My Kids Didn't Know About Tubing

We decided to take the boys tubing for father's day.  Paul and I hadn't been since the mid 90s, so we were pretty excited for a relaxing day on the Pigg River.  We were alarmed to discover that morning that our kids didn't even know what tubing was!  We had to explain to them about the intertubes they would float on and the river.

The water was a little chilly initially, but it was a warm day so it felt refreshing.  We had a short hike to the spot where we put in.

All smiles and ready to go!  The water was flowing gently.  There were one or two spots you had to walk a few steps, but overall it was perfect.  We saw frogs, a turtle, and three snakes.

It took about 90 minutes total to float the whole stretch.  Here we are at the end. 

It was a really fun experience, and the boys are all begging to return.  Turns out they are big fans of tubing!

Odyssey of the Mind 2018

 I've blogged before about Pierce participating in Odyssey in the Mind, something I did myself as a kid.  If you haven't heard of it, Odyssey of the Mind (or OM) is a creative problem solving challenge in which teams of seven kids choose from one of five problems and create a skit or structure or vehicle.  There is also a portion called "spontaneous" where they have to do a short term problem the day of competition that they don't know about beforehand.  Pierce was on a primary team in first grade (they present their project/skit, but don't compete), but has been on a competitive team the other years.

Last year Cort and Reid saw how much fun he was having, and asked to be in OM as well.  I talked to the teacher coaching Pierce's team last year, and she was nice enough to coach a primary team with the twins if I would coach that primary team with her. She has a lot of experience, and the kids all love her. This year Pierce migrated to a different team of mostly 5th graders (everyone else on his team from last year left for middle school), but Mrs. Harden and I stuck with the primary team from last year - only they progressed to being competitive this year.

The kids chose the problem of Stellar Hangout.  They had to create a space relay station with aliens.  There had to be a human worker, space food, entertainment, and a quest for treasure.  The kids have been working on this since October.  The last couple of weeks we were meeting for a couple of hours after school every single day to try to tie it all together.  The coaches are only allowed to give guidance and provide supplies - the kids have to create everything and write all the lines.  The more creative and outside the box, the higher the score. (Pierce's team chose a problem where they made a Mockumentary of a children's classic - they chose Peter Pan).

Saturday was the regional competition.  Here are Cort and Reid in their alien pop star costumes:

The teams worked really hard and had so much fun.  What energy!  What creativity! 

At the awards ceremony, we found out that Pierce's team placed second in their category.  They were thrilled - they really did have an adorable skit.

And then came time for the Stellar Hangout awards.  They were up against 13 teams total.  I think Mrs. Harden and I were both a little shocked when they won first place.  They have a wonderful skit with very creative elements, crazy costumes and unusual props, and a catchy and hilarious song, but they're a young team (all 2nd and 3rd graders).  I just never expected it to happen, especially their first year.  So they get to go to the state competition in Newport News next month. 

So it looks like I have a few more weeks of OM practices in my future.  I'm happy for the kids - they really worked hard for this.  It's going to be a fun adventure, and I'll let you know how it goes! 

Christmas Break Recap

Christmas break was super cold this year!  We didn't venture far from home.  It was nice to have some down time.

Pierce has suddenly become relentless about learning how to ride.  Francie is not a beginner horse.  But I did let him walk her around on the lunge line one day.

Cort spent a great deal of time in frigid temps riding this spinning big wheel on my parents' driveway (ours is gravel). 

Reid asked for a biohazard suit for Christmas.  Santa delivered.  He needs to grow into it.  They just don't make biohazard suits in kid sizes.

Twice we met up with cousins for some rollerskating.  Rollerskating is a great activity during the cold winter months.  I enjoy getting out there, too. 

Overall, we had a nice break.  It was over in a blink, and now back to school through May. 

Wonder

Last summer I read the young adult book, Wonder, upon the recommendation of my friend, Ginger.  I loved the book.  It's about a fifth grader with a facial deformity, who has been home schooled his whole life due to surgeries.  But this year his parents are sending him to school, where he encounters bullies, but also makes friends.  It's a heartwarming story, that teaches us to be kind to those who are different.  When I heard the movie was coming out, I wanted to take my boys.  And then I thought I'd also like to take my class!  I was teaching Freshman Orientation, and it seemed like a message we all could use.

