Peter’s neighborhood friends, Matthew and N., both have electric scooters.  Matthew’s scooter is blue, with a seat and a basket.  I’m not sure of the make, but he says he’s had it for about 8 years.  N. has a Razor E200 electric scooter.  Peter loves scooters, and he and Caroline have several scooters between them, but none are electric. 

Caroline voluntarily plans to continue working on her lessons during the summer.  I also want Peter to do some extra work during the next few months, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled at that prospect.  Since I’m not opposed to bribery in certain instances, I asked Peter what would make that idea of doing some schoolwork over the summer more palatable to him.  He considered my question for approximately 30 seconds, and replied, “an electric scooter.”

We discovered that K-Mart is currently having a sale on electric scooters.  We went there last night, and ended up purchasing a Razor E100 electric scooter on sale for around $86.  We brought it home, put it together (which consisted of assembling the handlebar stem), and put it out in the garage to charge overnight.  

The directions specify that it has to be charged for 18 hours before its first use.  Peter, of course, was counting down the hours until his new scooter would be ready to ride today.  I gave him permission to try it out a couple of hours early, and since it seemed to work okay, I gave him the go-ahead to continue riding it until the battery gave out.  He gave it a thumbs-up.

The weather was lovely yesterday, so we decided to go for a long walk at Kanawha State Forest.  We took Peter and Caroline’s neighbor friend, Matthew, along with us. 

Shortly after we started walking, a teenage boy and his dog caught up with us and asked if we could direct him to the overlook.  He had a map, but since he had erroneously started off on the wrong side of the paved road that goes through the park, he was on the wrong trail altogether.  He decided he wanted to return to the picnic area, but he wasn’t sure how to get there, either.  Alexander, who knows the park quite well since he frequently jogs there, tried to give him directions.  The boy seemed confused, so Alexander invited him to hike with us.  The trail we were on would eventually lead us back to the picnic area.

The boy and his dog decided to join us.  We live in a small world here in Charleston, West Virginia. Everyone either knows someone personally, or knows someone who knows someone — we just keep asking until we inevitably discover that mutual acquaintance.  As it turns out, this boy attends the same high school as my cousin Anne’s son, and although they’re in different grades, they’ve had at least one class together.  Most of our conversation centered on the boy’s dog, which is supposed to be a Rottweiler.  It looked like a miniature version of a Rottweiler with standing-up ears, but since it is only 6 months old, it probably still has some growing to do.   

We hiked for about three hours, then the boy and his dog left us when we reached the picnic area.   When we arrived at our car, the kids waded in the creek for awhile.  We also ate watermelon and bread with dipping sauce that Alexander brought home with him from a Bravo! restaurant in Louisville.

It was a fun hike, but am I ever sore today!  We must have walked about 5 miles (maybe more).             

Cooking is an integral part of my daily existence, especially when Alexander is here.  He travels a lot for work, and after several weeks of being on the road and eating every meal in a restaurant, when he’s at home, he prefers home-cooked food.  I can’t really blame him for that, but geez, I’m not a short-order cook! 

He’s currently working out of town, but our two kids are doing a fine job of picking up the ”I’m-hungry-can-I-have-something-to-eat?” slack in the meantime.  They’re 12 and 9, so I really can’t expect them to prepare all of their own meals at this stage in their young lives.  And since we try to eat healthy foods most of the time, I also can’t say, “Oh, just go eat a bag of chips and a carton of dip for dinner.” 

Since my kids are homeschooled, they probably have more leisure time than many traditionally-schooled kids.  They have more time to run around outside, play tennis, ride horses, ride their bikes and scooters, jump on the neighbor’s trampoline, etc., and they’re doing a lot more of those things now that spring is here.  So at the end of the day, they’re especially hungry, even though we eat two or three meals a day with a few snacks in between.

I was working on my blogs last night while the kids were watching a DVD of old Pink Panther cartoons.  Just when I had started to type, Peter came out and asked me to fix him some pelminis (Russian-style ravioli — we always keep a few bags of the frozen variety on hand).  These pelminis are rather small, so he said 15 of them would do.  I cooked those for him, then sat down at the computer to resume typing.  Ten minutes later, he said he was still hungry, so he asked for 7 more pelminis.  I cooked them, then sat down again.  Fifteen minutes later, he asked me to slice him an apple (I hate to bite into whole apples or similar fruits, so I slice them up — my kids have obviously adopted this quirk).  I don’t trust him with a sharp knife, so I once again interrupted my typing in the interest of food preparation.  Fortunately, Caroline was satisfied with a container of yogurt and a peanut butter sandwich she fixed for herself while they were watching the Pink Panther.  Bless her heart!  

I really don’t mind preparing their food, since I feel that’s part of my job as a stay-at-home mom. And, it could have been worse while I was trying to blog last night:  I could have had both kids, plus Alexander, if not for the fact that he’s out of town, wanting to partake of my cooking skills.  

 My only wish is that my family would get all of their eating out of the way before I want to sit down and blog!  Waaah!   

My almost-10-year-old son, Peter, personalizes anything and everything.  He loves to draw, paint, make crafts, and decorate things.  Neither his father nor I are particularly artistic, although his paternal grandfather in Eastern Europe does oil paintings as a hobby.  We have one of his framed oil paintings hanging over our living room sofa, plus a few others downstairs that we still need to frame and hang.

I keep both of my children’s homeschool textbooks and workbooks in two file drawers in our living room, where we usually do their lessons.  As soon as I bought these file drawers, Peter began putting stickers on the front of his.  He likes any kind of sticker.  He gets them from bunches of bananas, from Christmas card envelopes, from the greeter at Wal-Mart, etc.  By this point, he’s running out of room on the front of his file drawer, and so he’s begun putting stickers on top of stickers.

Here’s his drawer: