General Gunnar

Gunnar loves to play with Army Guys, though - having the tenderest heart of all in the family - is the least likely to ever join the military! Still he's very proud of the creative effort in setting this all up.

BTW, the boys call these set-ups their "Arranges". That particular bit of 'family language' undoubtedly came as a result of Tate's hearing loss, and not hearing the full word "arrangement". So, any assortment of things they set up is an "Arrange", in this case, an "Army Arrange".

This is a picture about my arrange. As you can see, it has lots of men and my fortress is made out of cars, boats, and one airplane. As you can see, my camp has two flags, and one palm tree. Also, you can see a few policemen. And I think that’s all about my camp. Soon, you will probably see Wyatt and Tate’s.

Tate the Tank

Tate is the driving force behind the interest in the military, battles, Army guys, etc. He is REALLY interested in the Civil War, but - frankly - the attraction is mostly the artillery. It's a boy thing.

This is my Army, which is very strong, and indeed has a Delta Force. A Delta Force is a bunch of special troops that do special missions. My Delta Force does exactly that, and I am the gray soldier with the machine gun, squatting, in the picture to the right. My men have camped in an abandoned building, but luckily they managed to bring their flag and some sand-bags, too. I have one bazooka guy, three bombarders, three grenade throwers, a bunch of rifle guys, and five machine gun guys, not counting me.

Testosterzone #2

Wyatt hasn't really hit puberty yet, but there are definitely plenty of boy hormones floating around. It doesn't help that Tate (2.5 years younger) is almost as tall and much stockier.

Wyatt obviously feels the need to assert his dominance, in typical oh-so-very-subtle boy fashion. (Yeah, check out "Shark Boy", in a previous post.)

My army arrange is better than anyone else’s and my little message here is going to be better than anyone else’s. My army arrange has tons of bazooka guys and guys with machine guns and flame throwers. And it is ORGANIZED, not like Tate’s and Gunnar’s, which are all messed up. My army arrange could probably beat them up, any time, day or night.

Germs

Gunnar asked me, "Mom, is there any empty space on your blog?" Which means, "Is there room for me?" So, here is another "Gunnar-ism".

We were out for a walk a while ago, and had this conversation:

"Mom, I saw a picture of a virus, and it was a deadly virus."

Hmm. I have no idea what he has seen or where, so I reminded him that not all viruses are deadly. Some are just annoying, like the common cold.

But Gunnar was not convinced.

"Mom, this was a germ. A very diseas-e-ly germ."

PTO Day

Personal Time Off. The boys think PTO days are for them. Okay, sure, they are. Sort of. I love my boys and all their energy, and I’m glad we’re homeschooling. But let’s get one thing straight - Grandma does PTO days for me. Some days I just bask in the silence, but more often it’s an opportunity to do something that requires more than five minutes of uninterrupted concentration.

The boys spent the day up at Grandpa and Grandma’s house in the woods… “helping” Grandpa with his burn pile, riding their scooters, catching lizards, and cooling off (that’s right, I said cooling off!) with “Mt. Tiki-Soki” (a sprinkler/volcano.)

Wyatt, unfortunately, did not enjoy the day as much as he usually would. Right before we left home this morning he was running around the yard and managed to step on a nail. Went right through his shoe and into his foot. Yep, rusty.

Of course, since he’s nearly 12 and due for his next round of shots, I was a little leery of the effectiveness of his last Tetanus booster (what, 6 or 7 years ago?) So was the doctor’s office. Wyatt was almost pathetically hopeful. “But, mom, it didn’t even bleed!” Uh, yeah, I noticed. Bleeding would’ve been good. It washes the germs out.

So all day long he was dreading the 4:45 doctor visit. Like he’s been dreading his next round of shots since his last birthday.


The good news is I was able to convince them even though this wasn’t his official check-up to go ahead and give him whatever immunizations he has coming (DTaP and Varicella) so we could just be done with it. He was a bundle of anxiety, and it took two nurses and me, but it’s all over now. Hallelujah. Amen.

