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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7 Quick Takes about Painting the Sistine Chapel, Being Reminded to Death, and Bait that Tries Really Hard

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

—1—

Having kids get older is wild. One minute they're toddlers you can't take your eyes off of for 15 seconds or they'll find a way to kill themselves or destroy the house, and the next minute they’re big kids who could stay home alone all day long if there's leftover pizza in the fridge

This week I asked the 10-year-old, my littlest buddy in the family, “I have go to the hardware store, wanna come with me?”

Looking up, he politely declined and said, "No, but I’ll give you a hug goodbye.”

—2—

We're currently in the middle of painting our living room. It's a beast to paint because of the high ceiling. We rented a scaffolding from Home Depot and that makes it less scary than a ladder, but it's still a pain in the butt. 

Yesterday I did the first coat on the blue wall... it took me 2 and a half hours (not including taping) because of all the tediousness of getting up and down from the scaffolding and moving it around.

Yes, we know the top level of the scaffolding is crooked, Phillip is putting it together and hadn't adjusted both sides yet. Don't worry, Mom, there is a railing for the top.

Until we finish painting, the house is a mess. The piano is in the middle of the living room, which the kids actually love. 

The contents of the bookshelf are in piles on the dining room floor (the other day, someone asked like it was totally normal, "Can you hand me Throne of Fire off the second stack from the end?") 

The couch is in the entryway, right by the bathroom so it looks like a waiting area. Actually, we really could have used a waiting area when all 6 kids lived at home. 

—3—

We have the scaffolding rented for one week, and it's a lot of work so I knew that we (mostly meaning I, because Phillip is at work all week) needed to focus and prioritize well in order to finish in 7 days. 

I know that, but once Phillip took out all the seats in the van to bring the scaffolding home, I got distracted by how dirty the van was and spent two hours deep cleaning it.

Sometimes I realize that my productivity is misguided, but I let the irresistible compulsions win because who knows when I'm going to feel like doing that particular unpleasant task again. Best to just go with it while it's still there.

—4—

My 14-year-old thinks I’ll forget everything unless she reminds me. Before I'm supposed to pick her up, for example, I'll usually get a text from her saying "If you haven't left, you should leave now." 

I'm offended. Of course I remember! Don't you trust me? I said I would! About 90% of the time, it's insulting. Of course, there's always that 10% when I actually would have forgotten had she not reminded me. (Which I guess is why she does it.)

But still, sometimes I get a little grouchy at her reminders:

—5—

Our family needs a new TV series to watch for family "pizza and a show" night, so we pulled up Netflix and took a vote on what to try next. We settled on a series called Raising Dion. As I watched the first episode unfold, it seemed like a very straightforward coming-of-age story about a young superhero learning to control his powers.

I was not expecting 8 minutes before the end the discovery of a mysterious note in a dead man's pocket, making me correct myself ("Oh, this is actually going to be a mystery") or 2 minutes before the end for them to randomly see ghosts, making me correct myself again ("Wait, is this a ghost story now? I'm confused.")

Just before the show started meandering across all the genres, Phillip had to leave to pick up the 14-year-old from a school event, so it was a little hard to catch him up because I had no idea where they were going with all of this. If you know, don't spoil it, we're going to give Episode 2 a shot next week.

—6—

Saw this sign for fish bait outside of a gas station:

The small print at the bottom says "our worms catch fish or die trying!" It's a little gruesome, but true and effective advertising.

—7—

I subbed in nursery at church for the last few weeks and saw the cutest thing. After playtime, a snack, and a short lesson, we had just started blowing bubbles for the kids to dance around in when one 3-year-old's mom came to pick her up. 

Surrounded by floating incandescent bubbles, she jumped up and down in her sparkly dress and squealed in her little chipmunk voice "Mom, we learned about sharing! And Jesus!" 

If it had been a scene in a movie, I would've rolled my eyes and thought, "This screenwriter has never met a child in their whole life." But this actually happened. It was definitely the most wholesome thing I've ever seen.

