Zoom Times

Guest blog by Mxyl: A more detailed explanation of why I hate orange-kneed tarantulas

2012-02-01T09:58:00.000-08:00

In case you didn't get the general idea with the first post...

Cross Curricular Amaryllis

2012-02-01T01:19:00.000-08:00

I really love amaryllis, but the big bulbs are very expensive. Even when I splurge, I usually get a bargain basement bulb with one flower stalk. The larger, more expensive bulbs often have two stalks. The wimpier stalks have two blossoms, but the best stalks have 4 trumpet like blooms.

When the amaryllis kits went on clearance at Target, I pounced!

This turned out to be a great science and Algebra project.

Science, of course, because you can watch the roots (I used a clear container), shoots, and buds develop. In Amaryllis, the flower stalk develops before the leaves emerge.

Algebra because, if you measure the shoots each day, you get a chart that is half of a parabola.

In our case, we got a surprise! We got a nice healthy flower stalk, followed by what I presumed to be a leaf...

Surprise! It was another flower stalk! We started measuring and charting the second stalk as well. Then the leaf started to emerge...

Amazingly, it turned out to be third flower stalk! So, of course we are charting all three!

As you can see, they all follow that parabolic rise.

And, as it opens, I can see that the first stalk has 4 blooms!

The Tooth Chicken Brought Me a Squid!!

2012-01-31T06:17:00.000-08:00

How's that for a statistically improbable sentence? Nevertheless, it's quite true. The wiggly crown that turned into the Tooth from Heck continued to misbehave, ending with gum surgery followed by extraction yesterday.

I must admit, when the dentist told me (a while back) that I would likely lose the tooth, my first thought was to wonder what the Tooth Chicken would bring.

I've decided to call him Squiddy!

He's entirely hand sewn, and very affectionate with the children, as you can see. Either that or he's really hungry.

As Oob said, "He's sooo cuuuute! And piiiiink!"

I haven't had a visit from the Tooth Chicken in decades, but it was worth the wait. As long time readers know, I love squid!

More Biology

2012-01-30T02:01:00.000-08:00

One of my goals with this class is to make it a transition class towards college. I've been teaching the kids to take notes, study, keep a lab notebook, and (hopefully) learn at a college rate.

I'm not sure why high school science is usually presented so slowly, but I've always thought the slow bit rate was an interest killer. Not a problem in this class!

Last week we learned (in one two hour class) all the parts of the cell. I wrote out and explained the parts using candy as models for all the organelles. If you've ever seen a ribosome, I think you'll agree, they look exactly like nerd candies!

When I had finished my explanation, I had them build cells, using the candy and jello. The animal cell was a wiggly orange heap, but the plant cell had a firm (tupperware) cell wall!

They then identified and explained and ate their models...

Next, I assigned two organelles to each kid and had them put on a skit in which they portrayed their cell parts. I used a sheet as the cell membrane. Mxyl did an excellent nucleus: "Hey! I tell everyone around here what to do! Get back to work!!!"

Then we went on to talk about diffusion and osmosis. I used perfume to show diffusion in air (spray at one end of the room and have kids tell you as they smell it). And I used food coloring in three jars of water (cold, medium and hot) to show diffusion in liquid.

Osmosis was the most fun! Osmosis is the movement of water from an area of greater concentration to less concentration across a membrane. Really, it's a specialized form of diffusion and very handy to know about whether you are making pickles or washing your contacts or dealing with a sick child!

First, I skinned some eggs. Unfertilized chicken eggs are a single large cell, but they are hard to look at as a cell unless you take the shell off or "skin" them. You can do this easily by soaking them in vinegar for two days. As an extra bonus, the vinegar not only dissolves the shell (very fizzy and cool by itself!), it also toughens the membrane so you can pick the skinned egg up and carry it around! It should be noted that the egg is still completely raw...

We put one egg into water (hypotonic), one into corn syrup (hypertonic), and one into salt water (isotonic? the Zoomlians made this part up!).

Here's what they look like:

The top one is the corn syrup and you can see how the membrane shriveled as it the water was drawn out of the egg and it shrank.

The next one down is the salt water egg. It wasn't completely isotonic, probably because the concentration of water is determined by more than salt; the egg contains a lot of protein, so the water was drawn in and it swelled.

The bottom jar is our egg in water, and it is swollen nearly to bursting! It has a weird taut feel...

In all of these, the same thing is happening: water is moving from an area of greater concentration (outside the membrane in the water jar, inside the membrane in the corn syrup jar) to an area of lesser concentration (inside the membrane in the water jar, outside the membrane in the corn syrup jar).

I had done 8 eggs total, so we had one left over (each family had their own experiment). Zorg decided to try his own experiment, throwing the last egg (I think to see if it was really raw).

It was quite spectacular! He threw it hard enough that he ruptured the membrane! The white flew about 10 feet and the (denser) yolk flew about 20 feet! Both were, in fact, quite raw. An excellent demonstration of physics! A great idea to do that outside!

Biology

2012-01-29T13:57:00.000-08:00

I've been so busy, I don't think I've even mentioned that we started a high school Biology class two weeks ago!

We have Mxyl and two home school friends (all actually in High School), as well as Klenda (faking it well), and Zorg (auditing the class and enjoying it heartily).

Another parent is doing the driving and (yet ) another parent (Choclo's godmother) is watching Choclo, Oob and Leena. The godmother tells me that watching those three is hilarious!

The first visit, Choclo and Oob went methodically hand in hand through her house, informing her about their discoveries: Do you know that you have legos?

