"Masking" My True Feelings--get it?

Waaaaaah! Did I say I was OK with it? I lied.

But, the number one most important ingredient for learning is enthusiasm, right? And we have plenty of that around here. So I'm keeping my thoughts to myself and cheering them on.

Speaking of masks, lookit the cool splatter art that Dudeman made! You should see the clothes he was wearing at the time--let's just say they match the mask!

A visitor

I love dragonflies--they are so beautiful. This guy is HUGE. Can you see how tattered his wings are? The poor thing found his way into the house and beat himself against the windows until we were able to catch him. We put him outside but I don't know if he was able to fly away or if he was a bird snack.

Warning: Political Rant Ahead

It's un-American! It's un-American to question the President! We should get behind him and support all his efforts...

Oh, wait, that was last year. This year, it's just fine to question the President.

Feel free to question ANYTHING now! Question his motives! Question his morality! Accuse him of any outlandish plot you can think of! He wants to deny medical care for your poor old grandmother! He wants to deliberately bankrupt the country! Go ahead--come up with the craziest bullhockey you can! Question his country of origin for God's sake!

Remember when protesting a war-for-no-reason was unpatriotic and anyone who questioned Bush's reasoning was a traitor? Remember when we were supposed to fall in line and shut up because THE PRESIDENT KNOWS BEST?

Those days are over, people. The rules have changed and now, not only is it just fine to express dissent, but it's also fine to disrupt, disrespect, and completely disengage from reality. Because when you're on the losing side, and you have nothing successful to show for the past 10 years, the only option is to tear down and criticize.

So, let me see if I understand correctly... Everything was perfect during Bush's years. Everyone had lots of money in the bank, all the healthcare options they needed, great job and education opportunities, and an unassailable sense of complete security. Our soldiers were on an indefinite spa-vacation in the Middle East, and we made sure they had everything they needed once they came home. Then, Obama showed up from Kenya, ruined the country, forced us all to convert to Islam, and tried to kill our grandparents.

So, folks, is there any doubt where I stand on this issue? You want to quit reading this blog, go ahead (all three of you.)

Don't Stop Believin'

Just a few things that make me happy...

The sound of sprinklers early on a summer morning.

The sound of crickets on a summer evening.

When my mom visits and we can talk all day long, instead of a half-hour conversation on the phone.

Introducing my kids to the music I loved when I was a teenager. (Even if you aren't a child of the '80's, you have to admit the Go-Go's were fun, Aerosmith was rockin' and Steve Perry was the dreamiest...)

Etsy. A double-edged sword.

When Dudeman comes into the kitchen with his eyes still puffy from sleep and serious bed head and wants to sit in my lap (even though he's almost big enough for me to sit in his lap now.)

When Supersim gives me that certain twinkly-eyed smile that reminds me of her sweet wittle baby face.

My new computer!

Finally!!!!

I got my new computer! I'm so happy!

How do I even begin to fill in the blanks? Summer is/was super busy--we visited relatives in Texas and Oklahoma, and we went to Yellowstone National Park. Entertained lots of visitors: great friends from Washington, D.C. and Texas. We read a few good books (kids and grownups.) We did NO school whatsoever, unless you count the French classes I taught.

Supersim and I started a fun project of making our own hairclips. She worked in as many riding lessons as possible, between our various trips. Dudeman is training to be a sprinter and looking forward to soccer in the fall. He finished his book challenge and keeps reminding me that I owe him his prize: a giant Lego set. Oh, and BOTH kids have decided to attend school.

Yup, that's right. School. I'm OK with it. Whatever makes them happy. They're excited about it, wishing school would hurry up and start. And they know that if it doesn't work out, if they aren't happy or need more challenging work, they will always have the option of attending the Super Awesome School of Super Awesomeness.

Anyway, it's not like SASSA ever closes--even though we didn't do official schoolwork over the summer, we still had all kinds of amazing experiences, including visiting some great museums, enjoying lots of picnics in several states, listening to cicadas and tree frogs at Caddo Lake, having a three-day-long playdate/sleepover with cousins, lying outside and watching the Perseids, and seeing geysers, two wolves, lots of bison, and a GRIZZLY BEAR in Yellowstone.

We've had a wonderful summer...Hope you did, too!

The greatest thing just happened!

I found an old friend of mine, someone I've thought about for years but had no idea how to locate. We met in 5th grade and were friends until she moved away during our freshman year. I was absolutely lost without her! Those years are so hard anyway, and going through them without my best friend was rough.

I'm soooo glad to find out that she's doing well and I can't wait to catch up! The internet is a wonderful thing!

Just another abandoned blog

My computer is still messed up. I'm hoping to get a new one by the end of next month. Until then, I post whenever I can, which isn't often. Even if I had my computer, we have been so busy...

