Amy - a flight danger (LOL)

Amy and Tod were preparing to leave for a quick, long weekend trip to Montana to see Kale's last high school football game, and take in one of Shane's college football games. They were packing up the Jeep, ready to head off to the airport, when Tod said "Okay Amy I know this is a weird question, but do you have any scissors or anything like that in your bags?" And at first she said no, and then she realized she'd packed her whole pencil case, which included a pair of scissors. Out went the scissors. Then he asked "Do you have anything else sharp, like an exacto knife?" And sure enough, yes she had one of those too! TSA would have had fun with her!

Long-haired hippies

The other night at dinner, we were talking about the new Thor movie that's coming out soon. I joked that I wouldn't go see it because Thor had lost all his super-powers when he cut his hair. (I mean seriously, WHY would Chris Hemsworth cut that beautiful hair off?!?) Tod told the kids that I'd inherited it from my Mom to like the boys with long hair. Yep. Guilty. (Well, except for the guy I married!)

I started thinking about that, and realized that Mom would have LOVED Reed's long hair. She is smiling right now as I'm typing this. She probably would have fussed over it so much that it'd really embarrass him (I do my best to avoid that...mostly for fear it'll make him want to cut it all off.) Yep, she's gotta be really happy with his hair situation.

Fun at the corn maze...the long-haired one had more fun
than it looks like in this picture.

The teenage brain

So when kids are little, you always read that you shouldn't get frustrated with them when they can't remember to do a chore or hang up their coat or whatever thing it is that's driving you bananas. They (the "experts") say it takes until the teen years for kids' brains to have the executive functioning that allows them to form habits and remember to do stuff.

Well I'm here to say that evidently that's true. Now this boy's brain isn't totally done baking, the center of the cookie is still a little doughy, but he's getting there. He's got some technological help, which I count as smart - setting a reminder on his phone for when it's time to feed the dog, for example. Hey, it works!

And Reed's always been an early riser, there haven't been all that many days when we'd need to wake him up for school. But this year he's finally using an alarm clock and getting up completely on his own. Plus he's showering in the morning - yahoo!

These kids might become responsible human beings one day after all! :)

"That was a great day!"

This was our third year having a "girls day" at the National Book Festival. This year there weren't any authors that either of us were really jazzed about seeing, but we decided to make a day of it anyway.

It's a little bit of an alternate universe to be in the big convention center for this festival. The world talks about how people don't read anymore...well, the 100-person deep line just to get in to the area to buy books (at FULL PRICE, I might add) tells a different story. We're among fellow readers there, and I think that's partly why we both wanted to go even though none of our favorites were going to be there.

Amy decided she'd like to go to the YA panel discussion with Melissa de la Cruz, Nicola Yoon and Sandhya Menon. I thought it was awesome to have such a diverse panel of women writers - such a great message. Amy enjoyed hearing them all talk about their writing processes, and then of course we went and bought all of their latest books.

Then we headed over to Busboys & Poets where we browsed more books while we waited for a table, and had a nice lunch. When we got home, Amy said "That was a great day!" and it made my heart smile.

Already can't wait for next year.

My lunch date ignoring me as we wait for our food.
Hard to resist the pull of a new book.

The cook strikes again – getting more resourceful all the time

This morning we had a "milk emergency" (according to Reed) and didn't have milk for breakfast cereal. I told the kids they could have yogurt, or toast, or fruit, or oatmeal or maybe make some eggs. I was upstairs teleworking and heard dishes clanking around and figured it was Amy. But it was Reed. He'd gone online and found a recipe for scrambled eggs.

And he scrambled up four eggs for himself, and ate them all - growing boy, I guess!

Chore time

At the start of every school year (and sometimes at mid-year), we review the chore assignments and make some adjustments. This year was no exception. We decided to continue with the even/odd dish assignment days (leaving Reed with odd days, which he hates since sometimes there's a 31/1 and he has to do dishes two days in a row) and with switching off weeks mowing the grass (this was a new chore for Amy after she turned 12). We moved Reed's dog walking assignment to the morning before school, since he leaves so late (bus at 8:44) and then give Amy a new dog walking assignment for after school, since she's the first one home. We're continuing with Reed putting out trash/recycling on Thursdays and plan to do our best to actually get Amy to put the trash out on Mondays (seems to get forgotten more often than not). Reed feeds the dog and Amy (mostly) feeds the cat. That's about it. Oh I think Amy feeds the fish too. (No one pays them much mind in general.)

Each kid is supposed to bring their laundry to me on Wednesday mornings, but that's as far as I've gone with making them participate in laundry. I know I can't put that off forever, but for now I just do the whole family's laundry because I know what will happen - if they have do their own, they'll put laundry in the washer, then forget about it (it's all the way in the basement, after all) and then every time I go to wash, there will be a washer full of mildewy-smelling clothes already there. Heck, I know that happened when was a grown up living at my Mom and Jim's - it's pretty easy to forget the laundry when it's two levels away. So I just continue to hope that maybe they'll want to start doing their own laundry (yeah, right!) or I will finally draw the line then they're in their senior year.

One decent thing I have taught them is to make and use a grocery list. At this point they're pretty good about writing things on the grocery list if they use the last of it....not perfect yet, but not bad. That's a good lifelong habit - so much easier to write things down than to just try to remember them!

We have a cleaning crew that comes every other week, so none of us does any real "housework" like changing the sheets, cleaning the floors, vacuuming, or scrubbing toilets. We struggle with that a little...how will our kids know how to do these things when they're on their own? Well I guess they'll have to look it up on YouTube. It's another thing we're punting until they're closer to being on their own. Not the best plan, maybe, but if the alternative is all of us spending our weekends cleaning, then I'm okay with how it's currently going.

Hopefully we'll have two relatively responsible kids in the end, who can take care of their own houses.

High school? WHAT?

Sent the kids off to school yesterday. Ninth grade for Reed and seventh grade for Amy.

I can hardly believe we have a high schooler, and Amy's mid-way through middle school. Time flies!

Amy was super excited to get back to school, especially since we missed the school's event where kids could bring in their supplies and locate their classrooms. She has friends in several classes and her teachers seem nice, so far so good.

Reed was nervous about the jump to high school. I asked him what he was worried about and he said "I'm afraid I'll mess up" - just a general kind of anxiety. I assured him it really isn't much different from middle school and he'd handle it just fine. And so far so good, other than issues with the bus (which showed up 10 minutes before it was supposed to, and is very overcrowded). Classes seem okay (other than getting a writing assignment in English on the first day) and he's got friends in a few classes and "the whole gang" at lunch one day.

Whew. Summer was a short one, doesn't seem like it could possibly be here already!