Archive - August 2008

Oh, Bother

I have been blissfully living a life free of homeschool laws.  In Korea, as the family of a US soldier, the education of children was placed firmly under the responsibility of the parents.  Put them in the school provided on base, or one off base or homeschool – they didn’t care, as long as you were indeed educating them.

Then we moved to DC.  Several years ago, DC attempted to enact some outrageous homeschool laws that included pop home inspections.  Those laws were struck down immediately and the powers that be were way too concerned with other things to bother with better laws.  As a result, all you had to do was notify the schools if you were pulling a child out of a DC school.  That was it.

Well, that all changed last month.  Now we have to notify the Office of the State Superintendent of Education that we are homeschooling.  We have to keep a portfolio of our children’s work and provide a copy of our high school diploma.  If the OSSE determines there is cause for worry, they can request up to 2 portfolio reviews a year.

Through the grace of God, my high school diploma was not in non-temp storage like usual.  Non-temp storage is your stuff the military stores for you when they attempt to cram you into a house too small for your soldier’s rank.  It’s free, but the catch is this – you cannot access those things until they are delivered to your next assignment.  For various and sundry reasons relating to 5 years worth of non-temp storage being delivered at the same time as all our other household goods, having a one month old baby and general unpacking lethargy, we missed the 30 day deadline to send things back into non-temp storage here.

The point is, and I do have one, my high school diploma was available to be copied and sent in as demanded requested.

The funny thing is, this law just came to the table a few months ago and was passed last month.  And yet they set a deadline of August 15th to have your intent to homeschool form in.  Apparently, the OSSE estimates there to be 130 homeschool families in all of the District of Columbia.

Let that sink in for a moment.

With a population of 588, 292 (according to the census), only 130 of them homeschool.  I have to say that on our base alone there are 70 families registered in our homeschool group.  So that means that there are only 60 additional homeschool families in the entire District.

I’m imagining the single filing cabinet that has been set aside to accommodate 260 pieces of paper (intent form plus a copy of diploma).

Someone is going to be very surprised on Friday as the mail starts to pour in.

I did my part to plug up the system and took a moment to fill in the form and copy my diploma.

I may have a slight problem with authority, but I’m not actually going to break the law.

Foreshadowing

Tonight at dinner time, I sent Boo out to the park to get Pumpkin Girl where she was playing with her friends. Bip was underfoot during the last minute preparations, so Philip suggested that Boo take him along in the wagon. They took a little longer to get home than I’d expected, so I looked out the window for them. I spotted Boo coming up the street, pulling both Pumpkin and Bip in the wagon.

A few minutes later, hands washed and grace said, we started dinner. Boo and Pumpkin Girl started telling their story.

Apparently, when Boo and Bip arrived at the park, they didn’t see Pumpkin Girl or her friends. So Boo started calling for her. Pumpkin says she heard someone calling softly, “Pumpkin!” She looked around but didn’t see him. She heard it again, softly, “Pumpkin!” Still, she didn’t see him. Boo says he was trying to call her gently, instead of his usual yelling at her. (I was glad to hear that all my lecturing is sinking in.) So finally he saw her and called loudly, “PUMPKIN!!” Bip, ever helpful, called her, too. This time Pumpkin turned and saw her brothers.

Boo, a little frustrated at her, had his annoyed face on and his fists clenched at his sides in mock anger. Bip, on the other hand, raised his arms for his sister. “Like this,” he added, showing me his “come hug me” stance. So Pumpkin Girl said goodbye to her friends and ran to her brothers.

“Get in,” Boo growled, gesturing to the wagon.

As they started to pull away, Pumpkin’s friends called out, “Bye, Pumpkin! Nice ride!”

To which she yelled back, “Yeah, totally!” And home they came.

Not only was their telling of the story, punctuated with Bip’s point of view, very funny, but Philip and I couldn’t help but think that this was just a preview of years to come.

Fast forward seven or eight years. I’m busy getting dinner ready and realize that Pumpkin Girl needs to be picked up from ballet class. I ask 17 year old Boo to go pick her up and Bip asks to go with. Boo pulls up to the studio and finds Pumpkin chatting with her friends. He honks the horn, she “doesn’t hear” him. He honks again, louder this time and she turns towards him. He glowers at her. She says goodbye to her friends and runs to the car. He gruffly tells her to get in. Bip greets her happily.

