the sleppys

Dad here….for the second day in a row I took one of the boys to the toy store. Each wanted to spend his saved paycheck. Kyle made his very first purchase with his own money yesterday. He bought the Bionicle Skrall. Today, Ty made his fourth purchase, second toy purchase, with his money. Each time in the toy store I was keenly aware that my boys, our oldest children, were the only children in the store making their own purchases. I cannot begin to describe my pride. Ty also went to work with me and ran all of the normal errands. He met every encounter with the people of my world with engagement and politeness. Rarely did I have to step in and help direct his conversation to facilitate adult to seven year old communication. Our confident seven year old boy was remarkably friendly, polite, and refreshing as he talked about the nature in our yard, his helpfulness around the house, and the accomplishments of his siblings. Now, if only this home-schooled child could learn some basic social skills.

I was telling a mother of two girls that Ty went to a boy’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. At three years old, he clung to Dad’s arm for an hour before he sat by himself in the booth. The other children ran around and played. He was still, quiet, observant, and no more than four inches away from Dad the entire time.

“Wait until he gets to the real world!” exclaimed she.

A young public schooled boy asked me why I home school our children. He mentioned that his school was a good school. He also talked about a family who lives on his No Outlet street with five children who are home schooled. Without waiting for my response, he said, “The mom does that because she’s afraid of the world.”

“Oh, is she?” I wondered where he got such an idea.

“Yea, and her kids are never allowed to come over.”

I didn’t answer the boys original question because he obviously didn’t want to hear it and because I didn’t want to get into topics such as parental influence, abdication of responsibilities, and low quality government workers with a nine year old boy.

On a Teacher Work Day, Dear Husband was at Target when he overheard a mother’s telling her children, “This is why I shop while you are at school, so I don’t have to put up with your misbehavior.”

Yet… our children give a proper greeting, hold open the door, give the right of way to elders. When prompted, they give up their seat for others. They sit quietly at the bank, and stand in single file when I’m shopping. They are children who forget where they are sometimes, so every once in a while, I have to call attention to them while in public.

Do we not ALL live in the real world? A successful bachelor banker doesn’t live the life that a single mother of two who is on the dole lives, but they both live in the real world. What exactly do people mean when they mention “the real world”? If it means gangs, drug pushers, and people of questionable values, the sexual education of young children, loud music, video games, and high fructose corn syrup, then, by the power invested in us by God Himself, we will strike it down with our flaming swords!

But it is all in how we treat people and to what we are accustomed. Ty’s clinging to his father for an hour is a representation of how we chose to live, where we chose to go on our free times… the library, the park, the wilderness, places that harbor mostly quiet (the real world). When Taylor accompanies me to my trips to the fabric store, she stays close to me, on the right side of the walkway, with her voice down, exhibiting behavior that is lacking from other four year olds. She’ll get a little shriek in her voice when she sees a pink, glittery fabric that would be perfect for a tutu. In our “real world,” Kyle greets the grocery store’s security guard and cashiers with a hearty “Good Morning” and stands aside when a stock clerk has to make his way down an aisle while pushing a filled cart.

We, Sleppys, are not afraid of the real world. School cannot be counted on to do what is clearly a parent’s responsibility, which is to teach a child how to treat others. NOT EVEN CHURCH will teach them that. We, Sleppys, already live in the real world, day after day, guiding, teaching, encouraging, witnessing to, sacrificing for, correcting, and molding our young breed.

Just you wait until *your* children get to the “real world.” Wait to see how shunned they’ll be, classified as rude, crass, grotesque, tasteless, loud.

(Aside, Talon loves wearing her brothers and sisters’ boots. They are so big on her, so she stomps around the house, looking like Link in Iron Boots. Totally adorable.)

From The McLaughlin Group, June 11, 2010:

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: This is from the government manual on what the Minerals Management Service does. It assesses the nature, extent, recoverability and value of leasable minerals on the Outer Continental Shelf. The service conducts extensive environmental studies and consultations with state officials prior to issuing leases, easements or rights of way. Once permits or other approvals have been issued, inspectors conduct frequent inspections of offshore operations and environmental studies, personnel, collect data to ensure that marine and coastal environments are kept free of pollution.

Searching for the original document, I found this, though not the source material, an interesting discovery.

Why does the media focus on BP over this oil leak? We the people, through the President, through the Department of Interior (a Cabinet member), through the Minerals Management Service (MMS), bear responsibility for this. We as a people have oversight, yet have decided to look the other way. The Chief Executive is ultimately responsible when one of his departments under-performs at best or causes the citizens harm at worst.

This will be edited over time.

It starts in the beginning of May, when the heat index rises above 90, when the Royal Poincianas bloom in reds and yellows, when the “dry” season in South Florida is in its dusk… We see the dawn of flag season.

Our flag is on continuous display in our foyer, between the Ten Commandments and the Ten Home Rules posters. We have it mounted on a pole, which is stuck in a pipe, which is embedded in a bucket of concrete. On Loyalty Day, May 1st, we take it outside to wave, and we carry it inside at sunset. No more than two weeks later, we carry out the same procedure for Armed Forces Day. Two weeks after that, Memorial Day. Two weeks after that, we fly it on Flag Day, June 14, which is also the birthday of every US Army soldier and veteran. Again, on Independence Day, our nation’s birthday, we let it fly in the free American breeze.

