MLK Day

ALIVE! ALIIIIIIVE!: Imagine my surprise today when I held up the Triops tank to take one last look before dumping its contents down the drain. I sighed and scanned the watery horizon, wondering where we went so, SO wrong. Again.

But wait - what's that? An air bubble - with a tail? ... Nope ... I'll be damned, it's a real live Triops!!! And wait - there's another!!!

I squealed and called the kids over to see. They both spotted them, too, and were very happy. While we expected a whole lot more than two Triops, we're very happy to have ANY at all! We fed them and are looking forward to tracking their growth.

I AM HAPPY TO JOIN WITH YOU TODAY: Naturally, our day had to include some Martin Luther King Jr. content.

For starters, Christian and the kids toured MLK Jr.'s birth home. (You have to have QuickTime in order for it to work.) Hosted by the National Park Service, the tour lets you 'walk' through MLK Jr.'s childhood home in Sweet Auburn, an African American hub of Atlanta. Along with a floorplan and 360° views of each room, there are narrations that tell stories about his childhood. It's informative and definitely worth checking out. There is also a link to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his father was minister.

After the tour, together we took turns reading "I Have a Dream," a picture book about Martin Luther King Jr's famous March on Washington speech in August of 1963.

The text was pulled straight from the speech and there were lots of big words for CJ and Annabelle to tackle (momentous, captivity, segregation, discrimination, hallowed, gradualism, ghetto, brutality, selfhood, righteousness, redemptive, oasis, oppression, nullification, prodigious ...). And, of course, not only did they have to pronounce them, but we had to talk about what they meant. Heady stuff, indeed.

FRESH AIR: We went for a long overdue run/ride today. The destination was CJ's choice. He picked the Purple Play Park, more formally known as Lawton Elementary School's playground.

Though they rode their bikes there, the kids both spent awhile tooling around the blacktop once we arrived. (It's a lot more fun to just tear around with no obstacles than it is minding alleys, streets, sidewalks, potholes, hills and such en route.) CJ was experimenting with being daring at the playground. One of his stunts was sliding down the slide head first, on his back. I think he was disappointed that it ended up being so tame.


LAYING IN SUPPLIES: Today our errands included stopping at a Jo-Ann (fabric and craft) store for some Sculpey III, which the kids will be using for their Home Education Exchange Expo projects. They are each going to craft anatomical models (a la Jason Freeny). Tomorrow, we'll start cutting into Mario and Yoshi and maybe even make some skeletal supports for the clay pieces to come.

BUILDING: The kids spent a couple of hours today playing with their LEGOs, which is time well spent as it's all about being creative and engineering.WEEKEND REWIND: On Saturday, we put our fancy schmancy ($3 apiece) Goodwill tennis rackets to use for the first time. It was all sorts of fun! Annabelle took to it pretty quickly. CJ, not so much, but when he finally got it, he had a nice, powerful stroke. We'll definitely be doing more of that.

Sunday brought Annabelle's first soccer game as part of her new indoor soccer team at Arena Sports at Magnuson Park. It's just a rec(reation) league - supposedly no one keeps score, and it's supposed to be about skill building.

I was really surprised to find that Annabelle is the smallest person on her team. I guess since we're not around groups of girls her age on a regular basis, I've lost a bit of my frame of reference. But she's definitely the shrimp, er, I mean most petite member, and has to hustle to keep up with those with longer legs.

I was really proud of her. For a kid who has never played soccer before, she didn't hesitate to jump right in the mix of things. I could see her improve even as the game progressed. Also, by my eye, she was the only one on her team interested in playing defender, positioning herself between the ball and the goal all the time.

CJ cheered her on, which was sweet, but during her next game, we'll probably spring the extra $7 to let him enjoy the inflatables on site. CJ's "sport" is jumping (he's on his trampoline too many times a day to count), and the inflatables are fantastic for that.