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(A photoessay.)

My friend Joann and five of her children have embarked on an adventure that has me green with envy: they are touring this beautiful country of ours in a motor home. Joann’s husband’s work involves a great deal of travel, and this grand plan is a way for the family to spend more time with dad.

Joann’s nineteen-year-old daughter is chronicling the adventure at the delightfully named blog Anne Shirley’s Apprentice. The family’s blog names—and adventurous spirit—are inspired by Swallows and Amazons. No duffers allowed!

Yesterday’s entry ratcheted up my envy and delight even more: they visited Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home in Mansfield, Missouri.

Immediately inside the museum, so that it is almost the first thing that one sees is a large glass display case with the words “Pa’s Fiddle” written across the top. I was simply enraptured, but very quietly. The kind where you can’t say anything because it would ruin everything, because no one else could feel quite the same, and it’s no use trying to explain because words don’t cover it.

I can’t wait to see where they’re headed next.

Summer did come, and summer was the season of Becky Jack. The kids were free (free!) from the constraints of homework and school days. And they would go stark raving insane with nothing to do, so the Jack home became a summer camp: summer projects (raising insects, quilting, coin collecting, studying kinds of clouds, family read-a-thons), sports (swimming, rafting, hiking, Little League), field trips (zoo, amusement park, bird preserve, lakes, mountains, rivers, meadows), service projects (neighborhood widow’s yard care, food bank drives), and just good hard play from sunup to sundown.

—The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale (see my post and our discussion)

Well, it couldn’t be more obvious that Becky Jack, the heroine of Shannon Hale’s novel, is a homeschooler at heart—probably an unschooler. Every time I read about her exultation over summer or her dejection over the return to school schedules, I wanted to have her over for sweet tea and a heart-to-heart about how she might want to think about a more permanent freedom from the constraints she bristled against.

But I didn’t quote that passage to toot a horn for the joy of unschooling. “The season of Becky” (a recurring phrase in the novel) has been in my head all week as my children and I zoom around town to and from a series of activities which are a departure from our usual routine. We’re all of a sudden spending a lot of time at the Y for swimming and gymnastics, and I finally got around to getting everyone caught up on dentist appointments. The desert heat has settled upon our corner of San Diego County, and on the days we aren’t at the Y, we’re holing up indoors after 10 a.m., playing lots of Wii and other games until the afternoon shade transforms the yard into a cool and breezy haven once more.

It’s still light out when Scott gets home from work, and I’m reluctant to leave him for the two evening hours we’ve carved out as my precious and fleeting work time. I make bruschetta with tomatoes and basil from the garden, and linger longer than I ought in the kitchen, dipping crusty bread into the garlicky, lemony juice, listening to Scott’s stories of pre-Comic-Con office bustle. Sparrows and finches gossip at the feeder, and the bees are slow and undulating in their flight, their saddlebags laden. A monarch butterfly dips low, low, and lands on a rosy-orange blossom, uncurling its delicate tongue to sip from the cup of nectar. The children are playing in the grass, or else they’ve disappeared, called away by their books and their music.

Summer has never been the Season of Lissa—it’s spring that sets my heart soaring, always has been—but I am enjoying this Season of Becky, and feeling quite Beckyish indeed as the bright, hot days of July and August unroll before us. I’m a little envious of Becky’s neighborhood, with its impromptu backyard softball and kick-the-can—we used to live in a neighborhood like that in Virginia, and a very special place it was—but our summer rhythm is its own brand of nice, and I love knowing it is stretching out before us for many weeks to come, with Comic-Con (a major event in these parts, where “these parts” = both this city and this household) anchoring the middle, and a local unschooling conference waiting for us in September, promising to be a lively and colorful celebration of this lifestyle I love so much.*

*And in the spirit of not sugarcoating, I’ll add that at the very moment I finished typing that last sentence, a minor household volcano erupted, and in the space of three minutes, three different members of this mostly-happy family came at me with various shades of Bad Mood. Sometimes this wife-and-mother thing is a bit like finding yourself in the middle of a spontaneous game of paintball and you’re the one whose job it is to wipe the paint spatters off all the players while ducking and darting between the flying color-bombs yourself. But, you know, it’s probably a sign of a very successful and satisfying summer day that people are falling apart at the bedtime end of it. Off I go now to see if I can mop up some more paint.

