Vacation's Over

My vacation is over, and now it's time to get back to "work." I say "work" in quotes, because we're just getting back to our daily homeschool routine and enjoying a great life.

We had two wonderful weeks with Dave while he was home from Iraq. We went to Holiday World, the pool, and just plain-old hung around the house and snuggled. It was great to have Dave home to just spend time with. We all hated to see Dave leave and go back to Iraq, but we are a strong family and we will get through this as a family. When he leaves, we go through a few days of "mourning" and depression before we can feel normal again.

The girls and I are starting a new homeschooling year today...as soon as they get out of bed. I'm going to continue primarily unschooling this fall, with some math inserted here and there. I'm going to concentrate on having the girls read, reading to them, and having stealth learning opportunities available (keeping books laying around, interesting activities to do, nature exploration). We keep the TV and computer off during the day, but there are exceptions for learning games or documentaries.

This will be a year of experiments for me, as I am still learning what makes my girls tick and what inspires their passion of learning. I want to keep that learning fire going, and not dampen it with twaddle and workbooks (they get so bored with those). Wish me luck!

McCormick's Creek

We spent all of last week at McCormick’s Creek State Park. My in-laws rented a fairly primitive cabin in a heavily wooded section of the park. My father-in-law was only there two nights (he was working), so it was mostly just my mother-in-law, my two girls, and me for the week. I was the “man” of the house all week.

It’s funny that some people consider this being out in the country. There are fourteen cabins in the woods, but they are all close together like in a suburb. I know that it would be completely impractical to give each cabin its own acre of land, but a little more space would have been nice. Like, more than 50 yards. I like my privacy. I also like not having the idiot cabin next to me having his porch light on all night shining right in my eyes, when it’s too hot to close the curtains to shut out the light. They even had a window air conditioning unit running. Wimps.

Each cabin has very basic furniture, but we had to supply everything else, like pots and pans, linens, and good humor. We had to bring our own cleaning supplies, since we have to clean our own cabin when the week is over. We had to bring enough stuff that it took us about two hours to unload and unpack. It was exhausting. I started thinking that a couple of extra bucks to spend the week in the hotel would have been worth it.

There were two sets of tiny twin bunk beds in a room that was smaller than a walk-in closet. I didn’t know that a bunk bed could be smaller than twin, so I’m assuming that the park staff found a sale on toddler mattresses and stocked up. With the two bunk beds in the bedroom/closet, there was approximately 12 square feet left to get dressed.

The living room had a fold out couch that was malfunctioning and couldn’t be folded out (after two nights of forcing the bed out, maintenance was called and was able to fix it in two minutes). There were “primitive” chairs and tables for that woodsy touch, and (thank the Lord) a ceiling fan. No air conditioning meant that the fan was most welcome.

The bathroom was just fine, except for the three times that we had to call maintenance to get the toilet fixed. The toilet, strangely enough, was hooked up to the hot water supply. Every time one sits to potty, your butt got a good steaming. No one lingers on a toilet when you are, literally, sweating you’re a$$ off. It turns out that the hot water, however uncomfortable, keeps the condensation out of the bathroom and keeps the floor dry. The hotel is sounding better.

The toilet wouldn’t shut off and kept running water through. Did I mention that it was attached to our tiny water heater? That meant that we didn’t have any hot water for a shower. I would normally fix the toilet myself, but this was a power-flush model (not gravity fed). Maintenance came out and tried to fix it. After three people came and scratched their heads at how to get it to stop, they decided to replace the whole top tank.

Two hours later, with the new tank top in place, we got a new problem. The toilet whistled. I’m not talking a quiet little “peep” like some toilets do. I’m talking about the screech you get when someone drives down the road with low steering wheel fluid and it wakes up the whole neighborhood kind of whistle. It sounded like someone was killing a cat and a screech owl at the same time. Maintenance couldn’t get the whistle to stop, and started to talk about moving us to another cabin. We were horrified at the thought of moving and we quickly accepted the screaming, screeching toilet. That hotel is sounding pretty good right now.

