Freddy

Give a boy plenty of time to be bored, and he'll make a house:

make a friend:

make a submarine:

climb something:

find something:

and make my heart stop beating until he is safe on the ground again:

Airshow weekend

I did this post once already, complete with many links. However, it never showed up. I'm doing it again, less linky and less entertaining.

The last weekend in August there was an airshow in town. The highlight was the A 10. These are some of the lowlights of the weekend.

Dinner with a senator:

My girls say that I smile too big. Maybe they are right. We also saw a UFO:

Seb had his photo taken with an airshow performer, because he can't let an airshow go by without having his photo taken with at least one lady that he isn't married to:

My friend Jonathon and I at another dinner that weekend. I didn't recognize him in a suit. I don't think that the suit makes it out of the closet very often. This dinner was a roast, a roast of the senator in the top photo. Roasts are odd; I don't think that I like them.

The dinner was in Calvin's school. Seb was suffering badly from jet lag that night. He had been home from France for three days, and it was hitting him hard.

I don't know what Seb and John were discussing. I discussed grammar and dress codes with John. He and I disagreed about what cocktail attire requires for men. The online guides agree with me: John should have been wearing a tie. I guess that he didn't want to take any chances; the next time I saw him he was dressed in a tux.

Staying fit

We put the TV remote on top of the rock wall,...

donuts at the end of this fallen log,...

all the batteries on top of this steep cliff,...

candy on the other side of this crevice,...

and the Wii controllers on the other side of the creek.

That is how we keep Freddy slim and healthy.

Freddy's best birthday present

I thought that my sister loved me, but then she sent Freddy a dissection kit for his birthday. I guess that she hates me. Everything is getting dissected, except the crayfish. That one went right to the specimen jar. Freddy is collecting the good parts in alcohol-filled jars to join his collection of snake parts and skink tails.

Over the weekend there was something on the counter that I was sure was a mushroom. I haven't bought any mushrooms lately, so I figured that it was one from outside. After sitting there all day, I discovered that it was a pig snout and foot. I am so grossed out by this whole situation. I want to run away.

(In the photo they are dissecting in the garage because I won't let them do it in the house and it was raining outside. Isabelle frequently helps.)

A 10

The airplane:

Calvin in the cockpit:

Susan and Susan flanking the real pilot:


I was next in line after Calvin to sit in the cockpit, and didn't get to. I was terribly disappointed. Getting a photo with the pilot did not make up for it. Speaking of the pilot...can you see that his face is a little swollen on his left side? That is because he was punched while in a bar here in our little town, punched right in the face without any provocation or warning. Kind of makes me want to move away. I was in that same bar on the weekend, waiting for my sweet potato fries, and I wasn't punched. I was, however, offered free drinks, repeatedly.

I bought something

Trip to Europe: what Calvin did

What Calvin did all over Ireland, France and Switzerland:


(In the above photo, he's in the mustard yellow shirt in the center.)

Labor Day 2010

In spite of their singular courage, wonderful coolness, extraordinary fortitude, they were now breathless, motionless, almost helpless; their muscles were tightened to their utmost tension; their eyes stared out of their sockets; their faces were petrified with horror...

They could utter no word, they could breathe no prayer. They gave themselves up for lost--in the agony of terror that partially interrupted the ordinary functions of their brains, this was absolutely all that they could do!

We started homeschooling yesterday.

--quotes from All Around the Moon by Jules Verne.

Wednesday

Yesterday, one of us ate lunch with a cosmonaut, and one of us won $23,600 playing Wheel of Fortune. We lead exciting lives, and some days we do so without ever leaving our little, rural town.