Kentucky

Smiling because he's out of the carseat.

Mermaid and her baby.

Carcassonne

Tim and Gary

Zoe, Eric, and Alia

Maggie and Olivia

Sitting by the lake.

Turtle-time.

Andrew and Olivia

Suppertime when there's not enough table-space.

Zoe, Katie, and Matthias

Bubbles!

 

Most of the kids.  In the "office."

Matthias, Philip, Zoe.

Rocks are fun.

Watching the hummingbirds and orioles.

Purge Mode

Too.  Much.  Stuff.

Although there are plenty of more pressing tasks on the to-do list, I am distracted by my desire to de-clutter.  The yard needs to be simplified so there's less weeding and work out there.  But mostly I want to thin what's in cupboards, bookshelves, closets, and storage areas.  Flea market at church is in six weeks; hopefully I'll have a good pile for Maggie to hawk while I'm at work that day.

So it was timely to read an article on what clutter does to the mind.  [Hat tip: Cheryl.]  It helps me recognize why it's so hard to declutter; there is a neurological response in the brain which registers pain when getting rid of an object to which you are attached.  The article also shows that there really is stress and problems-with-focus from having too much clutter; it's not just silly me feeling overwhelmed.

I think this also explains one of the reasons vacation can be so relaxing.  If you're away from home there is usually less clutter.  The place you're staying probably has less stuff in the kitchen; you have fewer clothes to choose from; while you're away, housekeeping projects are not piled up demanding your attention.  For me, the escape-from-clutter is probably the most relaxing part of any vacation trip.

Conundrum of the month:  it's so much work to de-clutter.  And it clutters the brain to make de-cluttering decisions.  Uh ... no pain, no gain???

If I Had a Car

Gary's at district convention.  Kids are at a pool party.  If I had a car, I'd be getting a second dose of what I had Friday afternoon: I'd be at the beach doing NOTHING.

During a week of family reunion, I enjoyed talking with cousins and Mom, playing with kiddoes, trivia night, and my first exposure to Bunko.  It wasn't until the last day, though, that I did NOTHING.  A couple of hours with nothing to cook, nothing to do, just sitting in the sun or floating in the pool.  A few hours of listening to birdies tweet, with the sun beating down on me, floating floating floating ... I haven't felt so mellow in a long long time.  It's refreshing! 

And I'm definitely up for ditching my responsibilities and having another go at NOTHINGness.  But my car did not behave so well on the trip home from the reunion.  Thankfully, we made it home (albeit with only two stops) without roadside assistance and without anyone wetting her pants.  Well, actually, we didn't make it all the way home.  We made it to my mechanic's shop.  We'll find out the car's diagnosis tomorrow morning.

In theory, if I tackle enough housework, yardwork, and laundry today, maybe we could manage some beach time when I have my car back.  (So have I fooled you into thinking I'll actually be that productive?  I can't quite convince myself of it either.)

Another Follow-up to "Nothing to Do"

Played some piano. Reviewed Hilde's descant for "O Savior of Our Fallen Race."

Made bread.

Cleaned the oven and the stove's grates.

Goofed off on Facebook and wrote some blog posts.

Went to the post office and library.

Flushed the water heater.

Paid bills, did the December budget, and set up the files for the new year's budget-stuff.

Talked briefly to Paul about his vaccination record.

Listened to my pastor on Issues, Etc. (I wish I'd known earlier this week that he had a week-long stint on the show. He's doing a whole series on the Table of Duties, and if it turns out to be anything at all like what he wrote in Catechist edition, it'll superb.)

Cleaned two bedrooms.

Mopped those bedrooms and the bathrooms.

Shrimp stirfry for supper.

Watch Pizza My Heart with Gary. It's a cute, simple, clean, predictable, lightly funny movie that's kind of a chipper take-off on Romeo and Juliet.

