And a Field Trip Pic From Back in February

Early in February, Dave took Meg, Matthew, and Esme for his first ever solo field trip. They hopped on the Metro and whisked off to the American Art Museum with some of our fellow home schooling families. My friend Christine took this picture while they were there:

This shot was not only cute but significant, because we had just finished studying Georgia O'Keefe in our co-op art class. That day everyone got to see not one, but two of O'Keefe's works live and in person! The kids were excited to recognize her style and subject matter, and we moms (even those of us who weren't there) were all geeked out. It's just too cool when God lines life up like that.

Maryland Science Center Fieldtrip

Here are some pictures from a recent field trip to Baltimore. It was fun, because Meg, Matthew and Esme had a little chemistry workshop to attend for the first hour (the shot above is Esme and her lab buddy), so I got to take Graham upstairs to the Kids' Room and enjoy rare one-on-one with my littlest!

Then the big kids joined us in the same area.

Later on we took a quick spin around some other areas of the Center, but the kids were fading, and we had to get back home for their choir practice. Or, as it turned out, we had to drive around the highways and byways of Maryland fighting the GPS to reroute us around the toll road, which made us late to choir practice. But anyway! This was a great field trip regardless. In fact, Graham watched over my shoulder as I prepared to post this, and said wistfully, "I wish we could go back to the buseum."

This Picture Alone is Worth the Price of the New Phone

I could never capture this moment before, because I never have a camera on my person when I'm pulling someone out of the tub! Ah, but that phone sitting in my back pocket now...

How I love a cuddly, damp, towel-wrapped cutie grinning at me in the mirror after a bath.

A (Brief) Tale of Woe

Esme wrote this short story last week, completely on her own. The illustrations kill me. She really manages to convey dismay and distress in the body language of her characters!

I'm including her captions below with punctuation added, but the spelling and capitalization are hers.

I have a Flat tier

(I think this is the title page.)

One day My tier was Flat. My Daddy had a Flat tier too. it is hot tobay.

Then Momy cam in. "I have a Flat tier too!"

That's it. That's the whole story. Gritty, sweaty, bleak--a stark portrayal of the times when life just dogpiles on top of you. That's the kind of story teller Esme is.

Or it could just be that "flat" was one of her spelling words last week.