Just came across this and the memory made me laugh, so I thought I’d repost it just for fun. Originally posted in July, 2006.

It’s been about three [now five+] years since the day at the park when I realized my daughters were lacking a vital, a crucial, an indispensible piece of knowledge. I don’t know how we’d missed it—these kids knew Tennyson before they could read and discussed the periodic table of the elements over dinner. (Okay, so we had a placemat with the periodic table on it. Still. We did discuss it. As in: “No, dear, we don’t smush peas on helium.”) They’re bright kids, well-educated kids, but there was a giant hole in their education and it was the kind of hole that left an opening for serious pain. Literally.

See, we were at the park, as I said, and a bunch of kids were playing ball not far away. Suddenly a cry rang out: “DUCK!” Every person in the vicinity ducked out of the way of the large ball hurtling toward our group. Except my kids. All three of them (there were only three at the time) LOOKED UP AT THE SKY. I kid you not. “Where?” cried Jane. “Is it a mallard?”

Is it a mallard. The kid knew her times tables at age seven but had no clue that when someone hollers “duck,” you get your head out of the way. When I stopped guffawing, I decided I’d better rectify that little oversight right quick. Back at home, I put the kids through a bit of boot camp. I figured while I was at it, I might as well throw in some other quick-response commands. I lined up the three little girls, ages eight, five, and two, and drilled them in Duck, Hit the Deck, and On Your Feet Maggot. It was a smashing game and we played it every day for a week. They made mighty giggly little soldiers but they got the point and I felt reasonably comfortable out taking them back out to dangerous places such as the park.

At some point I added another command, and for something that started out as a whim, it has turned out to bring immense peace and pleasure to my home. It had occurred to me that one of my biggest pet peeves was calling one of the kids and having her yell back, “Wha-at?” instead of coming to SEE what because if I’d wanted a conversation of shouts, I’d have hollered what I wanted in the first place.

I remembered what Charlotte Mason has to say about habit-training, how a mother should pick one habit at a time to cultivate in her children. Start with a bad habit that vexes you, Miss Mason says (somewhere; I no longer remember which book—probably all of them), and devote a period of several weeks to replacing it with a good habit. This is the best parenting advice I’ve ever encountered. Such a simple principle: instead of punishing for the inappropriate behavior, you take the time to develop the behavior you want to see.

Of course my children didn’t know what kind of response I wanted when I called out their names: I’d never bothered to explain it. Did I just expect them to instinctively know that the “whaaaaa-ut” hollerback drives mothers up the wall? When I examined the situation, I understood that I’d never given much thought myself to what kind of response I’d prefer. I just got annoyed by the one I didn’t prefer.

So after the Duck drills, I started working on the “what to do when I call your name” routine. And oh my goodness has it been a pleasure to see it in action these past three years. By now it’s completely automatic. I call a name and the child in question cries out, “Coming!” Simultaneously she leaps to her feet and runs to wherever I am, landing before me with a “Yes, Mom?”

It’s marvelous. Maybe the script isn’t your cup of tea but I truly love it: the quick response, the way I can take it for granted that all I have to do is say a name and the needed child will appear before me—with no irritation, no resentment. It’s all automatic; we hardly notice it anymore; it’s simply what one does. It is, in fact, a habit.

