There’s a reason I have never willingly taken Statistics. This class is tedious at best. I do find the subject interesting, but would rather be fascinated by it then immersed in it. I’m exhausted. I think I need some type of break and I think the earliest that will come is just not soon enough for me.

Thankfully my whole day wasn’t Statistics. Fort Hood is conducting a Fall Cleanup this whole week. Since we live on post we have been receiving flyers and visits from our “block captain.” These entail of entreaties to rake every single leaf off the lawn, pull weeds and grass from cracks along the gutters in the road, edge and mow the lawn… you guys get the gist. I have a feeling most residents don’t enjoy the whole fall cleanup thing. I rather like it. And because I work in my yard almost everyday fall cleanup doesn’t present me with the stress it may present to others.

Except that we live on a corner lot. And it’s huge. And the people who cut my lawn have been short changing me on the one side. So, little heart condition me went out there and gave it a good go this morning. The edging and blowing and sweeping and so forth. Little B joined me and was a huge help. Love that boy. It still took me three hours to do what I would presume would take most people an hour at most. But at least I got it done.

I think I’m a little burnt out because as soon as I stepped in the door I wanted to take a nap so bad, but we had homeschool and tutoring and that wasn’t feasible. So, I’ve remained tired the whole day, but we got our stuff done, and even made time for art and a quick activity, followed by a viewing of Monster House.

For art, we attempted our hand at negative leaf impressions. Here is the link: http://tinkerlab.com/2011/10/negative-leaf-impressions/   The boy loves to engage in anything remotely messy. This is a huge departure from his norm a few years back when being icky, sticky was not his thing. He’s been begging me to build him a dirt kitchen in the backyard so he can mess in the mud to his hearts content. But I digress.

Our attempts at the art project were decent, except that they didn’t turn out as well as the picture in the website. I’m thinking this is two fold: One, the spray bottle we had consisted of streams of paint mostly, not good ol’ sprays. And two, Little B went nuts spraying everything from every angle, including under the leaves.

We are going to attempt our hand at this again, possibly tomorrow. I’m going to see if I can did up a better spray bottle and we might attempt this outside on the grass so that B can get paint everywhere.

I think we enjoyed collecting the leaves more than anything. True story.

We typically do an activity each afternoon, be it board games, cooking, baking, a walk, games, or projects. Sometimes if we have time we do two and space them out between me cooking dinner and B enjoying some free play. Today I had a statistical nightmare awaiting me: three solid hours of homework. Yuck. So I went with making a Balloon Centrifuge. Here is the link: http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/toys/pdf/deatofwelldoit.pdf

This was on par with the screaming balloon we made a few weeks back with the hex nut. Little B had a blast and made up several games to go with his balloon and we even took out some time from the fun to learn about the science behind the toy.

I’ll admit the movie night was a cop out because at the very least I could spend “time”with B while completing my homework in the same room that he was watching the movie. And as long and tiring as the day was at times, I am so thankful for today. Even for the exhaustion. Especially for my boys. And for one day closer to welcoming Brooks home.