On our own

Ok. It has been 10 days that Mr. and Lu have been gone. I've decided to use everyone's nicknames given that this is public and all... hope you don't mind. I was shocked the other day to see a local person following my blog. I guess, since I made it inaccessible to search engines that it would remain family and friend only. I guessed wrong. We've been doing fine here, but are soooo ready for them to come HOME!

As I write this, I am being attacked by mosquitos who seem to come out of nowhere as soon as the sun goes down.. (usually around 6pm , but a little later right now as we are in our "summer"). Unfortunately, we missed the parital solar eclipse about a week and a half ago. It was to happen around our sunset. I was bummed, but not too bummed. I was a little nervous that the boy wouldn't be able to resist taking just a little peek. I had read on NASA's website how dangerous partial eclipses are to the naked eye and that the retinal damage is totally painless. Not a good combo with a 10 year old full of curiousity (and Carter blood), so maybe next time...

It is the rainy season, here. We have had a couple of real torrents recently. The kids enjoy the rain. :) I mean, "back home" it never rains this hard when it is warm outside. You can see our driveway after about 5 minutes of REAL rain.

We had an interesting experiment in astronomy the other day. Homeschool science experiments are always interesting when you live in a remote area. We were supposed to make a rocket out of a film canister (umm, nope) and alkaseltzer tablets... hmmm. Well, I headed to the pharmacy to look for something effervescent. I found something that sounded like alkaseltzer and airborne put together, so we gave it a try. I used the metal container that the giant tablets came in. We found, through trial and error, that we only needed a small portion of a tablet to make it work (and not have it explode sticky, fizzy juice all over the operator) and were moderately successful. Life sure is interesting.