In Memoriam

Few things say, "It's going to be a great day!" like 12 dead tadpoles. Yes, that's right, we are officially down to 45 amphibians to raise. The price for all this glee is a few sad children. But I can live with that. I've tried to reassure them that it's not their fault and that tadpoles often don't live to adult froghood, while inwardly I'm celebrating and hoping soon to reclaim my tadpole-free life. I've grown weary of having containers of pond water on my kitchen island.

Our owl pellet lab went well. Once they got over the smell, the kids loved discovering all the tiny bones hidden in their pellets and then trying to identify the skulls. We were also able to clear up a few misunderstandings about owls. Some of the kids figured that since owls regurgitate these pellets, they must not have a "back door" for other waste products. Not so. They have a dual exhaust system.

Next Tuesday we will be dissecting earthworms. I wonder what extra rules I will have to create while we are using scalpels...

So this post is dedicated in loving memory to the creatures who, by being dead, allow us to have interesting science labs.

Last note. While writing this, I have been informed that we are now down to 44 tadpoles. So sad.

Hardy Little Devils

Zero down, 57 to go. Yep, they're ALL still alive. And I continue to waffle between stress over tadpoles not looking healthy and stress over none having died yet. Yesterday, we made an emergency pond water run because the pond water tadpoles looked listless (from what we could see of them through the murky water, which was the other indication we needed to take a trip to the creek).

We had our lab group on Tuesday and the kids were, of course, very excited to take home their little tadpole habitat. And we are happy to only have 3 habitats left in our care for now.

The lab went well and the kids are great. I introduced our "Lab Rules," of which there are were four. Simple, straightforward rules like--raise your hand, and follow instructions. After the first 5 minutes of lab, it was obvious I needed to add another rule: No pocketknives. I didn't see that one coming.

57 New Pets

I got these in the mail today. We now have 57 tadpoles. Hopefully I will not be writing in November about the 57 frogs we own. I ordered these for our first experiment in our Science Lab Group that I am running for homeschoolers this year. So when I say "pets", I really mean experimental lab animals. Mwaa-ha-ha-ha! Evil scientist laugh.

57 tadpoles. Aaaaacchhh! What was I thinking?! I hope I'm not in over my head.

I want Nathan to have the "classroom" experience again, even though he has school at home. This is the biggest reason behind my decision to teach a science lab to TWELVE kids. Yes, TWELVE! (Unrelated--have you ever noticed how, sometimes, when you type a word in all caps or type it a bunch of times, it no longer looks right to you? Twelve. Hmmm...is that how it's spelled?)

I wanted to start things off with a bang by doing a live specimen study. I hope it isn't a bang followed by a fizzle. But if these little guys don't survive until Tuesday 11:30am, this experiment will definitely be a fizzle. Tuesday is our lab, and we will be running an experiment over 6-10 weeks to test which type of water is the best growing environment for these tadpoles--spring, pond, or distilled.

On the one hand, I don't want the tadpoles to die, but I also don't want them ALL to make it to adulthood. Especially not the ones we personally are keeping. Alright. That's the intro. I'll be writing again soon. Let the obituaries begin.

Our Famiry...plus one

Last month, we disguised ourselves as a nice family with good manners and welcomed a Japanese middle-school student into our home for a week. Her name is Hikari and she is 15 years old. She had had 3 years of English in school, and, though we were impressed with her language skills, it was still quite difficult to communicate at times. But she was very sweet and we loved having her with us. (Side note: Please don't think I'm terrible for using the Japanese-accent way of spelling "family" in the title of this post. We find it very endearing and are sure we Americans make similar mistakes when trying to learn sounds in Japanese.)

We had prepared the kids for her visit by teaching them a bit about Japanese culture (what little we knew), but mostly focusing on the basics--manners. We are lacking in this category (again, see the post's title). They were excited for her visit and peppered us with questions on the drive over to the hotel where we would pick her up. We waited somewhat patiently for the bus to arrive, holding our little sign that we had made to welcome her.

When she finally arrived, we said our short greetings and hopped back in the car to drive home--just a few miles away.

Silence.

Never in the history of ever have my boys been so quiet in the car. I would have basked in that noiseless heaven if I hadn't been racking my brains for something to say to our guest. Anything. What else can I think of? She didn't understand the first few attempts I made. And why wouldn't that light ever change? We were never going to get home but be stuck in that awkward silence forever.

