Bits and Pieces

Whew. Busy week. Planning, hosting, shopping, driving ... it all makes for a thin margin of time to write.

But, still plugging along with Project Life, I have been taking pictures! Here are a few bits and pieces of life this week:

1. The girls spent a couple hours one afternoon making an amusement park out of cardboard boxes for their dolls. Caroline's doll is all strapped in with a duct tape seatbelt and crash helmet here (which she definitely needed). Just one more reason to nominate the inventor of duct tape for a Nobel prize.

2. As you know, we love listening to audiobooks in the car. Our latest "read" is The Magician's Elephantwhich I frankly enjoyed much more as an audiobook (the narrator is faaaaabulous, dahling) than as a read-aloud. And I say that as a Kate DiCamillo fan. I just didn't love the book the way I have others of hers ... but the audiobook won me over.

3. We attended a wedding reception for our friends Joseph and Joanna (yup, Joe and Jo!) on Sunday afternoon. Caroline is always eager to be photographed with the bride. Maybe she's hoping the romantic aura will rub off on her? That girl seriously scares me sometimes with her eight boyfriends (all older and sweetly disinterested in her none-too-subtle designs on them). 

4. I've been purchasing books/curriculum and digging reusables out of boxes like a crazy woman. And, this week we attended orientation for our Classical Conversations group. I came away both exhilarated ... and overwhelmed. The mass of STUFF to organize, file, laminate, put in page protectors, review with the children, and remember each week is not for the faint of heart, my friends. And, my inner introvert wanted to curl up among the couch cushions and suck her thumb, as is typical when we're in large groups and the Inner Extrovert has to drive for a while. That said, I'm so impressed by the other mamas involved in this group. They're kind, reassuring, and apparently quite productive.

5. I'd promised Ashley, my 11-year-old niece, that I'd show her how to make a duct tape wallet way back in June. Well, with five days left before school starts for her, we got it done! Then she and her sister and cousins (my girls) had a duct tape crafting extravaganza. See point #1 concerning  the Nobel Prize.

Happy Weekending, everyone! 

P.S. Fellow Texans, this is the weekend to shop for school supplies tax-free. Even if you homeschool like us, you still need a few pencils and markers on hand, n'est-ce pas? 

Winner! And a Few Things

It's Friday. And it's April Fool's Day. And I'm feeling random. So here we go!

1. The winner of the Alphabet Glue giveaway is ... using a random number generator ... Commenter #1! (When does that ever happen?!) Bethy Lynne, congratulations! A copy of the magazine will be sent to you via email. Now, everyone else should go pony up the $4 for your own copy. And no, Annie didn't ask me to say that. Pinky promise.

(I'm doing another giveaway really soon, and I promise you'll like it, so stay tuned!)


2. Did you play any April Fool's pranks today? Or do you dread, ignore, or shake your fist at the day? I ended up baking scones for breakfast and sneaking a Thin Mint into each of the kids' scones to show them that April Fool's pranks can be fun and loving instead of just fun and irritating. "Mother dearest, thank you for your shining example," they all humbly responded.

Ha.

I see that Whole Foods has their annual April Fool's tomfoolery up here.

But my personal gold star goes to my friend Courtney, who arranged with another friend that their respective children would wake up this morning with different parents. After all the kids were in bed last night, Courtney and her husband sneaked over and switched places with the friend and her husband. Is that pure, unadulterated genius, or what?

3. A Love Letter:
Dear Keen Company,

Thank you for making shoes that my boy has worn since time mostly immemorial. We bought our newest pair today. He loves them because they're uber-comfortable. I love them because:
1. They're machine-washable.
2. They're sandals, but they meet the closed-toe requirement of various camps and summer activities.
3. He can take them off, and I can tolerate being in the same room with both his feet and his shoes. And that, dear Keen, is a miracle worthy of deepest gratitude.

Yours sincerely,
A mother who was not paid a dime for this endorsement, honest.

4. Snow in Boston on April Fool's Day is neither new nor funny. Enough already! Send those poor, winter-traumatized, Vitamin D-deprived folks some blue skies and sunshine!

Snippets for Your Amusement

In random order:

1. Before kids, two of the things I thought would be a breeze were making one-on-one time with each child and being completely chill about how they chose to express themselves through their clothing. HA! That latter one especially makes me squirm. It's one thing when your daughter decides to wear her princess costume to Costco. That's charming. But when she insists on wearing her taffeta party dress and SNOW BOOTS to the playground? Where every other child seems to have stepped out of Gymboree display window? Folks, it turns out that I am quite shallow, because I felt a great disturbance in The Force. Being chill about their clothing choices? Working on it. 

Anyway, this is all by way of saying that I made strides as a mother on BOTH counts this weekend. Tim, Ian and Caroline sallied forth on a Cub Scout campout, taking our only family car. Eliza wanted to stay behind in order to attend her BFF's birthday party. So yesterday, we rode the bus down to the Children's Museum, bonding all the way there and back. We told jokes. We played math pattern games. We enjoyed the vistas of our fair city. My Love and Belonging child's cup overflowed. Oh, and by the way, she wore an outfit that clashed like nobody's business. I'm still here to tell the tale, and I think I'm a stronger woman because of it.

2. Speaking of fashion -- and then I promise I'll move on -- have you been to Target in the past week? It's been hit by a style tsunami called Liberty of London. Y'all. So fetching. From women's clothing to accessories to pajamas and, ahem, unmentionables, to girls' clothing (oh! the! cute! skirts!) to housewares. Consider yourself forewarned.



3. If you're homeschooling, or thinking about homeschooling, or know someone who does, or passed a homeschooler at an intersection once, you might wonder just how freakishly they're going to turn out, especially if their home barely resembles school. If so, you might find this interview with a homeschool graduate, now on a full ride at the University of Chicago, enlightening, reassuring, or inspiring.

4. I just finished reading Charles and Emma (see sidebar for link). It's a fascinating look at the marriage of Charles and Emma Darwin -- man of science, woman of faith. Can you imagine being married to  someone who not only did not share your faith, but also pioneered the science that would call into question the faith of thousands? What's absolutely amazing about these two is that they made it work -- respecting each other, adoring each other, raising an unusually close-knit family, weathering tremendous grief together, hardly spending a day or night apart from one another for over forty years. She even proofread The Origin of the Species for him! And yet she agonized over the fate of his eternal soul, while he could not hide from her his doubts. If you read it, I'd love to know what you think. (In case you're wondering, I believe that faith and science can coexist harmoniously ... but we won't open that can o' worms tonight.)

Also. It turns out Mr. Darwin suffered from ill health, particularly of the digestive nature, for most of his adult life. I am hereby diagnosing him with gluten intolerance. You heard it here first.

5. Since the Olympics, Ian's enchantment with commercial jingles has ramped up into hyperdrive. To converse with him, you'd think he watches the telly all day ... which, need I even say, is so not the case. So the other morning at breakfast, we were reading about how David, in the book of 1 Samuel, played harp music to calm the troubled mind of King Saul. Ian interrupted in a syrupy voice: "Get refreshed and regenerated with David's (TM) Harp Music today!"

There's just something about that "TM" that unglues me.