A Week at the DingoDen

This past weekend Mom was pretty beat and rundown and needed a good
break from the kiddies, so Dad played with them Saturday morning, and
then took Logan and Delenn out camping at Junction Waterhole with pals
Bradon, Seth, and Jesse (with Sydney, Lexi, and Mark joining us just for
the afternoon). It had been raining heavily the previous day and thus
the normally dry Todd river was flowing and we wanted to take advantage
of the cooler weather for one last campout. Out at Junction Waterhole
we went on a few short hikes along the river and up a few hills. Delenn
enjoyed making Wombat Stew and Mud Pies with Seth while Logan and Bradon
made mud balls while sliding, swimming, and sloshing around in the muddy
river (amongst the many rocks and small waterfalls). The kids loved
getting into the tent at night and proclaimed their undying love for
camping. As always, Dad told a made-up bedtime story, this time it was
about some water rats surfing down the river trying to catch Logan and
Delenn, but luckily the good-natured frogs held the rats at bay. The
frogs needed to be the protagonists in the story as their croaking was
so loud that Dad wanted the kids to sleep soundly knowing the frogs were
their friends. The next morning (Sunday), the howling of dingoes woke
us up (real dingoes, not the kids :-) After pancakes and cereal, more
mud fun was had and at around 11:30 AM we headed home with mud-caked sad
kids who wanted to stay forever.

Bedtime routine these days has usually meant one book for Delenn and one
for Logan. Then they require one or two oral stories (in the dark).
Dad keeps getting harassed as the made-up oral stories tend to be too
short for their liking. They started at being 5-10 minutes long, but
now tend to be 20-40 minutes long! And yet, they are STILL too short.
Dad now has to abruptly change the subject and ask them what sort of
dreams they want to dream at night, followed by giving each kid
'goosebumps' on their back, a head rub massage, and finally a good ol'
backscratch. What happened to the days when a Dad could simply say
"Good night kids" and tuck them into bed with a good night kiss???

This week has been a bit quiet WHAT YOU'RE JOKING RIGHT!!! . Mom
pulled a muscle in her neck so we've stayed close to home. We're not
working on any big projects for Logan's school this week so we've done a
number of little things. It's always hard to describe homeschooling
because "academic" stuff is interspersed with constant play. We still
have a pretty hard-and-fast rule that there is no TV until the end of
the day. As we eat breakfast Logan usually reads a nursery rhyme (a new
one each day) and Mom usually reads a book or two as we all eat. Then
the kids often play outside with Boomer or on their own as Mom does some
chores (throwing in laundry, doing up the dishes, etc.). During the day
this week we made turkey pinch pots out of clay, did crayon rubbings,
and did some map work and did treasure hunts based on a map we drew of
the house. We've had some fun with Fruit Loop math this week -- doing
lots of counting (for Delenn) and skip counting by 2s and 5s for Logan.
Plus we made a little math fact lapbook for Logan. We baked
banana-blueberry muffins together. We've taken the dog for walks around
the block and in general the kids have spent a lot of time outside
playing with Boomer. We also played in the splash pool and read lots of
books. One of the books we read this week was the Magic School Bus goes
through the Human Body so we pulled out the human body model and talked
about the insides of our body -- fitting together the stomach,
intestines, liver, lungs and so forth into the little model. We've
played a number of board games and Logan and Delenn both play with their
own toys. Logan is still partial to his jets, star fighters and legos
while we'll often find Delenn playing imaginative games with whatever's
on hand. For example, Delenn pulled all the shapes off the stacker,
called them donuts and hid them under the kindermusik scarves. Or
she'll play with a few little animals and have them talk to each other, etc.

Boomer, true to her namesake (a Boomer is an Australian nickname for
kangaroo), has discovered that the neighbor's dog gets better food than
we offer. Yesterday Boomer was in our yard munching on a fresh meat
bone. I was quite puzzled and the only thing I could figure was that
the crows that roost in the tree in our backyard had dropped it. This
morning Logan said that Boomer was in the neighbor's yard (over the
4foot8inch fence) -- and had taken the neighbor's German Shepard's meat
bone. Luckily we have some new fencing coming (in a few weeks) that'll
keep her in the backyard (where the fence between us and the neighbors
is about 9 feet high!!). On a good note, Boomer and the neighbor dog
got along really well so in that way we're very happy with Boomer. She's
good with people and with other dogs.