of moving day, Swedish Fish, and vocab lessons

One advantage of having to help move your sister home from college 300 miles away is that you get to spend time in the pool before you go help pack her things:

  They had a ball swimming Wednesday night, which is good, since apparently all of Emily’s things multiplied while she was gone last year, and packing her stuff to come home was quite the adventure.  The boys, sitting in the back seat of the Suburban, were almost totally isolated from the driver and front seat passenger…

But they were pretty good sports about it.  Ryan’s not sitting in his car seat in this picture, but Logan is.  Ryan should be back that far as well.  The space between us?  FILLED with boxes and bags.  And the space behind them too.  We had to lift them over the stuff so that they could crawl into their seats…and they both had stuff under (and on!) their feet all the way home too. 

My terri___ (-fic or –ble, insert appropriate ending) twosome doesn’t travel as well as they did last year.  Hard to believe that it’s only been 11 months since our epic road trip to San Diego.  I spent much of the time trying to referee spats from the driver’s seat and fielding the age-old question of small travelers:  "Are we there yet?”   I didn’t hear that at all on our trip to San Diego; I think I heard it every 23 minutes for the entire 5 hour drive each direction this time.  Not fun.  I even had a new experience, something I’ve never had to do in 22 years of parenting.  I had to stop the car on the side of the road to discipline a child.  Never done that before, hope I never have to do it again.   Good thing I had plenty of these with me:

since I needed something to help retain my sanity on this trip!  Oy.  Sadly, the bag is almost gone, if that gives you any idea of how many ‘sanity savers’ were needed…

And vocab lessons?  Well, the boys learned something about each of these terms on this trip:

• mirage (“Why is there water on the road, Mommy?”  “It’s not water, it’s a mirage…”)
• refraction (“I see a rainbow!  Can you see it?”  No, because the refraction is different--light is hitting that CD at a different angle for me than for you.”)
• crop duster (“What is that airplane doing?  It’s going to crash!”)
• biplane (“Why does that plane have 2 sets of wings?”
• tilling (“What are they doing out there in that field?  What’s it called when they turn the dirt over like that?  Are they getting ready to plant?”)
• wastewater treatment plant (“Look!  A swimming pool!  Can I go swimming there?”)
• sewage (see above…)

Yep.  Vocabulary, geography, PE, geometry (how to get all of Em’s stuff in the car), and character development/self control.  All in a 30 hour trip.  I think I will count that as a successful school day.