what do you get when you cross an inferno with a leaky mattress and tired muscles?

last weekend my lover (we have referred to each other as 'lover' on every vacation since we saw an old 'west virginia is for lovers' t-shirt in west virginia once. incidentally we have looked for that t-shirt on every trip since) and i went on a camping trip.
we even went alone. what, what, what?

yep- a.lone. for four days.
i missed the kiddos terribly, but it was blissful.
or at least blissful in the only ways that camping in 190 degree weather can be.
we used to camp all the time before we had kids, but we haven't been in about 6 years. fortunately, it is like riding a bike. it was pretty much like all the last times except this time we played a significant amount of 'jet pack' on the iphone. 6 years ago, i am fairly sure we both rocked some variation of a flip-phone and totally thought we were up on the latest technology. we might have been and there were no apps for that.
.

after the first two nights of leaking air mattresses and the loudest insect symphony you can even imagine, we may have thrown in the towel and reserved an air conditioned cabin for the last night.

i'm not even afraid to admit it, because it turns out that when we camped and traveled all over the united states while we were students, it was less about fun and more about being broke! now that we can actually afford to stay in a hotel, we MAY be spoiled...

nevertheless, we had a GREAT time. we hiked more miles than i have walked this year, swam in cool mountain lakes and pretended we were 19 again.

and also, arkansas... who freaking knew?! gorgeous.

have you heard, arkansas too is for lovers ;)

Unschooling the Unschooled

When it comes to preschoolers, the best learning tactic is the random lesson- I am truly a believer in this, but not yet ready to jump into "unschooling". In fact, my children will not be homeschooled, mostly because i would go insane and they would hate me way more than I disliked even my mean high school algebra teacher (who taught me that I was bad at math). Plus my hubsand is a great great teacher and I know that there are other really great teachers out there that need to, well, teach!
Not that I think there is anything wrong with homeschooling, I know plenty families that really make it work, I just don't think it would work for me- unless someone would pay me really well to do it :) Anyway- for now though, I try to find creative ways to introduce Nolan to new concepts. This morning as we were cleaning up breakfast, my husband started laughing (really) at my rather adult explanation about what honey was. I said "I will not dumb anything down for him- he will learn it now and be a genius later :)" and then we went about our day.
Later as we were driving and listening to the Barenaked Ladies Snacktime cd (GREAT) they were singing about oxygen and Nolan asked what it was. Our conversation uncovered that 1) Oxygen is an invisible thing in the air that we must breathe to live and that 2) Oxygen is made by plants when they use the sun to make their own breakfast- he was pretty interested in the latter so we got into the process of photosynthesis. You probably couldn't care less about photosynthesis, I know my college students are not too amused with it AND I agree this may be a bit above a three year old's thinking, but I am a biologist so if I have an audience I am going to go with it.....
I thought we were doing pretty well and then suddenly he groans and says " photothenasis mom? what the heck?!" I busted out laughing- maybe I should be dumbing things down just a little :)