4th at 7 and a Tut-less tour

This weeks has been a good week around our house. Children are happy and engaged in their school and Mom is loving it. Here are two of the reasons for this break in their usual attitude differences:

 

1: Owen moved from his 3rd grade math book up to his fourth grade math book. He has been so excited about this and actually finishing this 3rd grade book finally has made him one happy little man! He is loving division and is loving even more that he isn't working on long multiplication problems! I've already given him the heads up this this book contains the dreaded long division that was a stumbling block for both Tig and Garrett, but he said he would fair much better than they did because he loves math so much. We'll see if his tune changes mid year once we get to the long division chapters. Just the fact that I am giving my seven year old a fourth grade math book to work on has made me one excited mamma! The boy loves his math.

 Reason number two for the giddy excitement around the house has to do with our field trip this week. We drove into Seattle with some friends of ours to go see the King Tut exhibit at the science center. It is being touted as a "Must See," "Last Time in the United States" tour. It is only here until January and then it goes back to Egypt. So we thought, hey, it's a must see, once in a lifetime opportunity for us and the kids. Then when BYU offered a deep discount for their alumni, I couldn't resist! We hired a babysitter to watch the two littles who weren't old enough to attend and the rest of us excited went to this life changing exhibit!

 The exhibit was wonderful. Well laid out. Interesting. Quite large. The only problem we had with it was that King Tut wasn't actually there. There were a few artifacts from his burial chamber, and an empty conopic jar that had once held his stomach, but HE wasn't there. There was a replica of his mummy and we only got to see that after we followed the Ikea store-type forced-walk through the gift shop past all the Tut souvenirs. When we asked the tour guide why Tut wasn't there if it was the King Tut exhibit, he looked at us like we were wacky and said, "Uh, King Tut is a national treasure. Do you really think they are going to let the real King Tut out of Egypt? He he"

Yeah, what were we thinking? It was being advertised as a once in a lifetime experience that was leaving America never to return again. What would ever give us the impression that Tut himself would be there?! Silly Americans!

It had been a long, filling day, and we lost all the kids to slumber land on the way home. Emme was wide awake though when we got home!

Since our Tut adventure, Owen has been on a major hieroglyphics kick. We had gotten his name printed out in hieroglyphics there at the gift trap shop and it set off some long dormant Egyptian bug inside him. Everyday now he writes his spelling words in hieroglyphics and requires that I actually spell check them. I tried just 'looking' at them the first day and approving them, but he knew I wasn't fluent in Egyptian and handed me a symbol key so I could translate all his words for accuracy. Thanks, dear!