Journal 12/1/10

Woke up early. Rick left at 6:00 a.m. to get to airport.

Really windy and rainy out. Dozens of stinkbugs driven in by weather. Yuck. Spent morning catching and flushing.

Everyone slept in except S. He spent time scanning, photoshopping Garfield comics into his deviantart page.

Made gingerbread and read two chapters of Little Apostles on Crutches.

B and S played upstairs.

J read Church history and took Ch. 4 chapter test.

Read The Erlkonig by Goethe to the S and B and then we listened to Shubert's and Loewe's interpretations of the poem. B asked to hear it again. They had fun huddling under a blanket during all this pretending to be frightened.

Watched next lecture in Discovering Music on Opera. Very long lecture. First time B watched with us. She was bored silly.

Took B to VT.

J played on computer then did a little math, then went outside. The temp has dropped from 60's to 42 degrees.

W practiced lots of music then went off to his music lesson.

J did some drawing. He and his friend at CLC are trying to challenge each other to draw more. Joe came over to play with S. They were making music in the basement and then sitting out on the screen porch writing a parody of a Pokemon show.

B played a lot on Webkinz. She designed several T-shirts. She was doing this on Thanksgiving as well with her cousin.

I made latkes and we said the Baruchas and lit the candles. After dinner the kids all played dreidel.

Took J to CLC

W came home from his music lesson and then later left to p/u J for me. While W was here though B and I got really into singing Chanukah oh Chanukah while W accompanied us on guitar.

Joe didn't go home until almost 9 o'clock!

Read next ch. of The Story of Rome about Lucretia to S and B. The put euphemistically described her as being 'insulted.'

Didn't want to read David Copperfield without R here. And R has been reading Westmark to B and S at night. So in lieu of other read alouds I read a story from Tales from a Korean Grandmother. I was falling asleep as I read.

J was stilling working on math when I went to bed.

B listened to a new story cd from the library (not sure which one) I think S was reading Dilbert comics.

Journal 11/30/10

Forgot to mention S doing Sudokus at bedtime 11/29.

Tuesday - S and B went to Art class, J and I went to Latin. Magistra read Horatius at the Bridge. I've heard about that poem for ages but never actually heard it before.

Took J to Biology class. Can't remember what B and S did just then.. . .

W woke very late. He spent the day practicing music for hours and hours.

After J came home from Biology @ 2:30 he basically was on the computer playing games and reading web comics for most of the rest of the day.

S, B and I went to Target to various and sundry things. Then we hit the library. S brought along the Suduko book and instead of looking at books, worked on those. He's done 8 so far, he pointed out to me.

After the library we hit the grocery store to pick up necessary supplies for S's 4H cooking project. We also picked up dinner since I realized I wasn't going to be able to cook the dinner I had planned and get to 4H on time.

I don't know what B did at home while S and I were at 4H. S was only so-so into it. We were making a marinated veggie salad. Everybody brought veggies and oil and vinegar. Another lady in our group who is just wonderful at this kind of stuff. Had the kids mixing different amounts of oil and vinegar to test what the best ratio was for making a vinegrette. She had them close their eyes and then smell olive oil and canola oil to see if they could tell the difference. The kids all agreed olive oils smells good! They then compared different types of vinegar: malt, red wine, balsamic, apple cider, white vinegar. Some of kids really hated the vinegars. It took so long to clean up the mess we'd made that we didn't get home until after 9.

Rick read aloud to B and S (Westmark by Lloyd Alexander). J did read some more of Augustine's Confessions. Almost done!

W was a sweetie and hand washed a huge sink load of dishes (our dishwasher has been broken for a week).

B was still in gift making mode. She made something for S. R was up late doing work and said B was still awake at 1 a.m!!!!