As Boo’s pulling out of his parking space, Pumpkin’s friends see him and giggle and call out, “Bye, Pumpkin! Nice ride.” She’ll giggle and wave back.

Off they’ll go. But this time Boo will be making a mental note to volunteer to pick up Pumpkin Girl more often.

And I’ll be the one left giggling.

Aquarium of the Pacific

A few weeks ago Bip decided that he wanted to see whales. I have no idea why, he just started saying, “Me want see whales.” Since we were already busy planning our California trip, we decided to dedicate a day there to seeing whales. I was not about to actually go whale watching, on some three hour tour to get seasick and wet and not see any whales. Instead, I suggested going to the Aquarium of the Pacific.

Of course an aquarium is not actually going to have whales, but I thought perhaps Bip would be satisfied with seeing fish. I was right.

Now, we’ve been to a few aquariums over the years. Before we were married, Philip and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. A few years ago we went to Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg with its shark tunnel(very cool). We’ve been to National Aquarium in DC (small) and to the National Aquarium in Baltimore several times. So to be honest, we were not expecting to be impressed. We were wrong.

First off, the children were given maps that were actually like souvenir programs. Each page highlighted a different section of the aquarium, with pictures and descriptions of the fish. A sort of treasure hunt was included in the pages. Throughout the aquarium were stations to emboss a sea creature picture on to the corresponding pages. If you emboss all the pictures, you receive a souvenir pencil.

Then, right there as you walk in is a huge whale model suspended from the ceiling. Bip was happy to see his whale and already our adventure was a success.

A few feet away from the flying whale,  we found divers cleaning a two-story tank.  One of the divers pointed to Boo and they played three of rounds of “rock, paper, scissors” togther!

We really enjoyed the Aquarium of the Pacific. The fish displays were huge, so there was usually no problem with the children getting a good view. The windows often went from floor to ceiling, so small children or toddlers in strollers could also see easily.

Another cool thing about the windows is that many of them were curved, so you could step right up to them and be almost surrounded by fish!  Lean in a bit and it was like being in the tank.

There were some touch tanks outside, as well as a sea lion viewing area and a playing area. We even spotted the Queen Mary from up in the sea lion area.

We arrived within half an hour of the aquarium opening and the crowds were light. A few school groups kind of got in the way, but we managed to ditch them about half way through. We took our time and enjoyed all the fish and collected embossed pictures for our maps. We were finished in about 2 1/2 hours. As we were leaving the crowd had gotten noticeably larger.

For lunch we walked not even a block to Chili’s. There was several other similar chain restaurants right there, too. (The aquarium had food and an eating area, we’re just never happy with aquarium/zoo food prices and quality.)

We had a great time there.  If you’re ever in the Long Beach area and don’t have the time or budget for Disneyland, try to get to the Aquarium of the Pacific – we highly recommend it.

My Grandparents’ House

I’ve moved around quite a bit. I am married to a US Army soldier and we have moved 9 times in 16 years. As a child we moved a bit more than I would have liked, though after 3rd grade we stayed in one place. Through all of my 38 years, one place has remained the same – my grandparents’ house.

It’s not a large home or a fancy one, but it’s home. Here is where we started our 10 day California vacation.


When I was around 3 years old I fell off those steps and scraped my nose on the brick wall.

Our first morning dawned and we were still on East Coast time. We attended mass at the church two blocks from my grandparents’. My parents were married at this church, I was baptized there, as was Boo, and I attended the attached school with most of my cousins. I told this all to my children who were suitably unimpressed.

Later in the day we had a gathering of my extended family. Aunts and cousins and one uncle came to spend the afternoon with us. I have the extreme good fortune to have 4 generations of family all living in one city, relatives from each of my grandparents’ sides of the family. They all know each other, too. I have cousins who are related to me, but not to each other. It confuses others who want to know how we are all related. Eyes glaze over when we say that Holly’s mother is my grandmother’s sister, but Chris’s mom is my grandfather’s sister. Holly and Chris went to school together with Mary, who is my aunt, but Holly and Chris aren’t related. But they are both my cousins. Oh never mind. We know who we are.

It’s funny to be sitting there chatting with grown-up cousins who I used to play hide and seek with just a few years ago (or so it seems). Now our children are the ones running around the yard, climbing the trees and putting together a talent show, much to the delight of their grandmas and great-aunts.


