7 Quick Takes about Economic Realities, Looking Like an Australian Breakdancer, and Two of My Favorite Movies

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

Phillip had been perusing real estate listings in our area (probably because he's sick of everything in our house being broken) and the 10- and 12-year-olds saw the Zillow map on the computer, peppered with red pins showing houses for sale and their asking prices.

"Look at this one!" they gasped, zeroing in on the most expensive house. It wasn't exactly a house, more like a $3.4 million estate with an in-ground pool and cabana, garage space for six cars, a home gym, heated workshop, and state-of-the-art kitchen (two kitchens, actually, one was outdoors by the pool) with a center island big enough for me to parallel park my minivan on.

As they clicked through the listing photos issuing a steady stream of "Woah!" and "Oh my gosh, there's a waterfall in the pool!" I knew it was time to bring them back to reality. 

"Sorry, guys, I need the computer," I said, and went back to what I was about to do before they started shopping for our million-dollar compound: Googling smoothie recipes for the discount cantaloupe we'd bought off the reduced rack at the grocery store. 

—2—

Nothing in life makes you consider your own mortality like buying a tree. We want to plant a new tree in the front yard to replace the one that the power company cut down in February, and it's proving to be a tougher decision than I thought.

Historically, we just buy the cheapest version of everything and that's what works for us. But it doesn't quite make sense with a tree: Phillip and I will 100% be dead before a tiny baby tree grows into the big leafy canopy that we envision. Trees get exponentially more expensive the bigger they are, and I find myself struggling to quantify exactly how much enjoyment per decade a larger tree is worth, in terms of dollars. 

We went to a tree farm the other day and it was the weirdest purchase experience I've ever had. Never have I been in Target trying to decide what to buy by turning to Phillip and asking, "So how long do you think we're going to live, anyway?"

—3—

I always clip my hair back when I wash my face at night, but one night I had a baseball cap on so I just flipped it around backwards to hold my hair back to saved myself the effort.

Phillip chose that moment to walk into the bathroom, and commented, "You look really cool with your hat on backwards."

"Thank you," I said.

"Like that Australian lady at the Olympics."

Well, I looked it up and her hat wasn’t even on backwards at the Olympics, so it must have been something else about me that reminded him of Raygun the breakdancer. I guess this is just the kind of energy I'm bringing to the table:

—4—

On the way home from my 10-year-old's gymnastics practice, we stopped at a local farm stand that turns one of their greenhouses into a haunted house for Halloween. I heard that it was short and inexpensive, and I was excited to take him to his first haunted house

When we got there, though, the place was packed. We wedged the van into the teeny tiny parking lot, which wasn't easy since it was both poorly-lit and crawling with people. And then we went to the greenhouse and quickly figured out that we'd be standing in line for twice as long as we'd actually be in the haunted house, looked at each other, and unanimously decided to go home.

So we tried to go to his first haunted house, but unfortunately the scariest part was getting in and out of the parking lot.

—5—

This week I got to watch not one, but two of my favorite movies with the kids. We don't rewatch movies very often, but these are two that we absolutely do.

The first is obviously Hocus Pocus. I watch it every October with the kids in our family who like it (not all of them do.) And when they're all grown up and gone, I'll continue to watch it every year by myself. It's so campy, and I love it.

The second is The Princess Bride, which we wanted to watch again because the 12-year-old is going to go trick-or-treating as the "man in black." It's a charming movie that is clever and clean, super-quotable, and all the characters are so lovable and perfect as who they are. It's also somewhat campy. I think I may have a type.

—6—

My 12-year-old son has always played soccer in the spring and fall, but in the past year he's really gotten passionate about it. He regularly laments to me that we don't have a flat yard so he can practice his shooting and dribbling.

He's right. Our yard is very... natural. I prefer to think of it as "rolling hills," plus it's plagued by tunneling moles and one large depression in the ground caused by decomposing tree roots and/or a portal to the Underworld. 