Vacuumed the basement furniture with my new Dirt Devil. #1 -- It's shocking and disgusting how much cat hair was on those chairs. #2 -- Why don't women like tools (like Dirt Devils) for Christmas gifts? It makes a task quicker and easier, which means it's essentially a gift of time. And everybody seems to want more time. I certainly treasure gifts-of-time more than gifts-of-jewels or gifts-of-perfume or other supposedly romantic things. After all, if I have more time to read a book to a kid or cuddle with my sweetie, what thing could be better than that?

Early to bed so that I can be out of the house extra-early for opening at work tomorrow.

Back to RegularLife tomorrow. And on my vacation I didn't even start on the Christmas cards, the Epiphany introits, or the school records. But no! I ought not look at what I didn't accomplish, but at the things I did. Right? Right? Yes, I can brainwash myself into this.....!

Follow-up to "Nothing to Do"

Because I knew I would come to the end of the day, take a look at all the unfinished tasks on my to-do list, and bemoan having "done nothing all day," I kept track of what I did do:

Cleaned behind and under the refrigerator. Dusted the coils. Pulled out the stove and cleaned behind it too.

Laundered the boys' sheets. Bathroom towels too. And three loads of clothes.

Remembered to take my vitamins (no small feat, unfortunately). Hit the neti pot repeatedly to fight back at the problem instigated by a tooth having been whacked by a popcorn kernel. (This week I'm understanding Gary's reticence with regard to eating popcorn.)

Several little jobs, like sweeping the stairwell, scrubbing the kitchen sink, sharpening knives, cleaning out my purse, and dusting the bathrooms.

Smoothie for breakfast.

Mopped and triple-waxed the kitchen floor.

Two-mile walk, in the sunshine!, fast enough to get sweaty, followed by a hot soak in the tub with my magazine. (Hey, I had to do something while the wax was drying on the floor that's smack-dab in the middle of the house's traffic.)

Watched a cooking show while I ate my lunch and wrote some thank-you notes.

Ran three quickie errands in town.

Soaked feet and treated split heels.

With Gary's help, took the piano out to the garage, awaiting either the garbage men or someone who wants a near-free piano.

Broke down the large and sturdy box the snow-blower arrived in [wow -- what a gift!] and cut-and-tied it into a size acceptable to the garbage haulers.

Scrubbed the shower walls and the bathtub instead of doing the regular 2-minute swiping/cleaning. Tried it with baking soda today instead of SoftScrub. I think it worked okay.

Bottled kombucha and started two new batches.

Fried chicken for supper.

Watched a sitcom with Gary.

Cleaned the rest of the kitchen (that is, whatever wasn't cleaned when I mopped & waxed this morning).


Now, when I read that, it doesn't look like quite so nothing. And I've got another day of this "nothing to do."

Nothing to Do

The kids are with some friends for the week. Gary's at work. I'm not scheduled to work. Nothing's on the calendar at church. No doctor appointments or other things penciled onto the calendar. Two whole days stretched out before me. I have nothing to do.

Except cooking and baking and laundry. And long-overdue straightening and cleaning. And Christmas cards and a desktop-publishing project for church. And errands and a list of phone calls. And catching up on school record-keeping. And school plans for the next semester. And maybe a little self-indulgence: writing, going for a walk in this beautiful sunshine, playing piano, wasting time watching a movie or maybe even reading?

What shall it be? So many options for "doing nothing"!

I started the day with a sudoku.

Philip's Travels

Philip flew out of Chicago Sunday morning. He has two weeks of vacation in Japan. Because Japanese cell-phone towers do not mesh with American cell phones, he set up a website to stay in contact. (As the kids joke, yes, his mother wants to know every few days that he's still alive!) For those interested in seeing pictures and hearing reports, check out philinjapan at tumblr.

Agreeable to Change

Last week was a family reunion. Katie and Nathan and Alia traveled from Texas to attend. Occasionally (but rarely) Alia was a bit out of sorts. For the most part, though, it was a grand time for her. Plenty of people around to entertain her, to take her to the playground, to take her to the pool, to take her for a walk, to play chase or to rough-house. Sometimes it was hard for her to get to sleep in a strange bed. Sometimes she was over-tired and didn't want to come in from playing to nap. But overall, she adjusted really well.