Habits (good and bad) are catching. Wonderboy has picked up the routine too, without our doing anything to teach it. In fact, he’ll see your “coming!” and raise you one—half the time I holler out for Rose or Beanie, the boy will chime in his own “Commmmm-ee!” in chorus with theirs. Sometimes he just stands at the bottom of the stairs barking out his sisters’ names and supplying their responses for them. Or maybe he just thinks their names are Rosecoming and so forth.

I know the drill-sergeant routine is a little hackneyed, but it’s been a most successful means of following Charlotte Mason’s habit-training advice. Very Mary Poppins-esque, really: the silliness of the drills (nothing says fun like calling your children maggot) is the spoonful of sugar, far more palatable than the pill I used to be, scolding them for not coming when I called. Kids pick up an awful lot by osmosis, but not everything. Just ask my little birdwatchers. No, dear, it isn’t a mallard. It’s a soccer ball and it’s about to give you a concussion. Now DUCK!

I took a leaf from Jenn’s book today and raided our scrap bin to make a spur-of-the-moment flannel quilt top for Rilla. We are in the process of transitioning her to her own bed in the girls’ room. (My three big girls share a room, and we’re adding a trundle for little sis.) This is something that’s always on the to-do list during a pregnancy, moving the toddler out of our room to make way for the newborn, but I admit I’ve been a bit lax with it this time around. Rilla still nurses a little at night; that’s part of it. And also, she’s very cuddly. Toddlerhood passes so quickly, and I like to savor every breathy little snore of it.

A month or two ago, we set up a (bedraggled old) child-sized futon next to our bed, and Rilla has been starting out her nights there. At some point in the night, she climbs into bed beside me. She’s like a cat, the way she sort of pours herself under the covers and curls up next to me with a contented sigh. She’s also like in a cat in the way she’ll turn on a dime and hiss and snarl at the blankets because they have offended her somehow, and she’s all flailing paws until the malevolent covers are no longer touching any part of her body. A mercurial little creature, is my Rilla.

Yesterday we moved the futon into the girls’ room. She thought this whole “sleeping with the big girls” thing was a pretty swell idea right up until bedtime, when suddenly it was The Most Offensive Idea Anyone Has Ever Had in All of Human History. But I snuggled up beside her in the dark, and her sisters whispered to her, and the devious plan I’d carried out earlier in the day—feeding her marshmallows at naptime instead of putting her down for a nap—paid off pretty quickly. She sighed, and sank, and slumbered, and when her limbs began lashing at the covers I knew it was safe for me to slip away. (Sob.)

Jane and I thought a special new blanket for her special new bedroom might help ease the transition. Rilla doesn’t have a blankie she’s attached to, though she does like the little patchwork baby quilt I made her before she was born. It’s way too small now, of course. So this morning Jane and I pieced together the remnants of the same cozy flannel plaids and prints I’d used for that baby blanket nearly three years ago and came up with a sort of wonky, large-patch quilt top. We’ve got a big piece of pink plaid-and-polka-dots to use for the backing. I’ve never actually quilted anything before, mind you—the baby quilts I’ve made are just patchwork tops with flannel backing, no batting in between. I need to go buy some batting tomorrow and we’ll see if we can pull this thing off.

In the meantime, the quilt top seems to have passed Miss Rilla’s muster.

The little embroidered kitty with flower umbrella at the bottom is a pattern from the Wee Wonderfuls “Tulip Fairy” Stitchette set, which I bought a while back and forgot about until today. That blank pink patch was just begging for a bit of embellishment. And I have to say, I am completely enchanted. The Stitchette pattern is a reusable iron-on which took all of ten seconds to transfer to our fabric. Suddenly everywhere I look are blank bits of fabric crying out for a little Wee Wonderfuls snail, or the mice pouring tea from that cunning acorn teapot, or that kite-flying ladybug, oh the cuteness of it all.

I have lots to write about this past week, but we’re heading into busy breakfast time so it’ll have to wait. In the meantime, a few more photos. Lots more at Flickr.

(If you have a Flickr account, let me know so I can Friend you.)