Okay. Yes, we did make it home. The boys couldn't stop staring and kept glancing sideways at us to see if we were staring too. She brought us a nice bunch of gifts to thank us for hosting her. Among these were an origami book and a box of origami paper. For a few weeks there, we were all addicted to origami. Evidence below.

There were, I think, 17 students in her group, each staying with a different host family, so as to ensure they used their Engrish skills. As a thank you to the host families, they held a "Japan Night" for us and fed us pizza and cookies and showed us some of their talents and culture. We had a blast! Our student was an excellent pianist (loves Jazz and also plays the sax) and so she and another student performed an awesome duet. The students also taught the American children a game that seems to be the Japanese equivalent of Red Light Green Light. As you can see in the photo below, Japanese teen-age fashion is as unique as American teen-age fashion.

Our cover (as a nice famiry with good manners) was blown very soon after Hikari's arrival by the many bodily noises my children made. For years, we have heard that burping is polite in Japanese culture, but I heard recently that the Japanese don't know how that particular rumor about them got started. In which case, we were extremely rude. Daniel produced a symphony of noises while Hikari was with us.

Speaking of manners...on the last night of Hikari's visit, she said she wanted to make some Japanese Miso soup for us. When it was ready, Stephanie was already seated at the table, hungry for dinner, so we let her get started on it while we called the boys to dinner. We all sat down and prepared for the blessing on the food, at which point, Stephanie stood up on her chair and loudly announced, "I DON'T like this SOUP!" Luckily, Hikari found it as funny as the rest of us did (Stephanie is a toddler, after all). The soup was actually quite delicious, but Daniel slowed down his intake when he found out that the green stuff was seaweed. And my intake slowed a bit when the communication barrier prevented us from learning the identity of some pale spongy rings floating in the soup.

Here is Hikari playing a duet in my living room, during the final evening of her stay.

And here she is with two friends who came over also. They were really nice kids. Again, that inexplicable fashion. Most of the shirts the kids wore had English words written in large letters. And they didn't always make sense to us. His shirt, for example, says, "PLAN AND FREEDOM DREAM." ??? Something seems to have gotten lost in translation there. Maybe it means--plan and dream freely? Anyway, the girl in the middle has a shirt that says, "Groove Joy". Our student, Hikari, is on the right.

We all really enjoyed having Hikari with us, but I think no one more than Daniel. One evening, when we had run out of things to say and things to do, I asked Hikari if she could think of anything she wanted to do. She asked if we had a Wii, which we do, so we did that. As we were getting started, Daniel began explaining how to do everything in very specific detail. When I could see it was slowing down our fun, I broke in to tell him that Nintendo is a Japanese company and she probably knew how to do it already. He was very skeptical of that until she whooped our tails at Mario Kart.

We were sad to see her go. Daniel cried when she left. He's so sweet. Luckily, her visit was closely followed by a very unexpected earthquake and then a hurricane, followed by the start of school and then 12-plus inches of rain in a few days, resulting in a day off school due to flooding. Never a dull moment.

Turn your wallet over to The Mouse

 My brother who lives in Florida has a saying--I don't know if it's his or just local--"Turn your wallet over to The Mouse." Meaning, obviously, that if you choose to spend time (and money) in Orlando, you might as well just put Mickey Mouse in charge of your wallet. There won't be much left when you leave. First, Epcot...

Don't ever buy these lollipops. Your children will be sticky for the rest of their lives.

Duffy the Disney Bear. Who? Apparently, Disney needed one more mascot. So they added Duffy. Duffy who? I don't know. But Stephanie loved him.

 

Hula-hooping in the America region at Epcot. It was very interesting to see how Disney summed up each country. America--hula-hoops and colonial architecture. Mexico--mariachi. Canada--moose. England--red phone booths. Germany--beer and cuckoo clocks. We had a blast and Disney is very family-friendly, but I would love for them to add Australia, Egypt, and Peru to name a few.

 

We used this phone booth to enter the Ministry of Magic. We went to Universal the next 2 days. Nathan talked me into going on a roller coaster called The Hulk, which turned out to be very fun, but mainly, we were there to go to Harry Potter World.

Now for a tour...if you haven't been to Harry Potter World, wait till you see how incredible it is!

