What DIDN'T We Do This Week?!

Wow.  What a freaking week.

The ginormous theater is having summer kids movies for $1, so we went and saw Journey 2: Mysterious Island.  Both kids were enthralled and after it ended Brooklyn asked, "Okay, so now can we go find a mysterious island?"  Uhhh...so now I'm investigating California islands, ha!

Sam was happy sprinting up and down the aisles of the theater after everyone else left.

I forgot about the power of arcade games at the theater...it's not that I mind parting with $5 for the 15 minutes of sheer pleasure for my kids, but it was the unprepared fugalista that was the personal that emerged when the kids asked me for some of my greenbacks.  I think next time I'll just set $5 aside so I can focus on their pure joy instead of the fact that my wallet is $5 lighter! Ha!

"Look what I got for $5, Mom!  Two plastic balls!"

We enrolled Brooklyn in one of the charter schools that partners with homeschooling families.  We have to meet with an Education Specialist (ES) once a month to show off what we've been learning, and she will have to do the STAR tests when they're required.  In exchange, they give us $800/semester to use for educational purposes--classes, art supplies, lessons, books, whatever.

So Brook and I had to go to an introductory meeting that was about an hour away.  She was pretty nervous at first--she knew it had something to do with school and something to do with lots of extra money for her to do fun stuff with.  But apparently she thought she had to take a test and such and was just super anxious.
We watched a video, Brook colored a picture of tarantulas, I signed some papers and that was it.  When we left it was, "PHEW!  I am so relieved!  That's not as bad as I thought it would be!"  Poor kid, I didn't know she was that anxious!!  "I thought it was going to be like, you know, school."
So I asked her what was done at school.
B: “Uhhh...”
T: “Did you play at recess?”
B: “Yeah, but not much.”
T:  “Did you read?”
B:  “Yeah, but I don’t really like it.”
T:  “But you got to be with your friends.”
B:  “That’s not what school’s for.”

Huh...quite the insightful little thing.
So afterwards, we hit up Red Robin.  Brook ordered the "Cookie Monster!!"
YUM!!

Except she was so restless that this is how she sat for the majority of our time there...

...and this was my view.

This girl totally cracks me up.  On the car ride back to Livermore, I noticed her in the back "stalling," as she calls it.  I mentioned that I used to "stall" when I was a kid and I loved it--I could do whatever I wanted, be whatever I wanted, imagine whatever I wanted in my own head.  But I called it daydreaming.  Then I asked, "Do you know what 'stalling' usually refers to?"  And I explained that the term was generally used in reference to engines and she perks up and says jokingly, "I didn't know that cars daydream! HAHAHA!"

Quite the comedian, that one.

And then I walk into the kitchen and catch her doing this...
"UGH!  Why can't I ever be right-side up!?!"

Oh the magic of concave and convexes!

Another Brooklyn quip for the week:  We love YouTube here.  I mean seriously, you can find EVERYTHING on it!  So the other day Brooklyn and Sam asked for me to type in "sperm".  Thanks to the Safety On feature, I got a bunch of interesting animated clips.  Brooklyn narrated while Sam sat watching saying, "Oh." and I tried not to giggle too loudly.

They got bored and Brook and I went into the kitchen.  She grabbed a bottle of Russ's experiment that shows the flow of fluids.  She tipped it upside down and declared, "Ooh look, it looks just like little spermies."  That one had me on the floor laughing.

Another day, Brook and I were watching a movie that I surprised her with that she has been searching everywhere for (Cats and Dogs) and we were in the garage watching it.  Well, we were both listening--I was making homemade refrigerator magnet words and Brook was dumping the stamps bucket upside down.  She asked to borrow my scissors for something and I obliged.  I got caught up in the movie and the next thing I know, I look over and she's cutting the hair off of her legs.  I just said, "One small slip and that could be really painful."  "I know" was the reply.

Then she moved up and grabbed a piece of hair on her head.  Oy. 

Here's my internal dialogue:  "Ohhh boy.  Here were are.  The hair and scissors.  Okay, just play it cool here...don't want to freak her out.  Oh hell, I'm freaking out.  But it's not like it's my hair anyway.  But I have to look at it!  But if I forbid it, she'll find a way to get the scissors and try it herself.  Oh geez, she's looking at me with that 'what are you thinking' look!  SAY SOMETHING!"

"...it'll take awhile for that to grow back."
"I know."
--snip--
...sharp intake of breath from me...
"Let me see...huh, that's definitely shorter."
"Yeah, it's definitely the season you know and I need the hair not to be on my shoulders anymore so I need to do this."
"...I can help if you need..."

She finally let me help her do the back.  Not bad, considering, lol.

And the front.  It looks far better here than it normally does though, ha!
It was actually a bit of a bonding experience with her figuring I'd freak out, but allowing her to express herself.  I'm hoping she'll invite me along next time, too!

"I'm sooooo thirsty!  Ooh, I found the perfect cup!"

Goofball.  It's from a tea set--someone put it in with our cups, ha!

She asked if I would build some blocks with her.  When we started I thought it was going to be a 10 minute, 4' high easy simple tower.  Nooooo...she had a plan!  914 blocks it took to build this "Stairs to Heaven" as she calls it.

Sammy-Man, playing with the bubble machine.  I've got a couple of good quotes from him this week as well:

Russ asked Sam, who was watching Tom and Jerry on YouTube, if he wanted a grilled hot dog for dinner.  Sam replied, "Yeah, I want a octopus.....uuuuuhhhhhhhh...a hot dog."

Both kids are constantly asking us to type things they are interested in into YouTube to see what comes up.  There are the main ones:  Tom & Jerry, cats, scorpions, eyeballs...but then you get really odd ones like one that Sam had the other day.
"Can you type in 'a cat riding a bike without a face'?"

Shelan and I look at each other for a second like, 'did I hear that right?' and then about die laughing.  Meanwhile, Sam is just irritated that I seem to be taking my sweet time, rolling on the floor in a laughing fit, not typing in his request.  Ahhh, love that boy.

Russ has been wanting to go hiking with Corinne (his sister) again for awhile.  They attempted Mt. Whitney about a year and a half ago and it didn't end super well, so they decided to go for Half-Dome this time and make sure they pack the right kinds (and enough!) food.

It was a bit of a last-minute endeavor though.  They both put their names in to be raffled for spots to be able to climb, and they didn't find out until late (early?) the night before that they were indeed able to climb that weekend.  Corinne emails at 5am that she's coming and will be at the airport in 4 hours.  Russ is running around like a maniac, trying to pack everything.  Neither know if there's even a spot for them to camp and plan on just sleeping in the back of the truck.
It was a bit crazy.

But it all worked out!  So they got there Friday afternoon, found a place to camp, and passed out around 8pm so they could get up early and get moving.

Saturday morning for us looked like us...

The kids doing their mini-mountain climbing at the park structure.

Catching bugs--here it's an ant.

Picking roses.

Rescuing the spider that was giving nightmares to the kids that slid down this slide--it was about halfway down the inside of the slide, building a web.
*shudder*
But Brooklyn saved it!

Thankfully, the splash pad was on and it wasn't swamped yet.  The kids had a glorious time trying to soak me, and in the end they succeeded. :)

There were lots more experiments.  Brook is now moving on to experimenting with physical states...generally she mixes liquids, but is now seeing what happens when you freeze your experiments.
These are rose petals in ice.

Water, milk, and cinnamon, I believe.  It's currently being stored in the freezer for a future "thing to put on your head when you are really hot."

Oh yeah, Saturday was also the day that it was 106* outside!!!!  The really crappy part?  We don't generally use our air conditioning, especially since we know it doesn't work very well.  Well...it didn't work at all this day.  It got up to NINETY THREE DEGREES inside the house!  UGH.  So that's why everyone is sweaty in these photos!
Yahtzee Jr....which lasted all of 2.5 minutes.

Jenga, which always turns into block building, and then dominoes.

Papel picados!

It wouldn't be a normal day in our house if all of our Tupperware wasn't used to house creatures of some kind--spiders, daddy long-legs, cockroaches, earwigs, snails, slugs, bees, wasps, ladybugs, rolly pollies...oy.

Another experiment I found later-on in the freezer.

We decided to see if an egg would fry on the sidewalk.

Not immediately, but we went out today (2 days later) and saw where it did eventually get cooked.

See?  Jenga isn't Jenga without it secondarily becoming the Eiffel Tower.

Realized I never got a photo of her gap.  Now her tooth is growing in there, but the one to the right will be out before too long as well.

I'd heard of World of Goo through some homeschooling groups and was happy to see that we got it for free with our trial membership to GameFly.  We all have way too much fun with it (Russ is on the couch behind me currently, having been playing it for the past hour, ha!  But it's also easy enough that Sam can do some levels by himself.).

While we were sweating it out at the house, Russ and Corinne were sweating it out at Half Dome.

The hike was 8 miles, one-way (including the near-vertical climb at the end).
They were up at 4am, on the trail by 7am and they finished around 6pm.  Phew!!!
Russ got some awesome photos though!!