Day Four: Old Town San Diego. Fun and free—can’t beat that!

One of the beautiful rooms in the hacienda that belonged to the commandant of the Spanish fort circa 1825.

Candledipping takes fierce concentration.

Stencil on the wall of the visitor’s center.

Scott is taking his first real vacation since we moved to San Diego. Yes, I’m excited. My awesome parents have flown in from Denver and are entertaining my “twins” while Scott and I take the big girls on some outings of the sort that can be a wee bit difficult to mesh with the needs of little ones.

So yesterday, after two years of oohing wistfully over the proximity (i.e. 20 minutes from home), we went to Sea World.

Of course, if you follow me on Twitter, you already know this.

I’ve put a few photos up at Flickr. Mostly, though, I was too busy waving to my girls as their cars paused at the top of horrifically scary rides and revisiting my adolescent Vicky Austin-wannabe fantasies at the dolphin tanks.

Not to mention sobbing with awe through the Shamu show.

Not sure what’s in store for today. It’s possible I overdid the walking a teeny tiny bit yesterday. Today might have to be even more of a sit-and-wave-at-daughters kind of day for me.

Originally published in Februrary 2005.

It’s been a rough morning. Our wagon tipped over while fording a river, and we lost fifty pounds of salt pork and our only shotgun. Then Rose took sick—cholera, we think—and died before we could do anything about it.

My girls are undaunted by this stunning double tragedy. They push on across the prairie, estimating the number of miles to the next fort. Maybe we can trade our mule for a new gun.

“At least we still have the fishing pole,” says Rose. She seems to have accepted her own death gracefully.

“I don’t like wattlesnakes,” announces Beanie.

Jane cracks up. “Who does? Remember when I got bit, back before we crossed the Platte?”

We found ourselves on the Oregon Trail by way of a great read-aloud, one that vaulted unexpectedly to the top of our Family Favorites list: By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleischman. I began reading this hilarious novel to the girls on a cold winter afternoon, but after Scott got caught up in the story during a coffee break, it became a family dinnertime read-aloud. At times, the kids laughed so hard I feared they would choke. We sailed with young Jack and his unflappable butler, Praiseworthy, from Boston Harbor all the way around Cape Horn and up to San Francisco. Along the way we visited Rio de Janeiro and a village in Peru. We panned for gold in California and made friends with half a dozen scruffy, optimistic miners. We found ourselves caring deeply about such oddities as rotting potatoes, dusty hair clippings, and the lining of a coat.

Our westward journey has occurred at a fairly brisk speed. After Great Horn Spoon deposited us in the thick of the California Gold Rush, there was much conversation about the many reasons and ways in which people migrated west. Our trail led to other books: Moccasin Trail, Seven Alone, By the Great Horn Spoon!, and now Old Yeller. We discovered the absorbing Oregon Trail computer game and have outfitted a dozen or more separate wagons for various westward journeys. Rose got hooked on the food-gathering part of the game. I can’t tell you how many baskets of dandelions and wild onion she collected. Jane seems most interested in the game’s diary function. She clicked her way through the journal of the young pioneer girl who appears in the animated sequences at certain points along the trail, and then she began to write a trail journal of her own. The sad death of our sweet Rose, the disastrous river-crossing, and Beanie’s encounter with the rattlesnake are now chronicled for posterity.

I don’t know what lies around the next bend in the trail. I’ve stopped trying to pave the road ahead of time. The best adventures, it seems, are to be found in the bumps and detours. We’re well outfitted for the journey with books and maps and eyes and ears and that burning appetite for knowledge that can make a hearty meal out of buffalo grass and brambles.

—Excerpted from an article appearing in the Virginia Homeschoolers newsletter.

Originally published in November, 2005 as “The Purple Cow Hula-Hooped Boisterously.”

This is a game we played in the car yesterday, all the way to town and back. I assigned each of the girls a part of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb (one girl had to take two parts in each round). From there it went something like this:

Me: Miss Noun, what is it?

