Vegetable, Dessert - Whatever.

Another stupid post. I really should be posting more on serious things - adoption, parenting, homeschooling, politics, blah, blah, blah. But everyday stuff is so ridiculous sometimes that I feel this desperate urge to share it. Maybe it's a gland problem.

So today my mom and I took the kids to a local corn maze/pumpkin patch/tractor ride thing. Afterward we drove to the nearest little town for lunch.

I was telling her that I remembered a college classmate of mine years ago telling me that this specific town had the best chicken sandwich he'd ever had. I didn't get the name, I guess I just thought it was be obvious once I saw it. Surprisingly, we didn't see a place with a name like "Best Chicken Sandwich You'll Ever Have." We did, however, see a BBQ place called - wait for it - Boston Butt Hut. You can't pass up a place like that. Don't even try. So we pulled into the little place and get out, smoke wafting around us. At that moment, my mom notices a little restaurant across the street. It touts old-fashioned southern cooking. My mom is intrigued, I can see, little elfish ears perked up. So we decide to head over there. In between these two restaurants is a four lane highway. A main artery, as my mom kept calling it. Lots of semis. We all hold hands and are about to cross when we decide to drive over. We get back in the van and begin the back up. My sensible surgeon of a seven years old states "We're in the parking lot of a restaurant and driving to another restaurant. This doesn't make any sense."

And darn it if he isn't almost always right about these things. But the people with drivers licenses control the cars, so off we go. It is probably about oh, 10 feet away? No wait, that's two of me. Maybe 20 feet. Our ride was like this:

"Ok, everyone, buckle up. *Click*
Ok, time to get out."

We walked in to a restaurant that was started in 1948. Original booths, carpet, and tables, from the looks of them. We sit down and order our drinks. The girl taking our order is decked out in Georgia gear, little bulldogs gracing her cheeks. Mom asked "So you are you rooting for on Saturday?'

Our waitress (blink): "Ha."

It's going to be a good lunch, I can tell.

While we sip our drinks, Mom looks longingly over at the restaurant we came from. "You want to go back to the Butt Hut, don't you?" Jack shakes his head, he's disgusted with us. If he knew the phrase 'You've made your bed, now lie in it,' he would've said that.

On the menu, under Vegetables, is a dish called "Chocolate Delight." We are told it is chocolate pudding and cool whip with a cookie crust. "Yes," Mom says, "I'll have that for my vegetable."

She goes to the bathroom and when she gets back she states "You have to see the bathroom."

Indeed.

When I go, I discover that there are two stalls but you must go through the first one to get to the second. That's right. We imagine the scenarios:

"Could you please hand me some toilet paper on your way back?"
"No, go right ahead, I'll just pick up my feet."

If I had thought to bring my camera, we could've acted out some of these scenarios and that would've made this post that much better.

The second stall is larger, like it's the wheelchair accessible one. No matter that the wheelchair would never get through the first stall. They have one on the premises and legally, that's all that matters.

From now on, I can say in any argument "Hey, I can't trust your judgement. You chose the restaurant with chocolate as a vegetable and the bathroom built for two."

I'm pretty sure I win.

Conversations in a Minivan

                 My oldest has a deep, passionate hatred for fast food. Especially McDonald's. It stems from his desire to be a cardiologist. Usually he says "I hate you. McDonald's - blech" as we drive by. Kate will tease him by either telling him she's going to work at Chik-Fil-A when she's adult or by sprinkling his food with salt (Mom! She put salt on my peas - now they're covered with sodium!)

The other day, as we were driving by McDonald's, this was the conversation:

Jack: "I would hate to be a construction worker. My boss might make us build a McDonald's and I would be very unhappy. When I'm a surgeon, I'm going to tell all my patients that they can only eat fast food once a year. Maybe once a month but definitely not once a week or day."

Katie in the backseat pipes up, hands on her hips: "You can't tell those people what to do."

Jack: "It's my job, I'm their doctor."

Katie: "They already know what to do. A couple weeks ago I saw a yellow pick-up truck at McDonald's and it's not there now so he knows."

Meanwhile, Jack is rolling his eyes.

