A few days ago we had round two of our new socializing club.  The drama continues….

Seriously though, our little book club is turning out to be a lot of fun.  Our selection this time was Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey (apparently our favorite author).

The girls loved the book, although it took a couple of readings before it held their attention all the way through.  I should mention that we pick our book and then spend the month reading and discussing it several times, so by the time we have the club everyone is very familiar with it.  This seems to work best for keeping everybody interested.

So we met at the park.

It was a really nice day and didn’t get TOO hot until about the time we were leaving.

Here’s all the little ducklings, acting a little more like crazy chimps.  With a little guidance they had fun acting out the story, running around the park looking for a place to make their nest.

Here is the good old police officer helping them cross the street.

After they found a place for their nest, we all sat and read the book.  Then we had some great discussion time about saftey, and how the little ducks were SO cool because they followed their mommy in a nice little line, never running ahead or away.

Just so you know, this is EXACTLY what I envisioned as motherhood before I had children.  My little angels, following me sweetly and silently everywhere we went.  In case you haven’t guessed, my girls are not like the ducks, so this lesson definitely was worth emphasizing.

After storytime, we made our own ducks.

Then we went down to the water and fed Mr. & Mrs. Mallard of course.  We even had peanuts to throw them, just like in the book.

The fact that there were only two ducks that came to eat definitely convinced all the kids that these were the very ducks we had been reading about, searching for their perfect nesting place.

Today we started school. Very exciting. The girls were thrilled, especially Miss E, who will be participating a lot more this year.

Of course to satisfy my control issues, we had to start with a nice tidy schoolroom…

This was accomplished only by banning them from the room for the last two days.  And of course, as you can imagine, by the time we finished today’s lessons it was a disaster.  But it doesn’t matter.  Some things you (or I)  just have to do a certain way.

Don’t they just look like little scholars;)

Anyway, it was a fun day without any major meltdowns.

Miss A got to have her first official music lessons with Daddy….

and Miss E ventured into the world of cutting actual shapes.  Once she realized I wasn’t going to tell her she couldn’t do it, she politely handed it to me and asked if I would cut it because it was too hard for her:) 

Funny how I could never convince her of that before.

We ended the day with a gourmet patriotic snack, rounding out our fabulous study of the Pledge of Allegiance from the morning lesson.

In case you can’t tell you’re looking at yogurt with blueberries and strawberry jam swirled in.

This was of course the part when Miss I decided she also was ready for school!

Our project this week should have been the “rough” one;). 

It was a REALLY busy week for me, so I didn’t put any thought into what we were going to do until about two minutes before we did it. 

Even though it wasn’t our most glamorous effort, it was a nice break for us to just hang out together.

We started with a pile of magazines and looked for pictures of things that were hot.  I was curious to see what they would pick.

We ended up with things like suns and fireplaces, but some more interesting things too like lightning, fireworks, jack-o-lanterns and grilled cheese sandwiches!

We cut them all out and made very hip collages.

After that I was overcome with guilt for my lack of craftiness, so we launched into a completely impulsive project that was kind of fun, but a REALLY BIG MESS!

I made them a nice big pile of crayon shavings,

using my cheese grater because it was the fastest method I could think of.

It worked well for the crayons, but the clean up afterwards was not so fabulous.  FYI, toothpaste is AWESOME for removing crayon.  However, even using a half a tube of toothpaste, I still spent about 15 minutes restoring my grater.  Oh well.

The goal was to make a beautiful suncatcher.

I got out the wax paper and wrote the word HOT on it, so they could fill it in with the shavings.  They really liked this part.

Then I topped it with another piece of wax paper, and this is where it went downhill.  I’m sure if I had bothered to look online I would have seen something about putting a layer between the paper and the iron, but I was in a hurry so……

I plopped the iron directly onto the wax paper and moments later we had an insane ooze of crayons, and my iron had a nice purple film on it (thank goodness I remembered to wipe it off before I ironed my white shirt yesterday!)

So we didn’t end up with the beautiful suncatcher I had in mind.  But the girls are now very aware of why we don’t EVER touch the iron!:)

For more hot ideas check this out:)

So, I was driving home tonight, and I experienced one of those things you (or at least I) always wish for.

This car was tailing me so bad, and I was getting SO irritated.  I hate it when people do that, and to top it all off , it was a RED car.   No offense to anyone (especially my sister), but I LOATHE red cars.  I don’t know why, I can’t explain it.  I just know I look at them and want them to GO. AWAY. FOREVER. 

Anyway, this car was making me nuts, and I just wanted to stop right in front of them.  But of course I couldn’t do that with my children in the car.

Instead I chose to drive the exact speed limit and not one mile over.  It took about five seconds for this person to cut around me and go zooming on down the highway.

A couple of miles later, guess who was sitting on the side of the road with red and blue lights flashing in their mirror:). 

I laughed.  Not a nice laugh, not a giddy laugh, a sinister laugh.  The way the witch laughs in Snow White. 

FINALLY, I witnessed someone driving badly, and they got caught.  I’m one of those people who’s always wishing a cop was around to catch everyone on the road.  And FINALLY, it happened!

And I felt bad.

As soon as I let my evil little laugh out, all of the guilt rolled in.

Maybe they were sick. Or maybe there was a baby in the backseat screaming. Or maybe it was just a really bad day and they were distracted.  What if it were me.  I hate being pulled over.  I always cry. Even when it’s for something dumb like a turn signal that is burnt out.  Being stopped by the police is definitly on my list of things to be avoided; things that will ruin my day, or even week.

That person was experiencing one of my most dreaded things, and I laughed.

Cruelly laughed.

What a horrible person I must be.

Realistically, that person was just speeding. Plain and simple.  They were deliberately driving too fast. I know that.  I know they probably got what they deserved.

But for some reason I still feel like I should tell them I’m sorry.