Last week he played tennis every morning for an hour. Actually, I think that they spent about half of their time playing a "baseball" game with their tennis rackets. But he seemed to have fun. Last Thursday I realized how lucky I am to have an almost 3rd grader who is as mature and responsible as Caleb. I had a migraine (I only get them once or twice a year and this one I think this one was weather related) and instead of going to the library and to the rummage sale after tennis when he got done playing I told him we were going home because I felt awful (I was just hoping not to have to stop to throw up on the way home since this migraine was making me nauseous too.) Caleb didn't complain about the change in plans or the fact that he was going to have to watch Foster when we got home so that I could take a shower to try to get rid of the headache. And Foster was crabby! When I got downstairs after my long shower Foster was climbing on Caleb and whining and fussing and Caleb was just putting up with him. Foster and I took a 2-hour nap together and when we woke up the headache was gone. While we were napping Caleb didn't wake us and he fixed his own lunch (waffles) and didn't complain that he was bored or that we had changed our plans. I am a lucky mom! And I remembered how good he was that morning so I didn't get too frustrated when I had to go find his wallet for him in his room that afternoon. He swore he put it on his red shelf in his room. And he did, because that's where I found it. In his defense he said "I put it on this shelf right here" and pointed to the shelf where he thought it should be. It was on the shelf directly above that. This seems to be a trend in my house of "Mom, where is ...?" or "Amy, where is.... ?" But that's a subject for a different blog post.
Last weekend was also a big garage sale weekend in our neighborhood. Earlier in the week I told Caleb he and his friends should do a bake sale in our driveway, especially since our house is on the corner where everyone comes and goes. At 3:30 on Friday they decided that they wanted to do it, so I made them some chocolate chip cookies, some brownies, some oatmeal cookies and some blueberry muffins to sell. (They also had some strawberry lemonade.) By 4:30 there were 7 kids in our driveway yelling "bake sale!" to every passing car and pedestrian. We made them quit at 5:30 (the garage sales all stopped at 5 pm) and told them they could start again at 7:45 am the next morning. In that hour they made more than $21 (each of them walked away with more than $3). The next day sales started very slow (Caleb was on his own when I left at 8:45 am to go to the Y) but by 10 am things picked up and there were only 4 of them selling on Saturday. They quit around 11:30 am, but not before they made more than $30. Each of them got $7 and Mark had a $10 bill that he couldn't split between the 4 of them so he gave it to me to make change. I told him I was keeping it to compensate a little for all of the ingredients that came from our pantry!
The bake sale was such a success for them that they wanted to do it again on Sunday. I told them that they were limited to one each month, so they've decided that they'll do another one in July sometime. Maybe I'll post it on Craigslist this time for them :)
We finally got to some fun "science" projects on Sunday afternoon. All of Caleb's neighborhood friends were gone and Mark was golfing so Caleb was bored. Since we have a "no electronics" rule on Sunday afternoons between lunch and dinner Caleb was really bored :) I told him we could prep our volcano for when Mark got home and have our eruption. On Friday prior to our bake sale extravaganza I had made the "volcano." Using gelatin, a funnel, and some playdough I made the volcano. I put the playdough in the bottom of the funnel and then filled the funnel with the gelatin to make our volcano. I had enough gelatin leftover to make a "practice" volcano in the giant cupcake cop that I had in the cabinet. The volcano and the practice volcano had been in the fridge since Friday.
The instructions in the book said to use a pencil to put a hole in the funnel stopping a 1/2 inch from the bottom. When we did this on the practice volcano it caused it to split. For the "real" volcano I used a very sharp pencil and that seemed to help it not split as much. It also said to use the funnel to fill the hole with baking soda. This seemed to be an overly complicated way to fill the volcano so for the real one I just spooned it into the hole. The instructions also said to use a baster filled with vinegar (with drops of red food coloring added) and put it into the side of the volcano. I think we needed a smaller baster because this made the gelatin split too. In spite of these challenges, the eruption was successful and the boys thought it was cool. Caleb was also able to explain to Mark that "when you mix these two things together it causes a reaction" 
Caleb's "Blast Lab" book also had instructions for making "milk planets" so we tried that experiment too. We put a little bit of milk in the bottom of some containers and added a few drops of food coloring to each one. Then we took a q-tip dipped in Dawn dish soap and just touched it on the surface of the milk and watched the colors swirl together. My recommendation for doing this "experiement" is to only use 2 colors in each "planet" or you'll kind of end up with a gross looking mess. Then again, since you're just going to dump them out at the end, maybe it doesn't matter :)
