When I asked Christopher what he wanted to do on vacation, one of the things he said is that he would like to go to an arcade.  So, before we headed out today, I did some checking and found  an arcade and mini-golf place in Dayton called Rollandia Magic Castle.  We started out with breakfast at Panera and then moved on to a game of mini-golf and then spent some good quality father-son time shooting ninja terrorists.

We made it back  to Yellow Springs to pick up mommy a half hour early, so while we were sitting in the parking lot, we saw several F-16s flying by overhead.

We got back to the hotel early and I took a nap.  While napping, I heard the distinctive sound of fighter planes flying by so I quickly called Christopher and we got to the window just in time to see the three of the Blue Angels flying by in formation low enough and close enough that we could make out the details on the planes.  They were in town for the Dayton Air Show, which, unfortunately, we will miss.

Today was a low-key day.  Christopher and daddy had breakfast at Panera and then went to see The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  We both had a good time and really enjoyed the movie.

As I mentioned in an Earlier blog post, Cathy is attending the Antioch Writers’ Workshop at Antioch University Midwest in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  I’ll let Cathy tell you more about her experience in the writers’ workshop over on her blog at Ganymeder.com. We decided to spend the afternoon walking around town.  Yellow Springs is a charming town with a flower child feel.  We had a lot of fun but the heat and humidity was pretty bad and we had to call it quits early.

After Yellow Springs, we went and checked out a game and comic store called Bookery in Fairborn, Ohio.  Christopher had a lot of fun browsing the various games and comics.

Today, we went to the Boohshoft Museum of Discovery.  This is the sort of hands on Science Museum that Christopher (and Daddy) really loves.  We started with a stroll through the space section, then went and played with some water wheels and locks.  Christopher climbed a net and took the plastic slide down with, and without, a blanket to see if he could increase the amount of static electricity he generated.  We then went upstairs where Christopher got to play in a mock landfill and pretend to be a garbage man?!?!?!

We spent the rest of the time at the museum seeing the various planetarium shows and exhibits.

Christopher finished the book that he bought yesterday (that’s right, a 300  page novel in 24 hours).

Today, while mommy was at her writer’s conference, Christopher and daddy went to Olentangy Indian Caverns.  This was something that we have been looking forward to doing for a long time.  We arrived pretty close to opening and bought tickets for a guided tour of the caverns.  We had about 30 min to kill before the tour so we browsed in the gift shop.

The caverns were very interesting.  They were carved by an underground river and used by the Native Americans of the area for shelter and council meetings.  Lots of cool stories of bandits, etc.

After the tour, Christopher and I bought a fossil bag and an emerald bag and hit the sluice for some gem mining.  We had never done this before but it was a lot of fun.  We found some shark teeth and other fossils as well as some fool’s gold, and a bunch of pretty purple, green, and clear gems.

Christopher quickly made friends with the goat and sheep that freely roam the property.  We left and made it back just in time to pick mommy up for lunch.

update: We finished the day off by going to Half Price Books where Christopher found a book called Nightmare Academy which he hasn’t been able to put down.  The book was at a good price so we grabbed the sequel as well.

While Doug is reorganizing our webpages, the articles and especially photos will be available off and on. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

In the meantime, here are the 2 most recent pictures I’ve taken. We posted them on FaceBook in honor of Towel Day- the day fans choose to honor Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by conspicuously wearing a towel all day long. If you don’t understand the significance, it helps to read the books! haha

There’s lots going on now but not much to say. Christopher has 2 more weekends of flag football before he starts soccer. Next month he has Summer Camp (which he’s looking forward to), and this is the last week of school!

Have a nice day, and Bye for now.

There’s plenty of new photos in the gallery for April and May, but I’ll highlight a few here. Things have been pretty hectic around here until this week. Christopher’s been playing flag football on Saturdays, and next month he’ll start soccer and also spend a week at Summer Camp. He’s also had a lot going on for school that threw a wrench in our schedule- OAAs a week or so ago, plus every 2 weeks he goes to a Homeschool Class. He had his first ‘Kids Who Write’ meeting at the Library.

Now that he’s approaching the end of the school year, we’ve been able to take things a little easier. He only has a few subjects left, just a few lessons in each subject (not including Music and Art), so we’ve been able to expand on them and have a little fun. For instance, a few times we’ve watched Shakespeare movies or movies as adaptions of Shakespeare plays, then discussed them, and I’ve been able to count that as Literature. We’ve worked on practicing his soccer moves in the driveway in the afternoons -P.E. We baked a cake together, talking about measurements in detail and how to convert them (how would he double 3/4th of a cup? What would that equal?), and whether what happens to the dough in the oven is a physical or chemical change – Math and Science. That sort of thing. It’s fun!

