Six Flags

Taking 8 people anywhere is expensive.  This means we tend to plan our big money outings on a rotating basis: one year we do the circus, the next it's the fair, and this year it was the amusement park!

Our local park is called Six Flags.  When the kids wanted to know why, I told them there was one flag for each of them!

 This year, in keeping with our trajectory plans, the Emperor took all six kids by himself! 

This meant that he took the youngest three to the "younger" rides, and the oldest three went off on their own... for the day.

 It worked! 

Everyone had a great time.  No one got lost.

We provided a little structure for the older kids: what to do if they lost some one, what to do if different kids wanted to do different rides, when to be back, where to meet, how to get food, and so forth, and they were totally fine!

The one thing everyone could do together was the bumper cars.

Sorry for the blur, all the pictures are from phones.

What a fun day! 

And the confidence on the older kids' faces was the best souvenir!

Urgent Prayer Request

I'd like to really beg for prayers for this little 5 year old boy, the son of a friend of mine

Yesterday, Patrick  wandered into the family van alone unbeknownst to anyone at some point in the afternoon. They don't know how long he was in the hot van, but when his Mom found him, he was breathing but nonresponsive. They immediately called an ambulance and they took him to the ICU of Children's Hospital.

Since then, he has been in a coma and, in fact, has taken a turn for the worse.  The nurses and doctors are working with him constantly. He is losing blood and they are doing transfusions. They think it is something worse than heat exhaustion. He might have ingested something poisonous. His heart rate is high. He is is on medications that are keeping his blood pressure down.

His Mom is telling us that things are not looking good.  She asks for prayers to St. Jude.

Thank you for your prayers!

Wendy

PS: Veronica (the little 5 year old girl who had a stroke and was in a coma) is coming back to her house this weekend!   She is doing miraculously well.  She is using a walker, but it looks like she will eventually make a full recovery.  Thank you so much for your prayers for her!

Beach Trip Round 4: The Rest

 We made our annual visit to a candy store!


We visited the Wallop's Island Flight Center!

 We ate crabs!  My kids have lived their whole lives in Maryland, and this was their first crab feast!

They drew pictures on the table while we waited for the crabs:

 This is a sleestak from the Land of the Lost.  Who let him in?!



We played mini-golf!

We visited strange little museums.

This was the oldest house on Chincoteague, built in the 1800s. 

One of the guides, a lovely little old lady, told us that her mother had been born in the upstairs room: one of eleven children in the two room house!

We hung out and relaxed!

Beach Trip Round 3: The Beach!

Beach Trip Round 2: Microscope Madness

We had a wonderful time with the microscope, at any rate! 

We saw zooplankton and phytoplankton, to be sure, but the high water mark was when the kids caught a repulsively  surprisingly large jellyfish. 

I had brought gloves, in the hopes of finding one! 

Let me preface this with two statements: 1. Jellyfish are a harmful and invasive species. 2. Jellyfish have no nerves or pain centers. 

The kids had fished the jelly out with a net.  As it was revoltingly excessively large, it began to lose structural integrity almost immediately.

I tried to take a sample of the dome and a separate sample of the tentacles (with a spoon and bowl, if that doesn't gross you out too much).  I ended up getting all tentacle all the time, but that was the more interesting find anyway.

Unfortunately, my microscope does not have camera, and what we saw was a bit nicer than this. 

We saw chrysanthemum shaped clusters of stinging cells. Larger empty cells fringed the outside, tiny new cells clustered at the center, and in between were cells with what looked like large convoluted nuclei.

Those convolutions were actually the coiled up "harpoons" of the stinging cells!!  How cool is that?  Even as someone who despises is not fond of jellyfish, I found the cell clusters weirdly beautiful.

Beach Trip Round 1: Down by the Bay

 Despite the regular posting, we were gone all last week to Chincoteague Island!



We had a house with Grammy on the west coast of the island, and so were treated to a variety of beautiful sunsets over Chincoteague Bay.

On the other side, you could drive a short distance to Assateague and see the sun rise over the Atlantic!

This was an amazing set up in several ways: we were in the middle of a salt marsh, an ecosystem which we'd never experienced, the private board walk ran through the marsh to a dock in the Bay, complete with a crab catching cage, and we were surrounded by wildlife, including more snowy egrets that you could shake a stork at!

Ahem.

Fortunately, I had thought ahead and brought my microscope, complete with well slides for looking at microscopic water creatures!

Yeah, I do know most people would have brought binoculars for looking at the birds... I kind of wonder what my kids will think when they grow up and find that not everyone takes a microscope on summer vacation.  Don't spill the beans, OK?

Tomorrow: What we saw with the microscope!

Trajectory

A conversation with my friend, Becky, has gotten me thinking a lot about trajectory in parenting.

To me this means having a clear idea of where you want your child to be on his or her 18th birthday.  Not a physical location, or even a "they should be in college" type thing.  I mean thinking about what it means to be a fully functional adult, and how to get there from "It's a boy!" in 18 years.

I want my kids to be deeply connected to God, to draw life and guidance from their relationship with Him.  I want that life to spill out into the lives of others.

I want them to be able to confidently navigate daily life (feed, clean and care for themselves).

I want them to able to handle their own finances.

I want them to know how to find out what they want to know, and to want to know lots of things.

I want them to be able to sort out truth from error.

I want them to have a knowledge base that allows them to do whatever God calls them to do.

I want them to able to drive and be able to literally navigate their way through life!

I want them to be comfortable in their own skin, to know who God created them to be and to be excited about being that person.

I want them to be able to think of others and  to look at a situation and think about how to make it better.

Where do you want your kids to be?  Do you have an intentional trajectory?

Big Plans

Me (to Leena): We'll also be doing a younger kids  chemistry class, and you'll be in that.  Just think, all chemistry experiments, all the time!

Leena: You mean like blowing up a donkey?!

Zorg: No, that's Art class.

Guest Blog by Mxyl: Goshen, Round III

Around half-way into camp, The Grand Emperor came--and he brought a camera!  We finished up the badges and awards, performed an excellent flag ceremony, and then...








FANCY DINNER NIGHT!!!

Our Troop, known for awkwardness and pranks, remodified our ordinary table into something out of a fancy restaurant!



I volunteered as one of the fancy waiters!

Which meant pouring fancy champagne to the staff, our fancy guests!


All and all, a fun night, need I say more?  The answer would be yes, but I've run out of pictures of significant note.

Hmm... for swimming I  blew up my pants...


Ah yes!  I forgot that we now have our own sign hung up on the hall's walls!  Nothing uncommon, though still neat for revisiting.

Guest Blog by Mxyl: Goshen, Round II

 On to our busy week!


I got badges in Environmental Science (literally fun and games), Emergency Preparation (more to the point, but still fun too), Sculpture (easy and fun), Textiles (short and fun) and Cinematography (mostly listening to music on our counselor's Mac and guessing which movie it's from=fun).

In my spare time, I learned to shoot a rifle!



Zorg, meanwhile, did the Trails Head program, and got his Totin' chip and his Fireman's chit, which means, as I aptly put it, "You are now able to carry a flamethrower as well as axes and swords."

Pocket knives and campfires are also allowed.

The biggest news from camp: Zorg and I both got our swimming badge!  I originally started Hiking (you have to do one or the other to get Eagle), but Hiking, upon closer inspection, required 70 miles of hiking, and I'd personally prefer more rifling in my spare time.