Having worked in the yard all day long, I was pretty tired, so I rewarded him by letting him pick somewhere (anywhere but McDonald’s) to go out to dinner. Double-plus-good.

Homes Cool Advantage #1

'Nuff said.

We were outside nearly all day. :0)

What did you do?

Tate's Lego letter

Yes, I confess that my boys are a bit obsessed with their Legos. Tate even took it upon himself to write a letter to the head of the Lego company himself, with a suggestion he had. He may be HoH, but his expressive language is pretty darn good!

Can you believe they turned him down?! Not even a coupon or a certificate for a mini-kit! I was really proud of him, so have printed his letter, (all in his own words) below:


Dear Mr. Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen,

I’ve always loved Star Wars Legos the best. Some of my other favorites are Mars Mission, and the Castle Legos. They are cool too! All the Legos you’ve made are perfect!

But yet, the Lego Star Wars clone collection is not complete. Because I have seen red, yellow, green, and white clones, and even clones that look like they’ve been kissed (on the helmet and chest). There is only one clone needed for the collection to be complete: the Blue Clone! The perfect scene, in Episode 3, the chapter named “Time to Leave” is the scene where the hot-rod-speeder-guy goes down to the Jedi Temple and meets up with four or five blue clones, and is about to be shot or arrested when a kid-Jedi comes and stops the blue clones from killing or arresting the hot-rod-speeder-guy! (But the kid-Jedi dies in the battle.)

The reason I’m sending you this note is because the scene that I am telling you about is only one to two minutes long, and I don’t blame you for missing it, since you have about sixteen other kinds of Legos you’re working on. I’m suspecting if you make this kit, it would be $15 to $20. $15 would probably be great, since I’m suspecting it would come with the hot-rod-guy’s speeder, which was red, and the hot-rod-guy, and the little kid-Jedi and four or five blue clones, with Commander Appo. I learned long ago that Commander Appo is the leader of the blue clones. I think the kit would be complete if you gave them the specialized kind of blaster. And don’t forget to give the little kid-Jedi little legs (like little Annakin has) and a blue light-saber, and to give the hot-rod-speeder-guy a cool pistol. I think that the hot-rod-speeder guy should be wearing gray clothes, like he does in the scene. The kid-Jedi is wearing a gray shirt and tan pants. The blue clones have a little blue on their helmets, and a bunch of blue on their bodies, and usually have white legs. Be sure to watch the scene yourself, just in case I’m getting some of this wrong. I do not mind if this is one of the next kits you build, but I still do really hope you make it sometime in the next few months.

My brothers and I like playing Legos. We usually play two to three hours of Legos a day. Since we like Legos so much, we are building our own creations.

Sincerely,


Tate, age 9

Cirque du Soleil !

Christmas came in May, for us. Grandpa and Grandma treated the family to tickets to "Corteo". I've never seen anything like it! The boys were mesmerized. The first pic is two incredibly flexible (and strong!) "little people" (dwarves). The second was an aerial act. Men were on three platforms (quite high above the stage) and were tossing several women back and forth. The third is only part of a set of gymnasts on single bars that formed a square, with two others just offscreen.

The boys especially loved the "Jumping on the Beds" (trampolines) scene, and watching the "little person" (a dwarf woman) being gently bounced around the stage and audience, almost completely supported by 4 or 5 huge helium balloons. Can't begin to describe it all... too amazing!

Thanks, Grandpa and Grandma!

King Ghidorah and Godzilla

Wyatt, not to be outdone by his younger brothers, prepared these wonderful play-doh sculptures.

He's in bed - I hope asleep - so unable to give commentary (which he may wish to add later). Since I have watched exactly NONE of the Godzilla movies (but have listened with great patience to many long explanations and descriptions) I can only tell you for certain that the green creature on the right is Godzilla. (I love the detail of the blue tongue!) I think the yellow creature on the left is Gedorah.

