School Days, School Days, Dear Old Golden Rule Days . . .

It's that time again in the Todd house! Yes, I know what you're thinking: "But it's only July 19th! The summer is barely half over!" Well, I know my kids better than anyone and when I've got one who is lamenting he's bored, one who's pulling out old workbooks "just for fun" and one who asks almost daily, "Is it a school day yet?" I know it's time to put the ol' noses back to the grindstone!

I have to cut Tyler just a little slack because he's mourning the loss of his best buddy, who left yesterday to go back to Florida where he's from. Zach is the grandson of Aravella, one of our members at Southwestern, and he and his mother (Aravella's daughter) came to Grove City back in May for Aravella and her husband's 50th wedding anniversary celebration and stayed for an extended visit. Zach and Tyler are the same age and hit it off immediately, but Zach's mom decided it was time to go home when she discovered that her husband, in her absence, had "adopted" an opossum and actually allowed it into their house! I think she was a little freaked out by that turn of events! So now Zach is gone and Tyler doesn't know what to do with himself. Boo-hoo.

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I began this entry early this morning and expected to finish it up after Tyler's tennis lesson, but when we got to the court at 10:00 a.m. the place was deserted. Yes, it rained last night and was sprinkling this morning, but Tyler assured me that his instructor said she'd call in the case of inclement weather, and we got no phone call. Anyway, since we were all dressed up with no place to go, I decided to take one final opportunity to take the kids to COSI before we start school. I am so completely over COSI but the kids just love it, and I had promised to take them to the new Extreme Screen film called Dinosaurs Alive 3-D before it left the theater. I don't usually do well with 3-D images--I have some of the same convergence issues that Tyler used to have--but aside from a few scenes where I felt completely cross-eyed, the film was excellent and I really did feel like I could reach out and touch the dinosaurs. There was one funny scene at a dinosaur excavation site where the paleontologist shoveled a big load of dirt right at the camera, and the kids and I all half-expected to look down and see bits of gravel, dirt and dust all over our clothes!

Funny story: We left COSI at approximately 4:30 p.m. and because I had stowed my purse (and cell phone) in a locker, I stopped to check for messages before continuing on to the van. As expected, Randy had left a couple of voice mails and as I stood there listening to his voice I heard Tyler say, "Oh, hey Dad!" I looked up and there, standing right in front of me, was Randy with his cell phone to his ear! Seems he had been visiting someone at Mt. Carmel and thought he'd drop by and spend the rest of the afternoon with us at COSI. He took the photos that you see below of all four kids sitting on the farm equipment parked outside the entrance to COSI:

 

 

 

 

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So, back to school. I have already pre-read the first of Tyler's and Darcy's independent readers called By the Great Horn Spoon! and I loved it! I have to hand it to Sonlight, they know their stuff when it comes to children's lit. Once in a blue moon we'll have a book assigned that we just simply can't get into, but it's rare. I am now reading Sing Down the Moon, their second selection, and I am hooked. Peyton has an equally exciting reading list for this year: Charlotte's Web, Mr. Popper's Penguins and Understood Betsy to name just a few. It's a good thing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is being released this weekend; any later and it might relegated to my "Books I'm Hoping to Get Around To Someday" list. No, on second thought, I'd just bump it up to the beginning of the list anyway!