Hogwarts castle is AMAZING! It is so much like what you see in the movies. We were completely WOW-ed. Inside is the main ride, which was really cool but also made me nauseous.

Professor Sprout's greenhouse. Pass through this while waiting in line for the ride. (You can also just walk through the castle.)

While hanging around the Hogwarts Express, we overheard the "Engineer" respond this way to a girl who asked where "the other Harry Potter ride" was. He said (in British accent), "Harry Potter's a person, love. He's not a ride."

  

The paintings are wonderful. Lots of them move and talk like in the books and movies yet they really look like paintings. The black ones above are the moving paintings--they don't show up in photos.

Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Holograms of Harry, Ron, and Hermione appear frequently at the top of the staircase and talk about the class. It was so easy to picture Gilderoy Lockhart coming down and talking about himself with his winning grin.

 

Entrance to Dumbledore's office. If only there was actually a moving staircase that opened when you said "Sherbet Lemon." Speaking of which, Honeyduke's sells Sherbet Lemons as well as many others, including Pepper Imps, which are yummy.

Dumbledore's office. So well done. There's a talking hologram of him also.

The Pensieve! Loved it!

                                              

The Three Broomsticks. I loved the design of this building. We ate there also. BUTTER BEER is the best thing!!! So tasty--like drinking a creamy butterscotch candy. Pear cider was also quite delicious.

Eric in Hogsmeade. Don't let the snow fool you--it certainly felt like Orlando in August. But I think the snow is a really nice touch.

There you have it! Crowded. Hot. Long lines here and there. Expensive. But SO MUCH FUN! We came home with wands for everyone except Eric, who said, "What would I do with it?" ??? Cast spells, of course! Play! Be a wizard! He's missing out. I bet he secretly wishes he spent the 30 bucks. What does he know, though? He washed his hair with lotion the two mornings we were in the hotel, till I pointed it out to him. He is a good man, though. He's still recovering from the injuries to his wallet. Obliviate!

Shapeshifters

Okay, T-minus 6 days to camp and I have to do something other than prep for camp or my brain is going to explode.

So here's what I want to share today. My children are shapeshifters. They are really quite amazingly talented. Some of their forms:

STEPHANIE: Easily shifts into her octopus form any time I try to buckle her into something (carseat, stroller, shopping cart). Suddenly, it's like she has tentacles swirling around, in and out of straps and latches, all moving in different directions.

DANIEL: Perhaps the most adept of my shapeshifters, whenever he is asked to do ANY kind of work or chore whatsoever, he instantly becomes roadkill. Squashed flat, not moving a muscle, you would think he was actually dead. We then have to scrape him up off the carpet and do CPR. He is also excellent at shifting into a laughing hyena, a Tasmanian Devil, and a sloth.

NATHAN: Takes the shape of a fly-on-the-wall daily. Wherever there is a conversation to be overheard, that boy is there, eavesdropping and plotting to use the information to his advantage. He is very stealthy. Also morphs into a crow regularly--finding and keeping shiny objects in his "nest" of a room. Any discarded little metal object can become a treasure.

Despite how it sounds, I love my shapeshifters. Do your children have this super-power?

Buried Alive

Help! I'm being buried alive!

I've been missing in action for quite awhile now. Every once in awhile, I try to come back here and post something--I have ideas all the time of things to write about. Just no time to do it. So I'm just here long enough to say that, after camp, I will re-surface. I serve as the stake YW camp director and this time of year is crazy. Fun. But crazy. Here's what my days are like:

• Planning for camp
• Emailing about camp
• Phone calls for camp
• Brainstorming for camp
• Shopping for camp
• Pretending I'm listening when other people talk about something other than camp
• Feeding my children
• Promising my children I will make it up to them after camp

Nearly every night, I tiptoe into the bedroom between 12 and 1am and try not to disturb Eric, who is sleeping (and usually snoring). Then I toss-and-turn for quite awhile, eventually fall asleep, and dream about...do I even have to say it? One of my recent dream episodes included all of the following: our camp T-shirts were neon orange (they are, in fact, royal blue); my asst. director and I had to share a queen-sized bed at camp--bizarre; and last, I dreamed we finished our clean-up of the camp an hour early and there were 150+ people crammed into a sauna-of-a-cabin looking at me and waiting for me to give them something to do.