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7 Quick Takes about Makeshift Scaffolding, Ancient Relics, and Life Skills You Gain at Age 44

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

—1—

We started painting the main area of our house! It's been a decision that was long-overdue, but we procrastinated because of the pain it is to try to work on the two-story areas. 

We even got a quote from a professional painter to come do it, but I could never in my heart of hearts bring myself to pay someone 4 times as much to do a job we could technically do on our own.

Phase One was tackling the stairwell, which involves a DIY scaffolding that was technically sturdy but felt very precarious to be up on.

You wouldn't know it from this picture, but Phillip absolutely hates heights.

As Phillip was finishing up, he said he was starting to feel kind of dizzy so I asked, "Do you want to take a break? Do you want some water or food? What can I do to help?"

"Just... stand there," he said.

"For moral support?"

"Well, someone’s got to tell the cops what happened."

Everything ended up fine, by the way.

—2—

When we set up the scaffolding to paint, I was especially excited to extract the Nerf dart in the lampshade in the picture above. It's been there for years but it wasn't exactly easy to get out, being situated high in the air over a set of stairs.

When we went in to retrieve the Nerf dart, we also found a wool dryer ball inside, in case you're wondering what it's like to have boys.

Also while I was painting, my 14-year-old complimented my jeans and told me it was too bad I got them all full of paint because they were so cute. This was an old bootcut number from 1999 that I decided was too embarrassing and out-of-style to be seen in public anymore years ago.

—3—

My kids assemble their school lunches the night before, so one evening as we were trying to get the kids ready for bed I yelled to one of my boys and asked, "Did you pack your lunch?"

"No!" came a distant response from deep in the house.

"Where are you?" I yelled back.

"In the bathroom!" came the answer.

Someone in the family had the audacity to look at me and say, "We could say he's unpacking his lunch."

I love being a mom and think it's the best job in the world, but sometimes I could really use some PTO.

—4—

In what feels like maybe a related note to Take #2, I went to pick up a WalMart order and when the employee handed it to me through the car window, he saw my phone and said, "Woah! That's an old iPhone!"

I wasn't offended. It is old. So I laughed and figured that would be the end of the interaction. But he couldn't stop marveling at such an ancient artifact. "What year is that?" he wanted to know.

I'm not techy and I don't buy the household phones so I told him I wasn't sure, and in the end he walked away muttering "That's an OLD iPhone.” 

I’m sure he’s still telling his friends about that day.

—5—

This week I’ve been working very hard to get ready for my new online seminary class. (In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, seminary is what we call the weekday religious class for teenagers. I'm not handing out doctorates in theology, but I'm flattered you think that.)

Anyway, my co-teacher and I spent all week setting things up online, visiting our students before the first day of class to deliver their materials and say hello, and practicing using all of Zoom's features like breakout rooms and whiteboards for the first lesson on Thursday.

It went... okay.

Zoom teaching is a bazillion times harder than classroom teaching. I’m still figuring it out, and the kids are still figuring me out, so as time goes on I hope we'll all get more comfortable. Thoughts and prayers are appreciated.

—6—

This is the time of year when my inbox is flooded with emails from all the middle and high school teachers with subjects like “Welcome to 7th grade math!” 

Respectfully,  I'm not in 7th grade math. I'll talk with a teacher if there's a specific concern that my kid can't resolve by themself, but there's really no reason I would need to know the daily ins and outs of the classroom late work policy. By the time my kids are in middle and especially high school, I feel like that’s their job to know and manage, not mine. 

And they do know what the late work policy is. I know that because after the first day they brought home a paper copy of the class expectations that I had to sign for some reason.

—7—

The best thing I ever did for my back was to start lifting weights. It totally taught me how to bend over and pick up stuff the right way. I couldn’t do it wrong now if I tried. 

The right way, if you’re wondering, is to hinge your back. Imagine you’re holding a broomstick (or go get an actual one, I don’t care.) Put it in front of you so your head, chest, and pelvis are all touching the broomstick. Now imagine you have to bend over and pick something up, while keeping all those points of contact.

