My Family Right Now at This Moment

As I sit here and type this, my daughter is singing in her loudest voice some of the songs from my son's recent play as she cleans up chess pieces from her pretend session with her brother. They sometimes play chess, but sometimes things are used in novel and creative ways. In this case the chess pieces were children and kings and queens and soldiers and the chess board was the great hall in a huge castle.

My son is holding a rubber chicken at the top of the stairs as my husband, who just got home a few minutes ago, is "pitching" my son a flying monkey with cape and eye mask and rubber arms that you pull to fling the monkey across the room where he emits a howler monkey sound as my son swings. It's almost impossible to hit with the chicken and is unbelievably hilarious to everyone involved.

All of this brings me to my post homeschooling conference report. It was a wonderful conference--everyone had fun and learned new things. My husband discovered that he's right brained just as some others are in this household. Nice to know. Want to know what new things we got? Of everything we saw in the vendor hall, all of the cool science equipment and laminated maps and marbleized paper and used books my son's eyes settled on the rubber chicken and he was hooked by it. He desperately wanted the rubber chicken and hinted at the flying monkey, and so that's what he got. He has thanked us for getting him those two things at least a dozen times in the last day and a half. My daughter saw a sort of goth looking homeschooling teenager who was selling all sorts of chain mail jewelry that she had made and my daughter really wanted a chain mail rainbow bracelet, so we got her that. She loves it and a calligraphy set we got her as a surprise. It has different sized nibs and different pens and several different color ink cartridges.

Now they're getting ready for a bike ride. I will stay here and enjoy the peace.

I love my family very much, but I like a little peace and a stretch of time without howler monkey noises and musicals sung at the top of my daughter's enthusiastic lungs.

Sometimes happiness is very loud.