Soccer, Clay Class, & the Electoral Map

Kyle's team usually plays 4 on 4 in soccer. Sometimes he doesn't get to play the whole game. Kyle and Hailey are 2 of the best players on his team. I thought it was really cute when they both had to wait on the sidelines.

Kyle was shy at first...she's a pretty aggressive girl.

They're not even interested in the game. I asked Kyle later what they were talking about and he said birthdays and the weather.

The Pump House Museum in La Crosse every year offers a variety of art classes for home schooled children. I couldn't pass signing them up for the clay classes. They go every Thursday in October and on the last Thursday they get to paint and fire all of their work. They've had two classes now and they love it.

The second class was making clay tiles. We've been reading a lot about dinosaur fossils lately, so Kyle chose to make some fossils on his tile. Reeve made a fish, Kyle made a flower, and they both made one with Christmas trees.

The display in the museum right now is filled with differently decorated herons. The kid's favorite was the "Heron Potter" heron.

Like the rest of the country Reeve and Kyle are very interested in the election. They watched both the DNC and the RNC and decided without a doubt that they want Barak Obama to win the election...too bad they can't vote. They have their own reasons, and Tom and I have listened to them talk late into the night about politics in their rooms. Their main reasons seems to be environmental at this point, and they say they just like Obama better. We usually check out Yahoo's Political Dashboard to see who's ahead in the polls.
One day I decided to trick them and I created my own scenario where Obama was in the lead in every single state. Kyle took one look and was overjoyed.

Then I had to break it to him that I manipulated the map. He thought that was the coolest thing ever and had a blast controlling which state would vote for whom. He just couldn't bring himself to give McCain any states, but Reeve convinced him that was unrealistic. Kyle's compromise was to give Rhode Island (the smallest state he could find) to McCain.

Reeve spent a little more time thinking about it and came up with this scenario.

I'm weird, but I find it extremely amusing to be talking about the State of California and have Kyle immediately say, "Oh yeah I know that State, they have 55 votes."