—7—

When Phillip went on a work trip to India a few weeks ago, he fell asleep by accident the morning he arrived and was never able to adjust to the time difference. The whole week he was there, he was waking up at 2 AM and taking weird naps after work.

So we were hopeful that maybe after he returned it wouldn't be very hard to get back on our home time zone, since he'd never fully gotten off of it. But no, he's still waking up at 2 AM and taking weird naps after work. 

Actually, last night he reports sleeping all night. Just in time for Daylight Savings to end and mess with him yet again. Poor guy.

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7 Quick Takes about Bike Trains, Looking Like the Smartest Girl at the Gas Station, and Pickle Plants

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

My friend organized a group of us to go on a rail bike trip. I'd never even heard of such a thing before, and said yes before I really even knew what it was.

You know how they sometimes convert old railroad tracks into paved trails for walking? Well, sometimes apparently they leave the tracks and use special bikes that you pedal along the tracks. We were even able to hook all our bikes together like a train... a bike train.

The fall leaves were so pretty as we were biking along through the woods. It was a really cold day, but I wore my lined fleece hat that is about an inch thick, so I was okay.

—2—

With my youngest two kids being 10 and 12 years old, I am alllllmost done helping make and put together Halloween costumes.

Almost.

Helping create DIY costumes is just not a part of parenting I ever really enjoyed. I think it's too much like a craft, and I hate crafts.

Anyway, I was trying to convince Phillip to take on the Halloween costumes this year, but I know his M.O. is flying by the seat of his pants so I tried to warn him: "You have to plan ahead to source the materials and paint stuff and let it dry... you can't just do everything the day before," I told him. 

He just laughed and replied "You'd be surprised what I can do the day before."

But in the end, I ended up taking the Halloween costume supervisor job again this year, mostly since Phillip was taking a work trip to India this week and wouldn't even be here. (Just in case I'm tempted to put him in charge of planning the kids' costumes next year, I should remember that he packed for this trip at the last possible second and was running around looking for his passport 10 minutes after he was supposed to leave for the airport.)

—3—

How many times have you been called for jury duty in your life? I just got my 4th summons in the mail, which seems to me like kind of a lot for somebody who's only 44.

I've actually never been empaneled when summoned for jury duty, but I have spent the entire morning in a basement room of the courthouse playing on my phone while waiting for something (anything) to happen and then gotten sent home. I hope my service will be similarly brief in January. 

—4—

There are numerous things I don't like about our van, but one of them is going to the gas station. There's something funny about the gas tank that triggers that auto shut-off on the gas pump immediately.

The only workaround is to flip the nozzle upside-down, making me look like a complete idiot who's never used a gas station before. I'm aware that there are most likely pictures of me pumping gas upside-down on the Internet with nasty comments about how people with my IQ shouldn't reproduce. TOO LATE.

—5—

The 10-year-old was extra-excited for our weekly pizza night. He and his dad always share a gluten-free pizza, but with Phillip out of town, guess who got to eat the entire thing by himself:

I can't believe he fit all this in his stomach.

I actually made him put half of that pizza back, finish what was on the plate, and get a salad before moving on to the second half of the pizza. It barely slowed him down.

—6—

I got superglue on my fingers while fixing something around the house. It was annoying, but skin is constantly sloughing off and the tackiness wears off in a day or two.

It doesn't do that, however, on your fingernails. Right now it looks like I'm wearing really badly applied topcoat that is apparently going to be there until I grow them out. It could be a while; fingernails only grow the thickness of a credit card per week.

—7—

When my neighbor moved last year, she made me take her snake plant. I tried to refuse, but she insisted that it was "impossible to kill." Apparently she hadn't gotten to know me well enough.

I think I was watering it too much, and three of the leaves got root rot and fell out of the pot. I read that you can cut off the mushy parts and propagate the leaves in perlite to regrow roots and replant them eventually, so I figured I might as well give it a shot.

