I had the best time this weekend at a baby shower brunch for my friend Bonnie.  We drank mimosas, ate delicious food, laughed and laughed, and squealed over little baby girl clothes. Then almost all of us got together at the next day while the kids were doing chess club. Alison is still sticking with chess.  She is the only girl in our group who has.  You would think there would be some reason for this, but as far as I can tell the other girls and a couple boys  just didn’t enjoy it much.  So she plays with the boys that are left.  We have a group of 14 kids from age 6-14 in a friendly, supportive environment.

Girl Scout cookie selling time is nearly over.  Alison was supposed to try to sell 300 boxes.  We didn’t even come close.  Her leader gave a big speech about how important it was to try to make this goal.  She assured us that people love to buy Girl Scout cookies, so it would be much easier to reach that goal than we might expect.  I know she lives in one of those newer neighborhoods where all the homes are closer together and they aren’t allowed to have broken down cars or clothes lines.  Perhaps those types of people love buying cookies.  We sold boxes in my neighborhood, but I think it must have been about 10 no’s for each yes.  It was slow going, and we’re not even going to come close.  At this point I think she’ll be lucky to sell 100.  I hope she’s not the only one.

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Alison has expressed interest in attending public school because she wants to see what it’s like.  I can certainly understand why she would feel that way.  She has always been encouraged to be curious and try new things.  School is a big all encompassing thing that a lot of her friends do.  How could she not be curious about it?  Her biggest concern was that she wants to be able to go and see what it’s like, but she wants to retain the option of coming back home because she likes homeschooling.

After a little discussion we’ve agreed to wait until the beginning of the next school year because it will be a lot easier to start at the same time as all the other kids.  I think it would be easier to make friends and fit in that way, not that she is likely to have a problem with that.   I don’t mean to brag, but whenever she is in a group of her peers she is well liked.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t sad about this.  I’m proud of her for making her own decisions  and being ready to act on them of course.  But I like homeschooling her, and I like our lifestyle.  It will be weird to me to sent her off for several hours ever day to a place where I’m not in charge.  After so many years of having freedom to education and raise my children as I see fit, I’ve become accustomed to the freedom. This is going to be different.  It’s not about me though.  I’m determined to be the kind of parent that genuinely supports my children in what they want.  Someone suggested ways I could undermine what she wants to do and manipulate her into staying  home.  I never want to be like that.  Now that I’m getting used to the idea I’m feeling a little excited for her in her new adventure.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden 5*

Arthur Golden perfectly captures the voice of his narrator, an especially famous Geisha from the first half of the 20th century.  This is a life story and a love story that left me breathless.

The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr 3.5*

A girl growing up in East Texas during the mid 20th century comes to an understanding about her mother’s mental illness in this well written, beautifully detailed book. Unfortunately, one horrifically detailed scene of a child rape ruined what could have been a very good book for me.

The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way by Joy Hakim 4.5*  A history of science and some math, beginning with the earliest cultures through the Dark Ages with a heavy emphasis on the Greeks.  I picked this one out because I loved Bill Bryson’s “Short History of Nearly Everything” and I thought this would be a similar thing for kids.  It is written like a textbook for middle-schoolers.  My quick preview told me that Andrew is almost ready for it, but in a couple years it will be even better for him.  Much of the science will make more sense once you’ve had some basic geometry.  My interest, however was piqued, so I read it for myself.  She gives a good narrative of how we got from one point to another in scientific knowledge.  This is book one of three.

In the Shadow of the Ark by Ann Proovost 4.5*

Re Jana is a dark skinned young woman from the marsh settlements who comes to the desert to escape the rising water with her father and paralyzed mother. Here they find the Rrattika, the nomadic tribe of Noah. He is an old man with three sons who oversees the construction of the biblical ark. At first the reason for its building is a mystery. Re Jana’s father is an expert boat builder, so the family finds a place in the community. Re Jana falls in love with Noah’s Ham, and while he loves her, he marries another woman. Re Jana and her family try to find a way to save themselves.

The style of the writing feels like the way Moses would have written if he had almost 400 pages for one story. Emotional descriptions and moralizing aren’t necessarily done in a modern style, but events are told in a plain,  practical way that led me to experience all the sensations without being told how to do it.

Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon 3.5*

I’ve fallen in love with the characters and the story in the Outlander series, which is why I read this book.  I wish I loved it wholeheartedly.  I wanted to so badly.  There were too many story lines for one book, and not one of them came to any sort of conclusion.  Apparently there is going to be another book in the series. I still like it enough to want to read the next book.  I just sincerely hope it’s the last one.