So the day before Thanksgiving my class took a field trip to the movies, and my mom met us there with my boys, who were already out of school.  The movie was incredible.  I almost cried several times.  One of my students was still crying on the way out.  It made a HUGE impression on my boys.  They talked about it for hours.  It opened up a lot of discussion at our house.  Especially Cort, who has a very empathic personality.  My mom bought him a copy of the book (the wait to get it from our library is several months).  Once he had his hands on the book, this is what happened over the next few days.

 

 

He says it is his favorite book.  Next up?  He's reading the sequel.  The film had a great message for anyone age 8 and up.  And the book is even better than the film.  I highly recommend both!

 

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas! 

Trick or Turkey

Well, it's the day before Thanksgiving, and here I am just now posting about Halloween.  We end up driving to a neighborhood every year to trick or treat, as there is nothing in our rural area.  The neighborhood we go to is always overflowing with people like us, who drive in from the countryside.  The residents love Halloween and go all out with decorations.  They humor all us outsiders and are welcoming.  It's always one big party.  There's one house that even creates a haunted house in their garage each year.  It's a favorite of the boys.  They also love this 'working' electric chair:

 

 

This year Reid was an Oompa Loompa, Cort was Willy Wonka, and Pierce was an airline pilot.  I was so happy I didn't have to work this year, and got to take them trick or treating.

 

Now, I'm finally done with Halloween - is it time to move on to turkey?  Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving!  

Pierce Turns 11

I started blogging when Pierce was 3.  Two weeks ago, he turned 11!  We had some family come to celebrate and it just happened to be on the actual birthday of my aunt, Pam.

I didn't have time to do a cake that week.  So I took Pierce to Sam's to pick something out.  We were flipping through the cake book and Pierce complained, "Mom, I'm TOO old for decorated cakes!".  So I told him that it was Pam's birthday too, and that she liked decorated cakes.  So he picked out a cake for Pam.  All with an air of "I'm just humoring my great aunt, but I am much too old for decorated cakes". 

A couple of summers ago we went to see The Secret Life of Pets with Pam and George, so Pierce picked that out as her theme.  Plus, Pam is an avid dog-lover.  Pierce then chose the most boyish frosting colors he could find.

He sure didn't complain any when he was gobbling up those teal blue frosted flowers!  Thank goodness we had Pam around to thank for our cake this year.  A birthday without any cake sure would be a sad affair.  I'm guessing this whole incident officially puts Pierce into that "tween" category. 

The Twins are 8

Last month, the Cort and Reid turned 8.  Some of you have been reading about them on this blog since they were four months old!  Most of the time, they get along well (like in this picture, they were listening to some music together).  It's Cort and Pierce that do all the arguing in our house.

Cort and Reid are often up to some sort of antics.  Here, they were banished outside because of the brass instruments that they truly cannot play.  This is my uncle's old trumpet and Paul's old saxophone.  Instruments of torture for this mom's ears!

The week after they turned 8, it was back to school.  The only thing Cort requested for his birthday was blue hair.  So we made that happen.  He loved it, and couple of weeks later he was back to normal. 

Cort and Reid are in 3rd grade this year.  Pierce is in 5th.  I can't believe we'll have a middle schooler next year!

Up to Something

On Mother's Day, Paul and I had just finished cleaning up dinner when he said, "I think the boys might be up to something".  We went to look outside.

They were carrying one another around the place on an old WW2 stretcher that came from my grandparents' garage.  Good thing they don't know where my big bandages stash is...

Go Fly a Kite

We had three kites from previous beach trips.  One breezy day over the boys' Spring Break, we took them down to the large pasture.  One was missing a piece.  Reid got his stuck in a tree when a breeze jerked it out of his hand.  But Cort?  Well, Cort had a grand time.

Behold the joy of Spring! 

Readers, when did you last fly a kite?