I'm sure the expert will want to comment in the morning.

Hi, my name is Wyatt. I'm here to comment this morning! My creation was of King Ghidorah, a three-headed dragon-like creature, and Godzilla. Godzilla is more of a lizard-like creature. Godzilla does not like King Ghidorah. Godzilla actually kills King Ghidorah, even though KG is bigger than him. In one of the movies, people in Tokyo also make a Mecha-King Ghidorah out of metal. Godzilla kills this too. KG can breathe three atomic rays, but Godzilla can only breathe one. And this about ends my descriptions.

Tate, Godzilla, and Hedorah

The green guy is Godzilla! The black guy is Hedorah – the Smog Monster. Hedorah is shooting a ray, from the top corner of its eye, at Godzilla. But of course, since Godzilla has such armored skin, the ray has not much effect.

Now, for more information that is not happening, Godzilla can breathe an atomic ray. Hedorah can spray gas that can originally kill people, but can only make Godzilla dizzy. Also, Hedorah has two other modes: tadpole mode, and standing mode. When Hedorah is in standing mode, he can also shoot these glop-like bomb-like missiles that start to smoke on Godzilla, that must be hot. In tadpole-mode, Hedorah can swim around sinking ships. And Hedorah is made originally of garbage which makes it so invincible. Another reason Hedorah is so invincible, if Godzilla were to punch it or bite it or get it with his tail or his spikes, they would stick into Hedorah with no harm! If Godzilla sticks his hand in (into Hedorah) all that happens is that glop comes out. Another way to say "Hedorah" is to say "Head-ra".

Back to Godzilla, he has spikes, a big tail, two legs, and two arms and hands with four fingers. Godzilla also has a roar that doesn’t sound like a roar. It sounds like a screechy roar that I cannot describe. Godzilla is originally charcoal gray, but in some of his movies he is kind of green – very very dark green.

Hedorah looks like a piece of glop too. It has gloppy legs, but you can hardly tell that they’re not one piece! And long strands and pieces of him just hang off of him everywhere, which is why he looks like a piece of garbage. Hedorah will only stop rampaging to breathe smoke. Hedorah likes breathing smoke because it must give him power.

Gunnar, Minilla and Mothra

This is a picture of Mothra’s larva, webbing up (since they're silk worms) Minilla, the son of Godzilla! Mothra is a huge moth, that’s why she’s called Mothra. We know she’s a girl because there’s a movie called “Godzilla vs. Queen Mothra”. In the movie “Tokyo S.O.S.” on an island where there is two fairies they were singing a song, which I think was the Mothra song. There is an egg, above, as they singed, the egg started to hatch. Out of the egg, came two Mothra larva.

Minilla is Godzilla’s son. (Japanese people call Minilla “Minya” because they don’t like to say “L”. And they call Godzilla “Gojira”.)

This is why the larva are mad at Godzilla and Minilla: In “Tokyo S.O.S.”, Godzilla killed Mothra, so now, for the rest of their lives probably, the larva has been longing for revenge. That’s why the Mothra larva is webbing up Minilla.

That’s the end of my story.

New Homes Cool Lunch Program

Home + Schooling = Flexibility

Our week has been interrupted by some usual things (like our Sign Language class today) and some unusual things (Wyatt had one of his two testing days on Wednesday, and I went out to lunch to hear a holocaust survivor speak on Tuesday).

For the boys this has meant more free time! With the slightly warmer weather, they've been able to be outside more and longer, and decided to build a tree-house. They started yesterday, and by lunch-time today had finished a platform big enough that they all could sit together and eat! Gunnar informed me that it has a wonderful view of the lake. (In case I hadn't noticed it from the house!)

Now they're working on enclosing the bottom part into a "Clubhouse", with a window. While Wyatt and Tate were at soccer practice, Gunnar and a neighbor managed to nail "siding" around the window and talked me out of an old dishtowel for a curtain.

Julius Caesar and Cleopatra will have to wait.