Wake Up World!

Although I detest the news, like all humans I love a morning routine. For weeks now I've been pouring my coffee, grabbing my laptop, settling into my favorite loveseat and firing up the Morning Cup of Links at the Mental Floss blog. Here I am pleased to say I find a tasty mix of art, social updates, weird history and just general good yet stimulating stuff. A few days ago, the links included one to Improv Everywhere's blog. This blog has definately been the highlight of my week. The purpose of Improv Everywhere is stated as;

Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 80 missionsinvolving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City.

I had seen their infamous Frozen Grand Central some time ago, but didn't realize they had a website and an ongoing plan to continue these sort of missions. Recently they have incorporated MP3 players into their plans, for even bigger and better executed missions.

What surprised me most was my reaction. By the time I had watched two mission videos I was sobbing. The reaction was similar to how I feel at classical music concerts, as if my solid wall of resistance is being broken down and pure joy is immerging...against my will for some reason.

I find myself to be somewhat out of sync with the world in general, lost in a sea of people who seem content to be like each other, to fit in, to go with the flow. I think these missions strike at that core feeling and give me hope. Hope that their is life on this planet. Hope that we can be jarred out of our automaton state. Hope that the world will awaken and we will all see each other for who we reall are; unique, perfect, blessed.

How about you? Is there anything that causes you to sob for joy? What would you say best wakes you up and helps you to feel alive and whole?

Gravity and Scrapping

For my very own Easter basket I bought a jump rope, which I've been craving to do lately, and a bike pump.  Don't I sound healthy!  Thing is, 45 year old women who have had 3 near 10 pound babies should NOT jump rope...still I'm stubborn and will make gravity my friend!

Lisa came over this evening and we scrapped.  Felt good to get back on that horse.

I'm going to try storing my layout images somewhere new.  Its a place where I can make them private or not, and more importantly I can sort them into albums.  Another cross reference tool, because when you scrap three to four hundred layouts a year its hard to remember what you've done and what you've just dreamed about doing!  I don't want to get involved with another scrap community, because if I had time for that I'd be back at tallyscrapper, so basically I'll be making them private.

I will post them all here though, for my family and friends viewing.

And here are tonight's efforts.

I already blogged about this little adventure.  Love Scott's style of teaching!

A more recent addition to our homeschool group, this guy is so cool and handy and doesn't seem to mind helping out with the younger kids who all look up to him.

Andrew has been saying murff nearly constantly for the last few days.  Its what a character in the 39 clues book series says (a cat of course!)  So this layout about his funny birthday cake had to record this little verbal idiosyncrasy for sure!

Our neighbors are away at their dad's this weekend, which gave me some time to scrap some of the pictures I've taken of them!  

A fav of mine for the evening.  Just a silly way to record our Easter egg decorating for the year.  This is styled after Leachy, who always makes such bright and happy layouts.

This is way cute in person, the photos and paper got muddy in this evening light.  Just a simple little layout about Ben's ongoing development.

Again, colors way off in the photo.  I love this photo of A and K walking and talking together at the park.  I hope their friendship stands the test of time, because it seems like a very postive one.

When Men Lead the Homeschool

Two days ago I came home from work to see a ducking stool, miniature sized of course, with a victim waiting for sentencing.  I was informed by the nine year old student that the Puritans generally issued this punishment to "scolds", women who spoke in shrewish tones to their husbands.

I was a little concerned, but was assured History was COMING ALIVE through the pages of our chosen text.

Today I came home to this:

Seems witchcraft was on the menu today.

Anyone else noticing a trend toward punishment of women?  Should I be afraid to sleep with my door unlocked tonight? 

Trudging Through the Tundra...

As told by Andrew---

We went to the moon and walked on the solar snow today.  Not really, but we did go for a snowy walk.  I wanted to get my crabbiness about homeschool out before we did our work.  Little did I know that I would want to hitch a ride even before we were half way done.

Mom made it fun by adding in a trip to McDonalds and to get a movie too.  At McDonalds mom blow dried my boots in the bathroom and gave me her dry socks.  I decided that I want mukluk boots like hers because her feet never get cold or wet when we walk.  We ate two orders of french fries; mommy ate the majority of the first order, then I ate most of the second order.  Mom taught me about McGyver when we outfitted my boots with ugly McDs bibs to keep my feet dry.

We ran to the move store being chased by intergalactic space aliens, and looked at the WII games.  The movie I picked out was Star Wars Phantom Menace.  

On our way to the grocery store, we were chased by people wanting us to take surveys, and then we searched all over the grocery store for dry, robotic gloves.  Foiled!

Trudging back over the moon's surface was TERRIBLE!   All our energy was wiped out by the survey and intergalactic chases.  

When we arrived home, wet, cold and dizzy with tiredness, we crashed against our hover bubble couch.