We do display it outside for other days such as Patriot Day and Presidents Day, but I do love the quick succession of display days in the early summertime. Five times in eight weeks make it memorable.

We had been packing all week. Dad made a checklist of all we needed including sleeping bags, camp stove, cooking utensils dry foods, cloth napkins. We packed it all in The Charles Daniels (our van) on Friday night, so on Saturday morning, we just had to put our boots on and brush our teeth… after eating.

At eight o’clock, we reached the gate of the National Park. The water levels were the lowest that we’d seen them. The dry season was afoot in the Everglades. Birds that we hadn’t seen all summer long were flying about, concentrated in pools of water along the park’s main road, picking what mosquito larvae was left. A small alligator, four footer, relaxed by itself in one of the pools.

The Anhinga Trail was busy with people as it is extremely inviting during the dry season. The parking lot was at 80% capacity (in the summers, it’s at 10%). We met with the children’s maternal grandfather and participated in the ranger-led walk. Of the ten children (12 and under) in a party of 30, our two boys asked the most questions. They stayed close to the ranger the whole time, listening intently.

After the walk, the children’s paternal grandmother met with us to walk the Gumbo Limbo Trail, which is adjacent to Anhinga. It is a different habitat, made of hardwood trees (Gumbo Limbo), ferns, and palms.

We drove to Long Pine Key where we had sandwiches and chips at the picnic area. Grandma made cupcakes at her house and brought them over to sing “Happy Birthday.” We presented Ty with his presents. I took a nap on the Everglades ground. The boys took a walk to the pond while the girls cleaned up.

After we said our goodbyes we drove to the campground and set up our tent. It wasn’t even three o’clock, yet the sun cast long shadows on the pineland. The boys went off to look firewood. The girls stayed by the tent to prepare a dinner of kernel corn, potatoes, and ham. At twilight, we packed into the van again to drive over to Anhinga Trail.

It was dark. We were the only ones there. The sky was clear. To the northeast, there was an orange glow of the city, but the lights didn’t take over the stars much. We saw two shooting stars and two satellites. Thankfully there wasn’t a whole lot of alligator action because the sky distracted us with all its gems.

We were about to pile back into the van when Dad asked if we wanted to hike the Gumbo Limbo trail. “Okay, let’s do it,” was my response. We all still had our flashlights on and walked it rather swiftly. Every once in a while, however, we would give instructions to place the light toward the belly and make it pitch black again.

We made it safely to the campground where the children brushed their teeth and went to sleep in the tent while Dad and I talked while sitting near the fire.

Kendall and Talon say Please, Thank you, and You’re Welcome. They doesn’t sound the like way practiced speakers do, and each girl has a unique way of speaking. But for experienced parents, we understand that they are trying to say these phrases. Talon points to something, anything, and asks, “What’s this?” She points to something else and asks, “What’s that?” But it sounds like “wash deesh” and “wash dat.” Kendall is repeating the Knock, Knock jokes that she hears from Kyle. “Na na,” she says. “Who’s there?” I ask. And there’s a pause. She smiles and says, “Eee!” I think that’s the extent of the joke because I ask “Eee Who?” and she giggles.

*******

Dad brewed some beer a month ago. Ty and I helped him bottle and cap it. We had some during the “Lost” season premiere. We gave some to Dad’s brother and a cashier, with whom we are friendly, at the grocery store. We really downed the bottles during the Daytona 500 last weekend.

We took a different kind of trip to the Everglades today. Dad woke up at five in the morning and started on breakfast. I made sure the children were dressed and prepared for the day’s hikes. We piled into the van at six-twenty and drove to the Anhinga Trail.

The sun was coming up quickly, and it was already sunrise when we got there. The photographers were out, taking pictures of the birds’ morning feeding. We saw more kinds of birds that usual. A Black-crowned Night Heron stood quietly along the water. A few common thrush????? skitted back and forth, between the pond apple trees and the sawgrass.

The boys took a hike on the Gumbo Limbo trail while I sat with the girls in the breezeway.

At Flamingo, we drove by a group of birdwatchers and photographers who were observing an osprey that was having a meal on its nest.

We weren’t too impressed Flamingo, the last stop on the Everglades’ Main Road. The camp sites were all open, no privacy, no shade. Well, it was the beach. There was a parking lot across the street from the camp sites. We prefer to have some foliage for privacy, some shade, and our van right next to our picnic table.

On the way back, we stopped for a meal at Parotus Pond. One particular Swallow-tail Kite kept showing off for us – or checking us out while we had lunch. It flew gracefully, moving its v-shaped tail at all angles. A Roseate Spoonbill flew over us as soon as we got there. It was a very pretty bird, all pink. The hawks ki-reed at each other right over top of us, hovering in the wind. The other hawk was about 100 yards away. There were plenty of turkey vultures hoping around, too.

We LOOKED AT where an alligator was sitting earlier. We formed hypotheses on how he used his claws to get back into the water. We knew that he was there earlier because we stopped by Parotus Pond while on our way to Flamingo and saw him.

We also had some small talk with a couple from Pennsylvania. They were familiar with Yeungling.