We're back!

The kids and I flew down to southern California on the 18th. We spent a day at The Money Trap, er... I mean Disneyland (aka "The Happiest Place on Earth", but I'm not quite certain how it got that reputation). My 4-year-old declared that he hated it there after spending hours of his life standing in line for rides. I think they took away more good memories than bad, so all was not lost.

I was also able to go watch my very good friend L. being awarded her black belt. I am so proud of her, and she earned every last thread of that thing! We also got to visit with many of our old friends. It was our first time back to CA since moving from there almost two years ago, and it was decidedly too long to have been away. And just to make us feel right at home, the Santa Anas rolled in and put on a firestorm for us! Not necessary, but thanks anyway! Fortunately, all our friends are safe. The fires are still not completely out, and we're continuing to keep all those wacky Californians in our thoughts and prayers.

This past weekend, we all went to a halloween carnival at the local YMCA. The kids went in costume, and I donned a witches hat (I asked hubby if he thought there'd be anyone dressed up as members of the Village People, but he only rolled his eyes at me). We met my sister and nephew there, too. The kids came away with bags of candy and toys, and N. even won a cake in the cake walk, which totally made her day.

As this whole entry is full of unrelated topics, I may as well throw in a recent observation I made about little A. Up until very recently, he had never drawn a picture of anything looking remotely recognizable. He would throw a couple of different colored scribbles across a piece of paper, and announce to me that it was a drawing of fourteen bunnies in space suits riding on the back of a runaway train heading straight for the open mouth of a T. Rex. I always had to kind of take his word for it, ya know? Well suddenly, like in the last few weeks, he's become a very detailed artist. He passed briefly over drawing people as a single circle with dots for eyes, and went straight to drawing people with a head, neck, body, hair, ears, clothing, etc. in a matter of days. Apparently he didn't read the part in the child development books that said he was supposed to be doing crude drawings a couple of years ago. Last night he drew a tiger with a head, neck (necks are very important to him for some reason), body, tail, legs, hair, stripes, and whiskers. Where did this come from? I'm tempted to take it as a sign from the Unschooling Gods who would remind me that, given the opportunity, all children develop the skills that they need at the time when it is right for them, not at the time we think it should be right for them. The fact that I wasn't stressing over the observation that my son was "behind" in his drawing, yet we frequently freak out over our daughter's delayed reading skills, also speaks volumes about the things we value as a society. LOL, back in pre-historic times hubby and I probably would have been pulling our hair out with worry that our male child would never be able to make a proper cave drawing! ;P