Quiet is Relative

We sent the Two Teens off on a youth group trip to Winterfest in Gatlinburg for the weekend, and it is very quiet around here. John Mark seems to think it's his personal duty to manage all his younger siblings, and it generally keeps things stirred up, since the siblings do not particularly want to be managed by John Mark. It's very quiet without him, although that seems an odd thing to say, considering that I still have three boys here...

Anyway, we had the homeschool group Valentine's Party today, a day late- don't ask me why 'cause I don't know. It's been the little boys' hot topic of conversation for the past two weeks, so they were beyond excited. Considering that, you would think that they would put a bit more work into their Valentine boxes- the church gym was full of shiny, glittery, heart-covered boxes, but no! Philip shows up with a taped-together granola box. I am such a bad mother.

Ok, in all fairness, I just had other creative priorities this week. The 4-H Communications Day competition was tonight, and Philip and I spent our "break week" throwing together a demonstration together for him. I was so sick back in January when the registrations were due that I figured we would just have to skip the competition this year, but our Extension agent told us to go ahead and pull something together. Philip is his father's child- all he needs is an audience- so he loves to do the speech competitions. He also loves science, and he had his heart set on doing a presentation on Super Novas and Black Holes. I told him that was way too much research for one weekend. "Ok then," he replied, "how about geology- all those rocks we have downstairs?" I told him he does not know anything about those rocks and he would have to do a great deal of research to find out about them. He was going to have to choose an easier topic this time around! In desperation, he begged, "What about gravity??" So much for easy topics. In the end, he entered the Health category and talked about "Bones: The Inside Story" and all was well. Now he knows all about the four bone groups, Haversian Systems, rickets and osteoporosis. We went to Steak n' Shake for celebratory cheeseburgers and shakes afterwards. Sometimes it pays to be a talker!