We've been indoors much more with the rain and grey weather we've had, though it doesn't keep the boys indoors entirely; they still sneak out when the rain stops to splash around and track some mud indoors for me. I'm glad that they love to go out and flow in and out all day, even if I do have to clean up the mud.

They've each got their own rhythm throughout the day, but sometime during every day, usually more than once, they'll all be out there together shrieking and laughing together or crying because someone hit another someone too hard with a rock or bickering over who has the biggest stick. I really like to observe when they each decide to go out. Jonathan goes out the most and seems to go on a whim, most often. He's transitioning from one thing to another and as he passes the door, I can see the idea grab him and he turns to retrieve his shoes from the rack. Benjamen often decides to go out after asking where Jonathan has gone, but just as often ventures out on his own. He seems to go out with more intent, more purpose. He has a sparkle in his eye and mischief in his heart when he goes through those doors. Nicholas goes out least often and usually as a result of hearing his brothers having fun out there without him. Even so, I occasionally look around for him only to find that he's slipped out without notice and I find him twirling in the road (we have no traffic on our road, and he's very--overly, I might say--car cautious; he runs into the yard when he hears a car two roads down), staring up into the leaves and clouds.

So today we've been outside to play between drizzles, we zipped through our maths early this morning, made some more Latin connections--"Mom, caelum sounds like column, and some of those broken Roman buildings have columns that look like they reach up to the sky!" (caelum is latin for sky)--read together (Benjamen is a bona fide reader these days, reading whole paragraphs with very little help) , figured out some history puzzles, and made a peach & blueberry crumble together, watched some movies, did an experiment from Jonathan's book fo chemistry experiments, and played on the computers, among other things. I realized today that we have as many computers set up as we have people in the house--though that doesn't stop them from all huddling around one, watching one guy play and cheering him on/yelling at him to watch out because here comes an ALIEN!

Over the weekend, Jonathan asked if we could go down to the Air & Space Museum and I was so relieved that he wasn't asking to go to Paris or Sierra Leone or the Antarctic or Kuala Lumpur, like he does every other hour of the day, that I immediately said, "Yes!" We drove down the next morning, Sunday, and made a day of it. They all had alot of fun (the infrared camera was a big hit), got alot of neat stuff from the museum shop, and of course, we had to hit the Einstein Planetarium first thing:


I had less fun, as the short people were acting like short people and the tall people were put out by them, which sometimes stresses me out a bit, despite myself. I also wanted to swing by my best friend's apartment while we were there, but there was a snafu and that didn't happen, so I was disappointed. Overall, though, it was a lovely day and I'm glad we went. Next time we go downtown, I'll plan better and bring lunches, drinks and snacks to cut the expense, because dang, but it's easy to blow $100 on a daytrip down there.