Those flower baskets

I saw Mike walk outdoors this evening with his measuring tape and followed him to see what he was going to build next. Turns out he was measuring the flowers in the baskets. I guess he wanted solid proof to back up his assertions that they are growing.

Cameron keeps walking into one of them....you'd think he'd learn after getting clobbered a few times.

When I get my camera back, I'll post a few pics of them. I'm suppose to get it tomorrow. We'll see if Nick remembers it when he brings back the camping gear he borrowed along with the camera.

Friday

This afternoon, Cameron decided he wanted chicken fried chicken for supper. It's one of his favorite entrees. He rummaged around in the freezer until he found the chicken tenders and thawed them out and Richelle got some potatoes to prepare. I told Cameron to go ahead and trim up the tenders while I peeled the potatoes and he got a rather revolted look on his face. Touch raw chicken?? I pointed out that if he was planning to make this after he moved out, he was going to have to plan on touching raw chicken. He thought really fast and said he'd rather watch me do it this time so he'd know how to do it next time. I told him I knew that was only and excuse but went ahead and it anyway. He watched closely but never asked to try it himself even after watching me do three or four.

I love making this supper because both the kids are in the kitchen with me. Richelle dips the tenders in the milk, dredges them in flour, then drops them in the beaten eggs. Cameron fishes them out, coats them in crushed Ritz crackers or crushed Special K cereal (whichever we have on hand), then takes them to me to fry. I'm standing at the stove monitoring the cooking and the kids are working together at the sink board getting them ready at a pace that isn't too fast or two slow. I mean, the kids are working together! Without a hint of an argument!! Tonight, I told them that even if I went without supper, I'd still consider it a success because of the fun we had preparing it. They agreed. Then asked if I planned to eat supper.

I didn't even think until this moment to get any pictures but it's a moot point. I don't even have my camera. Nick borrowed it last weekend and I haven't gotten it back yet.

Tuesday

The last Tuesday of the month is when our home school group gets together at the bowling alley for a couple of hours. We love the fun and visiting with friends and throwing the balls down the lanes. Well, the kids love all of the above while I concentrate on the visiting-with-friends bit. This is a great group of people and the new bowling alley is so cool with black-lighted lanes, pins, and balls, bumpers that come up automatically as programed into the main computer for those who request them which allows kids to bowl together regardless of expertise, couches as well as tables and chairs, and an extremely well-equipped arcade.

But here is a changing of an age. Cameron wasn't able to bowl this month because of a job interview conflict. Sometimes it's hard to believe he's old enough to be job- and apartment-hunting, budgeting for life on his own and college. Yikes! Seems like it was just a month ago that he crossed over from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. Anyway, he had the interview with the mill and one home school couple at the bowling alley is so interested in his success that the mom jumped every time my cell rang, hoping it was Cameron telling me the interview was over and he was hired. Eventually that call came through I was able to tell her that although he wasn't hired on the spot, he did have an appointment for a physical and they said they'd call in a few days for an orientation meeting.

After the bowling, I took Richelle to the bank so she could exchange $46 WORTH OF PENNIES! for paper money. Why? She wants a hamster. She's been collecting pennies since her seventh birthday and decided that a hamster is the ideal thing to spend them on. She did ask Mike for permission and he told her it was all right with him as long as she promised to take good care of it and did research to find out how to do that. She did and she did. She's done quite a lot of research actually, and can go on at length about the care, diseases, health, habits, habitats, and the best prices to get food, bedding, treats, etc.

Who rolled the pennies? Richelle and Yours Truly. One would count and the other would roll until Richelle got bored with her job and we'd switch. I ought to have taken a percentage for effort. We did it all at once and then had to go through them Tuesday morning because I realized that there were half a dozen times that I saw an old penny with the heads of wheat on the back and set it aside....then didn't replace it before rolling the stack! Duh.

So we went to PetCo where they had the habitat and a chew toy Richelle wanted and then went to Wal*Mart for the bedding, chew sticks, and food. She didn't get the hamster because she wants to have everything set up for it before-hand. The habitat Richelle got came with a water bottle, food dish, and exercise wheel that doubles as a zip-around ball. When she gets the hamster, she'll get the salt wheel, lava chews, and possibly some treats.

Richelle started complaining that she was hungry when we left the bowling alley around 3pm. As time went on, she increased in frequency and theatrics as only 11-year-old girls can do. Wal*Mart was the last stop and as we crossed the parking lot to the car, she was in fine form, slumped forward, staggering a bit, moaning plaintively, "I am SO hungry!"
"How hungry are you?" I intoned.
"Hungry enough to eat a WHOLE MEAL!" she exclaimed.
The guy walking a little behind us snorted.

The rest of the day was pretty dull. Except for when Mike said that the flowers in the hanging pots were growing. How can he tell? We just transplanted them Saturday! Maybe the times he went out there and yelled at them to grow had an effect?

At the beach

Seven of us adults took fourteen girls camping on the coast for two nights. The highlights were a ninety-minute horseback ride and a couple hours playing in the sand. Here, two groups of girls are competing for the tallest castle....uhm....pile of sand. They were being scored on elevation, not architecture, hence the sticks.





I turned around and saw these clouds. The people are total strangers and I wished they would have obliged me and sort of disappeared for a minute while I took the picture.





The haze, fog, and clouds moved in rapidly and made for a great picture. Haven't a clue who those people were, either.

Garden

Here's a close-up of an azalea in my garden. I was having fun with the micro setting on my camera and ended up with this shot.












And here's a shot a bit further away. Living on the "wet" side of the Cascades has its advantages, rhodies and azaleas being two of them.

Soccer

Richelle's save as goalie in her last game of the season. She played one quarter as goalie every game this season and did very well. Only two balls got past her in the four games she played. She loves the goalie position but my heart does jumping jacks watching her.








Here's the one that got past her. Ironically, it was her best friend who scored on her! The two girls met a couple of years ago when they were on the same team and hit it off well. The friend had just started home schooling. They've been playing soccer for so long that it doesn't bother them to be on opposite teams. They hang out until their coaches call them to warm-ups, greet each other when they line up for kick-off and go off at half-time, and they walk back across the field together after the game.

Wrapping Up the School Year

On the home schooling front, Richelle sat her required testing today and normally I would end the school year at this point. However, (you saw that coming, didn't you?) there are only about four lessons left in her math book and one in her English so we'll finish the year when we finish the month. Last year's scores ranged from very good to awesome so I'm curious to see what this year's testing will show.

Cameron is preparing to sit the GED and go on to the local community college in the fall. He has a job interview Tuesday with an area mill and hopes to be hired on as summer help. The pay is very good and he hopes to make enough to meet tuition and books for the coming year. He's looking at a few different fields of study and will take basic courses until he decides between massage therapy, physics, and chiropractics. He certainly has a knack for finding the release point for sore muscles!

I'm planning a light course of schooling for Richelle this summer. She's staging a student protest. I'm planning for her to develop some lap books with just a few minutes of math each day. I think it will pique her interest and she'll end up enjoying it.

Eagle Scout

I see I'm not off to a good start about keeping things posted! The following was written last week and then I was interrupted and never got back to it until now. Ah, well.

Cameron went to his Eagle Board of Review last Tuesday night and is now officially an Eagle Scout. We are so proud of him! Several questions we had were answered for him at that time.
He had responded to the notification letter, letting the chairman know that the date and time fit in with his schedule as was requested. The email he got back mentioned that the chairman would officiate but was not allowed to vote because he knew Cameron. So then we wondered what would happen if all the members knew the Eagle candidate. I thought that was unlikely because I didn't even know many of the Eagle board members. Turns out I was wrong! I don't know many of the Eagle board members but that's not who sits in on the review. The review is made up of Eagle Scout adults from this area who don't know the candidate. In Cameron's case, there weren't any Eagle Scout adults who didn't know him. So the answer to the question "What happens if..." is that they choose three members who don't know him very well.
We now know that there is a minimum of three on a review, they all need to be strangers to the candidate (or as unknown as possible!) , and they're all Eagle Scouts that live in the area. Strange I didn't find this out when Nick went before the Eagle Board! I wonder how difficult it was for them to form a review board for him?




It is such a relief to have it done. For a while there, I'd nearly given up because he was so stubbornly opposed to earning this. I have SUCH a stubborn child. And he certainly does not get his stubbornness from me because I have every last bit of what I was born with and have since cultivated more! I was nearly out of my mind with frustration because he stopped working toward Eagle rank when he was three and a half merit badges and one project short of the necessary requirements. When you learn that there are twenty-one badges and six previous ranks required along with that project, you can empathize with my frustration.

But it's done now!!