in pursuit of wild things

We enjoyed a short three-day school week followed by two full days of “field trips”. Both Oldest and Sparkles had birthday’s this week so my husband took a couple of days off work and we went to the St Louis Zoo on Thursday and to Land Between the Lakes today.

Sparkles turned eight on Thursday. She wanted her ears pierced for her birthday and we will get that done on Monday…we also have Literature Club that day and my mother will arrive too. Monday may be scary for me…Anyway, we had a blast at the zoo. Getting to St. Louis was not so much fun. We lost about two hours on the way due to road construction. Frustrating. We ended up sitting in front of the VA hospital in Marion Illinois for just over half an hour. My brother is being treated there so I ended up thinking about him for a while.

Oldest turned ten today…wow! Ten years…I really just don’t know what to say. If I dwell on it too long then I’ll start to cry.  We gave him a Snap Circuit set for his birthday. He wasn’t sure what to think of it at first but he is hooked after building a working radio. We went to the planetarium at LBL and watched a little show about the sun and planets. We are nearly finished with our astronomy book so it was a nice little review of our studies. We then went to see the bison at birthday boy’s request. LBL is nice but I always get a little upset when I think about all of the families the government removed from their homes and land. It always leaves me wondering about our perception of freedom…

Tomorrow I will spend the day cleaning and making birthday cakes for the little birthday party on Sunday. My husband will decorate the cakes tomorrow night. Next week my mother will arrive…that spells stressed-out for me.