My son walked by and said, "Is this a pickle plant?"

Yes. Yes, it is. Just kidding, they're toxic. Don't eat them.

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7 Quick Takes about Partying Like It's 1799, Finally Being Able to Fax All of My Friends, and Exciting Packages That Show Up on Your Doorstep

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday Sunday! How was your week? 

—1—

Phillip and I were invited to a wig party! If you're wondering what a wig party is, that's the same question everyone has. 

My friend Melanie made it up. She belongs to this affiliate program where she gets free items, and a lot of them are wigs. So she just kind of collects them (as one does) and when she accumulates enough of them she has a wig party.

She has us all over for conversation and party food, and we do a white elephant-style wig exchange, where everyone takes turns picking a mystery wig from a pile of gift bags in the middle of the room or stealing a wig from someone else.

Phillip received a blonde colonial style with a tied-back ponytail, and I got this Elizabeth Bennet-looking number:

 Unfortunately, he's really going to have to commit to this look and shave off his sideburns if he wants to make it work.

 

—2—

We also went to the Quinceañera of our daughter's friend. We didn't really know the birthday girl or her family that well, but my daughter was part of the court so they had a choreographed dance and everything.

I was told that this dress cost more than her mom's wedding dress, but I'm sure she'll find lots of occasions to wear it again.

At least 250% fancier than my own wedding reception.

The whole Quinceañera was a really beautiful production. My favorite was a dance the birthday girl did with her little sister, who was about 7 years old. With an oval frame between them so it looked like a mirror, they copied each other's movements to a ballad about growing up. If they'd been my kids it would have been a cue for the waterworks, but luckily I didn't know either of them too well so I was free to just smile and watch.

—3—

Our old printer (R.I.P.) was the best printer and lasted forever, so we knew we wanted to replace it with the same brand. But the base model only comes in white now, which would look awfully weird in our space. When a big box arrived a few days later, I was surprised to see a picture of a not-white printer on the front.

"How did you find a black one?" I asked Phillip.

"We had to upgrade to a higher-end model," he said, taking the printer out of the box.  "We are now the proud owners of a fax machine."

It also prints double-sided and collates. I don't even know what "collate" means. I just know it's fancy. 

—4—

My 12-year-old came home from school to see a shipping envelope from Amazon on the doorstep and got so excited. He was like, "Can I open it? Can I open it?"

So I let him.

The truth is, I actually was excited about getting this. Being an adult is stupid.

—5—

The 14-year-old's cross country team goes to a night meet every year, where they run under the lights and the energy is crazy. It's super-fun, but after the meet ends and the bus drops her off at the school, she can't drive so one of us has to go pick her up.

I went to bed and set an alarm for their expected return time, and at 12:30AM I joined a line of cars with other disgruntled parents in the school parking lot just in time for my daughter to call and say "You haven't left yet, have you? I'm looking at GPS and it says we'll actually be there at 1."

It would've been a very awkward amount of time to go back home, so I just waited for half an hour in a cold minivan (gas is too expensive to idle in these unprecedented times) that also smelled a little because a trash can had spilled in the trunk earlier that day on the way to the dump and I needed to shampoo the floor.

It's true that you get no sleep when your kids are babies and toddlers, but it's certainly not untrue when they're teenagers. And at least toddlers like to cuddle and don't call you "unc."

—6—

While I was out of the house, Phillip was at home multi-tasking and helping the 10-year-old write a short talk for church. The thing is, he didn't have time to actually sit down and help him write it, because he had to take the 12-year-old to soccer.

So Phillip fed the topic of our son's talk into Google Gemini, and asked the AI to generate five thought questions and five activities appropriate for a 10-year-old (like looking up a scripture, etc.) that would help him write the talk. He opened up a Google Doc for our son to type it in and Googled "20-minute timer" to keep him on task before leaving.