Towards the end of April, Autumn and I went to see ‘A MidSummer Night’s Dream’ in Cleveland. The production interpreted the play as taking place in the 60′s, so there were lots of hippy jokes and slapstick. It was hilarious! I had asked Christopher if he wanted to go when we bought tickets, and he said no. Then the day before he changed his mind, but it was too late. So as a consolation gift, I bought him a William Shakespeare Action figure. He loved it! The next day, he had him fight the Hulk with his mighty quill (mighter than sword). Of course, we all know that Will won.

So, last Saturday he went to flag football, which he loves…

Then after we dropped Doug off at work  we went to Free Comic Book Day at Heroic Adventures in Massillon. My friends Nikki and Joe were there dressed as Superman and WonderWoman, plus we got free comics (of course!). Then we drove to Canal Fulton really quick to Toys Time Forgot and met Darth Vader and one of his minions- I mean Storm Troopers. Then afterward, we picked Doug up for dinner and went to Land of Cran in Canton for one last stop for Free Comics. I was even able to pick up some Doctor Who ones!

I’ve written several more short stories and poems, and started submitting my work. I’ve gotten a couple rejections but lots of feedback. One rejection said that if I edited slightly I could resubmit to the magazine, so I did. I think I’m starting to get more into the groove of submitting my work.

That’s about all for now. We still have schoolling to do today, so I’d better go.  Bye for now.

Thursday, April 15 , 2010.

It’s been a busy month for us. Bonnie is still recovering from her gallbladder surgery, but hopefully she won’t need to keep going back to the doctor too much more. Doug has been working hard, as always, and has been getting steadily healthier. Christopher has been writing fiction stories about once a week, and almost 2 weeks ago Doug set him up with his own blog to post his stories (http://www.therussellfamily.org/~monsterbat). On Friday the 2nd, I tweeted a link on Twitter for his first #fridayflash story. He’s gotten a ton of favorable comments and lots of encouragement. He’s very excited about posting his fiction!

For Easter, everyone had a nice time. Christopher got a big basket filled with a football, candy, a notebook, bubbles, and toys. After we went to Autumn and Bonnie’s house for lunch, he searched their house to fill another basket with candy and toys. Later, he hunted plastic eggs too!

Everyone enjoyed their meals, and we spent the whole afternoon there. Christopher got to play a videogame with Aunt Autumn, shoot hoops with mom, and towards the end we all played a quiz game. Everyone had a great day.

Christopher will start Flag Football this Saturday, since he was unable to go to the first game last week (he was sick).

He’s also started a Homeschool Class that teaches Art, Music, and Soccer once every 2 weeks.

We went to our Poetry Reading at the Massillon Public Library on Monday night. Christopher was brilliant and made everyone laugh with his funny poem. I’ll reprint it here.

Lightning of Heaven

Lightning is like a pole of fire
reaching down from heaven’s sky,
and when I see of course I climb it,
And then I ask, “Where is (pi)?”

I also won the (Adult) Poetry Contest! I was really, REALLY nervous. I’ve never read my poetry in front of anyone before, but Doug put me at my ease as much as possible. My hands and voice shook, but it must not have been too noticeable because everyone seemed to enjoy it. Here is a copy of my poem that I read, “notebooks.”

notebooks

my shelf is filled with beautiful journals i’ve never written in
dust covered but lovely just the same
the papers were never marred
by pencil
ink splotches
stains from food or drink
they are pristine
except for the dust
nothing ever seemed good enough to put down on the pages
or i’d dedicate a notebook to a single subject
but nothing was ever good enough
to stain the perfect pages
so most of them stayed blank
and sat on my shelf
safe and dusty
i wonder what i would have written
if i had dared to ruin them

now that i’m older
and wise enough to know i’m not
i don’t care if the pages are pristine
i dont care if they aren’t the way i envisioned them
all i care about
is the feel of the notebook cover
pliable and soft in my hands
watching the ink glide over the creamy surface of its pages
i choose all colors that i think are beautiful
that way
whatever mess i make
will be a lovely rainbow

they are my notebooks
my mess
i wonder what pleasure i missed
by denying myself so long
the pleasure of failing

*
The contest was judged by a Professor of Poetry. There were over 180 submissions. I still can’t believe I won. And after I heard him perform his own poetry, I’m completely relieved that I didn’t have to read after him. He was incredible.

That’s about all for now. Hopefully Christopher’s Flag Football will go well on Saturday. He’s doing really, really well in school, and next week he goes to take the OAAs (Ohio Achievement Assessments). The OAAs, from my understanding, are the tests resulting from the No Child Left Behind legislation.

Have a great day!

Friday, March 12, 2010.

It’s been an entire month since I last posted here (though I have posted at my personal blog), so I’ll need to try to remember everything to sum up the past 30 days. Things have been really crazy here, so I’ll just start with where I left off in our last blog post.

