So the other day the kids and I were in the car on the way to Costco, it was a beautiful sunny day, and things were working out perfectly, I'd gotten everyone fed and dressed and in the car with a decent amount of time to spare before Ollie's nap. I was in a fantastic mood. I turned on the radio, it was a song I like, so I turned it up and started singing along and bobbing my head...
"I-I-I-I-I-I
I came to dance, dance, dance, dance
I hit the floor 'cause that's my plans, plans, plans, plans
I'm wearing all my favorite brands, brands, brands, brands
Give me some space for both my hands, hands, hands, hands
Yeah, yeah
'Cause it's goes on and on and on
And it goes on and on and on
I throw my hands up in the air sometimes
Saying ayo
Gotta let go
I wanna celebrate and live my life
Saying ayo
Baby, let's go
'Cause we gon' rock this club
We gon' go all night
We gon' light it up
Like it's dynamite
'Cause I told you once
Now I told you twice
We gon' light it up
Like it's dynamite..."
And then I looked in the rear-view mirror...you would have thought I'd grown horns out both sides of my head, from the looks my kids were giving me. Haha! I tried to get them to dance too, but they were having none of it. And I just thought, "Man, we need to get out more."
I used to really enjoy driving around, windows down, music cranked, singing at the top of my voice. I'm a terrible singer to boot, but with the air blowing in your face and the radio drowning you out anyway, who cares? It's such a stress relief.
Then I became a mom, and little by little I think a lot of the fun has been sucked out of me. Why is that? Is it because I feel a need to be responsible? Maybe I feel I should set a good example? Be mature? I don't know. But it sucks.
You know what else I miss? Country dancing. Aaron and I used to go all the time when we were dating. We weren't pros or anything, but we could bust a couple of good moves; back flips and stuff. And we had a blast.
On a completely different train of thought...Aaron and I have developed a minor addiction to Lost (thanks Wynter!). We are only about half way through season 1. Yes, I realize we're about eight years behind the rest of the country, but hey, what can I say? TV is not our big thing. All I have to say is What the freak John Locke? Something is definitely up with him. Don't tell me though. But I knew I recognized the name from somewhere in American History, so I looked it up...John Locke was a philosopher and scholar that the Founding Fathers based a lot of their political ideas off of when they were framing the Constitution. I'm pretty sure it's not a coincidence that the Lost character has the same name and seems to be super all knowing and philosophical. And I know Sawyer is supposed to be the bad guy, but he's one of my favorites. I think he's so funny. But I do have quite a few sarcastic bones in my body, so maybe that's what's ringing true. But it's great.
I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It won a Pulitzer Prize. I've been wanting to read it forever. So now I've read it, and I'm not sure what to make of it. I didn't "get" it. And it's bothering me that I can't figure it out. It won a Pulitzer Prize, right? Which means it's probably deep, thought provoking, and has some kind of message it's trying to convey to humanity...and I cannot for the freaking life of me figure out what. I need it to mean something. It's a huge blow to my literary analyzing ego. It reaffirms my belief that I'm getting dumber. I used to be able to do this kind of thing.
For the last couple of days I've traded my voice in for a sore throat. Talk about a frustrating experience. But hey, at least I went three days in a row without yelling at my kids, right? :)
We finally did letter V. I got really behind on our letter of the week activities when Ollie was born, and I'm still struggling to catch back up. But we've done letter V, so now there are only 4 more letters. Maybe I can finish them before summer is over.
For V we studied volcanoes. I read the kids the National Geographic Kids Volcanoes book. And for reading lesson, I had Lincoln read me Hill of Fire by Thomas P Lewis, it's one I found on the Son Light reading list. Linc liked it and didn't have any trouble reading it, even though it's kind of long. We made volcano V's to go in our alphabet train. And we watched the Magic School Bus episode on volcanoes.
I've been spending a lot of the thoughts in my head trying to figure out what we're going to do for school in the fall. I had a plan, for reading at least, and I even bought a stack of books, but Lincoln's ability has taken a huge jump forward, and he's already read 2/3rds of the books I was going to have him read aloud throughout all of next year silently to himself, and given me satisfactory summaries of them all. So I need to come up with a different plan. Or at least more reading material. But I've found some really cool book series. One that I like particularly is the Usborne Young Readers series 1-3. I actually came upon the series by accident when I was browsing through the library's selection of easy readers. But I'm glad I did. Lincoln likes them too because they have comic-book-like pictures where the characters have little speech bubbles coming from their mouths.
One thing I'm really excited about is this. I'm putting together a big unit study on the history of flight. We're going to do a timeline and everything. Starting with the Chinese flying kites that could carry a human and then hot air balloons in France, and taking some time with the Wright Brothers and Amelia Earhart, we'll talk about the Candy Bomber of WWII and then move on to Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, and end with rockets and space travel. It's going to be so cool. I'm so pumped. I've started collecting books for it already. And at the end of the study, we'll go up to Roy and visit the Hill Air Force Base Aerospace Museum. I have no idea how long it will take, we'll probably spend as much time on each section as the kids are interested in and go from there. But even if it takes the whole school year, it's going to be awesome and well worth it.
I could probably do a whole post on what I want to do for school next year, but it's going to have to be another night. Aaron is home from Elder's Quorum meeting and I haven't seen him all day.
Peace out.
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