When he returned from soccer, the 10-year-old had researched and written a solid 2-minute talk. Google is such a good dad.

—7—

I racked my brain to find a last Take, because in truth a lot of this week was consumed by an issue that's going to stay off the Internet for privacy. That's actually why this post was a day late, too.

So I guess this is my 7th Take, and even if I could think of something else it's probably good to remind you that my family has a behind-the-scenes life as well as a public highlight reel (yes, my highlight reel apparently involves my car smelling like garbage.) What I mean is, focusing on the funny 7QT parts of life helps me deal with the parts that make me want to shut my head repeatedly in the oven. So carry on, you guys. You're doing a good job.

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7 Quick Takes about Ancient Literature Showdowns, How to Be a Chill Person, and Looking with Satisfaction at a Pile of the World's Ugliest Mending

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

My 10- and 12-year-olds really know how to fight over nothing, but this was a weird one even for them. 

The scene: the boys are cleaning up their room before bed, and the 10-year-old goes to put some books in the bookshelf, including his graphic novel adaptations of  The Odyssey and The Iliad.

"It's the other way around," the 12-year-old said, rearranging the order of the two.

"No, The Odyssey goes first."

"The Iliad does."

"The Odyssey was written first, but The Iliad happens earlier."

Now as an English major I know who's right and who's wrong here. But that's not the point. I was just frozen in place watching them having the most literary "I know you are but what am I" argument of all time, and I'm just like, What is happening here? All I know is, I fought with my brother WAY different when I was a kid.

—2—

Whenever I see bumper stickers, I always think "That person feels so strongly about XYZ that they went out of their way to affix a more-or-less permanent sticker to their primary mode of transportation for everyone to see."

So I laughed when I pulled up behind these guys at a stoplight:

Passionate about being completely unbothered.

The fact that there's a dent on the bumper is a chef's kiss, if you ask me. The driver got run into, looked at the damage, shrugged, and just let it be because didn't you see my sticker?! I really couldn't care less.

—3—

One unique feature of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we believe there are currently apostles and a prophet, just like in the Bible, and they lead the church and tell us the things that God collectively wants us to know.

When I say that, sometimes people will raise their eyebrows and say "Really? Well, what do they tell you?" 

Sometimes the answer is something we already know, like "love your neighbor" and we just need a reminder and/or a kick in the pants. But here's one example of a general conference talk from this past weekend that I can point to and say "Here's a societal problem they're warning us about right now, actually."

Talk is 13 minutes long, text is here.

If you don't have time to read it, the short answer is gambling/betting. I think gambling has been mostly rebranded on the Internet as "prediction markets." Which makes it sound like the stock market, but it isn't. You're not buying a share of a company and seeing dividends on your investment. You're just profiting at the expense of other people. And as Christians, there are definitely better uses of our time and money than that.

—4—

Now that half of our kids have left the house, we're already doing the boomer thing where we have too many leftovers and find moldy food in the fridge. This is how it happens, I guess. You just run out of people to eat things before they go bad.

It's shocking how quickly the house empties out after the oldest child goes. It seems weird to complain about only having three left at home, it's just that for 10 years the house was never not full of people. I never in a million years would have believed it could so boringly quiet. When the kids were little, I bought foam panels and fabric, fully intending to make sound-absorbing panels for the living room. 

I don't exactly miss that. But I also kind of do.

—5—

Right now we're under siege by these western conifer seed bugs. This is the time of year when they're all looking for a warm place to stay, and our house is pretty darn warm. So they're literally all over the outside of our house and windows going, "I know it's warm in there! I can feel it!"

They're kind of gross-looking, but they're harmless. They don't sting or make messes or destroy anything. And they're easy to catch/kill when we do find them inside.

However, I'm still not a fan of getting jump scared by seeing one crawling up your leg while you're minding your own business working at the computer, so I'm excited for them to give up and just hibernate or whatever they do over winter. 