Later: Do you know that you have a dog?!

Still later: Do you know that you have a BABY!?!

So this has been good for all of us: the older kids get time with their friends, Choclo and the younger kids get to spend time with the godmother and her younger kids, and, best of all, I get to teach Biology!

Early Warning

2012-01-28T00:47:00.000-08:00

Oob: Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, MOM!

Me: Yes?

Oob: Can you teach me to drive?

Crazy Day

2012-01-27T09:08:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, we started doing our usual Wednesday field trips again. This time, we went to the BMI. No, not the place to measure your Mass Body Index, we went to the Baltimore Museum of Industry!

This is always a fun trip. The museum is set up as an indoor town where you wander through buildings (stores, canneries, garment factories, print shops, and smithies) looking at (and trying out!) the machines used in different places.

Here are the Zoomlians at the port (harbor) section.

My favorite was the bakery, where we saw a gigantic rolling pin used to cut out donuts. The Zoomlians preferred the TV sound stage where they staged a talent show the like of which I have never seen...

Then it was off to the bizarre alien playground.

I don't know who designed this, but they were a twisted genius.

And I'm pretty sure they were not human.

But it's a great place to visit!

They have this ring thing. It's exactly like a merry go round (except there's no center, you can't sit down, it's on an angle and, if you have more than one person on at a time, you are likely to kill each other)

And they have a slide like object (the blue thing extending to the left) that is convex, grooved and without sides. It also wobbles.

My kids, being Zoomlians, have a fabulous time!

I think what's fun about it is that there is no obvious, per-determined way to play with the stuff, so the kids just make stuff up. Also, it has not been "child-safed," so we have a distinctive thrill (right before the "Aiiieeeeee! THUMP).

Next, it was off to the library where I reached my long cherished dream of escaping the library with less than 50 books (47!), mostly because it was a long walk back to Blue Streak (parked at the playground). My true dream is to escape with less than 50 books in less than an hour, but we must take our victories where we may...

I should dream for all that AND finding all the books the first time I try to return them, but even my imagination can't stretch that far!

Then it was home to make dinner and collapse in a book besotted heap.

Guest blog by Mxyl: Why I hate orange-kneed tarantulas

2012-01-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

Mxyl: Well, YOU'D be scared too, if you were in the middle of writing a blog post and suddenly a 10-foot-long-- never mind.

Guest blog by Mxyl: Happy Demidolthood Klenda!

2012-01-24T14:05:00.000-08:00

Mxyl here. Good news: Klenda has just survived her first few nights as a teenager.

You see, there are two different kinds of age people are at: Child and a dolt. However, I--and now Klenda--are at the most dangerous age: when we are half of each. I call this being a demidolt.

Also called half-dolts, demidolts contain random powers that are necessary for their survival; mine is super-clumsiness, allowing me to increase of decrease the clumsiness or coordination of other beings (though I can't use this on myself yet; it looks like it'll just have to be 0% coordination for me) and I also can construct really long sentences, while Klenda actually appears to have the rare and virtually uncontrollable power of... breaking random body parts!

But the less you know about this the better, so I'd better stop saying these things now. But just so you know, if you ever run into a dark-cloaked man with four arms who calls himself Khiruptorr, you'd better say you know nothing abou--

Happy Birthday, Klenda!

2012-01-23T19:13:00.000-08:00

She's been on earth for...let me see....About 4,745 days. Or rather, 13 years. And,of course, we had a party! Or two...or three! #1 First and foremost, a Tie-Dye Party! This was a sleep over with friends. In the evening they tied and dyed the shirts. They also tried drawing designs freehand and then folding them, and I thought those shirts came out very well. The over night soak gave amazing colors!

They also made tie dyed (chocolate) cupcakes and ate tie dyed grilled cheese sandwiches!

They watched Dreamer, played Quelf, and then did a game called Piggly Wiggly.

In this game, "it" leaves the room and everyone gets into a random sleeping bag. "It" then returns, sits on a random sleeping bag and asks, "Piggly Wiggly?"

The bag's occupant replies, "Oink, oink!" and "it" guesses who is in the bag.

#2 We had our family get together with Grammy and Pop at the Chinese restaurant, and then came back for (angel food) cake and ice cream and presents.

Her biggest present was half an i pod touch (she had saved up enough for the other half!). Since all the "i" devices can text each other, we have been texting knock knock jokes and puns...a lot!

#3 A second family get together with extended family (i. e. Mr.Bill and Miss Tracy).

Obviously this called for more (strawberry) cake and ice cream!!!

My dear Klenda, you are finally really and truly a teenager!
You are growing into such a lovely young woman, puns and all.

I enjoyed your babyhood and childhood so much, and I'm very excited to walk with you in this next stage of your life.

You are developing into something truly beautiful for God!

Insults From an English Teacher's Offspring

2012-01-18T00:52:00.000-08:00

Leena: Most of them were oxymorons, but the rest were complete idioms!

ADD-ON BY MXYL:

The Emperor: But then, one of them fell into a comma!
Me: But only for a period.
The Prime Minister: I've gotta quote that one.

Weird Weather

2012-01-17T01:04:00.000-08:00

It's official. We've lapped seasons.

This morning the early Spring snowdrops are blooming....

And so are the Fall camellias.

The camellias are usually the last thing blooming, and I pick the last of them for Thanksgiving.

I still have dozens of my late white camellias, and even one or two frostbitten pink ones. And now I have half a dozen snowdrops in the shade on the north side of the house. Crazy!

