It's the most wonderful time of the year

Today I took K and L to Staples to buy ink for our printer that has this persnickety habit of refusing to print black and white documents if it's out of cyan and magenta ink. It makes no sense to me, but I was finally bullied by those "warning" messages (and it's refusal to do anything but blare those warning messages) into going out to get ink.

Do you know what they have smack dab in the middle of Staples?

School supplies. Bin after bin of colorful rulers, fresh boxes of crayons, and pencils with snazzy designs and glittery rubber grips.

I dutifully picked up the printer ink first, but then I wandered back to the education section and meandered past all those bins full of treasure. Does anyone else out there have a passion for new school supplies? The one thing I miss with homeschooling is going through the school supply list and seeing my kids decked out with new backpacks filled with shiny new folders (6, with brads in red, blue, green, yellow, purple, and orange) and boxes of baby wipes (are we sending them to the nursery or what?).

The lure of the supplies proved too strong and, reasoning that it would be special for the girls to have a few new things, each of them picked out a pencil bag with matching folder and ruler and I got some fun erasers and pencils. They happily packed their new and old supplies into their new pencil bags as soon as we got home and showed them off to Daddy.

Tomorrow morning - well, late tomorrow morning since I'm planning to take the girls to the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition rally at our church first thing tomorrow - we'll sit down with our new supplies and get working on some handwriting skills. The girls are so excited to start school again, and I have to admit I am, too. Especially now that my printer is cooperating again and I can actually print off some worksheets I need. Maybe I'll even go wild and print them in color.

And we're back

Yippee!! We're back in our own home, I'm on my own computer, watching the girls swim in our own pool, drinking water from my own fridge. Yep, life is good.

As you can imagine, I'm tired! I've got a zillion things to catch up on and school stuff to think about. I've decided to hold off on the full school program for a couple of weeks pending a decision about curriculum. Instead, we're going to dive into a study of North Carolina with an intensive week or two of concentrated study, then shorter lessons throughout the year complete with field trips around the state. Doesn't that sound fun? I'm hoping to convince some of our homeschool friends to join us. We also need to work on handwriting since K's cursive is beautiful, but her printing is sad, sad, sad. So we'll be doing writing starting Monday and pick up the state studies on the next Monday.

Today's funny quote from our trip is brought to you courtesy of L.

We were hiking on a short trail and in spite of having explained hiking and what we were doing a million times, L was still confused.

L: "Are we going somewhere? Where are we going?"
Me: "We're going to the waterfall."
L: "Why?"
Me: "To see it, because it's beautiful."
L: (jumping up and down in excitement with stars in her eyes) "Is it PINK?!?"

A midnight fried pie feast

I am breaking my rule about no posting during vacation for one funny story.

Yesterday we emptied our van so that we could get all 6 people in one car and we put the various bags and containers in our tent. It was mostly clothes, so we weren't too worried about anyone stealing it. As night fell, we lined all the bags along the front of our tent and everyone went to bed. It was hot (we are in Arkansas in July so what else would it be?), so I unzipped the bottom of the door to let in more air from the massive fan we have guarding our tent door.

Unfortunately, that fan was no match for a determined raccoon.

You see, one of the things I pulled out of our car was a small canvas cooler. I remembered that I had packed something inside of it, but I couldn't remember what and I didn't think much about it. If I had remembered that I had packed a sack of fried pies inside that cooler, it would've been in the car rather than just inside the door of our tent. But alas, that was not the case.

At some point during the night, a very brave and very hungry raccoon caught a whiff of the sweet, fruity goodness inside of that cooler. That little sucker *got into our tent*, pulled the cooler over onto it's side, opened the top flap, and pulled out that sack of fried pies. He then proceeded to sit right in front of the tent and devoured every single one, probably enjoying the cool breeze from the fan as a bonus. Mr. at Home said he heard the raccoon outside and this morning we found the sack and pie wrappers strewn across the dirt.

As always, there's a lesson in all this. Don't ever leave food in your tent, keep the tent flap zipped shut at all times, and don't trust a fan to guard your door. It can obviously be bribed into silence by hungry raccoons and fried pies.

Vacation!!!

Tomorrow we'll be in Texas and I get excited just picturing the mayhem that will happen when my girls see us pulling into the driveway. They've been gone for far too long. Not that I haven't fully appreciated the quiet, the peace, the ability to go out to dinner without ordering chicken nuggets, etc. I'm just ready to see them.

