Un-Labor Day

I have two raves and a rant for today. Hm ... let's book-end them. We'll start with Rave #1: Our outing today with our friends (and now fellow homeschoolers) the Dixons, to Mountainview Park, where we had a lovely hike, with just the right degree of ruggedness, some winged wildlife spotting, and a beautiful, shaded creek for the kids (and us) to play in. See below:
OK, never mind, Blogger seems to not be accepting images right now. (That doesn't count as a rant.) I must add, too, having done this same hike a couple weeks ago with our homeschool support group, that it is a whole lot easie to do this wiwhen 1) dads are along, and 2) the skies are ovecast and threfore not broadcasting 95 degree hat upon us!
Rant: The new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. We rented it this afternoon to watch with the older two during #3's nap, since the forecast called for tons of rain. Ian has read the book (he's a big Roald Dahl fan), and we just listened to the whole thing on CD, narrated most delightfully by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame at least twice while riding around in the car. Well, concerning the movie, I am most definitely not a fan. I guess I kind of carry a torch for the old version, Willy Wonka and the C.F., but Johnny Depp as Wonka in this recent one is just plain weird, failing to engage both the children he has invited on the tour and the audience. Even the factory just seemed to me too much like it was all done on a green screen. The last 5 minutes, with the heartwarming message about family, managed to redeem the experience a tiny bit for me, but still. Two thumbs down (but the kids liked it, and at least we got to discuss the comparisons to the book and audiobook, so maybe one thumb down and one waving horizontally). I see that most Amazon reviewers disagree with me, but that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. :-)
Final Rave: The super-cool, oh-I'm-salivating, coveting, feeling sore-tempted, history timeline figures on CD from Homeschool in the Woods. All I can say is WOW.