Beanie: A giraffe!

Me: Miss Adjective, what kind of giraffe?

Jane: A hungry giraffe.

Me: Miss Verb, what did the hungry giraffe do?

Rose: It bounced!

Me: Miss Adverb, how did the hungry giraffe bounce?

Jane: Enthusiastically!

All together: THE HUNGRY GIRAFFE BOUNCED ENTHUSIASTICALLY!

Wonderboy: Huh?

And I was only there for half of it.

Whew. As has always been my comic book convention experience, the weekend was exhausting but sooo much fun. That it fell on this particular weekend was a bummer, though, because a bunch of my girlfriends were at an entirely different conference on the other side of the country, and I (sob) could not be in two places at once.

Looking at all the beautiful pictures from the FCL Conference gave me such a smile, because talk about a study in contrasts! Here’s what their weekend looked like.

Here’s what mine looked like.

Scott had to work at the con Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, and through the weekend. My mother arrived bright and early Saturday morning, and I brought her home from the airport, gave her a hug, and abandoned her with the children for the next two days. More or less.

On Saturday, while Scott worked at the WildStorm booth and did portfolio review and all that editor stuff they pay him for, I strolled up and down the convention center taking in the sights. There is always a lot to take in.

View from the DC Comics green room.

Saw eye to eye, Yoda and I did.

After a while, you’ve seen so much it all becomes a blur.

Sometimes you just need to sit down and take a little breather.

Fortunately, Scott got a late lunch break just in time for us to hook up with our beloved (and gorgeous) college friend Kristen, her husband Vinny, and Vinny’s Attack of the Show co-producer, Joshua. We survived the cattle crossing that is the big intersection right outside the convention center

and wandered into the Gaslamp District in search of a good place to eat.

Speaking of cattle crossings, we passed these characters just hanging out on a streetcorner.

Rumor has it they were a promo for the TV show Fringe.

The restaurant that boasted of having award-winning meatloaf had a 45-minute wait, so hmph to them. We found ourselves at Fred’s Mexican Cafe, and oh my goodness. The complimentary chips and salsa were so good they nearly made us weep.

Kristen took this picture of me basking in post-salsa contentment.

She also got much better Comic-Con pix than I did.

After stuffing ourselves with cajun shrimp tacos (oh. my. goodness.) and carnitas burritos, we waddled back down the street toward the Con. OK, I waddled. Scott had to dash ahead to get back for booth duty. Kristen and I took our time. We passed Joss Whedon on the street. Kristen greeted him with what is now my favorite greeting ever. He grinned. Then we reached Kristen’s hotel and said a weepy goodbye. L.A. is just too dang far away. At least, as the car drives.

Back to the Con for me, where I visited artist friends until Scott was finished at the booth. Tim Sale shook his head in amazement at the news that we are expecting again. I told him we figure there won’t be any Social Security by the time we’re old enough to draw it, so we’re making sure we have plenty of children around to take care of us. He said, “Good point. It’ll be an agrarian society by then anyway, so you’ll need all those kids to work the farm.” Ha.

It was around that time that I had a little bag crisis. The bag I’d brought with me (this delicious creation by Beauty That Moves) turned out to be just a leetle too small for the event. My camera was perched too near the top, just begging to be snatched. What choice did I have? There was this booth full of big ole bags with zippers, and one of them was lime green. Seriously, what choice did I have. OK. I admit it. I have a little problem when it comes to bags. In fact, just minutes later when my husband was introducing me to one of his favorite writers in the comics industry (Kelley Puckett, whom I’ve been hearing about—and reading—for fifteen years, but somehow had never met until this weekend!), he broke off in mid-sentence and said, “Hey, is that a new bag?” I said, “Hmm? What?” And he turned to Kelley and said, “My wife has only two flaws.” (He’s wrong about that, but it was sweet.) “Number one: her ridiculous affection for me. Number two: her compulsion for bags.” I can’t deny it. I am so thrifty and purchase-cautious when it comes to clothes and furniture and household items and pretty much everything except books and handbags. I mean, it’s not like I buy a bag a month or anything like that. But three or four a year, yeah, maybe. It’s a quest, see, for the perfect bag. As pretty as this one but with lots of pockets and a sturdy bottom and some kind of inherent magic that will make me always be able to locate my keys when I need to. That kind of bag.