Egg Hunting, Two Bears Style

This was the first year that none of the boys had Easter egg hunts at school.  So we had to do something at home.  Rather than just hide a few eggs around the house or in the yard, we decided to get a little more....creative.  Paul and I hiked a trail loop on our property, hiding eggs along the way.  It's about a 3/4 mile loop. 

After we had all the eggs safely hidden, the boys were very excited to go.  A neighbor kid showed up right around this time, so we gave him a sack to let him hunt for eggs too (he was so delighted by his fortune in having shown up with perfect timing you would've thought he'd won the lottery).  A brief countdown, and they were off!

There were eggs in trees and in holes and even on limbs.  Eggs that had to be hit down with sticks.  Needless to say, this adventure was a HUGE hit with the boys, and they immediately wanted to do it again.  I suspect this will become a yearly tradition, assuming the weather is always as beautiful as it was on this particular week. 

OM and Ohms

This year I helped coach an Odyssey of the Mind team so that Cort and Reid could participate.  They were on a primary team (first and second graders, judged but not scored).  Their problem was called Movin' Out and they had to make a scene that could change when the characters moved from one scene to another.  Pierce's team did a problem where they used two famous works of art and looked at them in the past and in the future. 

It was a long day and the boys' competitions were close together, so I forgot to take pictures!  I was just focused on getting people to where they needed to be, and costumes.  I only took one picture.  At one point we were walking down a hallway by a science classroom (the competition was at a high school) and Pierce stopped me, pointing to a cartoon on the door. 

"MOM!  Look!"

I confess, I stood there blinking at this cartoon for a minute, at a complete loss. 

"MOM! Don't you get it?"

Me:  blink, blink

"MOM!  Resistance is measured in ohms!  That's something I learned studying ham radio."

Me, shaking my head in dismay at my shortfalls:  "Ohhhhhh!  I get it now! That's cool, Pierce."

Pierce's team didn't place this year, and they were disappointed, but they still had a great day.  All of the other kids on Pierce's team are headed to middle school next year, so he will have a new team I guess.  Cort and Reid loved doing OM and can't wait to be on a secondary team next year.

Readers, did you know that resistance is measured in Ohms, or is it just me?

Halloween 2016

The boys had a fun Halloween.  Here they are waiting for the bus on the day they had their school Fall Festival.  Cort was Mario, Pierce was Edgar Allan Poe, and Reid was a "Super Banana".  On Halloween itself they wore different costumes.

Signs that your child may be on to your candy pilfering habits:

I have been working more hours, and I've been blogging for 7 years come December, so I'm feeling a little burned out.  This is why my blogging is spotty for now.  I'll try to still write something at least once a week, but it may be a while before I resume 3 days weekly. 

There's Nothing To Do at My House

I love yard games.  I've got a nice collection now from yard sales and thrift stores.  Sometimes I set them all up in the riding arena for the weekend.  It makes for a nice break from other projects.

 Ladderball.  One of my favorites.  Paul and I first learned about ladderball on a camping trip up North in Michigan, where everyone in the campground seemed to have brought their ladderball but us.

 Croquet.  I still don't know if we're completely playing this right.  But we have fun trying.

And bocce ball.  A new yard sale find this year.  We played this with Paul's parents when we visited them in Nebraska a couple of years ago. 

As you can see, my house is so boring and there's nothing to do on the weekends.

Readers, do you like yard games?  Do you have a favorite?

The Problem with Nancy Drew

For the past year, I've been reading the boys some of my favorite books from my childhood.  Books like Superfudge, The Pink Motel, and The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  Recently I decided to read them my favorite Nancy Drew book.  As a kid, I think I read every one of them.

The Clue in the Crumbling Wall started off well enough.  By the time the boys' Spring Break rolled around, we were about halfway through the book.  We headed off one morning to run some errands.

I was unsuspectingly browsing through Dollar Tree when the boys started getting worked up.  They were certain they had seen a shoplifter.  Someone had stolen some pens!  They were quite insistent on reporting the matter to the manager.  But they didn't just report it.  They made all sorts of suggestions to the manager about how to catch the crook, including fingerprinting throughout the store and using hidden cameras.  They even suggested that the cashier had been hypnotized by the criminal, which was why she didn't see him leave.  Luckily, the manager seemed to find this amusing.