Thar she blows!

That line going up the middle is people climbing.

A quick stop for sunscreen.

Love this guy!

...and his war wounds.  Especially since it was either my camera or his elbow.

"C'mon Russ, let's go!"

Corinne in all of her fabulousness.

Psyching himself up for the ascent.

A pile of ruined gloves that Russ deemed good enough to use for a bed.

There were these women that apparently hiked with tails...??

Almost there!!!

"Just give me a minute..."

And the view from the top.

See that red speck at the edge of the cliff??

...that's Corinne.

Apparently she was getting interesting looks when she started busting out her yoga moves on the edge of the mountain...

It's difficult to see the depth here, but it's looking down to the bottom of the mountain from the top.

These two got back home around 11pm.  They came in the door hobbling (that's an overstatement though, I think)--Russ had about 8 blisters on his feet and his wounded ankle to attend to.  And Corinne tried to bend her knee and a loud POP emitted from it, and the sunburn on her legs was quite amazing.
They were troopers, for sure!

...and are already planning their next adventure.

On Sunday, we kind of lazed about.  Russ and Sam biked to The Dollar Store, then Corinne, Sam and I went to Trader Joe's.  

I also had a makeover!

There were water balloons.

Then Corinne set up her slack line for us to practice our balance on (which got increasingly difficult with the amount of margaritas that were consumed).

Then I got a message from Verna saying that she needed a photo from us.  I laughed thinking about the state of us...Corinne and Russ still hobbling about, me covered in makeup (thankfully, I'd taken a shower and got most of it off already though), Sam in desperate need of a haircut and with food slathered all over his face, and Brooklyn who had given herself a haircut and was in all of her naked glory.  So we just went for it...

After all of this craziness this weekend, we were relaxing outside in the shade and Corinne started talking about trampolines.  As in, 'How much do they cost?' and 'Can you get them on Amazon??'  So we mentioned Rockin' Jump that's near our house and made an immediate decision that we needed to be there, stat.

The first shot of the night, which about sums it all up:

It was Father's Day and the place was near empty, plus Russ got in for free!  So we pretty much had reign over the place and got to use the foam pit as much as we wanted!

...not that it was so easy to get out of!

Of course Sam decided to build a tower with the blocks.

The Tuck-and-Twist...and Lanny dragging herself out of the pit.

"Huh?"

Lanny was quite the aerialist!

Superman!!

This looks like it could be possibly painful...

I love this photo--you have to click on it to make it bigger to look at Shelan's "oh my gosh, am I going to make it out of this pit alive" look on her face.

More tower fun!

Some of Shelan's crazy back flips off the side.

Brooklyn spent the majority of her time with her two new friends (sisters), running around, jumping into the pit together, giggling...you know the drill.

Russ used to be a pro at back flips, but couldn't quite muster up the strength to do it again for the first time in years.

Truth be told, I'm glad he didn't try, the poor guy could hardly move after this weekend!!

For our last few minutes, Sam wanted to play dodgeball again.  It was so much fun!!

About 3 seconds after this, I gave him the go-ahead to throw it at me...what are the chances he'd actually hit me (I'm zoomed way in--see the above photo for a more realistic idea of the distance between us)?!
Yup, that ball hit me right in the camera.  Impressive.

On Monday morning, Corinne and Russ were up pre-dawn to get C to the airport to fly back home to Albuquerque.  Russ hobbled to work.  Lanny went off to nanny.
And the kids and I sat and snuggled.  Ahhh.
The previous night I'd mentioned to Brooklyn the idea of her starting her own blog, saying that she could put whatever she wanted on it--pictures, drawings, music, videos, stories, whatever.  She was excited the next morning, especially when Russ told her he'd caught something and put it in her bug cage for her.
Can you imagine her excitement when she found a cockroach?!?!  ...better yet, can you imagine my excitement...
CRINGE.
Sigh.
So she decided she needed to draw a picture of it in Paint to put on her blog, which can be found HERE.

Lucky me, getting to snuggle up and watch Tom & Jerry with this guy.

Later on Sam said, "Wet's go to duh Dowwer Store!"  So he and I biked there and he picked out some candy and a couple of toys for Brooklyn.  I tried to get his reaction when he pulled it out of the backpack for her to see (he was SO excited!!), but missed it.  It is a look of sheer joy and excitement.
For now you'll just have to settle for pure happiness. :)

And that's it folks.  I have a feeling that after last week, we may have a pretty boring week since it seems to take us all awhile to recover.  But you never know!