Half Assed by Jeanette Fulda 4*

Jennette’s story of what life was like for her losing weight.  She doesn’t talk about the specifics of how she lost weight, but about what changes she went through.  I loved her honesty in admitting thoughts she had that most of us would prefer to pretend we’re too mature for like how she would check out other women and compare herself to their levels of fatness. The book reads like a conversation with a close friend.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson 4*

This book is presented as a story of Ruby Lennox’s in the first person, but each chapter is followed by a footnote chapter that explains the parts of Ruby’s past that she cannot know herself. It’s hard little hard to follow all the names and back stories, but I’m glad I persevered because the ending is satisfying.

Four generations of women whose decisions and attitudes have more of an impact than anyone would ever realize their own and each other’s lives. This story is tragic with all the secrecy, death and abandonment. Eventually everyone is connected together by symbolic objects like the rabbit’s foot, the photographs, and the silver locket.

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I decided to thoroughly bundle up and brave this earlier than usual super cold weather so Jack could have a walk.  I wore one knit cap, one sweatshirt, one hoodie with the hood over my cap, and one winter coat with the hat on.  Then I added Richard’s super thick mittens, and of course pants, shoes, and socks.  I stepped outside and was surprised to find that it wasn’t nearly as cold as I thought it would be.  In fact, I was perfectly comfortable.  I ran back up to to the porch to check the thermometer.  It was 31 degrees.  This is going to sound like the most stupid realization ever, but I finally figured out how to dress for cold weather.  We just don’t have enough of it for me to get much opportunity to learn.

Andrew had the feeling run down kind of sickness today.  While he took a nap, I took Alison, Ana, and Chey on a bike ride to an old church graveyard.  The earliest date I saw was 1861, but I only looked at a small fraction of the gravestones and many of them are so weathered they are unreadable.  One of the buildings in this church has a large crawlspace surrounded by brick that has a pattern of holes built in.  I thought it would be funny to creep the kids out by looking through the holes and pretending I saw something spooky under there, but I really did see something that surprised me -  gravestones!  I have no doubt that’s what they are.  I wonder how many people in the congregation know they are praying and singing hymns over the corpses of what could be their church founders.    I saw Pet Semetary and Poltergeist.  I know all about what happens when you do that.  ;)

The good news is that after Andrew’s 3 hour nap and dinner he’s feeling much better.

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The New York Times’ educational blog has a 50 question quiz about the most famous events of the last decade with links to the appropriate news stories.  My kids were born very late in ‘98 and in ‘01, so this decade has been their whole lives.  Naturally, as young kids they have been oblivious to a lot of it.

I find that sitting at the breakfast table is a good time to have the kids attention.  Their minds are fresh, and they haven’t yet involved themselves with something distracting.  Also, there’s food, which is a good incentive to sit quietly.  I think I’ll use breakfast time to go over 5 of these questions per morning.  They like to hear my stories about where Rich and I was when things were going on and what we thought about them.  Don’t snicker, they really do like to hear about that kind of stuff.

  • We continued studying inventions and technology of the late 1800’s.  We read a biography of Thomas Edison.  We found the first ever movie created and one of the most popular very early movies on youtube.

  • Alison is practicing measuring with the metric system.  I’m briefly going over the pages in Andrew’s math book about working with fractions, but he’s already learned all this by using fractions and decimals in real life with building projects and working with money.  I just want to make sure he hasn’t missed anything important.
  • The kids were fascinated by a big book of deceptive art.  Escher, Dali, Arcimboldo, along with plenty of contemporary artists, many who were inspired Dali.  I asked the kids to pick a couple favorites.  Here are Alison’s:

“Bedtime Aviation” by Rob Gonsalves

Andrew’s:

Three Dimensional Model of Escher’s Waterfall by Shigeo Fukuda

“Individuals” by Vik Muniz -art made from chocolate syrup

Mine:

“Valentina, The Fastest” by Vik Muniz Art made of sugar

“Visions of Quixote” by Octavio Ocampo

  • We took a nature walk where we found some type of unusually shaped skull on the ground near a pond.  Alison thought it looked like an alligator skull, and I was inclined to agree, but I thought the nose looked a too blunt.  Still, I couldn’t think what animal it might be, so we found a bag and brought it home.  I know a guy whose hobby is finding dead animals, putting them in buckets with maggots to eat away the flesh, and then saving their bones to display in his house.  So I called him.  He was able to identify the skull as belonging to a catfish.  Once he pointed it out it was so obvious.  He pointed out where some of the gills were still left.  Also, that would explain why there was a skull and no body.  Someone who was fishing must have left the head behind.  We could have spent more time examining, but the stench made it hard to handle.
  • Interest and finances have petered out for the homemade phonograph.  Instead we bought a couple records at the thrift store and made a homemade player.  The kids found household parts to cobble together a turntable.  Then they taped together a paper cone, which would be the speaker.  They taped a simple sewing needle to the end and gently held it against the record.  One person holds the cone while the other uses their hand to spin it.
  • Learned about sound waves and sonic booms.
  • Andrew read a biography of Gershwin,so we listened to some of his music.
  • They’re memorizing “The Rainy Day” by Longfellow

Reading List:

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