Oh, Where to go?

Tomorrow's Friday and we just can't sit around the house. We did way too much of that this week. I'm thinking that since it is *only* supposed to be 95 tomorrow that we should go out on a nature exploration, yet something relaxed and low key. A 'spread the blanket' type of thing. Only I'm trying to think about where that should be...if we go anywhere that has a playground we are going to get stuck on that. Some place with trails means hiking and not many places to spread a blanket and chill. Can you tell I'm feeling a little lazy. Two places are jumping out at me; the local pond across the highway from us and a small pond at the educational forest at Lake Jordan. The first is always crowded with people and had geese. The other is quiet and low-key but has trails and I can see myself getting sucked into a hike. We will just have to see how I feel in the morning.

On another note, I've figured out the secret to making it rain in this heat parched land. Build a solar cooker. Since we put in the finishing touches it has either rained or been cloudy- up until the sun finally came out late this afternoon. We have yet to be able to test it. I'm not complaining, I now have four buckets of water ready for the garden this weekend when it hits triple digits again.

School today went quite well. Mary, with no prodding from me, was able to tell her friends right off that she had school to do before she could play. And, then, hung around the house doing other self-selected workbook pages and studying the crystals she is growing this week. She didn't even go to play with friends until after 3pm. Honestly, I was kind of floored.

This evening she went with a friend to the local school as her friend was finally finding out who her teacher was going to be this year. I asked Mary what she thought of the school when she got home (she has never been inside a public school) and if she thought she would like to spend 6 hours a day there. She wrinkled her nose at me and shook her head. Mary was not impressed, which left me wiping my brow. I was worried she would come home and be all excited about wanting to go to school.

Things are good here. Monday, the public schools start, so we will have much more time to settle into our school-year routine as opposed to our summer routine. I am really psyched about how well our summer school has gone and really think this new approach is going to work for us.

Peace,

Amy