Until then, I bought some peppermint essential oil because I read online that spraying it around your doors and windows might deter them from visiting so often.

—6—

I am a below average seamstress. But I know how to use the sewing machine and I'm the best my family's got, so I repaired a stack of clothes recently that needed to be hemmed up, mended, or was missing buttons.

I was never formally taught to sew, but my basic sewing philosophy is "I'm smarter than a piece of fabric, so I can figure it out." And I usually do figure it out, even if the method I end up using isn't the correct way to do it. 

For example, the dress my daughter's wearing as an attendant at her friend's quinceañera this weekend. The halter strap needed to be shortened, but since she's going to be wearing this dress just once for a few hours, I didn't want to take the whole thing apart and do it properly. I just took a good-enough shortcut and snipped off the end of the strap, folded it over, and sewed it shut. 

I give the end product a 4 out of 10, but as long as it holds together for a few hours I'm satisfied with that.

—7—

I just bought my daughter contacts on 1-800 Contacts. It was her first set of contacts so we qualified for a first-time customer discount. Great! And then it asked if we wanted to use our insurance benefit, so I checked 'yes.' Sweet! Look at me, saving money.

When I went to check out, and it gave me the message: "your insurance benefit cannot be used with a discount code."

Umm... why the heck not?? I pay premiums for that insurance benefit. It's not a coupon 1-800 Contacts is handing out. Do they honestly think I don't know that? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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7 Quick Takes about Hitting the Batting Cages, Car Key Replacement Sagas, and Mobility Content for Senior Citizens Like Me

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

Phillip was having a rough morning and told me he felt "old and crunchy," whatever that means. I gave a couple of suggestions of things that might make him feel better and he shot them down, so I asked "Well, then what would a lively young person do today?"

Immediately he answered, "Eat waffles for breakfast and go to a batting cage."

What? He just had that completely at the ready.

—2—

I went to fill up the van and saw this sticker on the pump. It was at least nice to have a little chuckle to interrupt the stroke I was having watching the numbers go up. 

Actually, this is the cheap station. Everywhere else is $4.69/gallon.

My 14-year-old is already bemoaning the price of gas because "she won't be able to afford to go anywhere" when she gets her license.

—3—

When I pick up the 10-year-old from gymnastics, I bring him dinner to eat in the car on the way home. The other night it was a yummy pork and cabbage stir fry dish that we haven't made in years. 

He unwrapped the foil, saw the pile of stir fried cabbage, and said "Ugh, onions."

"Those aren't onions, they're cabbage!" I corrected.

But amazingly, that didn't wipe the disgusted look off his face. I should not have been surprised when he paused and said "I don't know if that's better or worse." 

—4—

About two months ago, I somehow lost our spare car key. I swore I brought it out to the car with me, and then it was just gone. We needed a replacement, but I waited for a while just in case it turned up somewhere.

It didn't, so this week I got to work.

As a person who came of age in the era where you could make a copy of your car key at Ace Hardware for two dollars, having to visit a dealer and fork over 200 bucks for a laser-cut key and programmed fob feels like highway robbery. So I investigated how to do it cheaper.

I ended up buying an uncut key on Amazon, calling around to find a locksmith who laser-cuts car keys, driving there not realizing that I had the wrong key type, driving back home, returning it, ordering another one, and then going back to the locksmith to get it cut. When all was said and done, for a week's worth of work and a total cost of $41, I had done it!

"That sounds like the most Evans way ever to get a new key," my 20-year-old said when I told her about it over the phone. Seems like we always do things the hardest, most annoying way possible, but at least we save some money. 

I felt pretty good about it, too, until later that same day when I went to vacuum out the car and found the lost key wedged underneath the passenger seat.

—5—

They say that your 40s are wild: some of your friends are having babies while some of your other friends are busy becoming grandparents.