Anyone else having a weird winter?

And, I forgot to mention, we had a white Christmas!

That means different things to different people, so let me be specific: it snowed and we had a dusting on the ground on the very last day of the Christmas season, January 9th, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord!

Maybe we're stretching it a bit, but we'll take what we can get, especially since it hit 70 two days before that snow!

PARTY!

2012-01-16T13:02:00.000-08:00

Last Friday we had our long awaited US History party.

After 2 (and a half) years of study, and 10,000 years of history, we were ready to celebrate for a long time. In fact, we took the whole day!

We started with a true colonial breakfast: popcorn with cream (and sugar).

Then we had historical fun blocks. We rotated between Battle of Britain (WWII fighter plane game), Mission US (online Revolutionary War role playing mystery game), this great game that has you match events from US history with years (best capstone review project possible!), and Wii exercise games which had nothing to do with history.

In the afternoon, the party really got going!

We played Minutemen. In this game, you wait until your kids are least expecting it and then you attempt to startle their socks off by screaming, "The British are coming!"

They then have 60 seconds to grab something that represents their gun, and something that represents their powder (usually something sack-like).

I really enjoy this game, but I think they're on to me. They were lined up in 20 seconds with nary a sock in sight.

Then we did Guess the Historical Figure.

They dress up and we have to identify them.

Some are specific, like Annie Oakley here.

Others were general like the 70s girl, the 60s Star Trek fan, and the soldier from the Future.

I almost forgot! My favorite game was 10,000 in 5. That would be 10,000 years of history (narrated by me) acted out in 5 minutes (by them). I'm not sure how long it actually took, but it raised the bar for hysterical historical!

All this was accompanied by lots of snacks and a sound track of music from different eras.

We had pizza for dinner.

And, if you could guess what shape I was trying to get the cupcakes to make, you could have cupcakes for dessert!

Can you get it?

Update

2012-01-15T12:28:00.000-08:00

We had the portfolio review last Thursday and we had a great time!

The only down side is that I keep remembering things I forgot to say...

Days later, I am still coming up with, "I totally forgot to mention the gingerbread houses!" and, "Oh yeah, three of the kids are taking piano lessons!" and ,"Ooooh! All of those scout badges!"

Anyway, I love making a big deal out of the review, and it's important to me to really reflect on what we did and what we'd like to do... but by Friday I was in definite need of some R and R.

Guest blog by Mxyl: Speaking of Education...

2012-01-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

I have improved my skills at ~~photoshop~~ lightsabers & here is a quick tip to fighting evil clones, only while fighting more than one at a time: Think what Jason did when he was overwhelmed. Get them to fight each other and, since a clone is not as smart as the original, none of them will remember to force blast the other, so they will merely tire themselves out so much that they can hardly stand up.

I have also been working on a special effects software known as particleIllusion. So far I am testing what it can do on the trial version.

The answer is quite impressive, but I do not know if it is worth 300$

Forgotten Science: Trees

2012-01-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

I finished my portfolios and was talking to a friend about them when she reminded me that I had totally forgotten about the other science classes I taught!

This was a continuation of the Tuesday Science class. One of her kids was allergic to our birds, so we had to have class outside (and we had to stop when the weather got cold!). What could we study outside???

I dunno, what's outside to study? (Look out the window.) Trees!

We walked around the neighborhood, learning to identify trees by their leaves, bark, structure and leaf scars.
We looked at slices of wood and learned about the heartwood (the dead but supportive center) and the cambium, the thin ring beneath the bark that is the living tree. The ring regenerates each year- last year's cambium will be heartwood this year (or possibly sapwood, an intermediate stage)- and this is why we can tell the age of the tree by counting its rings. This is also why cutting a ring around a tree will kill it.
We talked about the xylem and phloem (both are in the cambium) and went through the progress of a drop of water from the root hairs in the soil up through the xylem and out of the leaves on the top of the tree, and the progress of sugars down from those leaves through the phloem to the roots.(If you ever get confused, phloem flows down).
We used magnifying glasses to look at the stoma on the leaves. These tiny holes are the trees lungs. Fascinating stuff!!
This was in early November, so we also collected colorful leaves and talked about the fact that these colors were always there, just covered up by the large quantity of chlorophyll needed for photosynthesis.
We reviewed the seasons, and the angle of the Earth causing the shortening of the days that signaled the trees to stop making chlorophyll.
We talked about roots. Roots absorb water, store food and anchor the tree. But did you know that roots only go down two feet or so? It's true! The roots go out nearly three times the length of the branches, but they don't go down (comparatively) very far at all. This is because, below a certain depth, there isn't enough oxygen in the soil for the roots to survive.

Spice Cake

2012-01-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

Choclo read this early reader titled, "Spice Cake."

In it, a mouse finds a recipe and makes, you guessed it, a spice cake!

Would you like to make a spice cake, Choclo?

Of course! I used a plain vanilla cake mix and let Choclo go through all my (baking) spices. He smelled each one and decided how much to add to the batter.

We mixed and baked and frosted and decorated with cinnamon candies and Swedish fish.

Yum! Spice cake!

Portfolio Review

2012-01-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true, I neglected the blog this weekend because I was off goofing around getting my portfolios together... Shocking, really!

If you're wondering what a portfolio review is, it's the twice a year check up that my state does on my home school. And I love them! Maryland actually only requires that I demonstrate that my children have made progress in a range of subjects, not tremendously difficult to prove, actually.

It all starts when I realize I have a review coming up. I "realize" this in my inbox.