But I digress.

Our Saturday evening wrapped up with what is for me the best part of a comic book convention. We wound up in the Hyatt bar eating appetizers and drinking beer (ginger ale for me) with a group of writers and artists. I love this, the jovial camaraderie and stimulating discussion of a community of creative colleagues. Our Barcelona pal Andy Diggle was there (but no Jock, alas), and Kelley Puckett joined us, and Fiona Staples (Scott’s artist on Jack Hawksmoor), and a bunch of WildStorm people, and assorted other folks wandering in and out. We stayed up talking too late and dragged ourselves home well past midnight.

And then poor Scott had to start all over at 9 a.m. on Sunday. I lingered at home, took the girls to Mass, played with my little ones. I didn’t want to take a second car into the convention-center madness, so I parked at the trolley station near our house and took the orange line downtown. And what an interesting trolley ride that was. I Twittered the experience (scroll down to “waiting for the trolley” and read upwards) and was probably lucky the Loud Girl didn’t know I was recording her rantings for all the internet to see. I told Scott you know it’s been a freaky train ride when it’s a relief to get back to all the nice, sane people at Comic-Con.

Like these guys.

I am proud to say I bought no bags on Sunday (although the blue soldier guy’s messenger bag up there is kind of cute, isn’t it). I took in the sights and drank free DC Comics cranberry juice and met more nice artists and attended the WildStorm panel. And then it was back to the Hyatt for more food & fun with Fiona and Andy (but no Kelley this time) and Mike Costa and Neil Googe and other engaging, talented folks. Scott, Mike, Andy, and I spent a good three hours talking about the nature of story. That, my friends, is why I go to comic conventions.

Later we stopped by a party hosted by Mark Buckingham, Bill Willingham, and Matt Sturges, but I was too tired to stay long. My obliging hubby took me home where I snuggled up next to my baby who is no longer a baby and dreamed about absolutely nothing, because I was that wiped out.

Last Friday Jane and her friends had the great fun of making blankets together for a service project headed by my sweet and generous friend Katie. All the volunteers were sent home with giant bags of fabric, fleece and cotton, to be used in making more blankets for the pro-life center and anything else the girls want to tackle for themselves or their families. Jane spent the weekend making fleece blankets and pillows, some knotted, some hand-sewn. I promised to work on making a space for her to have easy access to the sewing machine: all three big girls very much want to learn to sew, really sew, on the machine. So that was Monday’s project: finishing the big overhaul of the craft room that I started while the girls were in Colorado.

What I had done while they were gone was: tidy and reorganize the shelves, especially the craft-supply shelves under the window. Now it was time to tackle the closet. Jane was on hand to bag the trash I pitched onto the floor behind me. One of the first treasures I unearthed was a big book of placemats to color in, a German publication I remembering buying two-for-a-dollar at a Hearthsong sale many years ago. This felicitous find kept Beanie busy for most of the day, perched at the table behind me in the middle of the craft room. And Rose worked her magic on the little ones, entertaining them, guarding them from harm, answering countless requests for the refilling of sippy cups.

About this “craft room.” It ought sensibly to be a bedroom. We are (for now) seven people in a 1700-square-foot house. Rilla still sleeps in my bed. She’ll most likely move to a toddler bed next to mine sometime before the baby comes. That’s been our pattern with all the others and it has worked beautifully four times. Wonderboy has his own room, sort of: it’s also Scott’s office and laundry-folding center, and the boy’s closet absorbs a lot of the overflow from the rest of the house. The three older girls share a bedroom, from which we can hear them giggling and talking until late into the night.