And that's probably why social media has no idea what stage of life I'm in. I am regularly served Facebook reels like this:

(Facebook is being a turd lately so if the video doesn't play, click "Video on Facebook" at the bottom of the video box or click here)

I'm 10% offended that Facebook thinks I'm a senior citizen, and 90% like "Yes, absolutely! Gotta keep moving to keep moving! Show me some hip mobility content!"

—6—

Phillip and I went to a free workshop on wills and trusts at our public library, and we were predictably the youngest ones there by 20 years.

My favorite slide of the presentation.

The woman running the workshop was an estate lawyer, and at one point she mentioned planning for your digital assets, such as, say, your Instagram account if that's where your income comes from. 

I leaned over to whisper a snide comment to Phillip about not wanting the family to be torn apart after my death because they were all fighting over the $87 a year from my blog, and the presenter stopped talking, pointed at me, and asked, "Are you an influencer?"

Ma'am, I just drove all over town and spent a week getting a new car key that was only useful for 5 hours. There is absolutely no one who wants to copy my lifestyle.

—7—

It's that time of year again! General conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is this weekend and I'm pretty excited. 

Unfortunately we have 49 different kids' sports games/practices/activities on Saturday (I rounded up from 4) so we might not catch a lot of the Saturday sessions live, but we'll do what we can. And Sunday will be a restful day to just sit and listen.

If you want to know what general conference is, click here or here. If you want to know if you're invited, the answer is yes. And if you want to watch it virtually with me, the live YouTube link is here. Have a great weekend!

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7 Quick Takes about Messy Things for Sale, Finishing a Beastly Painting Job, and Casting Spells in a Field

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

After putting a few pairs of reasonably-priced boxer briefs in the Amazon cart, I asked my son which ones he wanted. Pointing to a camouflage-patterned pair, he joked, "Is this so that no one can see I'm wearing underwear?"

These didn't make the final cut, but I did show them to my son with a smile:

"Do you want some messy underwear?" I asked. Of course I know who Lionel Messi is, but this was too good a pun. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me away from making this joke.

"They come pre-soiled," Phillip added, confirming once again that he and I belong together.

—2—

I promise that one of these weeks I will stop talking about painting. But not this week.

Teamwork makes the dream work.

I'm pleased to say that the living room is officially finished. I finished the accent wall by myself during the week, but Phillip and I worked all day Saturday to do the other tall walls with a rented scaffolding. 

The three kids were asking to help, too, but I've been a mom for way too long to be fooled by that. First of all, they've never painted before, and the main living area of the house isn't the place to make beginner mistakes. They can do that when we paint their bedrooms. Second of all, there's a difference between "helping" and "being helpful." They only wanted to "help," which means painting for 30 seconds, getting paint on their clothes, then skipping off to play while I drop everything to work on getting Smokey Taupe out of their favorite pants. This is not my first rodeo.

—3—

On Monday, I finished up the entryway, which is just a single story. Turns out, I don't mind painting a normal one-story room at all. I actually find it kind of meditative. Only when it's broken up by going up and down a scaffolding and moving it around 1,000 times does it make me slightly homicidal.

Which is good, because the bathroom, kitchen, and mudroom still need to be painted. I'm going to take a break until next week, though.

—4—

The family was starting to watch an episode of a TV series, and the 10-year-old sat down with a glass of milk and spilled it on the couch almost instantly.

He went to go get a rag to clean it up, and then I remembered a Facebook post I'd just seen. It said something like "you can tell what kind of parent you are by how you react in the first 3 seconds after your kids break something." What had been our initial reactions?

What I did: shake my head and mutter "I don't want to see that." 

What Phillip did: calmly remark "Wow." 

I don't have a clue what that says about us. Probably that we're tired.

—5—

I pulled up behind a car with a funny sticker on the rear window. It was a silhouette of Bigfoot with the words "Gone Squatchin'." 