Reviewer: Courteous e mail reminder.
Me: Aaaaaahhhh! Really? So soon? What did we do? Did we do anything in the past 6 months?

I then go through my blog and records and rediscover all the fun and fabulous things we actually did and I get excited about everything again (plus a million more ideas of things we could do next).

By the time we get to the interview it goes like this:

Reviewer (very politely - I love my interviewer!): You are actually educating your kids, right?
Me: You're not going to believe all the great stuff we did!!!

And we go on from there and have a big brag fest. The county now consistently gives me the same kind, supportive interviewer (who does not read this blog, by the way), so I know we'll both have a great time.

This review is covering last June to last December and here are:

my science posts,
my history posts,
Mxyl posts,
Klenda posts,
Zorg posts,
Leena Posts,
Choclo posts.

Magic Castle

2012-01-05T18:22:00.000-08:00

At least, it seems like magic to me!

Oob gave Mxyl the world's teeniest Lego set: Neuschwanstein Castle small enough to fit on your palm!

Somewhat smaller than the original:

Magic Garden

2012-01-04T16:43:00.000-08:00

One present I knew that Zorg would like was this "Magic Garden." It's really a capillary action and crystal formation experiment in a very appealing disguise!

Here we see it just as it was set up. You can see the "magic liquid" (water with mineral salts) traveling up the paper mountain and trees bu capillary action.

Within an hour, you could see the crystals begin to form on the tips of the "branches" and "grass."

An hour later..... The "cherry blossoms" are developing nicely.

Three hours in, we have "snow" on the mountain!

Four hours in...

By evening (maybe 7 hours), everything seems fully developed!

But by morning, we have even more crystals!

We're pretty sure this is the max since the crystals and paper show definite signs of drying.

What a great experiment!

On the 9th Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me...

2012-01-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

This morning I found this mysterious Christmas present all wrapped up and waiting for me in the middle of the kitchen.

Who could it be from?

I wonder what's inside...

I shook it and it made giggling noises!

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

We have been continuing to celebrate Christmas (we do all 12 days), and we had a an additional New Year's celebration. As you may know, we open presents slowly: each person opens a present and then they go off and play with it. We usually open about 3 presents on Christmas, and then one a day for the rest of the days. That's not as hard as it sounds, since we are having small parties with friends through the 12 days. This year, with every kid buying gifts for every other kid, we had a lot of presents!

On New Year's Eve, (7th day of Christmas) we visited Grammy's house and did a big extended family Christmas thing. Have I mentioned I love the Emperor's family? One of their traditions is for people to prepare a written memory, often of the people who have gone before us. This year, Ole Ed did a funny and touching bit about the music different people in the family loved. It was really lovely.

The funniest Christmas presents to date (we are still opening presents) are these "drinking glasses" which Grammy got for Choclo and Oob. I don't know which was funnier, the name or the look of studious concentration on their faces!

That evening we had our New Year's bash starting with a fancy dinner which was a selection of hors d'oeuvres.

We counted down to midnight in Rio (8 our time), then toasted the new year (with cherry 7Up) and watched the fireworks in Sydney.

Then we pulled our crackers and watched a Cirque de Soliel. This year was Saltimbanco - very fun!

I would say that it's a New Year's tradition for the boys to wear clashing PJs, but, really, it's more like a New Year's Resolution... several years in a row...

Guest blog by Mxyl: Merry Christmas from Zoom Extended Edition

2011-12-29T16:24:00.000-08:00

This year our grandparents came over to visit us! Pa, while opening his present, handled it as if it was a bomb (or at least an unidentified object of some type) and by the time it was just about open he had almost convinced all of us that there were three [angry] ferrets inside who were doing everything they could to get out. It later turned out to be six mugs with designs of fighter planes on them.

We greatly enjoyed the presents and presence of one another. Oh, yes--I can't do a blog post about this Christmas without noting the Christmas tree. Last year, it was so big we had trouble finding enough room in the house to put the angel on top! This year, it was relatively tiny. The result was that we had a lot of trouble finding enough room
on the tree to put all the ornaments, let alone the presents.

Baby Jesus's manger was overflowing with straw (literally!), Our other grandmother came over to run a few errands and finish up her Christmas shopping, and we played both video games, outside games, and more.

Just today, we opened the stuff our Aunt Toni gave us.

Choclo & Oob got probably the most difficult-to-build castle in the world (just trust me on this one),

Leena got glowing gloves that glowed different colors (red, green, blue and all three--that is SO cool),

Zorg got a create-and-eat gummy bug set (no, I am not making this up),

Klenda got a new art kit (a calligraphy set, in fact!)

and I got an official Legend of Zelda t-shirt!

Thanks, Aunt Toni! And a happy new year to all!

Merry Christmas from Zoom!

2011-12-25T03:55:00.000-08:00

Scout Party!

2011-12-22T03:31:00.000-08:00

Last night was the Boy Scout Christmas party. I'm not sure how that turned into a costume party, but it did!

I think one scout decided to come as Santa and Mxyl thought of coming as an elf. Link, the Legend of Zelda elf, to be specific.

From there on it snowballed. Zorg wanted to be the nightmare before Christmas (or "Oops! Wrong holiday!"). Leena wanted to be a Christmas tree (although some of her tinsel fell off before I took the picture), and Klenda went as a department store elf. Her name tag reads: Hello! My name is Elf Rudolf.

And a very good time was had by all!

