Trip South - Take 1

It has been awhile since my last blog. Getting ready for vacation took every spare minute! But, we are finally on the road and, although exhausted, thoroughly enjoying our trip. Here's an overview of what we've done so far:

Monday: We actually made it out of the driveway around 8:30 am. It's pretty amazing that we made it out so early. My goal was 8, but I was thrilled with 8:30.
We spent the day driving to St. Louis, MO.

We arrived in St. Louis around 3:45 pm. We had just a few minutes to hug Sara and drop off our stuff before heading out to Dino and Alison's house. Alison made us a wonderful dinner and we enjoyed hanging out with old friends.


The kids tried their hands at Guitar Hero and Wii Boxing. It was quite hilarious to watch! And, of course, David and Zack loved beating up on Dad!

We finally returned to the Wescoats' around 9:45 pm. We spent a little time chatting with Charlie, Becky and Sara and then sent the munchkins to bed. They had a hard time settling down, but I have a feeling that's going to be the case throughout most of the trip. :)

Tuesday: On the road again by 8:00 am. It was a VERY LONG day of driving. We got stuck in stand still traffic, took a different exit, missed another one, ended up in Alabama (!!) and took much longer to complete our trip. We finally arrived in Athens around 10:15 pm. Nobody got to bed until close to midnight. I'm glad that day is behind us!

Wednesday: Had a great day just hanging out with the cousins and Aunt Christy. We saw the Tree that Owns Itself, a Double Barrelled Cannon and got some really delicious cupcakes and carrot cake.

Had a wonderful dinner, enjoyed some time outside in the warm sun and got to bed at a decent hour. Josh and Jim also went out and listened to some music together in the evening. Overall a really great day!


Thursday: This was our day on our own. We drove around Athens a bit, checked out a bookstore and got a Georgia shirt for Josh's mom, went to an actual book bookstore, and had a terrific picnic lunch and playtime at a park.

We're now catching up on laundry and preparing for another day of driving tomorrow. Florida, here we come!

Complaint Cure #4

This week I'm thanking God for ...
- 14 years of dating my wonderful husband!!
- Beautiful flowers that he thoughtfully gave me in recognition of our 14 years.
- New glasses
- Chores accomplished
- Only one more week to survive until vacation
- Good health for our family
- wonderful hymns and songs of the faith
- a good, albeit cold, soccer season that is almost over
- mapquest
- a nice conversation with my brother
- inter-library loans
- gorgeous weather today!
- friends on the mend from H1N1
- winter clothes and indoor heating
- authors who can write entertaining and emotive stories
- free tickets to the Creation Museum for our vacation
- the wonderful new coat hanging system that my patient husband slaved over
- the great generosity of my parents and the way they have loved on my children for the past few months
- hugs from little arms first thing in the morning
- that Christ is our high priest who stands between us and eternal death

Menagerie

Our house has become a home for arthropods, invertibrates and other creepy crawlies. Nobody warned me that homeschooling would force me to embrace insects, and yet, here I am with a houseful. Thankfully the ones I know about are caged!

Josh and the kids have been studying insects and other such gross things in science lately. So, we are now the proud owners of 5 tadpoles, 10 painted lady butterfly larvae and a few dozen ants. Until yesterday we also had a large spider, an asian beetle and a dragonfly. We had to get rid of those last night though, because the spider was creeping me out and the dragonfly (or flying dragon according to Gabe) was not allowing us to sleep at night.

Most of the kids are fine with the insects being under our roof, but our youngest is totally freaked out. Two nights ago, he was up every half hour to 45 minutes asking us to let him sleep with us because of bugs in his bed. I finally got to sleep at 5 am. That's what made me put my foot down about the flying dragon. No more of those. I think it's the name that really freaked the poor kid out. Who wouldn't be scared of a flying dragon?!

We're excited especially about the butterflies, ants and tadpoles - although when we ordered them, we didn't realize that we'd be on vacation shortly after receiving them! The butterflies are going to tour the southern states with us, the ants will have to fend for themselves and we're asking friends to tend to the frogs. I just hope we don't miss any great transformations. I thought 2 weeks in the car with four kids was going to be tough. Now we're taking 10 caterpillars and are responsible for their very lives! Hmm. We'll see how that goes.

So, here's a warning to any of you homeschooling moms out there. Be advised that homeschooling means doing ALL those crazy things that other parents can leave to the public school teachers - like keeping creepy crawlies in your house for "study". The things we are willing to do for our kids ... Yeesh.

Complaint Cure #3

Thanking God for ...
~ FUNNY, FUNNY children!
~ A wonderful husband who's willing to go sit through an hour of dance so that I can have time at home.
~ Warm outdoor clothing. An abundance of it!
~ Jars with lids that keep bugs for science study from crawling all over my house.
~ An early Christmas with family today
~ The incredible generosity of my parents.
~ An enlightening and interesting parenting conference this weekend.
~ My list making skills. :)
~ Hot chocolate on cold days
~ Goodwill
~ the ease of doing laundry in my own home
~ the forgiveness I am daily shown by God
~ His patience with me
~ The beauty of fall
~ A husband who can really preach well! (Thanks for the awesome sermon on Sunday, hon!)

Freezing in October

Thought everyone might like to see how cold it was at our 8am soccer game yesterday morning. Brrr. Notice the frost on the ground. They were smiling at this point because we had just arrived. But by 9 am, everyone was miserable. The poor kids had to be out for 3 hours at soccer games. I guess that's the price we pay for living in Wisconsin!