A couple of days later, we found out that the new tank that was installed wasn’t installed correctly. Now when we flushed, we got a spraying shower of toilet water and screaming. We called maintenance again, but since this time it was after hours, we got the night maintenance man. He was nice, but he wasn’t all there. He saw the problem, said that there was nothing he could do, and told us that we could put our towels around the toilet to absorb the water all over the floor. EXCUSE ME??? OUR TOWELS??? He finally offered to get some old towels from the maintenance shop to wipe up the water. While he was away, I figured out that the tank was leaning back and wasn’t seated right, so he did call in the supervisor. They got some 2x4 boards and propped the tank forward so that at least we could flush. We were leaving in a day, so I told them not to replace the tank until we left. They agreed. Hotel, anyone?

We did have a good time with our activities. The girls made sure that I didn’t get to sit and have too much quiet time. We spent several hours/days at the waterfall playing and swimming. We went for a nature walk in the woods, where we learned that whining is in endurance sport and can, indeed, last for more that 1 ½ miles. We let the girls go shopping in town, where the girls spent an hour picking out the just-right Webkinz while planning their next shopping trip. We went to the recreation center and spent approximately $50 on gum ball capsule toys.

We went horse back riding, too. Sami got a horse named Pal, Meg got a little horse named Little Bit, and I got one named Thunder. I found out quickly why my horse was named Thunder. It farted the entire hour ride. I’m not talking little dainty farts. It was named Thunder for a reason.

It rained every day, up until the last two days when we got a heat index of over 100 degrees. The wimpy idiot in the cabin next to us is feeling pretty smug at this point, with his air conditioning and all. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me envy his air conditioning unit. I waiting until dark, and snuck over in his bright porch light, and quietly whimpered.

I should finish out by saying that we did have a good time. I grilled out a lot, got some reading in, and we played a lot of games. Despite the rain, we did get some good time outside. The girls even played with sidewalk chalk, blew bubbles, and rode bikes. I can’t wait to go again next year, but this time I’m bring extra fans for the windows.

Vacation

The girls and I are going on a little vacation with my in-laws. Dave is still in Iraq and won't be with us, but that is what Dave wanted. When he is on vacation, he wants to spend most of his time at home with us and not in a big group setting.

We will be at McCormick's Creek State Park. It is a homeschooler's paradise. There are numerous creeks they can explore for fossils, water falls that they can play in and climb (if they are big enough this year), nature galore, hiking trails, horseback riding, nature center, and a swimming pool. There is a cave that, in years past, we could climb through and explore with flashlights, but I think it will still be closed due to issues they are having with their bats and white-nose disease; it is thought that humans may be carriers, but they don't really know what is causing it.

We will be staying at a cabin that has basic furniture, bathroom and a tiny range, but we have to furnish everything else (sheets, pots and pans, coffee pot, cleaning supplies, etc). It's a lot of work for me and my mother-in-law (I call it a working vacation), because we still have to cook and keep everything picked up, but we still end up having fun in the end.

There is no TV, and that is just fine with us. The girls don't miss that at all. They've planned their own activities to stay busy this year. They've got latch hook kits, books, games, books on CD, bikes, sidewalk chalk, and lots of paper art material. I'll bring their bird books and bug books so that they can identify what they find when they are exploring. In years past I've tried to provide educational material to keep them busy but, as you can imagine, that didn't go over so well. I'm embracing our inner Waldorf/Unschooling hearts this year.

Two downfalls of going on vacation is that: #1 - we've have to arrange animal care for our animals, and #2 - We have to come back halfway through vacation to turn in their 4-H projects and get their leader's signatures. Oh well. At least it's only 1 1/2 hours away.

I just need to pick up some poison ivy cleaning lotion, and we'll be set. :)