I'm Leaving.....

Or is it "leafing" I've been doing??  Max and I have been hard at work on a leaf collection for his biology class.  This is a big project for spring semester, and it counts as a massive test grade, so we're really bringing our "A" game, in hopes that it translates to an "A" grade!

First, we went to the nature preserve to start our collection.  We had a decent amount of success.  Then, I may or may not have suggested out loud that if we went to Home Depot, the trees would already be labeled for us.  (It may or may not have been my finest or most noble homeschool parenting moment.)  However, Home Depot was positively swarming with employees stocking the garden section, and I couldn't take the pressure of being a leaf thief.  My heart pounding, I tried to get Max to hurriedly pluck a fine specimen off a poor, unsuspecting lime tree, and shove it into his pocket, but I felt a million disapproving eyes staring at us.  I wasn't cut out for the high stakes game of horticulture fraud.

So, we went back to the legit way.....swindling leaves off trees in our neighborhood (which somehow felt less like stealing than at Home Depot?), and then looking up Texas tree guides on the internet and taking random guesses about the type and variety of tree.  Really, my neighbors are indebted.  There are now twenty less leaves that they will someday need to rake.  :-)

In my mind's eye, he's still the little toe headed boy who CLIMBS trees,
not the man child who classifies their leaves.

We referred back to Hannah's leaf collection from many years ago to refresh my memory on how to mount and display them.  We generate tons of paper and projects in homeschool, so I don't generally hang on to lots of stuff, but this is one thing I'm glad I kept.  It got me thinking about some old pictures I took of Hannah, so in the name of nostalgia, (since it's her birthday week after all), here's a peek from the past.  This is what "leafing" looked like in 2008!!

I love the little baby toy on the table!  Sweet memories! 

Hannah looks so young in these photos.  I know when I look back on these pictures of Max, I will feel the same way.  But today he looks SO OLD to me!  Ha!  Perspective.  

I suppose leafing hasn't changed too much.  This is what it looks like in 2013.....

Two biology leaf collections down; two to go.

Here's to leaf collections 2015 and......heaven help me.......2023.