Especially when you consider that a 1-yr-old doesn't really understand the concept of "vacation." She left her home. She left her kitties. She left her toys. She was dragged out of bed at an unreasonably early hour, locked up in a car seat for the whole day, didn't know hardly any of the people she was thrown together with for the week, ... and it was okay! Not only okay, but good!

Now, how many of us would react that way?

We want to know what's going on. We want to know what's coming next. We're often discombobulated when we lose the stability of what's around us.

I would see Alia prancing around confidently and recall the movie Life Is Beautiful. Granted, Alia had fun stuff like swimming and slides and swings and cousins. But you know how kids can be about their routine. It struck me that our attitude was "Isn't this great?!?" And so Alia enjoyed the adventure even though it would have been easy enough to a kid to be cranky in the situation. She had her parents with her; her needs were met; what she had [to all appearances] lost (such as toys and pets) was not important enough to deter her from the things she gained.



If only I could trust my heavenly Father when big changes (and even losses) come. If only I could, like Alia, just go with whatever comes rollin' along through life and accept it with joy.

Frugal on the Soap

I took a bar of home-made soap with us on vacation last week. It got used up! In one week! It never does that at home.

The shower stall was arranged such that the built-in soap dish was right where the water hits. (Now who would build it like that? Somebody with lots of stock in Dial and Safeguard?)

At home we have soap dishes that attach to the wall with suction cups. (Something on the order of this thing.) I can sure tell a difference in how fast the soap disappears at home, depending on where the dish is placed on the wall of the shower.

Maybe I need to start carrying a dish with me when I leave home, and not just my own soap.

Fieldtrips

Some homeschoolers I know have been talking about decompression time, when a family new to homeschooling takes some time off to recuperate from the school-way of studying, resting first, and allowing the kids to begin to find their own interests, to discover books or projects that excite their minds. In a similar way, I keep wondering if I'm still in "decompression" from autumn 2007.

For a long time, I've been wanting to learn something about photography. When [free] workshops were offered at the Janesville library, somehow they never worked out with our schedule. Last Thursday, our local library offered a photography class. I was hyped for it. But the other activities of the day (supremely fun activities) pushed back dinner-prep, and I wasn't ready with food early enough for us to be on our way by 6:15. (By the way, I don't regret how I spent Thursday at all.) A day or so later I realized that other families might have gone to Culvers and picked up burgers on their way to the library. Spending money at a restaurant never crossed my mind.

Maggie and I are reading about birds these days. It would be a great fieldtrip to visit Sand Bluff Bird Banding Station. Even though it's a 4-hour roundtrip, I think it would be worth it. Thing is, it's only open on the weekends, and you really want to arrive between 8 and 9:00 because the birds are more active in the morning. I was trying to gather my energy and my will, and make this Saturday the day for the big trip. Thing is, the kids decided to attend Matthew's play on Friday night with a bunch of the other folks from church. There was no way we were leaving the house at 6am, for a long day, a long drive, and hiking, after teenagers put themselves to bed at 11:00 or later. Two fieldtrips untaken this week. As it turns out, with the rain this weekend, we wouldn't have gone anyway.

It's that time of year when I long to visit Mackenzie Environmental Education Center. We often stopped there on our way to the state homeschool conference which used to be held in Stevens Point. I love that place. I love the wildflowers in late April and early May. And the kids love the two-headed pig in formaldehyde.

If we drove as far as MEEC, another great fieldtrip for learning about birds is the International Crane Foundation.

I really need to look into finding some volunteer opportunities for Maggie. We've done some websurfing, looking for stables that offer therapeutic riding for the disabled. I should talk to the folks back at Smiles and see if they can point us in the right direction.

I think we should go to museums more. To the zoo. To nature centers. To the beach when it's warmer (IF it ever gets warmer... thankyouAlGore). To re-enactments. To art shows. To concerts and plays. To ball games. And then there are music lessons, sports teams, and summer-school classes from which the kids might benefit if we signed 'em up.