Over the next two weeks, we'll spend a few days in Texas with my family, a few days at China Camp in Oklahoma, a few days camping in Arkansas, and lots of time in the car burning gas. Woohoo! I worried about the security issues of telling the world we'll be out of town and away from the homestead for a couple of weeks, but

• we live in a fairly quiet community
• we have someone checking on our home
• we have a security system known as Tinker, the cat, who would trip up any would-be burglar by winding herself around his legs begging for food
• we don't have anything here worth stealing anyway

I have made the decision that I will not be blogging during our trip. It would be difficult to get a connection and we'll be busy doing, you know, family bonding and all that. So I am officially disconnecting for 2 weeks. I'm not even taking my laptop with me.

I totally twitched when I typed that last sentence.

I am taking pens, a notebook or two, and my Bible. I plan to get some writing and studying done the old-fashioned way - hard-cover Bible (not biblegateway.com), paper (not Pages), and longhand (not typing). Don't worry, I'll be sure to write down all the funny stuff that happens on our trip and post it when we get back.

As for now, I am signing off and getting back to packing and cleaning. See you in two weeks!

In which Grandma discovers that L is so very 4

My two girls have been at Camp Grandma with Head Counselor Grandad for over 2 weeks now. They've been swimming, having playdates, visiting family, watching movies, and doing VBS. That's a pretty busy schedule even for me, and I'm used to the energy required to keep up with the kids.

They're winding down all the entertainment and spent the day getting my Granny moved from the rehab hospital and settled into a nursing home.

Well, at least one of my kids was involved.

L, it seems, has been acting out and getting into things that she shouldn't. This is my child who has issues with boundaries. Earlier this week, she let all the air out of the mattress she's been sleeping on. While Grandma was blowing it back up, L found Grandma's perfume. And liberally doused herself with it.

Nice.

When the girls were told the plans for today, K decided that she didn't want to drive ALL THE WAY out there, so she spent the day with her Great-Grandmother. L was not allowed to stay there since Great-Grandmother's house isn't exactly child-proof and after the perfume incident, Grandma didn't trust her around all those medicine bottles. Good call. I'm also thinking K might have needed some quiet time away from her high-energy little sister.

While my mom was telling me all this today, I heard her pause and say, "No, L! Get up off that floor! It's dirty!" Yep, L is also in the habit of checking out the comfort of public floors. For no apparent reason.

We're scheduled to arrive at Camp Grandma on Friday and I think my parents will be just as glad as the girls to see the reinforcements riding in.

More cool organization and redecorating stuff

First I have to sing the praises of Rocks in My Dryer's Works-For-Me Wednesday. Last week, her #1 link was on closet organization and I thought it was such a great idea that I implemented it.

I installed a shower stall rod in L's closet and now her beloved dresses hang low enough that she can reach them herself. I liked how it turned out so well that I went out and bought another one to hang her dress-up clothes on the other side. I then added a set of hanging shelves and her closet is now a masterpiece of apartment closet efficiency.

I also jazzed up her cabinet with princess stickers.


















On a final note for K's room, she had asked me to give her sister the tall castle shelves that held her impressive collection of stuffed animals.

Which led to the question, "What the heck do I do with all these stuffed animals?"

My solution was a $2 fish net from the craft store and a few nails. K will be thrilled.

Going through detox

No, not *that* kind of detox. Sheesh, people.

This kind of detox. A friend sells it and told me about a testimonial from a woman who claimed it completely got rid of her chronic hives. At that, I was sold. Hey, it couldn't hurt and maybe it would finally be the miracle cure for these hives I've had *for 2 years*. My friend said she was going to try it, too, and we could do it together. It finally came in and we started yesterday morning.

It comes in tiny beautiful blue bottles that you mix into 32 oz. of water. Imagine my surprise when the water turned into this.

Hellooooo, this stuff looks more toxic than anything it could be getting out of my system. Now look closely at it and I think you can even get a pretty good idea of how it tastes. In reality, the taste isn't as bad as it could be; it's the aftertaste that gets you.

Surprisingly, I'm not as grossed out by the taste today. I guess it just goes to show you can get used to anything. Next thing you know, I might even start drinking Diet Coke.

Yeah, like that'll ever happen.