A Child's Prayer

The "family" prayer Josh gave this morning:


Dear Heavenly Father,
Please bless the Tooth Fairy that she can come to my house and take my tooth and give me money.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

So, you can probably guess what happened at our house today.  Now I have to go buy something so I can break my $20 because the "Tooth Fairy" isn't quite that generous.

Irene

Irene has come and gone.  I am sure many people have been injured. others greatly inconvenienced and some killed even, but in our area the hurricane was rather anticlimactic.  We were lucky enough not to lose power and to have my mom here cooking yummy food - asian peanut noodle salad and chocolate cake - so we ate well and watched TV.  Not a bad way to spend the evening during the largest hurricane to hit the East coast in however many years. 

Before all that, however, we had planned a while back to spend the day at Shenandoah National Park for my sister's birthday.  As Irene became more of a threat, we kept a close eye on the weather to make sure our plans would not be thwarted.  It appeared that Irene wasn't due until Saturday night and the weather forecast for the Park was only 15% chance of rain, so we piled in the van (LOVE the van!) and headed on up.

The forecast neglected to mention the chance of fog.  Which was 100%.  When we got in the Park, it felt like we were driving in the clouds.  Maybe we were technically.  We kept telling Rachel that there really were mountains around us and beautiful views.  But, mostly we saw this:

And, every once in a while, this:

Despite the lack of visual confirmation of mountains (or hills, as I prefer to call the Shenandoah "Mountains"), we did find lots of rocks on which to scamper and we did a little bit of hiking on the Appalachian Trail.  But, now we definitely have to go back.  Not that Rachel didn't believe us, but I still feel like she got cheated on her birthday trip.

Some photos from our trip:

The crew:

Ben's favorite mode of transportation (notice that he holds on to Jason's ears - hilarious!):

Michael, always ready to protect us with his lightsaber:

 Mutti and the birthday girl:

Josh, the mountain goat:

Wow!  We were up an entire 3,300 FEET!  Only about 2,000 more feet before ground level in Denver!

First Day, High School

In all the excitement, I neglected to post about Jason's first day of school.  Tuesday was his first day back, although he only works three "flex" days this week and all teachers start back next Monday.

I have to admit, this day is always a little bit harder for me that Josh's first day back.

Quake

On Tuesday we experienced our first Virginia earthquake (5.8).  It was quite unexpected and most of us had no idea at first that it was an earthquake much less what to do.  As soon as I realized that we weren't being attacked by a large group of elephants storming up the stairs from the basement, I shoved Michael out the front door and ran upstairs to get Ben out of the crib to get out of the house.  At the school, they had the presence of mind to have the kids get under their desks and then evacuated the school for the rest of the day. Jason, a veteran of the Northridge earthquake (6.7), also got under his desk.  Whether we panicked or followed proper procedure (I'll let you guess who did which), we all survived just fine.  

In the scheme of things, this wasn't a huge earthquake.  But since Virginia doesn't build for quakes, there was some concern about the structural integrity of the schools so we may have set the record for earliest cancelled day of school in our county (and that is saying something considering that they cancel here at the least provocation).

And so, we found ourselves with an extra day to play.

And play we did.

First Day, Second Grade

Second grade.  Josh is almost to the half-way point of elementary school.  And apparently thinks he is too cool for the obligatory front porch picture.

Silly boy.  To his mom, he will never be too old for the front porch picture.  I have 3 of them so far and I fully expect to get 10 more before this is all done.

What I did get was plenty of "monster" pictures.

Which. are. awesome.  Especially when Jason gets in on the action.

Here are the boys from our side of the street.  Ben was still in "monster" mode.  The bus was 20 minutes late this morning so they had a lot of time to hang out.  

I have yet to get the rundown on how today went.  With my luck, I won't ever get the full story.  When I ask Josh about school, the most common responses I get are "fine" and "stuff" and "I don't remember."  Hopefully some of sinks in and hopefully he has a good time this year, even if I don't get to hear about it.

Rockets!

Yesterday, we took the boys to see some rockets.  There is a local rocketry club that meets monthly to shoot off rockets nearby (well, not too near).  A couple from our church have been involved in this for years.  The wife was in Chorale with me last winter and she told me several times that we should bring the boys.  We never really got around to it until now and now I regret that it took us so long!  

The weather was perfect yesterday.  This is the best picture I got of a rocket launching, but there were many rockets launched - some of which were huge.

Bro M was kind enough to give us a short lesson on how rockets work and to answer all our questions as non-scientifically as possible (sorry, I don't actually remember what apogee is).  Then he went and got a rocket for the boys and put it together for us.

Bro M is awesome.

After the rocket was constructed, Michael and Jason went to "register" it for a launch.  Bro M helped them attach it to the pad (not sure if I am using the correct terms).  When it was time for the launch, Michael even got to hear his name over the speakers.

And BLAST OFF!

Here is Michael and the Banshee.  It was a very exciting day.

And no, Josh wasn't left out of the fun.  A very nice lady and her daughter took him under their wing and let him see their rocket and help set it up for launch.  Their rocket went up several times and he helped chase it down and set it up again.  I just didn't get any pictures.

Ben, on the other hand, was the most excited at every launch, but was far more interested in getting the rare opportunity to drink out of Daddy's water bottle than to help out with the rocket.

In any case, we had a great time and I think this would be fun to get into.  We are going to have to get another rocket (for Josh and maybe one for Jason) and try this again next month.

A New Name

I am going to rename this blog and thought that I would give people a head's up.  Perhaps it doesn't really matter because the web address will remain the same, but I know that it throws me off when someone changes their name on facebook (talking to you, Kate!) or the name of their blog (and you, Courtney!).  So, consider yourself warned.

This name change is inspired by our friends over at Wikipedia.  I never found Googling myself to be very interesting as I am clearly not important enough to show up in the first million results.  But checking my first name in Wikipedia was pretty cool.  I bet you didn't know that I have my own island (Santorini) and a church in Istanbul (St. Irene church near the Hagia Sophia).

After I learned all that information, I looked up Jason.  The first entry for "Jason" is for Jason and the Argonauts. To give a recap of Wikipedia's recap, Jason was a man who suffered from a Oracle prophesy.  That usually means a life of struggle with an unhappy ending as far as I can recall from our friend Bulfinch.  In any case, Jason ended up on a dangerous mission with a handpicked, topnotch crew to man the Argos and cover his back on a series of adventures searching for the Golden Fleece.  Considering that my husband's name is Jason and we have a three-man crew over here, I thought it might be funny to change the blog name to some variation of Jason and the Argonauts.  I have a couple of ideas, but if anyone thinks of anything really clever, please let me know.

So if Jason is, well, Jason and the boys are the Argonauts, what does that make me?  I read more of the story looking for a good female character.  So, along their way, they picked up a rather feisty lady, Medea, who had a penchant for cutting people up into small pieces (her brother, her sons, someone else's father).  I am thinking not her.  Sadly, the character in Greek mythology that I most closely physically resemble is probably Medusa (it's all in the hair), although admittedly her life doesn't end well.