Boo and Pumpkin Girl with two of their cousins (who are not related to each other!) during their talent show.

I cannot begin to describe how wonderful it was to sit in the backyard of a house that I have known all my life. The cool ocean breezes kept the day almost chilly – what a relief from the humidity of DC! My family surrounded me, the very same people who knew my mother as a little girl, attended my wedding, celebrated each of my babies and held me upright during Rebecca’s funeral. There was a history there, my history, my children’s history.

There is nothing like the loving embrace of a family member who shows up just because someone says, “Lorri and her family will be here, please come.” Some moments stay with you forever – like this one particularly afternoon at my grandparents’ house.

Flying to Los Angeles

Our flight out to LA was long. Five straight, non-stop hours with three children who refused to just go to sleep already! I don’t know how it happened, but our carefully laid out plans landed us at the departure gate just 5 minutes before boarding began. We were more than a little stressed and Bip was quite put out with me for some reason related to me making him ride in the stroller and not letting him wander aimlessly and so he wanted only Daddy. That meant I got to sit with Frick and Frack Boo and Pumpkin Girl for the entire trip. They were fairly easy to travel with, especially after letting them watch movies on the DVD player. Except for Boo who guzzled his soda after I told him not to and had to go to the bathroom twice in 20 minutes. And then proceeded to keep a running dialog with himself for the entire last hour of the flight while Pumpkin Girl and I pointedly ignored him.

Meanwhile Philip kept the 2 year old entertained. Ha!

So we arrived at LAX, no worse for the wear and collected our luggage. After the baggage claim area cleared of mostly everyone, we accepted the fact that our car seat and booster seats were not arriving. I knew they wouldn’t. Back in DC when we handed over our car seats to be checked on to the plane, we were directed to a different counter. Our seats were bagged and tagged and then we were instructed to leave them “over there.” “Over there” turned out to be a spot on the floor next to the roped off queue. Ok then. We left our seats “over there” and hoped for the best. We did hear the ticketing person call for a car seat pick up, but we didn’t have a whole lot of warm fuzzies over this.

So of course the seats didn’t arrive and there we were with no ability to go anywhere without the car seats. Philip went off to file a claim and demand that someone go out to the local StuffMart for appropriate seats. The airlines however, lose carseats frequently enough to actually have loaner seats available. So, 2 hours after landing, loaner seats in hand, and we set out to find my parents’ car they had left for us in the parking lot.

Don’t ask.

Tired and crabby and very much on East Coast time, we wrangled the car seats and luggage into my parents’ car. We plugged in our GPS and while it tried to calculate the route from our last known location in DC to our hotel in LA, I told Philip that we needed to take the 405 S to the 110 S. I don’t know why, perhaps because it felt like 10 PM to us (see “East Coast time” above), but he kept asking me which freeway we were taking. I kept telling him the 405. South. to the 110. South. Very patiently. Through gritted teeth. He offered to let me drive. In my head, I offered to let him live.

Meanwhile, those people who insisted on coming with us and needing special seats because they are so small were sitting in the back seat, not going to sleep already and making comments about which freeway we needed to be taking. The front seat however, was quite silent.

So the 405 S led us to the 101 S and after turning the wrong direction off the freeway, we found our hotel.

All went exceedingly smooth for the rest of the trip. No, really, it did.

The Homeschool Classroom

Angie at Many Little Blessings has started a new blog called The Homeschool Classroom. Guess who’s going to be one of the regularly contributing writers? Well, ME, of course! So if you can’t get enough of me here on the ol’ Mac and Cheese Chronicles, you can read more from me over there every Tuesday. I think I have Tuesdays. I have to double check. Anyway, I’ll be writing about whatever pops into my head that is homeschool related. I’ve got some topics lined up for the next few weeks, but if you’ve got any questions you’d like to see me answer, please let me know.

Home Again, Home Again

Jiggity jig.

We are back from our vacation in California.  There was a surprise allergic reaction, an earthquake, 3-eyed fish, a talent show and a lot of Mexican food.  And that was only the first 4 days.  Then there were mariachis, dancing, confetti eggs, a very somber, teary moment and salty sea air.  Great fun was had by all. I’ll tell you all about it.

But today there is luggage to unpack and email and snail mail to sort.

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