FOOTNOTE BY MXYL: I made a photoshop of myself earlier. It reads, "Legend of Zenda", a pun on Princess Klenda (Hey, our dad is a grand emperor, so "Princess" Klenda really does work!) and has nothing whatsoever to do with The Prisoner of Zenda.

O Antiphons

2011-12-21T05:30:00.000-08:00

Each December 17th, the Church kicks into high "getting ready for Christmas" gear. This is marked by two momentous events: 1 we put up our Christmas tree, and 2 the O antiphons.

What's an antiphon, anyway? An antiphon is a response to a psalm or a scripture canticle. The O antiphons are responses to the Canticle of Mary, also known as the Magnificat. The Church sings this every evening, and there are always antiphons said before and after we sing it, but the O antiphons are particularly striking in their beauty and significance.

The antiphon for the 17th, for example is:O Wisdom, you came forth from the mouth of the Most High and, reaching from beginning to end, you ordered all things mightily and sweetly. Come, and teach us the way of prudence.

Each of the antiphons is a scripture based title for Jesus. There's even a cool "Easter egg" thing: If you take the first letter of each antiphon (not counting the O!) they spell out, "Tomorrow, I come" (in Latin, of course, since they were originally written in Latin!).

Every year, we each randomly pick an antiphon to illustrate on large paper banners. We draw or paint them secretly, and then post them in the stairwell on the appropriate day.

The top picture shows the first three days. Star did "O Wisdom," Leena did the next day "O Lord and Ruler of the House of Israel, you appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and on Mount Sinai gave him your law. Come, and with outstretched arm redeem us."

Zorg did "O Root of Jesse..."

I did " O Key of David and Scepter of the House of Israel; you open and no man closes; you close and no man opens. Come, and deliver from the chains of prison those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death."

This is my banner. In the key hole you may be able to see (from the top down) Adam and Eve, Abel's death, the Tower of Babel, hatred, money, sadness, the Golden Calf, Fear, slavery, death, human sacrifice, starvation, age, weapons of war, natural disasters, and, at the very bottom, people languishing in chains in the dark.

That was yesterday's antiphon, today's is "O Rising Dawn, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice: come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death."

Klenda did this one, but it's not on the wall yet!

Of Socks and Such

2011-12-20T15:49:00.000-08:00

It is a well known fact that socks tend to go missing in my house. I always thought the drier ate them, but now I need another theory.

I have a dozen Christmas stockings. I have never put any of them into the drier, yet each Christmas I find fewer stockings.

This year I could only find 7 and I needed 9. What to do? The plain ones were on sale at Target for $4, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money. I have yards of fleece stockpiled in my sewing cache, how hard could it be to make them?

In a shocking development, they turned out to be as easy as I thought they'd be!

I just folded the fabric to make 4 layers, cut out a stocking type shape, and sewed around the outside.

I wasn't sure how to cuff them (or was too lazy!) so I folded down the tops and fringed them. A little fabric paint and: Voila! Stockings!

It would have been nice to trim the seams to get the curves to lie smooth, and I may get around to that... eventually. But they bulge out when stuffed anyway, so it doesn't show in use!

Crazy Advent

2011-12-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of using Playmobil Nativity people is that they are of the right size to interact with other toys. The creature hiding behind the stable keeps showing up in our nativity...

This week my Advent has kind of felt like there was a giant alien bug hiding behind all the Christmas preparations.

Last week I went in for some minor dental work and got walloped with "the tooth from heck" as my dentist so delicately put it. By the end of that encounter I had laser gum surgery, a shaved bone, and air in my cheek (not in my mouth, inside my cheek).

I was an airhead for a few days, but I'm feeling muuuuch better now. Except that today I had to go back in with a raging gum infection. I'm glad I live in the time of antibiotics.

Back to last Friday: I was hardly off the pain killers when I got the news that Fr. Pinto had died. Later that day, my father-in-law went into the hospital with a fever they couldn't control. The fever broke today, thanks be to God, but prayers for his recovery would be appreciated.

What to make of all this in Advent?

A parish near me uses blue for Advent instead of purple and pink. Klenda asked the priest on Gaudete Sunday, why no pink? He told her that the pink was there to offset the penitential purple, but that Advent wasn't really a penitential time, so they just use blue and therefore don't need the pink..

That's wrong, of course. The Church has spoken on that one: we use purple because it's a penitential season. Pink represents joy. So, he's right about something very basic to the spiritual life: when you skip the penance, you lose the joy.

What does that have to do with my aching gums and battered heart? Two things. The first was that when I went in to get that minor dental work done, I was thinking of Annabelle's sister Julie.

Annabelle comments pretty frequently on my blog, and she happened to mention that she was having a tough Advent because her sister was diagnosed with cancer. I looked her up on Caring Bridge, and saw that Julie has a cancer that is difficult if not impossible to cure, and she has kids my kids age and younger - her youngest is 2.

Anyway, I thought I'd offer up any pain or discomfort from having my loose crown fixed for Julie. Little did I know! But it's awfully little compared to what she's going through, and it's a gift I can give to the Christ Child. Essentially, it's a suffering (a penance, if you will) that I chose willingly, if occasionally whinily!

The second thing: What about all this extra suffering? I didn't choose to suffer my friend's death, or my dear father-in-law's illness. Why these unlooked for, unchosen "penances" in Advent?

There is a saying that sorrow carves in your heart the space that joy will fill.

Put another way, you can't have a resurrection without a death.

This has been a pain that shocked me out of my own busy preparations. I was at the pharmacy today, waiting for my new antibiotic, and I really looked at the people around me. It seems so often, I am so busy, I don't really notice other people, especially people in pain. That's what I saw: people in pain, people who could use a kind word, the suffering Jesus.

