Unschooly Fun

After a break over the holidays, our River City Unschoolers group is getting back to their Thursday afternoon gatherings. This week, Gail was the gracious host, and Matthew had a great time learning to use her pottery wheel.


Trampoline jumping and Rock Band are two other must-dos whenever Matthew visits there! The kids in the group are starting to participate in our yahoo e-mail group and are getting involved in planning activities for our Thursday meetings. We're looking forward to more pottery, Valentine candy making, science experiments, and whatever else the gang is inspired to organize.

Then, on Friday, Andy and Matthew headed to Gainesville for the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire. They had a blast!!

Jousting Tournament

Archery

Andy and Matthew got to fence! They had a balloon on each shoulder, and the object was to pop the other player's balloons. You can see Andy won the match, with one remaining balloon

Matthew was in his element!

Quick...someone hit the pause button!

So much to do, so little time to blog about it!! This is going to be a quickie, I am determined to get to bed before midnight for once.

So....let's see. Science Spectacular! This is an event that the middle school Patrick goes to (a science and math magnet school) puts on at Chelsea's elementary school. It's basically a marketing ploy - to get the kids interested in science and in their school. Patrick goes as a student volunteer, Andy goes as a parent volunteer bringing Matthew along with him, and of course Chelsea is there at school as a participant(they all did this last year as well)...so everyone in the family ends up there except me! I guess someone around here has to earn a living, right? Matthew and Andy got to man the Coke and Mentos experiment station (pretty good gig!!)



We got new carpet in our family room. Matthew and Chelsea had some fun on the dollies that we moved the furniture around on. Then, the day after it was installed, I was doing the breakfast dishes and Andy said to me, "Stop what you are doing right now, and go get a picture of this. The boys are playing a video game together happily, without fighting - on the new carpet. You'll need this for your blog!" LOL...now that's the spirit!!

The couch and drapes will be going shortly too, don't worry ;-)

Lots of sports going on these days. Matthew is playing basketball and getting ready to start another baseball season. Patrick had his first soccer game playing for his middle school team, and is also playing in a recreational flag football league on the weekends.


No pictures of this yet, but Chelsea very recently started taking a gymnastics class again. She broke her arm 2 years ago at her first competitive gymnastics event, and hadn't gotten back on that horse since. She was suddenly ready to give it a go again, and she is loving it :-)

Okay, midnight is fast approaching. To bed.

Evening Fun and Morning Cold

Here are some random things that were happening around the house last night. Matthew was making a helmet from a cardboard box and some duct tape (he got duct tape in his stocking - I guess this is why!)

We made Patrick's birthday party invitations, and printed approximately a gazillion copies because he is apparently inviting everyone he's ever met.

P&C snagged some snuggle time with Tess.











Then we awoke to temps in the low 20s. We don't really have the wardrobes here to accommodate that, but Chelsea did her best! She wore 7 layers of clothes when she took off this morning to man her patrol post at school.




Lucky me got to work from home today, so I didn't have to brave the cold. But tomorrow morning I'll be up and out before 7am....brrrrrrrr!

The Cottage

My mom (who lives across the street) has a detached garage that has been turned into a little one bedroom apartment. We call it 'the cottage' because, well, it sounds a lot classier than 'the garage apartment' and because the previous owners left this sign behind on the door.
So, one of the ways the kids like to add some novelty to a sleepover, is to have it in the cottage. Sort of like camping out in the backyard - but with indoor plumbing. Not to mention a microwave and refrigerator! We've decided to keep the cottage sleepovers unisex...call us prudes ;-) The boys each were invited to a friend's to sleep over last night, so the girls got the cottage this time.
They made some microwave mystery meat for dinner.

AND, most importantly, helped me test the new setting I found on my camera that allows me to shoot people that are moving without turning them into ghosts!!!


You may have pieced together the fact that this left Andy and I alone in the house for the night. DATE!

Sleepy

Too sleepy to blog, but figured I'd share a sleepy photo before heading off to bed. So, the camera isn't all bad. I think I just need to learn how to use it. Just now in about 5 minutes of internet research, I already discovered a setting that I think fixed the problem of major blur and ghostly effects when there is any kind of movement. So, I guess I just need to stop whining and invest a little time in learning to use it. But, not tonight!

p.s. Matthew is faking, Andy is not.

Confession

I hate my new camera!! It takes crappy pictures. I guess you get what you pay for? I've only ever borrowed digital cameras, have never shopped for one. But, I've never used one that I had trouble getting decent pictures from. Maybe because I always borrowed them from people who weren't cheap like me. I thought I didn't need anything fancy. I didn't care about bells and whistles. I paid attention to the mega pixels and the brand name, and that's pretty much it. Its a Sony Cyber-shot. The worst part is that two days before Christmas my mom's camera broke while in my possession. The lens just suddenly wouldn't close. I read all over the internet about what everyone referred to as 'the dreaded lens error'. Tried every goofy fix I read about online, but to no avail. So now what do I do?? Here I thought we would now have 2 nice cameras on the block and instead we have none. I guess I need to look into having my mom's repaired. The only reason I haven't done so yet is that everything I read online implied that they were prohibitively expensive to fix - hence the suggestions to whack it around in an attempt to fix (as in, it's already broken, so don't worry about damaging it)

On the bright side...we're having another fun sleepover tonight!


This time with some of Patrick's school friends. No school here tomorrow. They had the longest injury and argument-free tackle football game in the front yard on record to date. Now playing virtual football on the PS2. There have also been nerf gun wars, laser tag and a bizarre amount of cereal eating.

Meanwhile, Chelsea is stacking and unstacking solo cups and has a drawer full of cards on the kitchen table sorting them.
The other day she was arranging V-8 cans in the pantry and when Andy questioned her about it she said, 'It's your fault for sending me to Montessori!'

Tales of a Random Sleepover

Sleepovers are pretty much a standard part of our weekends. They vary in size from small - 1 or 2 guests, medium - 3 or 4 guests, big (but not uncommon) 5 to 8 guests, and what we officially deem a "BIG Sleepover" which has to date been as many as 15 guests. A BIG Sleepover could be for a birthday, to mark the beginning or end of summer vacation or Spring Break, or just because we haven't had one in a while. Patrick is lobbying to have the mother of all big sleepovers for his next birthday coming up in February.

This past weekend, one of Chelsea's friends came Cosmic Bowling with us and spent the night Friday night, but that hardly counted, so we had four friends here on Saturday night - which makes for more of a party atmosphere. There are three neighborhood brother/sister combos that are part of the regular cast of characters - two of these pairs were with us Saturday night.

There was dinner, flashlight tag, wii fit, Age of Mythology, fun with glow sticks in the front yard (they made a jump rope out of them!), some interesting poster art, a cool little percussion jam session


A few rounds of Mafia,


and eventually settling in sleeping bags and believe it or not watching The Notebook?? Go figure!