Christopher did not get to attend his Valentine’s party. In fact, except for his soccer practice and karate class, it’s been near impossible to get him together with his friends the past month. Bonnie’s emergency room visit, hospital stay, and operation all turned out for the best in the end- though at the time we were really worried. Her operation went okay, and she’s going to have more procedures done in the not too distant future, but hopefully the worst is behind.

Our projects and fun have varied.  Christopher is working really hard on his schoolwork, especially his paragraph and essay skills. I had him doing some extra writing assignments, and his writing has improved dramatically. He’s written some great paragraphs and essays, poems (he loved that unit), and stories.

Yesterday, he wanted to earn more videogame time, so he suggested writing a short story. I’ve written some semi-scary stories, so he wrote a scary story. He even edited it himself.
Ta-daaa…

But it wasn’t.


*shiver*  Spooky!

Also, I’d like to share a poem he wrote for school. I think he did a great job, and he wants me to enter this one in a local poetry contest!

Lightning of Heaven

Lightning is like a pole of fire
reaching down from heaven’s sky,
and when I see of course I climb it,
And then I ask, “Where is (pi)?”

Other things that happened in the past month include Doug taking Christopher to Chuck E. Cheese for some father-son time, a movie treat- “Avatar” in 3D, and I finished National Blog Posting Month (February-1 post daily in my personal blog). I’ve also finished several flash fiction stories, started others, written some poetry, started freewriting, and I’m sure something else was squeezed in there too but I can’t remember right now.

Christopher has been taking karate since last year, but he started soccer in February and his soccer practice lasts til the end of March. In Spring he’ll be taking football, which he’s a little nervous about, but its not tackle so I think he’ll have fun. He’s been practicing both karate and soccer moves at home, and we’re very proud of how hard he’s working.

During virtual school, I usually give him a 30 minute recess. He’s been playing in the snow, making snowmen, but now the snow is almost completely gone. He’s a little sad about that, but when he realized that it meant it was closer to time to go to Summer Camp he got excited again.

Well, that’s about it for now. Hopefully it won’t be another month before I get to post here again. Bye!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010.

Christopher had a nice 9th birthday, even if it was a bit spread out! It fell on a Thursday this year, so we let him pick someplace to go eat (Cici’s Pizza) where we met Grandma Bonnie and Aunt Autumn. Then we all drove to Toys R’ Us where he picked out a toy. He got a Star Wars Voice Changer helmet, which he LOVES. He’d also gotten the Wimpy Kid books (the ones he hadn’t read yet) from Grandpa Charlie, Grandma Bea, and Grandma Bonnie. Aunt Autumn got him a stuffed manta ray that he named ‘Manta’ and sleeps with at night. When we came home, he blew out his candles on the chocolate cake I’d baked for him.

Saturday (1/30th) was when we’d scheduled a playdate for him. It wasn’t really a party, more of a playdate with cake. He was really looking forward to seeing Sammi and Christian and having the big cake I’d ordered from Mustard Seed. But things didn’t work out like we’d hoped (our basement flooded the day before), so we ended up having to postpone it to the next Saturday. In the meantime, I took him to Chuck E. Cheeze instead.

When Friday came, I confirmed his cake for the next day, and then we got hit with a snowstorm. Everyone was snowed in most of the day on Saturday. So after about 3 hours of shoveling our driveway, I drove and picked up our cake and take out.  \The playdate was postponed again. I think at this point, we’ll have to play it by ear. We’re getting another snowstorm today.

Next week though, he has a Valentine’s Day party. I would have been today except for (you guessed it) the snowstorm coming in. So it’s late, but it should still be fun. There are supposed to be a fair number of other Virtual schoollers there as well.

Until next time…Bye!

2010-01-13

Sorry it’s been so long, but things always get hectic around the holidays.  For New Year’s eve we went out to eat some Chinese food with Aunt Autumn, and then spent the night at her house.  We all played board games and video games until Midnight, as well as snacked on chips and salsa.

Both school and work picked up again for the new year.  Doug went back to working his regular hours, and Christopher began doing his Virtual school again. He’s been doing really well!

In fact, he’s been studying very hard for his first school Spelling Bee!  He’s been very excited and worked really hard to be able to compete.  In the car on the way, he knew so many words that we were very impressed with how well he was doing. He had a nice time. His friend, Sammi, won the Bee.

Students at Bee showing off their prizes!

For a treat, after the Bee we took Christopher to see ‘Astroboy’ (which he liked) and then went to eat at Cici’s Pizza.

We also had a Parent Teacher conference last week.  Christopher did well on all his quizzes (100% every one). His attendance is fine, but we need to adjust our course schedule.  So this week we’ve started restructuring the lessons, and he’s doing GREAT.  He’s such a great boy.

That’s all for now. Belated Happy New Year!