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The Memorial Day field trip began with a brief civics lesson.

Mama: Faith, do you know what a soldier is?

Faith: Yes.

Mama: A soldier fights to protect us.

Daddy: It’s kind of like a knight. You know what a knight is.

Faith: Do they fight the badguys?

Daddy: Yes.

Mama: And sometimes soldiers die fighting the badguys. And today is a special day we remember the soldiers who died.

Faith: Oh.

Daddy: Hey, want to go pick flowers?

Faith: Yes!

Abby: I want to pick flowers too!

Faith and Abby picked wildflowers, and put them in a shoebox. When we had enough, we took our shoebox of flowers to Oklahoma City’s military museum, on 36th Street and MLK Road.

The whole family came (although Mama and Gilbert did not make it into the photographic record). Here Faith and Abby examine a 37mm gun at the museum, while Bede tries to sneak away wearing only one shoe.

Daddy caught up with Bede and reshod him. Across 36th Street from the museum is Oklahoma City’s Union Soldiers Cemetery, where servicemen from the Civil War and subsequent wars are buried.

Taking their shoebox, Faith and Abby placed flowers on the graves of the soldiers.

They said a prayer thanking God for giving us such brave men to protect our country from the badguys, and asked Him to accept these soldiers into Heaven.

With the last flower placed, they took a little rest. So did Daddy.

We went to the park.

Sean drove us.

The boys don’t look too excited.

Maybe the girls…. huh, no.

Well, everyone will perk up once we eat our pizza.

OK, well I give up. Don’t smile.

Hey who’s drivin this bus? Bede at the wheel!

My goodness what blue eyes you have, Gilbert.

And last but not least your intrepid camerawoman.

Dang Fee, are those size elevens?

UPDATE: It was unseasonably warm, in their defense. Looks like a record high in fact.

We were given this phonics workbook by a neighbor about a year ago. Faith has been working in it since. Sometimes she’ll go a month or more and not want to write in it and sometimes she wants to do ten pages in one afternoon. She especially likes the excercises that involve solving the problem and then coloring something in, lately. (Her Pop-Pop got her the 96-crayon box for her birthday and it’s obviously a big deal to her to be able to choose from about 9 different greens to color in a treetop. Thanks, Pop-Pop!)

I think we’ll order the next book in the series as she approaches the end of this one. She’s about halfway through it now.

Two waxy thumbs up, here!

My daughters have trouble with prepositions, sometimes. We get things like this, in our house:

“Can we have hot chocolate after bed?”
“Put the milk behind my cereal, please.”
(after another child) “I want to do it first, next!”

When Faith was about 12-18mos she signed a lot. She had one sign that began as an indication for “I want down and I need your help” that consisted of her index finger pointing at the ground several times, insistently. Over a pretty short time it underwent a transformation into a general “change my position” sign - when she was up in a highchair or her carseat it meant “I want down”, but when she was on the floor but wanted up it meant “I want up”.

For a while it also meant “I want to be held” but that quickly changed to the common yet adorable toddler plea to “hold you?” or “Wanna hold you?” which stuck for quite a while (because it got such spectacular results, I’m sure).

So anyway, they’ve often had a bit of confusion orienting themselves in the world. I think this is common and I’m not concerned in the least, merely making an observation. John Holt talks about this in How Children Learn - he recalls asking a child to retrieve somethng from the teacher’s desk and telling the boy it was in the right-hand drawer, to which the child asked “My right hand or the desk’s right hand?”

I think it comes from several things but mostly from a fluid notion of where they rest in space and time. Not in a mystical way, but in an inexperienced way. I recall lying on my back in the summer grass and feeling as though I was falling into the deep blue July sky.

Cheetos.

They eat Gazettes.

are gentlemanbugs, according to my daughters.

As in, Mrs. Hathcoat. Or perhaps Hathcote. She was the Senior something or other history/government related subject at Bishop McGuinness High School, which I attended school year 88-89, in the Dark Ages before hot running water, sliced bread and the Intarweb. I probably would have continued there but they said they didn’t want me to come back. Which is another story for another day.

This story is about Hathcoat, who I believe is still at the esteemed institution mentioned above, only now she’s in a Position of Power. She may be the Dumbledore of the joint, or perhaps only the McGonagle. I’m not so clear on that. Anyway, I knew her when she was only able to terrify a few seniors a year, which she seemed to enjoy. Most of them spent spring dreading their Senior Project, which represented about 20% of their grade.

Now, being a freshman, I had no reason to fear her. But my friend Jim was a senior and had been dreading his Senior Project since New Year’s. He finally decided to make a short film and he rounded up his more oddball friends to appear in it (including yours truly; I was a lady in a mock commercial in the middle of the film).

So we spent a particularly muggy weekend in early May tromping around somebody’s overgrown huge backyard/acreage getting scratched up by brambles, twisting our ankles, fighting ticks, mosquitos and wasps, (mostly) avoiding poison ivy… it was not fun. Much cursing ensued as we did take after take and finally said OK, DONE.

The video was hastily edited together by dubs from camera to VCR, and was ready to go on Monday morning (You didn’t think Jim actually did it ahead of time, did you?), bright and early. The project was turned in, 6th period. The film began, played (it was an action picture), commercial break (me!), conclusion of film, roll credits, yay! The End.

But, no! Not The End.

As Mrs. Hathcoat walked toward the VCR to stop the tape and hit Rewind, the outakes/cuts from the film began to play because Jim had dubbed it over the same tape. The last thing the room heard was Jim saying:

“Hathcoat, you b*tch!”

He got an F.

Abby has been, for the last year, leaving diapers behind. In fits and starts (more fits than starts, I’d say!) but today she had a big advancement and I won’t go into detail but HOORAY ABBY!

That is all.