Tarantulas and Buffaloes!

As Mondays go, this one wasn’t ½ bad. {G}

I’ve scheduled Mondays and Tuesdays to be our heavy history days. We try to get most of our history reading done for the week by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. This schedule insures that the kids KNOW what we are discussing the rest of the week in their writing assignments, hands on assignments etc. We do divide our literature readings into 4 or 5 days. Mike is scheduled to have Friday off. He doesn’t usually take it, so it was a rare treat when he had both Friday off and TODAY off. He is going to another AFB on Friday with the Wing Chaplain and so it was suggested he take today off. We LOVE having Mike home but for some bizarre reason the kids simply don’t buckle down to school with Dad in the house. Every time he walks through the room I can see their attention follow him. {G}

Today was also slow for school as I tried to gather info for organizing the new Shop Natural co-op, made a few PWOC calls, fielded a few more PWOC calls, worked on my produce order for Friday, chatted with new friends who called on the phone….and THEN I finally realized it was time to just “do school”. We did. Mike went for a run and came home determined to work on taxes.

One of our history books for this week is *Buffalo Hunt*. We read 3 chapters out of the 5. Sometime during the reading I remembered that there are Bison at the state park up the road. I suggested we all go to the state park for lunch and visit the Bison. Mike suggested that I take the little ones on the adventure so that he could work on taxes in peace. Josiah had to be at work this afternoon. Jamin and Jared had no interest in seeing Buffalo! I couldn’t believe it. I even asked Jared if he wasn’t learning about Buffalo this week. He agreed he was. I said, “Then why don’t you want to come with us?” He informed me he’s seen Buffalo before. Hmm….well the four younger ones and I headed for the state park. The Buffalo are usually right as you enter the park. They were GONE. I asked where they were and when they’d be back. The gate keeper told me that they had to move them because of construction. Then she leaned closer and told me which roads to take to the acreage where the buffalos were. She said that if we were lucky we may find one near a fence. We saw about 3,000,000,000 Prairie dogs. Zander and Nolan noticed right away that they resembled the “Whack A Mole” game at Chuck E Cheese or Mr. Gattis. We also saw one buffalo. Arielle was timid to approach him, but finally did. I had Stacia in the sling, the camera around my neck (discovered the strap makes a good teether) and I was chasing wild boys who were trying to “whack a mole” all over creation. They had no fear of the buffalo. Nolan told Zander all he had learned from the 3 chapters in school. I love how personal God can be. What a blessing to have the time and chance to bring history alive for them today – all for $0.00. I also had quite a chuckle over something that Tricia, Adrienne and I had discussed one day at a different park. Zander and Ja’nae were having a blast putting gravel on the slide and then sliding down and pushing it off everywhere. Adrienne and I were fine with this. They were having fun. We were watching. No one was getting hurt. I shared a story about being at a park with my little ones and a group of first time mommies who were very uptight about their children playing in a park. No sooner had we laughed at how much more laid back we are these days – She has 7 and I have 9 children – than children with Mommies who didn’t like gravel on the slides began to arrive. TODAY we were the ONLY ones at the play ground. There were big rocks throughout the sand pile. Zander and Nolan took a lot of time hauling them all to the slide and then sliding down. An elderly gentleman (host?) came out and said, “Boys, I want you to put all those rocks back when you leave. They can’t be by the slide.” My boys were perplexed, but took great care to scatter them back into the sand box instead of piled beside the slide when we left. {G}

Back at home it was discovered that the taxes didn’t go as well as expected. BUT I did gain a new filing system out of the ordeal. :::snort:::

By the time we were ready for dinner it was way past a decent hour for dinner. No one was thrilled with the home made tortilla chips. SOMEONE is eating the apple chips (dryer than I meant them to be but they are a nice potato chip substitute) so I plan to make more. They all were satisfied with making a sandwich on one of my home made rolls. Thanks again to Adrienne for this recipe and for the tip to bake double and freeze them for sandwiches. The boys have noticed that they eat less when it is the whole grain stuff that I bake. In fact – I heard a comment to the effect of my “gut buster bread”. I’m not SURE that was a compliment…but I’m going to choose to think it was. {G}

*Dean & Me* by Jerry Lewis/James Kaplan

I’ve long been a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis fan. I grew up watching the old movies and the telethon. When I saw this book at the library I knew I had to read it. It was a fascinating read. It will be fun to watch some of the movies again, knowing the background of what was going on.

This book gives an insider view of the “golden age” of Hollywood. It is interesting to glimpse. It also portrays a friendship that spanned many decades. I learned lots of interesting things. Just a few, I’d never realized that Jerry Lewis is Jewish. That certainly made some of the sketches I’ve seen him do make a bit more “sense”. I’d also thought Dean Martin was a total LUSH but that isn’t how he is portrayed in this book.

All in all it was an interesting read. It makes me wish now that I could have seen their act live….my mother in law has emailed that she did just THAT in San Francisco back in 1952. How cool is that?