Little Mark pulled five 2-liter bottles of coke from our pantry this morning and pretended to bowl. It appeared that he had fun despite not being able to knock the bottles over. When the ball hit the center of the bottle, it let out a dull but audible doing!
I've decided that Little Mark is like a puppy with opposable thumbs.
Today is the first Carolina game of the season. Mark & I went out on a date last night. He decided to turn on football radio. In his Southern drawl, the commentator jovially talked of college football being a strain on marriages, and professional football causing an exponential strain. "Then," he paused, "but high school football--that's a widowmaker, that's what that is." So, to prove the good man right, Mark decided to stop as we were passing our local high school. They were finishing the last 45 seconds of the game. Every long suffering wife knows that the last 45 seconds of any football game is going to last at least 20 minutes. So we sat in the car 20 minutes watching high school football.
My sister and her husband and their two kids are in town for the game. They tailgate with their friends at a 6x10 foot piece of real estate they own in the Carolina parking lot. I never knew they treated parking spaces like real estate until Blake bought one. I don't know why this fascinates me.
My mother took Hadley, Ella & Meggy to a special exhibit at the museum about space aliens. I took the boys to Sonic for a corn dog and a milk shake. This way Mark could mow and trim the yard without the boys chasing him down with the Little Tikes "popping" mower.
I have a friend, Jennifer, who never takes her children to fast food places. Before coming to my house her daughter had never had Cheez Doodles.
Last spring at our mid-year meeting, I was sitting between Jennifer and another friend (now a missionary in Southeast Asia) listening to a talk by a homeschooling mother who is also a free-lance writer and speaker. It was meant to be a pep talk to revitalize us and encourage us in our homeschooling efforts. One of her concluding comments was, "I may never be able to become a missionary, or grind my own wheat, but I know that I am making a difference in my childrens' lives through homeschooling." At that, the seemingly revitalized and encouraged ladies of the crowd smiled and nodded in agreement.
I, however, glanced to my right at Jennifer, who grinds her own wheat and bakes bread three times a week, then to my left at my other friend (the missionary) who also grinds her own wheat. I leaned over to the missionary friend: "...Why are you here?" She replied dryly: "I signed up to bring the cookies."
Here's Little Mark with the Shop Vac. This is why I don't grind my own wheat.