I can't really remember how the rest of this conversation went because I started wondering how Pooh Bear got his honey pots. It seems to me that they are pretty complicated for such animals to make. You may say at this point "But Jess, they have furniture. Surely pottery isn't too far of a stretch." But those are just roughly hewn things. A couple small trees cut for legs of a table, a coarse slab thrown on top. That's not rocket science. But pottery require skill, finesse, some sort of pottery wheel. It bothers me a bit.

And then it bothers me that I'm wondering about furniture and household accessories in a children's book of fiction.

Back to fast food. I respect Jack's conviction on fast food. Although really, if you unwrapped a McD's burger and gave it to him, he would happily eat it. It's only if he knows it's fast food that he becomes a purist. A couple weeks ago, we went to Five Guys with my mom. When the food came, he remarked "That was really quick." And then with a quickening sense of panic, he asks suspiciously "Wait a minute - is this fast food?" Likewise, he went to Wendy's with my mom a couple weeks ago and she told me how she had to talk him into going in while out in the parking lot. He exclaimed with alarm "But I've already eaten fast food three times this year!"

Katie has decided that she will be a "haircutter" and will make cupcakes and muffins and such for the clients to enjoy while she does hair. She, at least, is not concerned about the risk of diabetes. And sometimes, if she's feeling particularly snarky, she will tell McDonald's she loves it as we drive by.

Oh, those minivan conversations.

School Plans Fall 2012 Part 2

You've just been welling up with anticipation for this post, I know.

Science

We use the Apologia Exploring Creation series. I did a lot of research and like Apologia because not only is it Creation-oriented but it's very thorough. There are a lot of ways to use this program too. There are the textbooks (along with test books and journals), audio cds, full course cd-roms, online courses for high schoolers, lab equipment, conferences, etc. Right now we're going through the General Science course. It's middle school level but I'm reading it aloud and then we do the experiments.

Lots of other fun stuff -

Bill Nye videos (find episodes on youtube)
Wonderopolis -a new wonder to learn about every day
Edheads - great for my budding surgeon. Even though the questions are at a middle to high school level (he just skips through them), the activities are fun for him to do. I can't count the number of times he's done the aortic aneurysm repair surgery.
How Stuff Works - like everything, you'll have to preview some of this stuff but the videos are pretty cool

Latin

This is honestly a really fun time for us. My kids (and I) enjoy learning Latin. We use Song School Latin but there are tons of good programs. We're going to add in Spanish in a few years. I know we'll never speak these languages like natives but hey, we're going to do what we can. Latin seems to be a lost art. I know, I know, it's a dead language. But there are lots of reasons to learn it. Especially as a kid - here's an article, and another and another. It's pretty interesting to discover the roots to lots of English words. Plus, it sounds really smart to say we're learning Latin.

Geography

Eh. We do a little. Print out maps to color, point on various things on the globe. When we're in the car, we listen to these songs. I can only stand them once a week, on the way to the library though. Oy.

History

This is my sweet spot. We do the four year history cycle, as outlined in Well-Trained Mind. Last year we did Ancient Times and now we're onto Middle Ages/Renaissance. History is so much fun. So many books and documentaries to choose from. It's never boring. We use Story of the World for our main book and supplement with lots of others. Here's a smattering of books we're using this year:

Obviously, a lot of the Middle Ages and Renaissance centers around Europe, particularly England. Part of my problem with the way history is taught in the public school system is that it's mainly European-American centered. Obviously there is no way to learn everything but there is a world outside of us. I remember learning about the Pilgrims quite a bit but really, how many times do we really need to go over that? There was (and is) amazing stuff happening in Japan, India, Australia, Central America, etc. I want to broaden our idea of history. When I taught preschool, we taught them social studies in this order: you, your family, your town, your state, your country. Everything boiled down to "How does this relate to me?"  It was very egocentric. The four year cycle in Well-Trained Mind is: Ancient Times, Middle Ages/Renaissance, Early Modern and Modern. The idea is to expose kids to the vast scope of history and all that has come before us and then learn about our place in it. We are really just a pin point on the page of time.

I stumbled across this youtube channel: Crash Course . It's awesome. The history ones are really good. The science ones aren't as good, in my opinion. The guy who does the history ones is laugh out loud funny. They're short (like 12 minutes) but really enjoyable and informative. You might want to preview them, as some humor isn't appropriate for kids. Or just ignore the joke, like I do, and they don't know the difference.

