A Series of Unfortunate Events

Okay. Nothing as dramatic as the actual Series of Unfortuate Events series has happened. No dramatic deaths, orphaned children, houses on fire, etc. Just a literal series of small, unfortunate events. (mishaps?)

It started with chickens. Yes..chickens. They were Brian's father's day gift. He has wanted chickens for a long time. We spent last Sat. a.m...browsing a local feed store for chicken coop ideas. We had decided to purchase chickens (hens) for eggs..expecting to let them be pretty much free range in a fenced in garden area (which is currently not fenced) and convert our old dog-run into a chicken coop. However..we were planning to take the summer to do this. Then purchase the chickens. You know when we were ready.

We meander into this feed store..and Brian whispers excitedly

listen..do you hear them?

I hear nothing, I protest.

Listen harder..I think they're chickens!

I remind him we are not buying chickens today.

but I only need like 4-6.

I remind him that we have no place for them.

He cannot hear me. It's this rare phenomenom he has..where he can't hear me sometimes..you know, like when he doesn't want too. Brian can hear chickens! He beams at me as he points to the barrell of chicks.

Brian is rarely this excited about things. This is a simple pleasure that brings him joy (this idea of chickens)...and since we tend to make all our major life decisions on impulse, I do not see why chickens should be any different. We walk out with the last 6 Rock Barred Chicks in the store..and plant them in my kitchen! They're probably all roosters...

Brian and the boys spend the rest of the weekend replacing a wooden fence and starting on the dog-run converted chicken coop...this leads to an eye injury. Brian wakes up Monday morning with something in his eye. He leaves work early to go to our local family clinic. They do not have anything to numb his eye, but pull stuff out anyway. They send him home with ointment and an antibiotic. He misses two days of work.

While he is home and can't see...we have a small dryer calamity. It appears that, like Brian's eye..our dryer has a small hole in the drum. This small hole sort-of ate my swimsuit, actually.

I assure myself this is okay.(the dryer part) I have

been thinking more and more about

conserving energy, going green, etc. lately. So line drying seems

about right. It seems to fit with our chicken transisiton.

So now we have a new dryer...it is on our back deck...and yes

that is a bat-man cape hanging on the clothes line. I'm not sure

why.

I take a deep breath..and as I am hanging the clothes discover

that I have washed, not only Austen's cell phone, but his

Ipod and new head-phones as well. They will not line-dry well.

Our phone is out for the week. Our internet was cut that day..(we

are still awaiting our bill, by the way..our company assured me I would receive it sometime later in the week..go figure)

I have reached my limit. I try not to cry. I cannot believe I am letting this get to me. It is just a really bad day, I tell myself. Cody assures me we can maybe redeem the ipod and cell phone by placing them in rice for a week. See..our rice bowl..complete with electronics? We don't know if it will work. We drive to The Club and look on the internet while I run copies of scripts for the Club kids in our Around the World in 80 days film. Cody says weneed to put the electronics in an air-tight container with rice instead of a rice bowl. We find an empty coffee can when we get home. We are hopeful. Austen is extremely patient about all of this.

The boys and I stay up late discussing..stuff. I fall asleep just in time to feel Brian tapping me on the shoulder. I hate to bother you..can you please drive me to the emergency room. I am not surprised. We had been trying to get him to go all day. His eye has only gotten worse, not better.

Sure enough, they find more stuff in his eye. This time they numb his eye first, remove more metalish stuff..and assure him he will hurt for a few days because yes, his eye looks like our dryer. They give him prescription pain meds and an eye patch and tell him to continue his antibiotics and ointment.

So that is it. Our summer so far.

On the upside. Michael remembered that he has a dryer in storage..and we have chocolate eclairs!

Homeschooling Top 10

I recently let myself spend more time than necessary reading and responding to some blogs over at teacher, revised. I created my own "Top 10 Reasons to Homeschool" in response to "A Case Against Homeschooling". My responses, however, were merely responses to the Top 10 reasons not to homeschool.

Later I started wondering, What would be our Top 10 reasons, you know, like for real? This is the list I have come up with. It is very specific to our family:

10: We like it.

9. We can stay up late around a campfire, watch stars from the trampoline, play flashlight tag and have overnights during the school week.

8. We can sleep late.

7. Austen can build a gyrocopter, work and be active in Civil Air Patrol and still have time to play.

6. Cody can build the EuroTrans business, work, play lots of soccer..and still have time to play.

5.Brian could computer-program, teach karate, go to gymnastics and still have time to play.

4. Park Days

3. Odyssey of the Mind and the Boys and Girls Club. (even when we complain about them both)

2. Reading together hour after hour, day after day, year after year.

1. Conversations, conversations and conversations.

What Grown Ups?

I was about to write a summer update..when I hear myself yelling, "Michael, stop putting noodles on the dog." Yes..Michael is 40somethingish. "We have a stringy dog." says Brian (the father of my children and my husband). "Look, he's a big, black meatball!" I ask them to quit. I remind them they are the grown-ups. "What grown-ups?" they both respond..and then watch the weather on the computer.

The weather tracking and the yawning at 9:38pm..would be the hint that they really are the grown-ups in this house. So while the men have spent the summer going to work, pretending the hot-tub is a mopbucket and doing victory/rain dances in the living room and kitchen...the boys..have been busy.

Austen and Mason have been attending a Good SAM Center work program. They have been volunteering time at the Club..and will be summer pay-check players at the Club starting Monday.

Mason leaves for a week in Costa Rica next Thursday.

Cody continues to work at the Flying L and is playing summer soccer. More exciting, he is now the sole owner of EuroTrans. He is starting with repair and resell of Mercedes transmissions. He became registered at the Court House today. He has papers and everything to make him official. Not bad for 16...

Brian-Scott is staying with the Ongs this summer. This will be his 3rd summer doing bone regeneration projects at the biomedical lab at UTSA. He is excited that this summer he is having the opportunity to combine both electrical and biomedical engineering together.

Okay. I am off to rescue our poor dog..who now has no spaghetti on her..just a big piece of tape?