I love this picture. So much.

If you don't know what Loving Day is, read here.

Loving Day is an educational community project. The name comes from Loving v. Virginia (1967), the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. Loving Day celebrations commemorate the anniversary of the Loving decision every year on or around June 12th.

I forgot to post about it last year. And while I planned to the year before, something else happened.

To borrow a paragraph from Devilstower at dailykos.com:

It's also a good day to remember that this kind of legislation, including the "Defense of Marriage Acts" now in effect in more than half the states, will one day be looked on with the same distaste as the law that put the Lovings in jail.

Now I'd planned to celebrate this day, much in the same way that Richard and I would celebrate our anniversary. However after spending the better part of the day at urgent care, I came home with a diagnosis of an anular tear in my L5. Pain patch, vicodin, mass quantities of motrin and ice packs. What a way to celebrate an anniversary, huh?

This little something arrived via UPS about 2 weeks ago. Because we stashed it away, saving it for a day when we were all home to work on it, I sort of forgot about it...

If you read 5 Minutes For Mom, you'll know all about their contests and giveaways. Well I finally won one!

This represents one thousand teensy tiny pieces. Joy. But the family is hard at work putting it together on one of the old train table platforms, so that if we get bored (or tired) we can safely tuck it away without losing progress.

And since its Monday, lets play Whats On My iPod? Ironically, one of the songs plays along with the Lego City Police headquarters theme, in title only I suppose..

"Calling All Cars" by Senses Fail. I love this song. I mean, really love it. I love even more, the acoustic version. But what turned me on to Senses Fail, was this bonus track on Guitar Hero III...

This is my warm-up song on Guitar Hero. And Connor, loves this song - he knows every single word and loves to sing along when I play. Actually, he asks me to play it over and over. This song also has an acoustic version - actually I think the acoustic version of "Can't Be Saved" is way better. Give it a listen.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a rant about a moronic, inhumane kindergarten teacher in St Lucie, Florida. This story kept me up, shaking and infuriated until nearly 3AM. Mental note: do not move to St Lucie Florida.. and especially do not enroll our children in their public schools.

My lifeforce in my favorite mug... Yes, it is a good Sunday morning!

As for the rest of the day? Paige reminded me of the shearing festival at Springside Farm. We went 2 years ago, and I think we'll take a drive down today, that is if I can pull the "boys" away from the Wii. The biggest boy bought himself the Wii zapper yesterday which included Link's Crossbow Training. They're having a lot of fun apparently.

After a few weeks of stalling negotiation, I took the boys in for a haircut...

They literally begged for mohawks for weeks .. and in the end, I gave in. But at least they both think I'm "the cool mom". Geez, thats all it took?

And..

OUCH.

This means we're staying home this holiday weekend - A time when we typically travel down to Pennsylvania. Thank you so much President Bush. Your foreign and energy policies suck.

Since I'm totally stuck on "The Seeker" by The Who on hard, which is I think the second level (Oh my aching hands!) The kids have been playing. Cassidy is nearly done with the easy level, but Alex is really just starting out...

Connor can't play the game very well, but he could spend hours playing air guitar along with every song.

My baby turned FOUR today. I can hardly believe it. And since Daddy has to teach a class tonight, we let Connor open his "big present" last night, therefor giving him an opportunity to actually play with Daddy.

That would be MarioKart for Wii. So, yes, we finally got the Wii... the story about how the kids saved up and paid for approximately one third of it themselves is one I'll tell another day.

A Guitar Hero prodigy? Umm, no. He does like to try to play with Mama's guitar though. Now I'm off to challenge my big boy to a game of tennis.

Even with the older three kids back in school this week, I've been soooo busy.

With all this great weather, I've started spring cleaning in earnest. Opening windows to air out - Cleaning out drawers and closets - Consolidating items left out of season in the kid's cubby - And hopefully before the weekend I can start on the yearly "thinning of the toys". I swear, Cassidy's Barbies and the boys action figures have been hooking up after the lights go out, purely to reproduce and stage a coup.

Connor also had his special ed and psychological re-eval on Monday, which is was nearly a whole day event seeing as how I got terribly lost trying to find where we needed to go. Picture me driving around East Syracuse looking for a road that seemingly didn't exist (no sign!) and a gas station that had a phone book. All of this because I rushed out the door so quickly, leaving the address on the dining room table, and my cell phone on the kitchen counter.

The evaluations went well though. We'll wrap them up today with a home visit later this afternoon with the special education evaluator. But in the end, he scored lower than I think any of us expected him to. Its a very weird feeling as a mother, hearing his scores. In that, I wanted him to evaluate poorly enough that the CPSE would have fewer arguments at the next meeting to negotiate him out of attending an integrated classroom, as they did last year. But I also wanted my baby to score well because he is so smart! I know other moms with special needs kids will understand my personal conflict.. and know just how terribly difficult to verbalize.

The crochet project? It grows. No pictorial updates however, because it hasn't grown that much. I did get quite a lot done last night while watching There Will Be Blood with Richard. We didn't like it. Incredible acting.. Incredible. But the movie itself? Ehhhh. Mostly, I've gotten so little done because there was this thing called the Pennsylvania Democratic primary going on. Between watching cable news, reading my favorite political blogs, and spending some time making calls for Obama - crafting took a back seat.

And now we get to the part where you say, "I was told there'd be a giveaway?" after reading my rambling update which clearly doesn't match the title of my post..

I'm reading I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. I love essays, particularly ones that make me laugh out loud. But additionally interesting, is that Sloane creates dioramas capturing the scenes in many of her essays.

As Cassidy is recently obsessed with creating dioramas, we love to look at Sloane's flickr album where you can see them take shape a piece at a time. Plastic spoons as subway seats and a hazelnut as a turd. Maybe I'm odd in that craft geek sort of way, but find it very interesting.

And now for the giveaway.. I have an extra copy of the book, sitting here on the desk, ready to ship out. Getting it is as easy as leaving a comment here. Nothing else. Just leave a comment by Wednesday April 30th, 2008. I'll use the handy number randomizer to pick a comment and send the book along for your reading enjoyment.

Good luck!