Field Trip!

A busy but relatively normal week~some seriously nice fall weather has moved into central Ohio, enabling us to move school out of doors much of the week. The first picture is of Darcy holding her Judy Moody journal and making like the Statue of Liberty; and the second photo captures the kids journaling on the dead grass (!). Yes, after all the time, money and hard work Randy put into laying down sod in an effort to repair our lawn after we had our patio installed, along came the summer and fried it into oblivion. Randy spent the entire day today pulling up the dead grass and sowing grass seed in its place. Lord willing, it will bounce back in time.

 

 

Thursday morning started out as any other day--I got up, worked out and had breakfast--but as soon as I heard the forecast I decided we would be fools not to take advantage of the beautiful weather so we slapped some sandwiches together and hightailed it out to the zoo for a "field trip." For someone who isn't big on spontaneity, I am COMPLETELY spontaneous when it comes to planning a trip to the zoo. It's all about the weather for me.

 

By way of explanation, in this photo it seems completely evident to me that Sawyer and Darcy are feigning fright at the imminent attack of the tiger, but to the untrained eye it might simply seem as though they both have goofy looks on their faces!

 

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We got home around 4:00 so I threw some pork chops in the oven for dinner and played a couple of quick games of cards with Sawyer. I forget where I found them but I got a good deck of Finding Nemo cards that are ideal for playing Go Fish and Concentration. I got a chuckle out of Sawyer as we were playing--we had each taken a few turns and had revealed a number of cards, so on my next turn I flipped over a card revealing a picture of Marlin (Nemo's dad). I had seen another Marlin card previously so I mused aloud, "Oooh, Marlin . . . now where did I see the other Marlin?" Sawyer, the smarty-pants, flipped over the other card and said, "It's right here, Mom!"

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Later that evening we went to the library and Sawyer paused to work a few puzzles. He was alone at the table for about ten minutes and had worked several of the puzzles when he was joined by another child and his father. The father excused himself to reach over Sawyer to get a puzzle for his own child, and Sawyer, making conversation, said, "Hey, I just did that puzzle!" He made a couple of other comments but the dad either wasn't the friendly sort or just wasn't in the mood for chit-chat because he just ignored Sawyer. (In case you're wondering, I was in the shelves about fifteen feet behind the dad, picking out books.) I glanced up every so often when I would hear Sawyer trying to strike up a conversation, but the dad was NOT interested. The next thing I see is Sawyer with his elbow on the table, cheek propped on his fist, and he was just watching the other boy trying to put his puzzle together. It sure seemed to me like he was just trying to be helpful but the dad very rudely said to Sawyer, "We'll work it out ourselves." Hello! All I could think was, "Dude, lighten up."

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We just came in from playing a little six-on-six football, made all the more difficult because we weren't allowed to touch the grass (much). Randy put down fertilizer today so we had to keep the ball in the air as much as possible. Sawyer was hilarious--every time we would throw the ball to him he performed the same move, which consisted of running a foot or so, then throwing it back over his head where, with luck, someone would catch it before it hit the ground. The game finally ended when Sawyer ran into the neighbor's fence and had the wind knocked out of him. Ouch.