver got Matthew thinking about pvc pipe and what else he might like to do with it, because he suddenly decided he wanted to make a geyser tube. This sounded like a good idea since one of his friends from the River City Unschoolers group expressed interest in doing the Coke and Mentos experiment, but when I heard there was drilling involved, I started looking to postpone this project to an Andy day. Matthew said he'd be happy to just get the pvc pipe cut for today, so he did that.



We headed back inside for some violin practice. Matthew's annual recital is coming up on March 20, so we are trying to get the current song he is learning down in the hopes of learning one more new one before recital time.


We fit in another chapter of Life of Fred Fractions before it was time to head out to pick up Patrick at school. This quirky quasi-curriculum is working out really well for us! Another week I'll have to elaborate on this resource that I stumbled on while reading this (AMAZING) unschooling mom's blog.

Lately, I purposely arrive a little early for pick up at Patrick's school to leave Matthew and I enough time to fit in a story from Roald Dahl's Boy: Tales of Childhood Days while we wait. This was a gift that my sister (the famous Aunt Zanny) gave Matthew during her last visit, and it's been a really fun read!

Truly enjoying the journey.

Monday, February 2, 2009

The Party Post


So, we had the big 13 yo birthday party, and it was a huge success! Patrick invited a whopping 29 guests, but lucky for us, we ended up with 17. Along with our 3 kids we had 20 here at least some of the time. This made for a really nice size crowd. It was big enough that Patrick still felt like he was having a BIG party, and it wasn't so many that it was a real squash just to have them all in the house. It also turned out to be a really good number of people for the two games we had planned that called for breaking up into teams. In each case we ended up going with 4 teams - and the teams were small enough that everyone really had a role in the game.

My mom was the first one to suggest a scavenger hunt, and we all thought it was a good idea. But, none of us had ever organized one and of course we didn't get around to real planning until a day or two before the party. So, we were a little stumped as to how to go about it. Then, Chelsea had a brainstorm, and if you ask me, it was a stroke of genius! Here's what we did....

We made a list of math problems and the answers to the problems were house numbers. Each math problem had a code word with it. Once you figured out the math problem, you knew which house to go to to say that code word. Then, you had to find the house, knock on the door and say the code word to the person who answered. If you had the right code, the person there would give you an object. The first team to collect all 6 objects would win. I am really baffled as to how Chelsea thought of this, but it worked out perfectly. She even took on the job of walking around the neighborhood recruiting neighbors to participate!



Is this legal...can they make us do math at a birthday party??




On the run...



Next we headed down to the elementary school to tire them out some more ;-) They played capture the flag, soccer, four square, basketball, and did gymnastics.




Oddly enough, Andy has the ice cream man's phone number in his cell phone, so we called him and asked him to come by.

It was getting dark by the time we headed back home. After pizza and salad for dinner, we moved on to a game that has been a staple of Patrick's birthday parties for years..."Who Knows Patrick Best?"
In the past, we've done this in sort of a game show format, with teams sitting on opposite sides of the room, taking turns answering questions, and the ability to 'steal' a question from the opposing team if they miss it. This time, Patrick wanted to go with a written test.

We were careful to put kids from both neighborhood and school on each team, so they could answer all types of questions. We put each team in a room, and they went to work...



Then, Patrick graded the tests aloud in dramatic fashion, while everyone huddled around him.
There were 35 questions and we ended with a tie for first place with 23 correct answers. We gave a quick 2 question tie breaker quiz, but it was still a tie after that, so we let both teams split the prize.
Next, we headed back outside for some flashlight tag. Soon, it was getting close to time for the girls to head home, so we went back in for cake and presents.




The highlight of the boys' sleepover portion of the party was the midnight trip back to the elementary school for more capture the flag. Andy took them down there around 11pm, and they didn't get back until 1:30am! Apparently it was a roaring success. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to fast become yet another sleepover tradition.

Happy Birthday Patrick!