The craft room (I call it that because it’s where the girls do most of their drawing and painting and Sculpey-ing and snipping of tiny bits of paper for their own inscrutable purposes) has three tall bookcases full of kids’ books, one tall bookcase full of Scott’s CDs, a fifth tall bookcase half full of more books and, until yesterday, half full of craftsy overflow such as crumpled origami paper, dried-up glue sticks, and eraserless pencils. We must make a lot of mistakes around here, because never in my life have I seen so many pencils with erasers worn away to the metal.

There’s a small desk in the craft room amid all the bookcases. This used to be my desk—since college days, actually—but in this house I wanted to make sure Jane had a corner all her own, so it’s her desk now. She has my old laptop set up there (no internet access, unfortunately—it’s too old for anything but dial-up) as well as all her beading, crocheting, sewing, paperfolding, etc, supplies. What we did on Monday was clear off some shelves beside the desk for her personal use and add a small end table in the corner for the laptop to go on when she wants the desk clear for sewing. And we moved the sewing machine to her desk. Jane’s in heaven.

Rose has long wanted a desk of her own too, and as soon as the dramatic emptying and organizing of the craft-room closet (you can imagine what it looked like before) was complete, she claimed her nook. We have an old children’s table from IKEA in there—I was using it as a kind of shelf. It’s Rose’s desk now, and I think what she loves about it is that it is inside the closet. Safe from sneaky spies, you understand, and prying toddler hands. She found a chair that fits the table and discovered she can store it on the table when the closet door is closed.

Beanie does not yet crave a desk of her own. “I like to be wherever you are, Mommy,” she says, causing me to kiss her all over her face.

Yesterday, Tuesday, we tackled the laundry room and Wonderboy’s room. Stunning progress, if I do say so myself. It may be the last boastful thing I’ll say all week, because the San Diego Comicon begins today (at least, Scott’s work-required wining and dining of the talent does), and just knowing I’m on bedtime duty for the next three days has already sapped all my energy. Also I have to go grocery shopping today and you know how that brings out the wilting lily in me. Do you hear that swell of sad violins? Waaah…

But my marvelous mama arrives bright and early Saturday morning and then I’ll become, for the weekend, a Mary Lennox’s mother kind of mother, gadding off to parties with an airy farewell wave of the hand. Okay, maybe that’s overstating a bit. (Tangent: a Rose quote from the other day: “Mom, I can definitely tell that Rilla is our baby. She’s prone to hyperbole just like you and Daddy. I just offered her a drink of water and she was grumpy and shouted, ‘NO! I never gon’ have water a-more!”)

Poor Rilla. Is it her fault she’s not a morning person?

Anyway, so maybe I won’t be quite as bad as Mrs. Lennox, but I do plan to spend a good bit of time at Con-related festivities. That’s the whole entire reason my mother is flying out here this weekend. Isn’t she the best? (And that, my friends, is no hyperbole.)

Ahead today: Shakespeare Club. I hope. In my closet-cleaning frenzy yesterday I forgot to send out a reminder email to the other moms. Even Mrs. Lennox had better manners than that.

So far:

A trip to the pool with their beloved cousin.

Kitty cats to cuddle.

Grandma’s home cooking—believe me, there is nothing better in this world.

Three days in the mountains!

The Continental Divide.

Wildflowers.

Alpine sliding.

Horseback riding.

Making crafts at the YMCA camp.

Tour of alpaca farm. Baby llamas up close. Wool to take home.

More crafting!

A trip to a lake? The phone was cutting out at this point so I’m fuzzy on the details.

And from the sound of it, numerous gift shop excursions. “I got a hat, and a tiny horse with bridle, and…”

Are these children ever going to want to come home?