Especially since we moved and the economy tanked (thankyouBigGovernment), the cost of these activities is usually prohibitive. The county parks and the state parks require different entry passes. This year we're going to have to pick one vehicle to be the going-to-the-park car, because it would be wasteful to buy passes for both cars. But it's not just the money. Finding time to go to the zoo or the museum is the bigger problem. I'm just too tired.

We go to chapel most mornings, and we take Maggie to choir 3x a week. We buy groceries now and then. Pretty soon we need to make a trip to Mankato to get Paul's car back to him; we'll hit up some Betsy-Tacy sites and may consider stopping to see cranes. There's a homeschoolers' beach day coming up that I want to attend with friends. We'll have to get to Chicago to see Rachel and Matt's new place. There's also a family reunion and symposium. It's not like we never go anywhere!

How do we fit in more activities? How do we make time for volunteering at a horse barn or at the library or some other opportunity for Maggie? Why can all these other families provide music lessons and art lessons and dance lessons and softball teams and 4-H, and still fit in cool outings? I'm doing good if I can remember to make supper every day.

I want to give my kids the mind-broadening, fun opportunities that can acquaint them with new ideas and give them new skills. But it seems like laundry and supper take everything I've got. So schoolwork is done the lazy, sit-on-the-couch, read-the-book way, and not the fulfilling way of experiencing all those different places & people & concepts. It reminds me of the Erma Bombeck essay about the mom who was old, and how her youngest had such a different life from the older brothers.

Sometimes I think maybe we're the ones with our act together, not over-committing and running around like crazy. But other times I wish we could be free to get out there in the Real World the way we used to.




PS: This is blogpost #2500. Good grief....

Are You Having Fun?

Have you noticed how often that question comes up? When you're at the park or a concert or a museum or a skating rink, parents (or other kids) are frequently asking kids, "So, are you having fun?" Questions like that arise on vacations and other family outings too.

Why do we ask?

If somebody says, "No, this isn't fun," are we going to interrupt our bowling game and take the whole family home because one person isn't having fun? C'mon admit it -- if a kid says he's not having fun at the beach, you're not going to break off your week's vacation, pack up your belongings, and drive home. If he'd have more fun in the hotel with video games than at the beach, are you going to let him hole-up in his own little on-screen world and disconnect from the family, or are you going to stay at the beach and enjoy the sun and the sound of the waves and the smell of the saltwater?

So why do we ask?

I think the frequency of this question in our society encourages us to turn inward. Instead of enjoying (or not enjoying!) experiences, we are evaluating our response to experiences. We can't take an event for what it is, but we focus instead on whether we're having fun with it. I think the pervasiveness of this question leads to depression at holidays, where people are so concerned with how they feel about the enjoyment of their holiday that they cannot just take Thanksgiving or Christmas as it comes, however it comes. Frequently wondering "Am I having fun?" leads us to become fun-junkies, always looking for more excitement and a bigger high; it easily leaves us with disappointment when the new Lego set or the new car or the great vacation doesn't bring endless joy.

You know what? I have a whole lot more fun when I'm not trying to have fun.

To the Fort

Finished up the bulk of the work on my current editing project. The last steps can be accomplished while I'm out of town this week.

Van is packed full of CCA material. I'm off to symposia to fill in for the deacon for the week ... and to see old friends! The hard part is always the self-discipline -- making ourselves sleep at night instead of trying to squeeze in every last minute of visiting we can.

With hopes of coming home at the end of the week both
-- satiated with the joy of being with buddies, and
-- not drop-dead exhausted.
This is my goal! (And it would be all the cheerier if I hit good traffic through Chicago. But I don't want to wish for too much and push my luck....)

California Trip

You disembark from the plane for your lay-over, walk into the Las Vegas airport, and face a whole bank of slot machines. Around the corner we found the wheel. Boy, you know it's Las Vegas!

Sacramento airport was a little more peaceful-looking.

The entrance to the M.I.N.D. Institute. Notice all the sun sun SUN in these pictures.

The side view of the MIND Institute, as we saw it from our room.

