camp rocks

Well, Monday's been an eventful day. But I'm not discussing that. Instead, I'll talk about my kids.

Being the unsocalized homeschoolers that we are, this morning we packed the girls' new backpacks, fed them a proper breakfast, stocked their lunch bags, filled their sport bottles and thermoses, and sent them off to their first day of Girl Scout Camp. It's an all-day camp, and they even got to ride a school bus (so cool). In spite of the on-again, off-again rain, they had a blast, and when I met the bus at 5 o'clock they emerged almost triumphantly, awash in smiles and information. There is stuff to buy (of course!) and they got t-shirts today, and there is a sleepover night on Thursday, and and and . . . They're very geeked about the sleepover night, so since the camp director said I can pick Emma up for her hip-hop rehearsal then bring her back for the campout, we're going to sign them up. Oh. My. God. This means slumber parties are looming in my near future. Nooooooooooooooo!

Vorpal Bunny? Not Quite.

Remember the garden I started up for the summer? Well, almost immediately, the rabbit in our yard ate all the celery. (Okay, I wasn't heartbroken about that because Anne, one of our CSA owners, told me that celery can be very demanding to grow.) We've actually done okay for the summer, with the rabbit eating various plants around the yard, and tending to only express mild curiosity in the garden. Until about 3 nights ago. I went out for my daily reality-check and lo! The carrot-greens were leafless! So I told the rabbit, who sat about 20 feet away from me -- pretending to be a rock with sharp eyes and a cute, twitching nose -- that he was lucky I couldn't catch him. (Because of course I would have put him in a hutch and fed him even more of what he liked until I could figure out what came next, with Penny and Emma likely pestering me with CanWeKeepHims.) The next day I dug up the carrots themselves before they withered in the dirt, and I threw them into a stir-fry. Yes, I washed them first. The largest two or three (carrots, not stir-fries) were about the size of those small baby carrots that the grocery stores sell. The rest of them were . . . well, we dubbed them Preemie Carrots. But damn, were they good. And I grew them. Pretty cool.

Easter Eggs

Today, Dan let me sleep in (the board meeting ran until midnight last night!), and when he came in to wake me, he did so with the news that Penny and Emma were playing a DVD game on Penny's Mickey Mouse DVD; Penny had discovered the game by finding an Easter Egg. As I looked at Dan and wrapped my brain around this accomplishment, he laughed and said, "Should we really be surprised?" Penny has an intuitive sense with electronics. She has figured out every remote control she encounters, knows how to record programs and even remove deleted programs from the TiVo trash can. It's cool.