Mama On The Move

Along time ago in a land called Kansas, Ben had two best friends - Katee and Jack.  The three of them were thick as thieves and hung out together daily.  All three were homeschooled, they all lived right next to each other, all their fathers were Army, and they all attended the same church and youth group. When we found out we were moving to Hawaii, Ben was incensed because he didn't want to leave his friends.  He wrote a post on Facebook about not wanting to move to a stupid island in the middle of the stupid ocean and how we were ruining his life.  It didn't matter that Katee and Jack were also moving at the same time - one to Georgia and one to Oklahoma - he was going to be the furthest away and couldn't even go on road trips to see them because the stupid ocean was in the way. He and Jack and Katee have kept in touch although they obviously haven't kept the same level of intensity to their friendship what with five years passing by and none of them being in the

Emily and I went shopping at the mall before Christmas.  At one point, I wanted to buy something for her, so I sent her out into the mall while I waited in line to make the purchase.  I just told her to keep in touch with me through texts to let me know where she was so I could catch up with her when I was finished.

Once again Emily has proven her intellect. We received her PSAT scores in the mail recently and she rocked it, of course. 92nd percentile over all with 97th percentile in Writing Skills and 94th percentile in Critical Reading. Yay, Emily!

This made me laugh - Ben's girlfriend posted on Facebook: Why do so many men feel like they need a "man cave"?  What about working women?  I want a cave. Her father responded: I don't need a cave, the world is my playground. Ben then responded: I take my manliness with me everywhere, rendering the cave unnecessary.

Merry Christmas! Bringing a little Aloha to Illinois!

Seven years ago, we were living on post at Ft Belvoir, VA. One day, a hole mysteriously appeared in the wall over the sofa.  No one knew where it had come from .  All three children denied knowledge of it.  The hole stayed there until we moved.  Only it knew why it had appeared and it wasn't talking. Yesterday, we were all sitting around talking and laughing and out of left field Ben suddenly says, "Oh yeah.  You know that hole in the wall in Virginia?  Yeah, that was me.  I guess it's been long enough that I'm not in trouble now.  I was playing with the dogs and my elbow hit the wall and it just caved in." Kerry and I looked at each other and then at Ben, "Yeah, we always figured it was you.  The girls weren't known for flinging themselves around hard enough to knock holes in the wall but we didn't want to call you a liar...............you liar." Mystery solved seven years later.

Katie came schlepping over to me after her shower still wearing a bathrobe and with a towel wrapped around her hair. "You know what I'm going to invent?" she asked me. "What?' "Towel pants.  When you get out of the shower, you could just pull them on and they would dry your legs so you wouldn't be walking around having water still dripping down your legs!" I looked at her for a moment before I said, "I just use my towel and rub it all over my legs to get all the water off." "I'm a busy woman, mother," she told me loftily.  "I don't have time for that!"

Yep, we have got some serious snow coming down here.

Our homeschool co-op produced three plays this semester.  Katie and Emily were each in two of them. Emily was in "The Great Pandemonium", a play about a high school play during the tech rehearsal.  She played a cheerleader who was standing in for one of the main characters who couldn't be there.  When she wasn't speaking, she pretended she was texting - but she wasn't pretending.  She actually updated her Facebook page while she was on stage during the live performance!  Katie was in a play called "Goody Grissom" which is a folk tale set in prairie times.  Katie played a young mom with a very sick child. Totally weird to think of my thirteen year old playing a mother!  Then both girls were in "Light in the Library", a story about two girls who get locked in the library overnight when characters from books come to life.  Katie played Alice in Wonderland and Emily played the librarian.    I somehow missed getti

Emily's a genius.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: She's had the highest score in every class she's ever taken.  She has a fabulous philosophy that if anyone else in a class is doing well, she must crush them with better scores. She's been writing full length novels since she was eleven. She made the highest possible score on the Language Arts portion of the college entrance exam when she had only just completed tenth grade.  There's only one score you can make to be able to skip ENG 101 and she made it. She's been taking an upper level Shakespeare class at the local community college and although we don't have her final grade yet, she's relatively certain she's made an A+.  She's also the only student to have not missed a single class and to have turned in every assignment. But unfortunately, with all that brilliance bouncing around in her noggin, she occasionally looses her mind and usually at the worst possible mo

My fortune cookie was empty.  That's ominous.

I went in to Katie's room to see what she was up to and her arms were on backwards.

On Sunday, we had to take Ben back to college.  Kerry drove, but I went along on the trip so I could have a little more time to talk with Ben.  He's usually quite entertaining and I enjoy hearing all the details about his life at school. The trip wasn't as scintillating as I had hoped.

When Kerry and I are home with the girls, they play on the computer and I have to remind them to do school, clean up after themselves, and breathe basically. When Kerry and I leave the girls alone for the day...... They decorate the house with lights, make a paper chain and decorate the ceiling fan with it, and bake cookies from scratch. I think I'll go out more.