The entrance to the Kiwanis Family House.

The side of the Kiwanis House where we stayed, as seen from over at the MIND Institute.

The nearby corner where we could find food: groceries and sit-down restaurants and fast food and an awesome Thai place. It was about two-thirds of a mile.

Our bedroom at the Kiwanis House.

Maggie working in our section's kitchen.

The dining room. (How'd that kombucha bottles get there?)

A shot of Maggie at the Phoenix airport.

Instantaneous

We drive. Even if it's a three-day trip to drive to vacation, we drive. We don't fly. Sometimes we are envious of those who can fly. It seems like it takes them no time whatsoever to arrive.

You know what? It's a rude surprise to find out that the plane-trip across the country --the one you thought was nearly instantaneous-- actually takes a pretty hefty chunk of a day.



Similarly, there are a lot of jobs around the house that I've taught myself to keep up on "because they take no time." Brushing teeth? A minute or two. Wiping the counters? Less than a minute each time. Changing a load of laundry? Just a couple of minutes (if you don't fold). It's very disappointing when, at the end of the day, you did 100 of those little jobs which take NO TIME, and that's all you did. All day. Nothing else. Hey, that's not fair! Any mathematician knows that 100x0=0. Therefore, all those jobs which individually "take no time" should cumulatively take no time? Right? You buy that, don't you? (How come it doesn't work that way?)



Similarly, I'm getting very VERY impatient with the time that it takes to think. Thinking? That's supposed to be multi-tasked. That's supposed to be what I do while folding laundry, chopping onions, waiting for El-Kid to answer a spelling question, waiting in line at the store, etc. It seems SO unproductive to sit and just think. But thoughts do not come easily to me any more. I have to work to think; that is, I have to stop other work and focus only on the work of thinking. Yuck -- this takes more effort than I want to invest. Problem is, too many problems remain unsolved when I do not solve the problem of not having time to solve problems. [Okay, stupid sentence. But read it again. I meant it.]

You don't suppose our society's desire for instant gratification has weaseled its way into my psyche, do you?

Trip

Our trip to California started well, and then went downhill. We began by taking only 55 minutes to drive to the airport, check in, go through security, and arrive at our [far-flung] gate. We watched a fantastic first half of the Vikings-Bears game. We didn't understand how the seating on the plane worked; no reserved seats, just take-your-pick. We were last on the plane and it was full. When the man next to me noticed how I was talking to Maggie and trying to help her figure out how to buckle her seat belt, he offered to switch places with her so the two of us could sit together. That was SO nice!

Layover wasn't long. On the second stint of the flight, Maggie managed to find two seats next to each other, and she sat next to the window. Hooray!

It took us three hours from the time we landed in Sacramento until we arrived at our room in the Kiwanis House. Three hours! There was a screw-up with the SuperShuttle reservations. When we checked in, they told us it would be a 7-minute wait for the shuttle. They promise a 15-minute maximum wait. It was an hour before we had our van. Then it took 45 minutes to drive to the house (a 20-minute drive if you're not making multiple stops around town for other passengers) and about 25 minutes to check in to the house. We didn't get to bed until what 12:30 PST (2:30 our time).

Today went better. Maggie had her tests and MRI. I was planning to do a lot of editing on CCA materials, but have been having trouble with it. I'm also required for interviews with doctors more than I'd anticipated.

Three nice things I've noticed about where we are:
Gorgeous weather today.
How polite the motorists are to pedestrians and bikers!
The black people here speak in standard English, not the ghetto-speak which is so common at home.

Gotta go make some supper.

Lutheran Liturgical Congregations

For those who have been patiently (or impatiently) awaiting the return of the list,

and with much thanks to those who reworked the website and spent time inputting data and verifying that information was updated correctly,

Gary's website is up and running again.

In the past, some people put a lot more stock in LutheranLiturgy.org than they should've. Being listed on the website is no guarantee of a good sermon or excellent hymn choices. And there are good congregations out there which aren't on the list. But this list is a good starting point for those looking for a congregation to attend when away from their home church. Congregations on the list use the hymnal and have no "contemporary" worship, and they report that they practice closed communion and have no women assisting in the chancel.

