Wow!

We watched the Blue Angels practice yesterday. We saw them practice today, twice! The airshow doesn't even officially begin until tomorrow!

When they do the maneuver where the one pilot pulls away from the formation, they are directly above our roof. The lowest maneuver they perform is the sneak pass, done by one of the solo planes, at 50 feet. Our roof peak tops out at about 30 feet. During the first practice we barely saw the solo coming straight at us over the tree tops. There was only time to snap our necks back before he was gone. It was absolutely deafening and so low that we were blasted with the smoke. Later, after our weekend neighbors arrived just in time for practice number two, we tried to warn them, as we were all standing out on our back decks, that it looked like they were going to do another super low pass. When it came ripping over their roof, they all grabbed their ears and fell to their knees, literally hitting the deck.

In between Blue Angel practices, we managed to get away from the house and off to the spelling bee. G, my reluctant speller, was worried sick. We had gone over the more difficult words, but easy or hard she refuses to apply the rules. When questioned, she will tell you the /l/ at the end of a word is usually spelled 'le', but ask her to spell 'gentle' and she will get it wrong. Remind her to spell in syllables and she will ignore you. Frustrating for both of us. After I signed them up I had been told that the kids would not be competing against others, but against their own score; one of those warm, fuzzy all-participants-are-winners kind of event. This was a very small consolation to G. Unfortunately, I had been told wrong. There was competition, but I'm proud to say, G held her own and received a third place ribbon.

S, my natural speller, received first place in her seventh grade division and another first place overall in the competition between first-place winners for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, making her eligible for the next step, the regional or state competition, whichever comes next. I wasn't really clear on that as I went into the bee thinking it was just a fun event among our local homeschool group.

Uh oh. My husband just called to say he was out by our four acres, which is closer to the airport than we are here and where we are planning to build, and saw an explosion. He thinks a plane may have gone down. We can see black smoke.