Literature, Music, Art

I've worked into our schedule time to learn about poetry, classic short stories, famous composers and music, works of art. There are lots of websites to introduce kids to music and art (Classical Music for Kids, NY Philharmonic, etc) as well as art. I love this book to introduce kids (even toddlers and babies) to art.



Lots of books on Aesop's Fables, Shel Silverstein poetry, Dr. Suess, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, short stories from around the world. One of my favorites is Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children, edited by the fabulous Edith Nesbit. I'll often read a story aloud while the kids have lunch.

I also play classical music in the background while they do math or handwriting. Not because I think it makes them smarter but because it's calming. Also, the kids recognize a lot of the songs from movies and always ask "Is this song famous?"

A trip to the library occurs every week to get books (whatever coincides with our lessons that week for me, science for Jack, princess books for Kate). The kids have the process down and each go to their favorite sections and pick two books.

 Oh and visits to our local science museum, field trips, playdates, homeschool PE at the Y, swim team for Jack every spring/summer, dance for Kate during the school year.

It's a pretty cool gig sometimes, this learning life of ours.

Walking Through the Valley of the Shadow of No Pants

Though a post is hardly necessary with such a title, I will tell my story. I promise I haven't forgotten about homeschooling part 2, but this needs to be told first.

The other day I was wearing white capris. I don't know why I do things like that. Past experience tells me it probably won't end well. But it looks so bright and springy that I can't help it sometimes. So I'm wearing my capris and walking into Kohl's. It's raining (of course it is) and I'm carrying Noah (of course I am) when my ankle decides to simply stop working. I got weak ankles from my mother's side. My grandma always says that the Beamer women tend to have big bottoms. Combined with our chicken ankles, it's a wonder any of us can walk.

As it so happens, I fell into a puddle. In white capris.

Apparently such was the force of the fall that I ripped a gash into the left knee of the pants and scraped my knee to the point of bleeding. Thankfully, I held onto Noah until about the last 6 inches. He landed on his diapered bottom with so little force that he didn't make a noise, just nonchalantly looked about. "Seems like I'm on the ground now - this is quite interesting."

My mother came rushing out from the store and scooped up Noah, fretting over his damp overalls while her daughter limped into the store, blood trailing behind.

This leads me to another point: it seems to be universal that children fall considerably in the eyes of parents once grandchildren come along. In introductions, it's always "This is Jack, Kate and Noah. Oh, and their mother." You can't even remember my name anymore, can you?

My kids squeal with glee at the mention of either set of grandparents. Books, toys, ice cream, restaurants. It's like a holiday every time. Whenever the kids find out we're meeting mom at the shopping center, Katie says happily "Ice cream!" I try to tell my kids that Mamaw is not my mom. Mamaw buys Trix yogurt (there are no words) and doles out Pixar movies and kisses and s'mores like every day is the last. Mom once broke a wooden spoon over my bottom. Mamaw keeps delicious chocolate cereal stocked in case of sleepovers. Mom would shove us out of the door in the morning and we'd hear the click of the lock. No sense in faking that stomach ache anymore - off to school we'd trudge, glancing wistfully behind us.

Back to the puddle of humiliation. As we're walking into the store, Mom says "Well, guess we'd better get you some pants." Fantastic. My mom has a platinum Kohl's card - jeans on mom! I found a pair, somewhat normalish (see last post). They do have some subtle dyed streaks and a small little river of rhinestones on the back pockets. I'd take a picture but posting pictures of jeans is a slippery slope. Pretty soon you're posting pictures of your meals and playlists on your ipod. Eventually you just lose all sense of normal.

They are nice, though. And at $32, they're nicer than ones I would've bought myself.

Later that evening, I was telling mom about my friend who gets upset when her mom books and pays for hair appointments. Sometimes I just want to shake my friend by her overgrown roots, "What's the matter with you? Take the free haircut!" My mom replied "Yeah, you dropped your baby just for a pair of jeans!"

Next I'll be kicking my own leg, "Break, darn you, break - maxi dresses are on sale!"