I dragged them away.  They insisted they could describe the thief for a profiler.  I decided I was going to need some coffee before we went anywhere else.  In the drive thru line, the boys saw a dad with a toddler.  The boys decided this dad was the thief!  He had magically appeared at Starbucks!  I asked where the toddler was during the theft, and they said at first that the toddler was an accomplice.  It didn't take them long to reason this out though....the dad was really a kidnapper!  I asked why there was no Amber Alert and they said that people didn't know yet.

I was pretty nervous about what might happen in the grocery store, as the whole way there the boys insisted that a black car with the thief/kidnapper was following us. 

I banned any further reporting of criminal activity before we went in to the grocery store.  But there were a lot of suspects in there.  The grocery store was just full of crooks that day.

The next week I got to go grocery shopping and errand running by myself.  It was so nice and quiet. 

Maybe next we'll read another Little House on the Prairie.  That seems a little...safer.

Magic Eye

When Paul and I were dating in college, a Magic Eye store popped up in the mall.  Once in a while we'd go in and stare at the pictures on the wall.  It took me a dozen trips before I figured out how to make my eyes relax enough to see the hidden pictures pop out.  I remember being irritated that Paul figured it out before I did.

At a recent yard sale I picked up several Magic Eye books for a quarter a piece for the boys.  It's been more than twenty years, but I still remember how to relax my eyes to see the pictures.  I guess it's kind of like riding a bike - once you figure it out you never forget.  Still, it was exciting when the 3D eagle popped out of the first picture I studied.

The boys desperately want to be able to see the pictures.  So they have spent a lot of time sitting on the couch trying different techniques in hopes of revealing the images hidden inside.  Pierce came the closest - and then when he started to see the picture shifting shape he got so excited he jumped off the couch, and of course, lost his concentration.

How about you, readers?  Did you ever frequent the Magic Eye stores in the mall back in the early 90s? 

Up in the Trees

Reid decided to put his Christmas money from this year towards building a treehouse.  It's still very much a project in progress.  But on nice days, he loves to go do his reading homework up in the branches. 

It does seem like a relaxing spot to read, doesn't it?  I'll feel better once the railings are up though!

Fire Starting

When I was a kid, I can remember my dad trying to start a fire with a magnifying glass, not expecting it to work, and causing the carpet to start smoking. 

When we were up on our mountain a few weeks ago, I discovered Pierce trying to start a fire with his glasses. 

I think the sun was at a wrong angle.  Paul came over to help.  All the boys were interested in this fire starting business.

In the end, a lighter started a fire in our fire pit very nicely.  Maybe we'll try the glasses trick again when the sun is overhead.

Readers, have you ever started a fire in an unusual way?

Sugar on Snow

One afternoon after the big snowstorm, my mom posted instructions on Facebook for making sugar on snow.  You may recall when Laura and Mary made this in Little House in the Big Woods.

It couldn't be any easier.  You pour pure maple syrup in a pan and heat it to 234*. 

Then you take the syrup and pour bits of it onto fresh snow.  Eat right away and it has a taffy consistency to it.

The boys loved it so much, and immediately begged to make more.  With the cost of maple syrup lately, we won't be making too much of this, but it is a nice special treat in a snow storm!

Halloween 2015

We had a good Halloween.  The boys had a fall festival at school and dressed up as Paul Revere, a knight, and a ninja. 

Then they had an event at a local church and they chose Paul Revere, Where's Waldo, and an alien costume. 

Finally, we went trick or treating.  They chose the ninja, alien, and knight costumes.  We have other costumes, but they just seem to have some favorites. 

This picture isn't the best focus because the skeleton was moving and flashing, and I used my cell phone to take it.  But you get the idea.  They had fun and got loads of candy. 

Readers, did you know that aliens wear smelly toe shoes?

Happy Boys

You know what makes my kids happy?  Being outside.  It doesn't much matter what they're doing - they always find some adventure.

And while they may still chat about Minecraft, while running and leaping and climbing, at least they are soaking in the great outdoors and having fun along the way. 

Readers, have you ventured outside lately?