Busy doing what? Swimming, Slip-and-Sliding, water balloon fights, going to the park with the muddy sand pit (I'm still soaking their clothes), seeing Monsters vs. Aliens and Up, playdates with friends, cooking hot dogs and s'mores outside, a road trip to Oklahoma to visit relatives, another trip to Texas to see more relatives. (My family knows how to have fun: the kids played with their cousins and the grownups sat around drinking Shiner Bock and watching the kids play.) Dad claims I went in every antique store between Oklahoma City and Jefferson, TX but he's wrong: two of them were closed.

When we got back home, the kids were really excited to find lots of baby strawberries on their plants. I've picked a few cherry tomatoes and one early girl. Dad got a new lawnmower and edger for an early Father's Day present (I swear, that's what he asked for!)

So...it's not exactly the lazy, relaxing summer I had imagined, but we are having a great time. Hope you are, too.

Art Class for Homeschoolers

Dudeman had a great time at his art class! He learned about Matisse and Picasso, then did some paintings of his own. Check out his green alien face, which he later cut apart and added weird eyes and noses, Picasso style.

In case you're wondering...

I haven't been updating my blog because I spilled a glass of water on my computer a week ago. Had to wait a few days to see if it would work, and it did--briefly. Took it in for diagnostics and found out that water damage repair costs about half what a new computer would cost, so I'm weighing the pros and cons of repairing it or just replacing it.

After warning the kids a thousand times about keeping drinks away from the computer, I'm the one who spilled water on it!

This Week at School

The Super Awesome School of Super Awesomeness just gets more super awesome each week!

We started the week by baking a cake. Why not? Dudeman was hoping to make a cheesecake, but we didn't have 18 oz. of cream cheese on hand (go figure), so we made a vanilla layer cake instead. The cake recipe called for 3/4 cup of butter. Two sticks of butter are a whole cup, so how do we measure 3/4 cup? Next we measured the sugar and talked about all the different ways we could measure the same amount. Two eggs. Vanilla. Uh-oh, the teaspoon is dirty in the dishwasher. Can we use the half teaspoon to measure 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla? Flour. Baking soda. One and 1/4 cups of milk. It was fun to cook together and a great excuse to discuss basic fractions. (You might notice that there are no pictures of the cake. It didn't last long.)

We read tons of books, especially the day that Dude was miserable with spring allergies (his mother's child.) Running a low fever and zonked out with Benadryl, he curled up with me on the couch and we worked our way through: Penny the Forgotten Coin by Denise Brennan-Nelson, Bad Boys and Mary Had a Little Ham by Margie Palatini, Dear Deer by Gene Barretta, Black Bear Cub by Jacqueline Moody-Luther, How Long or How Wide? by Brian Cleary, a couple more chapters of Toys! Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions by Don Wulffson, Inventor McGregor, by Kathleen T. Pelley, You Wouldn't Want to Be on Apollo 13 by Ian Graham, There's A Frog In My Throat! by Loreen Leedy and Pat Street and Yes We Can, based on President Obama's victory speech. Oh, how I love the luxury of dropping our plans and just reading together when we're not feeling up to an active school day.

The day of reading added lots of titles to our reading challenge list. I had picked up some sticky stars so Dude could rate his reading selections. It was interesting to see what his favorites and least favorites were. A visit to the library added even more selections to the list. By the end of the week, he had gone from 14 to 28 books.

We worked on our ancient Egypt History Pockets projects, and had a great time writing things with hieroglyphs. We located the Nile on the globe and talked about the red land and black land, and why the Nile was so important for the Egyptians. We read some good books about ancient Egypt (way better than the basic dry facts provided by History Pockets.) Mummies, Pyramids and Pharaohs by Gail Gibbons, You Wouldn't Want to Be a Pyramid Builder by Jacqueline Morley and Hieroglyphs by Joyce Milton provided us with plenty of fascinating information about daily life, Egyptian religion, and the power of the Pharaohs. Dude really liked the History Pockets cat activity and ended up doing two: cut out and decorate a sacred cat, then fold it and write a poem about cats inside. This inspired him to compose a great story called The Two Cats of the Pharaoh.

Oh, I almost forgot the other books, the Star Wars Clone Wars comic series. Dude goes through those pretty quick, but I still let him count them on the book challenge list. Reading them always inspires lots of clone and droid battle sketches.

Let's see...Hey, Dude, did we play any games this week? Oh, yeah, someone beat me at Scrabble, even though he had the worst strategy ever. "You see, Dude, the way to win at Scrabble is to make the best word you can at the time. Don't save your letters hoping for a chance to use them a certain way, because..." "Yeah, OK, Mom. But I'm going to save these three in case a G opens up." "No, that's not the best strategy..." I explain, as I lose by 20 points to a kid less than one-fifth my age.

We played a game called Tax Collector, from Family Math. The object of the game is to get more money than the tax collector. For every paycheck you choose, you get to keep the money, but the tax collector gets the factors of your paycheck. For example, if you took a paycheck for $10, you would get $10, and the tax collector would get $2 and $5 (because 2 x 5 = 10.) Dude caught on pretty quickly that some paychecks seem like a good idea at first, but really aren't. For example, $24 seems like a good paycheck. But the tax collector would get $2, $12, $6, $4, $8, and $3. Yikes! Even the Finns don't pay that much tax!

