Just a Daily Day

It's Friday, hallelujah.  Wyatt is already off on the bus for his morning at the high school, in spite of coming down with a cold.  I'll be taking Tate and Gunnar up to Grandpa and Grandma's for a PTO day.  (Personal Time Off - much more needed when they were all little and so busy, but still a welcome break for all of us.  I enjoy the quiet house, and they enjoy being with their grandparents.  Win-win.)

And it's such a blah day.  Such a Daily Day.  Above freezing, but cold, windy, and rainy.  A good day for hot cocoa :D

Some good things, and some funny things going on around here this week...

Wyatt couldn't wait to show his brothers some of the pictures from his history book.  He found it kind of funny that Louis Phillipe looked so much like a pear, but the picture of Sir Walter Scott that resembled Steve Martin sent them all into fits of laughter.

Wyatt is also working his way through Apologia's high school Biology.  I'm really impressed with their curriculum.

I think his brothers are quite envious of the dissections he gets to do,

... but their day(s) will come!

So here's a regional question - what do you call this animal?  His book calls it a crayfish.  Around here it's a crawdad.  And I think I remember Australians calling them yabbies.  What are they where you live?

Every once in awhile I have the boys do some creative writing.  For the most part, this frustrates Gunnar, but Tate will take the ball and run.  This time, I gave them five words and told them to write a short story (and try to use all five words).

I won't give you all seven pages of Tate's story, because you probably don't have the sensibilities of a 14 year old boy, but I'm including a few excerpts because I was thrilled at some of his phrasing, and his general creativity.  His writing is italicized and some of my favorite little bits are bolded.

The story begins when

King Alfonzo Delzeke Marramont Clapsicle Linterhonz Frederike Von Ravishing

sends our hero on a quest... for Twinkies.  Our hero criss-crosses Europe, encountering various groups of people.

He took an immediate dislike to the *** as they dressed like baboons, smelled like hippies, and only bathed on Tuedays, and even then only if the groundhog had seen his shadow.

He faces many obstacles.

But it was too late.  All he could do was sit there in the wreckage of the wiener dog watching 9000 annoying elves drive his motorcycle into the sunset.

And he overcomes them all.

Four seconds later he climbed out of the wreckage, a new resolve shining in his eyes.  He would accomplish the mission with or without the Harley!  After all, he was the direct descendant of an obscure janitor in the unused palace of Rickety-Shack!

He finally reaches the only 7-11 in the world, located appropriately at the top of the holy Mt. Olympus, but an unfortunate last-minute distraction has him wandering for three days in a Cabelas store (hunting/fishing/outdoor/etc.)  When he finally emerges, three days later...

He was wearing a furry coat, a space suit, a pirate pistol, high leather boots, pink socks, a raccoon-skin cap with a cigarette lighter in the tail, four pairs of pants - none of them on his legs, a suit and tie, and three pairs of underpants on the outside.  He had styled his hair to look like a boat.

As he enters the 7-11 to buy the Twinkies, from behind him...

came a fat, smelly voice, accompanied by a rain of spittle from behind the counter. He turned, and there stood a small, ugly little man with dreadlocks growing out of his gigantic ears and other than that, not a hair on him.


WHERE DOES HE GET THIS STUFF???


Moving on... time to load up the boys and head up the hill to my folks'.  I'll be trying to tame the clutter in my office (it breeds!  I'm sure of it!) and working on a quilt that lost some momentum.  Once I wrap it up I want to try a new, smaller project.

Wish me luck ;D