I shared my observation about learning to hinge correctly with Phillip and he replied, "My hip mobility exercises are teaching me to walk the right way. My hip doesn't hurt anymore after I go for a run."

So at 44 and 45 years old, I’m learning to bend over and he's learning to walk. This is great.

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7 Quick Takes about More College Move-Ins, Adventures in Milwaukee, and Topics for Your Next Luncheon

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

—1—

After moving my 18-year-old freshman son into college last week, it was time to help my 22-year-old super-senior daughter do the same.

Her off-campus apartment this year is a real upgrade. Last year she lived in a character-building place (i.e: a poor college kids' dump,) but this semester's apartment is a respectable place for an adult to live. 

After moving in her stuff, I asked her to stand on the steps of her building so I could take a picture.

“Is this my first day of school photo?” she joked.

Yes. First day of 17th grade. We're very proud.

—2—

When I wasn't busy moving both kids into their respective college living spaces, I spent the rest of the visit with my family in the area. I stayed with my in-laws and spent a lot of time with my little niece and nephew.

We took them to the zoo, and it was a great time. They rode the carousel, fed a giraffe, and could have touched the lions if there wasn’t two inches of safety glass between us.

Too young to realize that this is pretty cool.

As cool as the close-up lions where, I had to say my favorite was these monkeys taking a nap. It’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on in the picture but there are four of them huddled together, each pair with their tails wrapped around each other.

—3—

My in-laws introduced us to a card game called Flip 7, which is kind of like family-friendly Blackjack. I quickly got the reputation for being the worst gambler at the table. It was well-deserved. I always push my luck too far and lose everything. Everyone kept joking that I should never go to Vegas. 

When my 14-year-old won, she said, “I also won Blackjack when I played with my friends for cookies. Maybe I should go to Vegas.”

Okay, fine. I'll drive her, but I'm staying in the car.

—4—

Our flight home was sort of a disaster. We had a connection in Chicago, but there was a thunderstorm when we got there and no planes were allowed to land or take off. So we just circled around the airport for a half hour. 

Not a big deal, because our connecting flight was also grounded in Chicago with the thunderstorm and was going to be just as late as we were. 

But then we started running out of gas and had to divert to Milwaukee to refuel. We waited an hour in line to refuel, waited some more for some passengers to get off who just said "Screw it, I want off this plane and I'll make my own way home from here," and then waited another hour for our turn to take off and go back to Chicago. By this time, flights were moving again in Chicago and our connection left without us.

Luckily we were able to squeeze on to a flight leaving later that night and made it home by 1 AM.

—5—

Did I mention that this was the night before school started for my three K-12 kids?

As you can imagine, I woke up at 6:45 to get them up for school feeling like Ryan Gosling coming out of his coma in Project Hail Mary. I was sleep-deprived and disoriented from going straight from all-day flight saga to rushed school morning routine for three. But it was manageable because Phillip is amazing.

Over the past year, we've been having lots of conversations about the mental load at home, and this was the big, beautiful payoff. 

He arrived at the airport with food for me and our daughter and briefed me on the way home about all 3 kids' first-day after-school activities. He didn't ask me about them, he briefed me on them. He'd already checked the calendar, thought through everything that needed to happen for each item, and researched the murky details on after-school soccer tryouts and made sure our son had cleats that fit. I came home to a reasonably clean kitchen where he'd planned, prepped, and packed the kids' lunches, remembering what each one likes and that one of our kids has to meet a specific calorie count from his nutritionist. When I went to print a copy of our son's class schedule for his school binder, Phillip had already done it for me.

The amount of space this stuff takes up in your brain is HUGE, you guys. Having your partner share it is life-changing. I don't want to bash Phillip at all, but in the past I may or may not have had to remind him which grade the kids were in. Now he knows each of their school start times and, more importantly, everything that needs to happen in order to get them there.

—6—

I went to a laundromat to wash our pillows and comforters in the large-capacity machines and oh my goodness, it was such a cute place.