These sorrowful Advent experiences have opened my heart to others, and therefore to Christ, in a way I don't think I've ever been, and I'm grateful for that.

RIP Fr. Pinto

2011-12-17T18:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Angel called with the shocking news that my dear friend, Fr. Pinto, had been killed in a car accident in India.

Please pray for the repose of his soul, and for his family, as well as for all the people whose lives he touched. For myself, all I can say is that my life is so much better for having known him. He brought me closer to God, and may the Lord he loved so well, richly reward him.

He taught me that nothing is lost in God, and to trust, always trust in God's love for us, even, perhaps especially, in the face of great suffering..

Fun at the Botannical Gardens

2011-12-16T00:57:00.000-08:00

I thought this year's display was the best ever!

The theme was "animal houses" and they had an amazing variety.

This was my favorite: an Opposum Opartment!

Each house was a miniature marvel, carefully constructed of twigs, acorn caps and bark.

We also enjoyed the rest of their displays, especially their enormous glassed-in two tiered jungle.

I think the best might have been seeing the banana trees with actual bananas and the cocoa tree with real cocoa pods. Oooh! We saw a kumquat tree with fruit, also!

They also have a kids exploration room where you can smell all sorts of things that come from plants. These range from the commonplace cinnamon sticks, to the exotic pampas grass.

It's all done in this amazing giant metal garden where the "flowers" contain all the different things to smell. Very cool!

Yet More Gingerbread

2011-12-15T00:56:00.000-08:00

There's nothing like gingerbread and 6 bowls of candy to bring out the artist in any kid!

In this case, we sweetened the deal by making a giant batch of royal icing, then separating it into 6 bags with different colors.

This was super easy: we just snipped the corners of the bags and let the kids have at it. We used freezer strength quart bags to prevent the possibility of blow outs.

We ended up with a wide array of artistic styles, all of which tasted delicious!

Reasons for Photoshop

2011-12-14T13:35:00.000-08:00

One reason I like the Botannical Gardens is that it's a great place to take Festive Family ~~Fotos~~ Photos.

It's a great theory, and sometimes it even works! This year however...

Photo 1: Light isn't good, Mxyl appears to be blocking some unseen thing aimed at his ear.

Photo 2: Zorg looks desperately unhappy, Mxyl doesn't look happy and Klenda looks a little too happy. Light still isn't right.

Photo 3: Mxyl still too serious, Zorg looks pained, I feel pained.
I forget about the light because we are obviously having other issues.

Photo 4: Leena moved, Zorg makes an attempt at sleeping, Oob hides. I have a creeping sensation that this is not going to work out as planned.

Photo 5: The Zoomlians, perhaps sense my mood! Klenda is grimacing, Leena is horrified, and Oob attempts to escape. Mxyl looks great, though, and Choclo is smiling like a champ! Maybe I should change tactics...

Photo 6: I take a picture of "only the kids who want to smile." It comes out like this...

Photo 7: Fine! I try a picture of "only those kids who don't want to smile." It comes out like this.

Which is enough to entice Oob back since he doesn't want to smile either, which looks like this.

At this point we are actually 16 photos in (I spared you, really I did!) and I realize we are just not going to get a Christmas photo of glowing happy, respectabiggle children this trip and I decide to be all right with that.

There's always Photoshop.

Choclo's Machines

2011-12-14T01:53:00.000-08:00

Choclo has been going on a building spree with the big red cardboard blocks. He likes to build large and fantastically complicated "machines" like this one, which feeds penguins (fish and squid) and shoots leopard seals (the primary predators of penguins).

Guest blog by Mxyl: Overheard

2011-12-13T16:04:00.000-08:00

Something completely random for when you walk into your Mom and Dad's bedroom and see your youngest brothers:
CHOCLO: "No, Oob, 'cause God hasn't died yet." (suddenly becomes aware of my presence.) "Oh, Mxyl? Does God have freckles?"

Big Brothers Little Brothers

2011-12-13T00:19:00.000-08:00

Really, does it get any better than this?

If You Can Stand Another Advent Post

2011-12-12T16:19:00.000-08:00

We got our Christmas lights up!

The four youngest Zoomlians went to a Christmas concert at the BSO, and Mxyl and Klenda stayed home with me. We had the idea to do the outside decorations as a surprise to the rest.

When we were done, we decided we needed something extra. More lights? More bows? A gigantic snow globe on the roof?

How about a 4 foot inflatable penguin!?!

You may recall that Choclo and Oob are crazy about penguins.

They are really CRAZY about this one!

Incidentally, I forgot to mention the biggest deal about the Christmas cards. Mxyl created, printed and cut out the pictures, Zorg folded the letters, Klenda stuffed envelopes, and Choclo put on the stickers.

Then Klenda built a... house of cards!

Getting Things Done

2011-12-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

Today we were supposed to go to the Botanical Gardens and see their holiday train display. As it happened, the combination of cold and rainy and Occupy DC (camping out on the Mall, and presumably taking up parking) was enough to scare us off, temporarily, at least. We'll try again next week.

In the mean time, it looked like a great day to Get Stuff Done!

So far we've done the Christmas cards! Really that doesn't capture it. We are DONE, do you hear me, DONE with the Christmas cards!!! That means: Christmas letter, Christmas picture, addresses found and written, stamps and address labels applied mostly right side up (Choclo did those), envelopes stuffed and all, DONE! Did I mention we're done?

