Mama On The Move

I found it had been violently accosted this morning.

Today after church, Ben was invited to go play "Airsoft" with the testorerone laden youth of the church. Apparently, every Sunday, all the teen boys go to lunch, play Airsoft for four hours or so, then meet back at the church for a youth group study and games. I had never heard of Airsoft. I was told the boys would be shooting pellets at each other "sort of like paintball" and that it was lots of fun. Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear the word "AirSOFT" I think of the boys shooting SOFT pellets at each other. Sort of like Nerf bullets. Or mini-marshmallows. Turns out they are actually shooting hard little BB's at each other which hurt like crazy and leave bruises and welts and red marks and Ben can hardly wait until next week so he can do it again and this time Kerry is going to go with him so he won't miss out on the fun . I probably don't even need to point out that not one single teen girl from the church chooses to particip...

Our TV is in our household goods on a ship somewhere in the Pacific. When I realized we would be TV-free for a month or so, I was actually quite pleased. I felt like this would be a nice little experiment in how to entertain ourselves rather than just vegging out on the sofa. I knew if there were no television, we would spend more time reading, and this has turned out to be true. When there is absolutely nothing else to do , the kids will actually pick up books for entertainment. Emily was already a ravenous reader but she is hitting the library with a little extra vengeance these days, trying to keep enough reading material on hand. Katie - who has never shown a love of reading - has become a voracious consumer of "Magic Tree House" books. We checked out eight new ones for her and she has read one or two a day. Ben does not care to read as a leisure activity. I convinced him to try to find one book at the library in the "teen" section. He came back complaining tha...

I signed Ben up for a science class for homeschoolers . There is a woman here who teaches the lab portions of Biology classes. Because Ben wants to be a marine biologist, I felt this would be an excellent way for him to get practice dissecting things without me having to touch any of it. Here is Ben's report on his first day of class: Today, I went to the first day of my science class. Because it was the first day, we didn ’t actually learn anything. However, we saw some cool preserved animals that the science teacher had collected. They were preserved in that nasty formaldehyde, but the animals were still cool - smell and all. There was a three-foot long shark, some eels, salamanders, mudpuppies , cowfish , and lots of other little things. We did get to dissect some fish that were probably bought at the store. We split into three groups, and I was the main worker of my group (due to the fact that my comrades were squeamish). I had to pull out the spine, heart, intestines, gills, a...

Not only can Emily make an awesome sandwich , she can bake a cake that will knock your socks off! First, she made a devil's food cake in a skillet . Not a cake pan or a Bundt pan - a skillet. She had some trouble chopping up the chocolate for the icing, so I got to help with that part. Katie wanted to help, but Emily would only let her perch precariously nearby and watch. She melted chocolate and caramel together and spread it over the cake. After she iced it with the chocolate/caramel mixture, she drizzled more caramel on top and then added pecans!! Sin on a Plate

Ben is a daredevil. He will eat anything as long as it is gross to others. He's eaten crawdad eyeballs and brains, squid, octopus, alligator, ostrich, bison, elk, buffalo, haggis (ick), wild boar, and frog, to name a few. He laughs at danger. He went into an off limits area in Kansas and came close to getting shot by a hunter. He thinks rock climbing is fun, fell off the top of a ten foot slide last year, loves white water rafting, adores high speed snow skiing and jet skiing, has been bitten by a horse, and wishes he had access to nitroglycerin. The other day, he and I were in the dining room going over his school work, when Emily walked in and started telling me about a problem she was having with her bra. Ben stuck his fingers in his ears and started singing, "LA LA LA LA LA!" at the top of his lungs. Some people are so squeamish.

Kerry is getting ready to deploy.......... ...........as evidenced by the massive amount of camouflage gear taking over the den. Today he came in and announced (with great delight), "I got my lickies and chewies!" After I quit laughing, I asked what on earth lickies and chewies could possibly be. He told me, "You know when your parents used to go to the bank drive-thru window and when the drawer would slide out, the teller would have put a "lickie" or a "chewie" in the drawer for the kids." Apparently getting your cool deployment gear is the military equivalent of candy. First, he held up some thick, gray pants with a waterproof shell. "Snow pants?" I asked. "No, no, no," Kerry told me, "these are 'Extreme Cold Weather Trousers, Generation Three'." "Ah," I said trying to look wise and informed. Next, he held up what I would have ignorantly called a raincoat. "THIS is a 'Wet Weather Top...