We didn't spend much time outside, due to allergies, but we did go out long enough to catch Buddy (see below.) Dude worked on a new piano song, played with the dogs, did some Gamequarium math games, ran errands with me, including a quick trip to the bank to trade in some quarters for $2 bills.

Just for fun the kids made some stuff out of Sculpey, and we spent an evening painting stuff at the local ceramics place. We had playdates with good friends. (Thank you, Friend's Mom for having a pet rabbit so I don't have to!) Supersim's friend was so adorable--she came to me and said, "Can we turn this into a party?" "Sure, I guess." (What does that mean, exactly? I wondered...) "Yay!" she says! "We're having a party! This is the best party ever!" Then she runs away to play... Apparently just calling it a party made it a party. Kids are wonderful, aren't they?

I almost don't even care what we study--I'm just enjoying this time together.

Meet Buddy

Yesterday, snow.  Today, bugs.

These are great bug jars by the way.  Super cheap from Rainbow Resources, and they have a little magnifier built in.

After we got a good look at Buddy, we let him go, of course.

Guess I'm Not Planting Tomatoes Today

Look how pretty it is!  

Yesterday, it was in the 60's, we had the back door open and a hummingbird flew into the house!  Dad Sparklee had to catch it before it knocked itself silly on our kitchen window.

  

And today--snow!

The best part is...I did my grocery shopping yesterday, so I don't have to drive anywhere in this mess!  

The kids and I will clean out the feeders and make up a batch of sugar water for Hummie.  They need their calories in weather like this...

This Week at School

This week at the Super Awesome School of Super Awesomeness we...

Continued working on our Animal Kingdom notebook. We visited the local pet store to choose fish for our lab. We noted the price of the fish, food, and habitat (aquarium.) Supersim chose a pretty redcap goldfish; Dudeman chose a larger moor with a fancy tail. We also got a cute little yellow snail and a live plant.

After we set up the aquarium for "Chewey" and "Rocky," we talked about how fish need oxygen just like mammals, but they get it in a different way. We observed how they pulled water through their gills, and talked about why the live plant is beneficial. We talked about the difference between ectothermic and endothermic animals. We took the temperature of the water and hypothesized about the fish's body temperature. We also noted the room temperature and took our own temperatures to calculate the difference.

We did some research online and found some interesting pictures of different types of fish scales. Did you know that on some fish, you can guess their age by the patterns on their scales? We also found photos of really strange fish, including the Pacific Barrelhead, which has a transparent head! We found pictures of our favorite fish (not our favorites to eat, but the ones we find the most interesting!) This included lionfish, sharks, and fugu. Wikipedia has a long, informative entry on fugu with lots of pictures. As Dudeman wisely said, "What flavor is worth that risk?"

I had planned a 30-minute piano lesson for Dudeman early in the week, because he has expressed interest in playing. I hadn't counted on his enthusiasm--he ended up playing all morning that day and learned two beginner songs. I'm pretty sure we are going to need a real piano teacher (way better than me) and a real piano, too, because he is very excited about learning to play. The rest of the week, he went back to the keyboard several times a day to practice his songs, and he couldn't wait to show off when he went to a friend's house.

We made up a very silly story problem about cats. A girl cat named Goldie, nicknamed "Goo," met a boy cat named Pudgy, nicknamed "Poo." Goo and Poo had four kittens: Bloo, Choo, Koo, and Twoo. If Goo went to the store and got 3 cheese-flavored kitty treats for each kitten, how many did she buy? If Poo went to the store and got 4 sardines for each kitten, how many did he buy? And so on. This is where Dudeman takes over the storyline, in case you can't tell...

Then, Bloo went on a game show and won $5000. He generously decides to share with his family. Which leads to all sorts of purchases, including toys, groceries, cell phones, and scented pine cones (where did THAT come from?). When Goo decides to make her world famous cheesecake, the ingredients cost $50, but she already has milk at home so she doesn't need to buy a $5 carton of milk. To complicate matters even more, some of the kittens decide to pool their money so they can make bigger purchases. Also, the scented pine cones were on clearance, 10 for $5. Can Bloo divide them evenly between his family members?

All I can say is...Why NOT make math silly? And what the heck is in a $50 cheesecake?

We played Scrambled States of America, Domination, Apples to Apples, and Stack. We spent an awesome day at the creek, and had another great playdate with good friends.

We read LOTS of good books, and I'm going to post about them soon. It was a good week, and we're taking tomorrow off to clean the house!

Whine

Forgive me for being whiny, but it seems unfair to me that we went seamlessly from cold season to allergy season this year.

We also went from snow on the lawn to needing to mow our lawn in about two days.

Sorry I'm cranky.  It's probably just my allergies...

It's So True

Supersim: "You can make all kinds of pizza alternatives, but they're never as good as pizza."