I took a picture, but the light had changed so the car had already started moving and I was a little too far away. Since it was blurry I wasn't going to post it here, but when I thought about it, I realized that an out-of-focus picture of a Bigfoot sticker sighting is actually perfect.

—6—

Speaking of other funny things I see on the road, I drive by this lone tree covered in vines sometimes, and I always think it looks like a wizard raising him arms to the horizon in an incantation:

Alakazam!

I have thought that for years and sometimes literally laugh as I drive past the old sorcerer at his tricks, especially if there's a song on the radio that makes him seem particularly ridiculous. But I pointed it out to my kids this week and they were like "Huh?" They couldn't see it, even after I showed them where his head, robe, and arms were.

—7—

I can't figure out how to embed it on the blog,  but take a minute to put all the pains and irritations of family life in perspective by going and watching this video.

It's really good advice, and it helps that it comes from an older woman who probably knows a thing or two. But also, one might argue that when it comes to your babies becoming teenagers, you actually had no idea what you were asking for.

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Democratic Republic of the Congo

I'm aware that today is officially the first day of autumn. But I'm obviously struggling to keep up, and if I want to post about our final country of our Educational Summer Vacation 2026 on the fall equinox, then I will!

When the kids chose countries to learn about for the summer, my 10-year-old decided to be funny and choose countries that all have "Republic" in the title, the last of which was Democratic Republic of the Congo. Joke's on him, though, because the DRC is actually pretty cool.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you buy something using one of those links, the cost stays the same to you but I receive a small commission for referring you.

Monday

First, let's clear up what country Democratic Republic of the Congo actually is. Look at a world map, and you'll see that there are two similarly-named Congo countries right next to each other. Their capitols, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, sit right across from the Congo River from each other, making them the two closest neighboring capitol cities in the world.

Orange = Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC or Congo-Kinshasa.)
Green = Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville.)

Sometimes people call both countries "the Congo" because they're in the Congo Basin. Or because they don't really know African geography. Or because both countries used to be part of the historic Kingdom of Kongo (I did spell that correctly.)

Anyway, I don't think my 10-year-old knew any of that when he picked Democratic Republic of the Congo, but look at that: we're already learning stuff and we haven't even gotten started yet. 

My kids drew the flag of the DRC, and then we learned about the country. The land itself is rich in resources but 70% of the population falls below the national poverty line. 

We watched this 3-minute intro video to the DRC:

Then we read Democratic Republic of the Congo, a colorful picture book introducing unique things about the DRC and using a few words from Lingala, Tshiluba, and Swahili.

Tuesday

Have I said how much I love the Who Is book series? Of course I have. Well, they have one called Where Is the Congo? and we read chapter 1 today to learn about the land and animals. The book Trekking in the Congo Rainforest is also excellent, like an adult's book but with pictures. I started it with the kids and left them to finish it on their own (which I know they did because they told me later how to tell if a hippo is mad.)

We learned that the Congo River is the deepest river in the world, and also one of the most dangerous as explained in this short video.

Most of the animal species I know of that only live in one place in the world are isolated on islands, but I was surprised to learn that there are two animals who only live in the Congo rainforest (not counting zoos): bonobos and okapis.

Bonobos, to me, look a lot like chimpanzees. There are physical differences (bonobos have more slender builds, darker faces, and a hairstyle with a middle part) but the more striking differences to me were social. Bonobos are matriarchal and also are sometimes called the "hippie" primates because they don't fight.

Okapis are bizarre animals,. They're related to giraffes but kind of look like a cross between a zebra, a horse, and an anteater. They also only live in the Congo Rainforest, and really only in a tiny portion of the Congo Rainforest called the Ituri Forest.

After watching videos about bonobos and okapis, I asked my kids to pick one and write a story about it, in the style of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. 

The best opening line of a work of literature ever has to be "If you give an okapi a bat guano, he's going to ask for some herbs..."

