Happy New Year/Once More Into the Breach!

Sorry for the lack of posts! I have been enjoying the vacation, recovering from laryngitis, and losing my camera cable, among other things. I have lovely pictures from Christmas...but they are stuck on the camera!

We did have a very beautiful, joyful Christmas. Among the many fun presents, the 4 older Zoomlians all got lab coats and a brand new chemistry set!! Thank you Grammy Ann!!

After a month or so of light academics, we are itching to plunge into high tide. Naturally, we are planning to dive into Chemistry! Zorg wanted to be sure I would wear my lab coat, too (since my lab issued lab coats with our names embroidered on them, I got to keep mine after I "retired"). But of course! I will have to get a picture of all of us in our lab coats. And find the photo cable.

I will need to pull out the enormous Periodic Table we made a while back. We put made pictures for all of the elements: Al has some aluminum foil, C has some coal, He has a picture of a balloon, etc. We also got a book (can I find it?) of what I think of as the elements with attitude... Done Manga style, each page has an intro "by" each element showing it's chemical personality. I plan to do an element a day. We also got The Mystery of the Periodic Table. May be a good read aloud if I get my voice back... And I could show you pictures if...

And! Have I mentioned that one of the many wonderful things about my dear in laws is that they get the way we learn? And that means every Christmas we get a new stock of fascinating things to jump off into! Among other things, they gave us several fascinating books on how to immerse yourself into early American history including another book from the amazing Camella Van Vleet!

Oooh! And we got the Rosetta Stone Spanish! And we want to do more typing with the Scottish Goat! We are actually kind of bubbling over with new ideas and things we want to try.

Speaking of which... We tried a new way of ringing in the New Year. We set the clocks on Greenwich Mean Time! No kidding! That put midnight at about 7 PM local time so everyone was old enough to count down the seconds. We made silly hats (which I could show you if...) and signs and yelled,and toasted with pomegranate 7-up. Then we ate fancy cocktail food and watched the Sydney fireworks on You Tube and then some Cirque de Soliel (the Emperor's Christmas present).

Happy New Year!