Schooling at the Car Doctor

"Car doctor" is what A called it when I told him we had to go find out what was causing the bad sound. "We go to the car doctor?" he asked in his sweet little voice. I just love that boy! So I packed up our history book, some coloring sheets, and our entire plastic drawer of colored pencils and off we went.

We spent an hour doing history in the waiting room of Belle Tire. I read 3 chapters of William Bradford, Pilgrim Boy while the children colored a picture of Puritans for their history notebooks. Now for you fellow homeschoolers, especially those of you using TOG year 2 for history, I want to assure you that both myself and my children know the difference between the Pilgrims (who were separatists) and Puritans (who were not), but since we'd already colored the picture of the Pilgrims, it was Puritans today. We paused now and then to admire the beautiful chrome rims on display near us. L wanted to know why we didn't buy them for our van, and I explained that they were $600 each and we'd rather spend that money on other things since our plain rims worked quite well. Then we had a little impromptu math lesson while they figured out how much $600 x 4 was.

Thankfully, the bad noise was only caused by rust and corrosion in the wheel drum and nothing serious. They cleaned the drum at no charge. I love no charge!

So after our delightful adventure at Belle Tire we proceeded to the grocery store where I found not one, but TWO bench carts outside in the parking lot! Yes, you heard me right. TWO BENCH CARTS. I found myself wishing for more children so we could use them both!! If you knew how many times I have pushed two carts through the store (one for food, one for kids) while wistfully looking at someone with one child using a bench cart, you would know how exciting the sight of two was. All our children but A are now old enough to walk on their own two feet, but it still goes sooooo much faster if I can restrain the 5 year old as well. And for those of you who are not familiar with bench carts, they are a regular shopping cart with a 2 seat bench bolted on in front, so they essentially seat 3 children. I LOVE bench carts. Bench carts were made for mothers like me (for those of you with 1 or 2 children who have used bench carts, no offense intended!).

After our delightful adventure at the grocery store we went home for a late lunch (it was past 1:00 by this time, and A was getting cranky). But when we arrived home we found that the roofing crew had been shorted one bundle of shingles and they couldn't finish the roof. They were a crew from a town about 2 hours from here and didn't know our area at all, so I loaned them the phone book to try and find a wholesaler in the area who sold the kind of shingles they needed, while silently praying that the shingles purchased today would completely match the shingles already on the roof. (post script: still not sure it's an "exact" match, but time will tell, and they're on the back of the house, so I'm not going to quibble). They found a wholesaler and I found directions for them on mapquest while my daughter whipped up some sandwiches for her hungry brothers. I love that girl!

A got to bed about 2:30 and we officially started school at home right about the time that everyone else in traditional schools was finishing for the day. Such is the nature of homeschooling. Some days we are done shortly after noon. Some days we are not done at 5:00.

BUT.....we have a new roof, our van is safe to drive and didn't cost us any money today, we had a great history lesson, we got to use a bench cart, and tonight is pizza and movie night. For now, all is right in our little world.