Modesty

1. I normally dress fairly conservatively. Even when the heat calls for shorts and tank tops (or even spaghetti straps), my clothes tend to be frumpy and modest compared to most of what you see out there in the stores and on the streets.

2. I don't like other people undermining what I teach my kids. If something is good and right to do, it's good and right -- not relativistic. In other words, I don't buy into the "it's good for me, but you have your own right and wrong."

3. During the past week, we were at a resort for a grand ol' family reunion with wonderful wonderful people. Also at the resort was a group of Amish folks. They were fun to visit with and chat with around the campfire. The kids were sweet and cute, and the parents enjoyable and friendly.

Thus #4, the dilemma. My kids love the swimming pool. I would put on my swim suit to go to the pool or beach with them. It's not a bikini. It's not particularly revealing as swimsuits go, and actually rather modest. But it's still a swimsuit, with naked arms and near-naked shoulders and most of my thighs exposed. And I felt like I was undermining the Amish moms simply to have a swimsuit. Even though I was more covered than most of the other females at the pool, I could just imagine the Amish women trying to explain to their munchkins why they wear the clothes they do and why they don't run around with that much skin exposed. It was weird feeling like The Bad Influence, while wanting to minimize the Bad Influence I was being, yet without avoiding the pool altogether.

Welland Canal

When we decided we were attending the Gerhardt symposium at the St Catharines seminary, we needed to figure out what else we'd do here. Niagara Falls was an easy decision. But what else?

Turned out that about a month ago, we were reading some schoolbooks on transportation which fleshed out a history book we were reading about "American stories." Having read mini-blurbs about the Erie Canal and the Transcontinental Railroad, we extended our reading on those topics. A book on the St Lawrence Seaway had lots of information about the Welland Canal. Well, we'd never heard of it, but it looked like it might be in the same general vicinity. It wasn't just in the general vicinity. Turns out that the canal is only about a mile from our hotel. Yesterday, driving around, we saw one of the locks.

Today we ventured over to the nearest lock. There was a visitors center and a viewing platform. Looked cool. We stood and stared, and we read the signs. We drove past the "flight locks," where there are three locks back-to-back, climbing up the steepest part of the heights (over which the falls crash a few miles away). Happily, there was road construction on the narrow little street directly adjacent to the canal, so we had to stop and look, even though there was no place to park and get out to walk around.

No ships were due through for another 5-6 hours, so we decided to go to a winery and then go back to the hotel to swim. On our way back after the tour, we decided to buzz past the canal, just to see if that ship had started into the lock system on the further end. We were stopped at the drawbridge, waiting for the Winona to pass. Then as she headed upstream, we headed around the corner to Lock #3. We watched her enter the lock. We observed all the things we'd read about earlier: tying up the ship to the bollands, closing the gates, filling the lock with about 22 million gallons of water (which we figured would be ALL the water that about 1000 people would drink in their entire lifetimes), and then saw the ship exit on the south end of the canal. Then we saw the lift bridge raise up for the ship to pass under.

I feel like such a tourist ... but that was SO very cool!

More Trip

I'm sitting in the laundromat. I like laundromats. You get the laundry done SO FAST. It's quiet, and you can read or blog or watch country music videos. Every time I go to a laundromat, I think that it'd be really tempting to make this a part of my week (except for pumping quarters into the machine). But by the time I have little enough laundry to be able to afford it, I won't crave the hour and a half of aloneness that is the corollary to laundromat-time.

I was going to blog about the symposium and all the cool things we picked up there. But my desire to read the kids' blogs overrode my desire to ruminate on hymnology and Gerhardt. So I'll have to do that later, as my dryers don't have enough time on them to do two blogposts.

Mooooo. Apparently Canadians don't depend on dairy like Wisconsinites. The cheese selection at the store is small, and the price is outrageously high. Of course, I'm always stunned by the high grocery prices whenever we're on a trip. Good grief, I'm stunned by high grocery prices simply when I shop in my own county instead of at Woodmans. (I may have mentioned once or twice that I thank God often for Mr Woodman.) Gary told me that he'd heard Canadians pay a lot for groceries. Yowsa. He's right. And the butter. I pay about 40 cents a stick. Here it's $1.40 a stick. Probably eating less dairy is good for them. But the prices make my eyeballs pop outta my face.

We are enchanted driving through the countryside here around Niagara. Orchards and vineyards. That's all you see. No wheat. No corn. No beans. No cows. (Ah, that might explain the high dairy prices.) Just loads and loads of fruit. It's so pretty at this time of year, with the fruit trees all in blossom! The grape vines aren't doing anything yet, but that makes it easy for me to see the variety of ways they look, all bare-bones like, which gives me ideas of what I might do with my overgrown Fredonias (similar to Concords).

We went to see Niagara Falls yesterday after the symposium ended. The water is so clear. The power is overwhelming. The chill surprised me. It's warm this week -- mid 80s. Well, here it's high 20s. (I really made someone's jaw drop when I said our temps had been running in the 50s. I meant it had been cool, but the confused woman must've thought I lived in Death Valley.) Anyway, we were dressed for warm weather, and the temps by the falls were significantly cooler. All that water in the air! All that water rushing past in the rivers! Paul pointed out that you could actually see your breath. Not easily, but just a bit you could. And the tulip beds closest to the falls were just beginning to get buds on them, whereas the ones further from the falls (like a block or so away) were newly budding, whereas the tulips in neighboring suburbs were full and big and getting old. So it's not just my old bones and my decrepit chilliness that gave me such goosebumps yesterday. It kind of stuns the mind to realize that the temperature can be 30 degrees different (15 for you Celsius folks) in the space of a couple of city blocks.

Well, loads more to bore you with, but the dryers turned off and I should start folding clothes.

Trip

We enjoyed a grand time in Fort Wayne the last couple of days. We stayed with dear friends. We went to church at a place with kneelers and my daughter's favorite Easter hymn. Jane invited a few other homeschool friends over for Saturday evening, and that was a blast!

While in Fort Wayne, we buzzed past the apartment complex that Katie and Nathan will be moving into next month. It sure is nice looking! Wow! Maggie especially likes the scuplted hedges.

On Saturday morning, Gary was checking one last time for the information on getting into Canada. He realized that it could be that the adults, not only the children, would need to prove American citizenship, and that a drivers license and voters registration card wouldn't necessarily be enough. (What do the border-crossing guards know about illegal voting in the US that the Wisconsin legislature does not know??) Anyway, Gary made a quick run to the bank to fetch birth certificates from the safe-deposit box.

The lesson learned yesterday is that you should go potty before crossing the border into another country. A certain child informed us that we had to stop as we were approaching Detroit. But it was a big city and crowded and we were watching roadsigns. We thought we'd have to stop at the border anyway. Well, guess what? After being good little citizens, and hauling out the drivers licenses and the state IDs and the birth certificates, we approached the border. The guard asked where we were from, where we were going, and why. Quite the funny look in his eye when we told him that we were attending a symposium and what the topic was! There was a tourist information bureau just a block or so from the border. Of course, it was closed on a Sunday evening. So no maps. No information on exchanging currency. And worse, no potty. With the twists and turns in the tunnel, it was hard to figure out which way we were supposed to head out of downtown Windsor. So we drove in circles for a while. Thankfully the sun was starting to go down, so that helped with establishing directions. Finally found a gas station, but they had no potties. Drove a little further and found a Subway. So we hurried in a bought something before a little girl exploded. Whew!

The boys kept looking for signs of how different Canada looked from the US. About the only thing they noticed was that the flags have no blue on them, and the word "centre" switched the last two letters. In yesterday's installment the story we are currently reading aloud, the main character crossed the border from Connecticut into New York, the first time in his life he'd been out of his home state. He was disappointed that it didn't look nor feel any different. So my boys had to make the same statements about crossing into Canada. Stinkers!