It looks like it's right out of the 1950s. The machines still take quarters. I can't even remember the last time I put a quarter in a machine for anything. I was probably 6 years old getting stickers out of a plastic egg.

—7—

Back in 2019, I went to a luncheon of church ladies where someone had the idea to "go around the table and say what we're reading right now." Well, I outed myself as a complete weirdo, since at the moment I was reading the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. (I probably raved about it a little too much, now that I think about it.) 

Fast-forward to a few months ago, and one of the sweet ladies who was at that luncheon approached me after church and said, "I remember how you said you loved that other book by Mary Roach. This is for you!"

So now I'm reading Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. If anyone wants to invite me to your next dinner party, we can go around that table and I can share a lot of disgusting facts about the process of digestion. Or maybe you want to pick a different topic of conversation. It's up to you.

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The Educational Summer Vacation: Studying Malaysia

Since 2012, my kids and I have been learning about countries of the world during summer vacation. You can read about how it started here (at the time, I thought we were doing it for just that one summer) or you can follow along and study Malaysia with us!

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links in this post. If you click them and buy something, the cost stays the same to you but I will receive a small commission for referring you. Thank you!

Monday

While the kids found Malaysia on the big wall map, I told them a little bit about the country. Thirty-two million people live in Malaysia, and it's actually two separate land masses: Peninsular Malaysia and Eastern Malaysia on the island of Borneo. 

In the past, the kids also would've filled out the passport pages I made for them but they didn't want to this time. At ages 10 and 12, they've almost outgrown doing The Educational Summer Vacation so I'm not going to push it.

If you're from the U.S., the flag of Malaysia is going to look a little familiar. They didn't copy us, though. It's inspired by the flag design of the East India Company, which also looks suspiciously like the U.S. flag. So maybe we copied the idea?

 The 14 stripes and the 14 points of the star represent each of the 13 states and the national government. The blue is for the Malay people, the yellow is for the Malay rulers, the star is for unity and the cresent is for Islam.

We watched a travel vlog on Malaysia to get a feel for the country and what it's like there. Then we read a picture book called Kancil and the Crocodiles, where a trickster named Sang Kancil the mousedeer fooled some crocodiles into making a bridge so he could get to a tree full of rambutan fruit. (He's a regular character in Southeast Asian folktales.)

As we were reading the story I recognized the picture of the rambutan and said, "Hey! I've seen those at the grocery store!" So the next time I went shopping I picked some up. 

Not super-ripe... but this is New England, not Southeast Asia. I'm okay with it.

They came with instructions on how to eat them, which I appreciated. First, you saw through the thick  spiky/hairy red skin. Inside, there's a squishy oval about the size of an eyeball. You squeeze it out of the skin, pop it into your mouth, and then spit out the pit inside. I thought the fruit tasted like a grape, only milder. 

My husband loved rambutan and wants to buy them every week, the 12-year-old couldn't get past the freaky appearance to even try one. Everyone else was in the middle.

Tuesday

One of the most iconic landmarks in Malaysia is the Petronas Towers in the capital, Kuala Lumpur. It's twin towers connected by a skybridge, and they were once that tallest buildings in the world.

 

My 12-year-old is really into architecture right now, so we watched this video on the engineering of the Petronas Towers  and then I asked him to use his hand-me-down set of fancy architecture Legos to build a replica. 

He said he only had enough pieces for one, and we could just imagine the other one and the skybridge.  

Just north of Kuala Lumpur is Batu Caves, a series of limestone caves that was developed into a Hindu shrine in the 1890s. There's a giant gold statue of Lord Murugan (the Hindu god of war, victory, and wisdom) and 272 rainbow steps to climb in order to reach the cave.

(My 10-year-old was especially impressed with this drone flyover video of the caves, when the drone zips through the little window on top of one of the buildings.)

In Northern Malaysia, there's a place called Eagle Square. This site has a virtual tour, but be aware that your kids will 100% get frustrated that they can't move around in it like a video game, they can just look around.