At the end of the day, I gave the kids Gorilla Dawn by Gill Lewis (for ages 9-14) and picked up Emerald Labyrinth: A Scientist's Adventures in the Jungles of the Congo for my 22-year-old to read while she was home for the summer from college. As a scientist, I thought she'd be interested.

Wednesday

70% of the world's cobalt, a key ingredient in the lithium batteries that run basically all of our electronics, come from the DRC. It seems ironic that in the country where it comes from, only 10% of the population has access to electricity at all and only 2% of the roads are paved. 

 

There are other valuable minerals that come from the DRC, including gold, tantalum, tungsten, and tin. It's one of the richest countries for minerals. Again, ironic. In a sad way.

Another valuable export in Democratic Republic of the Congo is rubber. I actually had no idea prior to this week where rubber comes from, but it comes from trees, kind of like how you tap maple trees for syrup.

My kids and I watched this TED-Ed video about the Rubber Terror of the late 1800s, but I wouldn't recommend it for younger than middle school, and even then you should probably screen this video because it's pretty dark.

If my kids had been older, we might've spent a day discussing the scramble for Africa, the European exploitation of people and resources there, and the African rulers who participated in and profited off the slave trade. But they're not, and it was a little heavy, so we pivoted to something lighter and loosely related to what we'd been learning about: making a DIY bouncy ball.

True, no actual rubber was used in this activity. But the point was to have fun, because they're kids and it's summer vacation. 

We followed this tutorial, using school glue, borax, and food coloring.

For some reason, the yellow bouncy ball did not solidify at all and remained a gloppy mess. My son basically smeared it all over his hands and arms, and said it was the most fun he'd had all day.

The blue bouncy ball was a little more successful, but it stained my 10-year-old's hands for an entire day after that.

Thursday

Today, we continued with chapter 2 of Where Is the Congo? and learned about the Mbutu pygmies. The average male height is 4'11." It was a little hard to find resources to learn more, but this video was well-researched and interesting even though it was just pictures with a voiceover.

One of the traditional arts is Mbuti barkcloth art, like that seen here. We were fresh out of fig tree bark, but we are becoming masters of substitution after 14 years of The Educational Summer Vacation and the kids had a lot of fun approximating the look by crumpling up paper bags, smoothing them out, dipping them in water, and pounding them flat with a mallet and drying them in the sun.

This part may not have been completely necessary, but the boys sure did enjoy it.

Once it was dry, they painted geometric patterns on the "barkcloth."

They had to mix together a few colors of paint to get exactly what they wanted here, and I overheard one of them say completely unironically, "Just what I was going for! An inky black and an acacia brown." I've given birth to Manny Delgado from Modern Family.

We finished off the day by reading A Refugee's Journey from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was a really child-friendly way to talk about the unrest and violence in DRC without scaring them.

Friday

In Democratic Republic of the Congo they speak French, but there are also four other national languages: Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili, Tshiluba. 

My boys and I followed this video to learn some phrases in Kikongo, and then I put on this cute animated song teaching "hello," "how are you?" and "very good" in Swahili. 

My boys just about died because they're going into 5th and 7th grade already and they're too old for this, but we all learned something (even if it was against their will.) Be careful, it will get stuck in your head for days.

That night, my husband made mikate using this recipe. Outside of the DRC, you might hear mikate called beignets or puff-puff.

Phillip is always up for trying a new donut-esque recipe, since donuts are the thing he misses most from his old life (i.e: before cutting out gluten.) We used Bob's Red Mill gluten-free baking flour and these seemed to turn out just fine with the substitution. I know because they disappeared pretty quickly.

We ate them while listening to Congolese rumba and it was a pretty nice end to the summer, to be honest.

Soon afterward, we found ourselves back in another fast-moving school year routine, just like that. But we enjoyed our week learning about the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Not only do we know now where we can go to see okapis and bonobos, we can also interrupt people with "Um, actually..." when someone says something about the Congo and clearly doesn't know they're talking about two separate countries.

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