Did you know that one thing that stresses me out about Christmas is Christmas cards? You did? I'm surprised. I've never mentioned it to anyone. But as long as they are in the house I feel creeping guilt that I need to add (to the Christmas letter, mind you!) a newsy personal note to each person. I mean to each person in each household. That's about 200 newsy personal notes. Seriously, I would need to start in August. But, when the cards are sent, the guilt evaporates, because... it's done.

Did I mention that when I ran out of stamps, I sent Mxyl and Klenda to the post office to buy stamps, stamp the remaining cards and mail the whole shebang? Having older kids rocks!

We've also been making cookies and candy and starting to wrap the presents. And the kids all cleaned their rooms. ~~And we finished the cards!~~ And we're listening to Christmas music!

I am having an awesome day (as measured by I feel great)! And I hope you are, too.

Here, listen to some Christmas music:

Advent Musings

2011-12-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

As usual, slow posting means fast real life!

We are rolling along with our Advent theme song, People Look East.

The first verse goes:
People, look east. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

The First week of Advent we had unexpected, but delightful, house guests. That was incredibly fun! Love, the guest was closer than we thought! We set aside our regular plans and thoroughly enjoyed our guests.

The second verse goes:
Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare,
One more seed is planted there:
Give up your strength the seed to nourish,
That in course the flower may flourish.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the rose, is on the way.

This Sunday, I came down with a fever that has totally sapped my strength. The Emperor took off today to help me recover. In fact, he is off at the toy store with all six Zoomlians so they can buy presents for each other. He's my hero...

I'm supposed to be writing the Christmas letter right now, but, as I was checking the blog for what we did this year, I noticed that I hadn't posted for a while. I'm not dilly dallying around to avoid writing the letter. Really.

I find it interesting that this is the first year in a long time I have felt ready for Advent. Not ready in the sense of having everything ready, by any means! Just that I felt ready. Maybe God's using this Advent to get me ready, get my heart ready for Christmas. All the losses this year may have cracked my heart open enough for Him to have room to work. What I mostly feel now is joy.

I did not start Advent with a grand spiritual plan of how I was going to prepare my heart for Christmas, but God has stepped in with a better plan than I could have imagined.

Here is a video. The video itself is very amateurish, but I love the way he sings it. There's a bright and beautiful spirit there that seems to mean the words. This is also the arrangement I like best (by Eleanor Farjeon). My copy is sung by the angelic Amy White (not a high and inaccessible kind of angelic, her voice seems more rich and golden) but I can't find a You Tube of it. You can hear the sample if you click the link.

Happy Advent!

2011-12-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

It used to annoy me that all the Advent Calendars started on December first, while Advent itself only managed that trick once every seven years or so. But I'm feeling muuuuch better now!

Actually, I love Advent, but now I find it's nice to ease into it. I've found I need to do 6 Advent things a day so that everyone can do something each day. Plus everyone has a paper calendar of their own this year. Plus putting hay in the manger. Plus, to start out, I need to strip all the walls... I love it all, but it's tough to do from a standing start.

We got back from Mumpy and Pa's Saturday night (Blue Streak blew the radiator on the way back, so we got home late). On Sunday I went digging through the Advent and Christmas stuff in the back basement in a wild effort to get my act together. I wonder if this is a metaphor for what the Second Coming is going to be like that for me...

Anyway, our 6 daily activities this year are:

1. The Advent House, full of Playmobil nativity figures and candy (6 pieces plus a figure behind each door).

2. The velcro calendar: faded and missing a piece or two, but we love it!

3. The Jesse Tree. This is doubling as our Bible time since each day goes through a part of salvation history in both the Old and New Testaments.

4. The ornament: a new Christmas decoration picked out each day!

5. Lighting (or just blowing out ) the Advent wreath candles.

6. This is new! A kid gets to pick one thing we all can do as a gift to God that day.

You can see pictures of everything Advent here.

I also love online Advent calendars! My favorite religious one is on Busted Halo, my favorite secular one is Boola and Kwala.

Epic Thanksgiving Part 2

2011-11-30T11:32:00.000-08:00

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with smoked turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberries, salad and... soda!

Soda is a fairly rare treat for the Zoomlians (maybe once or twice a month), but I was still surprised when I found these pictures on the camera.

Klenda built a domino house, then amused herself (and Leena) by seeing what she could remove.

Actually, she could remove quite a bit while leaving the structure standing.

But not that much!

Here's my Dad, looking like he's wondering if someone did something to the soda...

In the back ground, you can see the Emperor reading with Mxyl. He (and the oldest 3) finished Return of the King, thereby concluding the Tolkien run which began over a year ago with the reading of the Hobbit!

Guest blog by Mxyl: The... Neat-o '90s...?

2011-11-29T15:14:00.000-08:00

A lot of stuff happened during this decade. This was kind of the grand age of the non sequiter.

First of all, then the World Wide Web was ~~winvented~~ invented. When the Prime Minister first heard of this, she thought it was virtually useless given the number of websites (or lack thereof). Obviously, a blog was by that point inconceivable. Now, what should I do next? So far, I have to choose from:

Dolly the sheep
The Kobe quake
The World Trade center got bombed
The stock market skyrocketed,
The Zoomlian Empire was first founded, and
Klenda and I were born!

And then there was also the Hubble Space Telescope and the beginning of the ISS.

Part of why this post is smaller then the others is probably because it was a relatively peaceful and "normal" time. The Cold War was over, no one was really afraid of terrorists (save the World Trade Center) and the economy was also doing well.