Near Pengang (also north of Kuala Lumpur) is a place called George Town. George Town is a popular tourist destination not only for of the architecture, but also for the street art you can see everywhere. 

We checked out some examples in this blog post, where the artist puts a real bike or swing or chair in front of a wall and then paints something on the wall to complement it. I asked my kids to creatively combine a drawing and a 3D object, and this is what my 10-year-old came up with:

Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel from Ice Age.

Wednesday

The half of Malaysia that is in Borneo is about 60% rainforest and is famous for outdoor adventure and incredible wildlife.   

For example, there are 238 species of birds in Borneo! I knew my 12-year-old would be interested in that. He's gone crazy with the Merlin app and now when we're out and about, he'll hear a distant bird call, incline his ear, and announce to us all, "That's a rose-breasted grosbeak." He's an old soul.

We read about a refuge in Borneo that rehabilitates and releases orphaned orangutans in the book How to Babysit an Orangutan and then I also gave the kids Adventures of Riley: Operation Orangutan to read on their own time. Another one, which I don't think they read but they theoretically could have, was Undaunted: The Wild Life of Birute Mary Galdikas and Her Fearless Quest to Save Orangutans.

Another interesting animal to see in Borneo is the proboscis monkey, and the kids really appreciated the sound effects in this video:

In Borneo's rainforests you might also glimpse the rafflesia flower, which is called the "corpse flower" because it stinks like rotten meat! The kids remembered it from when we studied Indonesia, though, so we didn't spend too much time on it.

For lunch, we had the national dish of Malaysia, nasi lemak. It's essentially Southeast Asian charcuterie, and therefore super simple to make. Especially because I cheated and used frozen chicken tenders to substitute for Malay fried chicken.

Not authentic but we tried.

Nasi lemak starts with coconut rice served in the center of the plate in a dome, surrounded with cucumber slices, hardboiled eggs, and peanuts. One of mine is allergic to peanuts so he had almonds. And in place of spicy sambal, which is time-consuming and my kids wouldn't eat it anyway, we made a fake substitute out of sauteed onions, ketchup, soy sauce, and brown sugar. Malaysian grandmas, don't come for me. I did what I had to do.

Thursday

Islam is the national religion of Malaysia, so I grabbed At the Mosque (Worship With Me) and Muslim Mosque from the library, and had the 10- and 12-year-old pick one to read and report to me on what they learned. 

We watched some footage of the National Mosque, Masjid Negara, and the famous Pink Putra Mosque. They were recognizing the features they learned about in the books, although it was unclear to us where the minaret was on the National Mosque.

Of course, there's obviously religious diversity in Malaysia, since yesterday we learned about the giant Hundu shrine at Batu Cave. So we also looked at Kek Lok Si, the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia:

The kids didn't know very much about Buddhism so we watched this 5-minute intro to Buddhism video. I would describe the style of this video as "drinking from the firehose." They paused it multiple times to ask questions, including "wait a minute... so no one knows if Nirvana is actually a thing because once you find out, you're dead?" It was a big day with lots of thoughts.

After the video, we took out their Keva planks (I love these things) and I challenged them to build either a mosque or a Buddhist temple. They chose to work together and build a temple.

Friday

Malay is considered a relatively easy language for English-speakers to learn. There are no tones, no conjugations, no verb tenses, no articles, no noun genders, and it's written in the Latin alphabet we already know.

I told the kids about a few fun features, like how you repeat a word to pluralize it ('child' is 'budak' but 'children' is 'budak-budak') and then we watched a video teaching 30 common Malay words and phrases until they got bored.

I usually try to plan a fun activity based around the language, but I was running out of steam at this point in the summer and I knew that my brother- and sister-in-law who both served religious missions in Malaysia were coming to visit us in a few weeks, so I figured that the kids could ask them some questions then and called it good.

This summer is going by so fast, but I'm glad I could make the most of it by planning a fun week for my kids learning about Malaysia. I love it when their interests (like the birding and the building) intersect with the things we learn, and hopefully connecting the different countries with their interests will help them remember for longer. And at the very least, if they don't, then I still will.

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