Following my after-hours return to the bedroom (we're back in my real world now), Eric gets up at some ghastly hour (I think 4:30) and kisses me on the forehead before departing. The sad thing is, I'm usually mildly awake and stewing again by that time.

See you after CAMP!

Trusted Advisors

Isn't she lovely?

I wanted to start this post off with a clever little text phrase to show how clued-in I am, specifically this: IMHO. But then I realized I'm not sure if it means "In my HUMBLE opinion" or "In my HONEST opinion". I guess either one works, right? (Although, I tend to be more honest than humble.) Anyway...

IMHO, the most sound and relevant advice comes from our living prophets. But, occasionally, I also take advice from John Bytheway, my friend Stephanie, and even, drum roll please, my mother. Here's what I've taken to heart:

• Living prophets: Most recently, I'm taking advice from Elder Christofferson. In April, he counseled us "willingly to accept and even seek correction." Wow. Just accepting it is hard enough for me. Seeking it has been pretty much unheard of in my life. But I am taking his advice. Here's the link to his excellent talk.
• John Bytheway: Yep, I take advice from him too. And he says it's important to persevere. (I know lots of other great people have said this as well, but when he says it, it's also funny.) So we've been trying to help our children learn to persevere and do hard things. We rode our bikes to Daniel's baseball game yesterday, which was hard work for Daniel. He complained some and got tired, but we kept encouraging him and he felt so good when he did it. Great advice.
• My friend Stephanie: One of her best qualities is honesty. And when I told her one reason I don't like asking other people for favors is because then I will need to do a favor in return (see, I was honest too), she said, "Okay. You need to work on that." Not a bossy rebuke or judgment, just a simple statement of fact. (This ties in nicely with Elder Christofferson's talk about chastening and correction.) And she's right. I should work on that. Serving others and being served is a pretty essential thing.
• My mom (see photo): Yes, mom, I do sometimes take your advice. Much more often now than as a teenager. One of my mother's axioms is "Talk till it's better." I think we've all come to love and appreciate this (or at least tolerate it) in my mom. She will talk about something till the cows come home, the fat lady is singing, she's blue in the face, and all avenues have been explored. But she will NEVER go to bed or go away until whatever it is has been resolved. I had that experience recently also. When someone dear to me was upset with me, I took my mom's advice and stayed until things were worked out. It wasn't easy. But mom was right--that was the best way to do it.

Thank goodness for trusted advisors. Since I now know I'm supposed to seek correction, anyone else have something to tell me?

Houdini and the Water Bill

I could also title this post, "How to have a stressful vacation." While our spring break trip was good in many ways, it was not relaxing. Worrisome things were happening back at the homestead. I had asked my very kind and generous neighbor to care for our cat while we were away. I hated to ask her this favor, but I was out of options. We left on a Tuesday evening and I told my neighbor we would just make sure Mako (the cat) was inside with plenty of food before we left, which he was, and that way she wouldn't need to do anything for him until Wednesday morning.

See the photo above? That's what he was doing when we left. Several eyewitnesses saw him calmly bathing himself right before we closed the door and departed. All was well.

That night, right before I got into bed, I found a text from my neighbor saying that she had seen that Mako was on the front porch that evening, so she came over and took him inside. She had to carry him because he wouldn't go in. I read her text around 1:30am her time, so I couldn't call her to say, "That can't be Mako! He was inside when we left." There is another cat in the neighborhood that looks like him, so all night I had nightmares of this other cat hurting Mako (who is missing some key defensive weapons--front claws*) or WORSE, hurting my house--carpet, furniture, etc. Eric and I laughed about it, but still worried. A lot.

The next morning we texted back and forth and she sent me a photo labeled, "This is the cat I'm taking care of." It was definitely Mako. Whew! Felt better. But it's a mystery how he got out. Again...eyewitnesses. One of them pretty reliable.

Oh...and Mako also left cat waste products in the dining room for my neighbor to clean up. Three times. So thoughtful of him. Eric is hoping he has a short life span.

Two days later, another text from my neighbor. She had discovered our water was on outside in the backyard, along with the river it had created, and wanted to warn me that the water bill might be scary. It was, in fact, most frightening. $250!!! And we don't even know who to yell at. Of course, both the boys assure us it was not them. Naturally.

Those hidden costs of vacation can really get you.

*Just FYI, we did not de-claw Mako, he came to us that way. Though, I think Eric is considering yanking out the back claws now as well.