Oh yeah, and something that no one who grew up in the '90s or late '80s could forget were "the video game wars", as I like to call it, also known to people in their 20s or 30s as Nintendo Vs. Sega, Super NES Vs. Sega Genesis or Mario Vs. Sonic. PUN WARNING: Thanks to intense competition--particularly Sony's arrival and PS2--Nintendo virtually won by a landslide.

Note: It is obviously a coincidence that I did a whole paragraph about video gaming and less then one sentence about the Hubble Space telescope.

And we've been going on a roll with music from the selected time period, so here are two.
First, Smells like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana. I'd recommend you only watch 20 seconds or generally enough of to get the idea (Guy who says his life stinks, although you can't tell a word he's saying, obviously courtesy of heavy drugs).

Second, Smells Like Nirvana, by Weird Al.

Epic Thanksgiving Part 1

2011-11-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

We went up to visit my folks for Thanksgiving, and we all had a great time!

As you may know, my parents live on a lake. What you may not know is that the lake is artificial: really, it's a stream that was dammed up sometime in the 50s or 60s.

Surprise! They are doing major work on the dam and they drained the lake!

Now my parents live on the mud flats!

The dam now looks like this (looking down from the road that goes over the dam). Why the sidewalk looking thing perpendicular to the dam? I have no idea!

Incidentally, if you're worried about the fish, they scooped them out in buckets. I wonder if they found the giant snapping turtle I was always afraid would bite my toes off. We saw it once, it's ragged shell the diameter of a man hole cover.

The heavy construction equipment was admired by all, as you can imagine.

Besides walking down to the dam, the kids clambered along the rocks on the shore line and returned with heaps of 6 and 7 inch clam shells, some still inhabited.

Giant freshwater clams in Clearview Lake? Who knew! And I was worried about the turtle!

At any rate, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to walk out in the middle of the lake and see the stream for myself.

I put on my Dad's rubber boots (3 sizes too large) and came up with a plan: there were large swathes of rocky terrain in the mud flats, and I thought they might be drier, or at least more manageable, than the flat muddy places. The Emperor solemnly promised that if I fell down, he'd ~~laugh really hard~~ throw me a log, so off I went.

Believe it or not, the "rocky path" idea worked. I sank in to below my ankles, but that was manageable, even with the oversized boots. I made it to the middle (actually 2/3rds across) and saw the stream. It was about 3 feet deep and running fast. I didn't get too close because I saw the tracks of a small duck imprinted about 3 inches into the mud there, and I figured a larger duck would sink more...

I picked up 2 flat rocks (one for my brother, one for my sister) of the kind we used to try to skip out there, and turned back. A few yards from shore, I saw the big branch my Mom had wanted out of the lake, so I thought I'd take a detour... through the smooth mud...

One boot sank in to mid calf and stuck fast. One foot stuck, when you're walking in deep mud actually turns out to mean BELLY FLOP!

Naturally, The Emperor on dry land became frantic with worry... about finding the camera.

While I was there, I did get the junk out of the muck, and eventually, me out of the muck, too.

If you're curious, the jacket and jeans survived, the white sweater did not.

After I got cleaned up, we picked up sticks and burned them for a marshmallow and hot dog roast. Yum! Yum!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T01:28:00.000-08:00

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

This year I was talking to a Swiss friend and I was mildly surprised that they do not have an equivalent holiday.

After talking to another friend from Guatemala, I think I understand more why this is such an American holiday.

The original feast was in thanksgiving for a good harvest, but it was also in thanksgiving for the native people who had saved their lives in a peaceful cultural exchange.

Has America always lived up to that hopeful encounter? No! But the American dream is that people from all over the world can come here and that the peaceful exchange of knowledge in an atmosphere of good will can enrich us all.

More Gingerbread

2011-11-22T18:27:00.000-08:00

Choclo finished (and ate) his gingerbread house!

He wanted a "tower house" which I took to mean a sky scraper.

As you can see it did not last long...

Amusingly, he actually bit it, just like this.

After a few tries he went with the more ordinary way: breaking and eating, and he invited everyone else to join in. Yum!

And Star finished this darling little Irish cottage to take home to her family for Thanksgiving.

It's modeled after a music box her family has.

A very sweet idea!

I think that just leaves making a house for Oob, but that will wait until after Thanksgiving.

Gingerbread!

2011-11-21T05:39:00.000-08:00

Long time readers of this blog know that blog silence in mid-November (as opposed to all the other random blog silences the rest of the year) can only mean one thing: gingerbread!

Indeed, this year we have Klenda and Leena entering the Darnall's Chance Gingerbread Contest. We also have some others in the works that are not for the contest, more on them later.
UPDATE: Klenda won second prize!

First off, we have Klenda's excellent "Cajun Christmas." (Fr. Mark, this is for you!)

She put an amazing amount of detail in this one: swamp grass, gators, cypress knees, squirrels and Christmas lights, even algae on the water! This has to be the most challenging house she has ever done.

The idea of doing a tree house is always appealing, but doing a weight bearing tree out of edible materials is incredibly difficult.

She came up with the idea of a laminate tree: layers of gingerbread glued with royal icing, then coated with royal icing. Amazingly, it works! The tree is bomb proof! Great job, Klenda!

This was Leena's first gingerbread for the contest and I think she should get a prize for best first entry!

She named hers, "Have a Huffy Puffy Christmas!"

After a few years of doing this, I think the best gingerbreads are the ones that capture a moment, and this one is great!

I love the cobble stone path and the wolf's red nose!

For fun, she put little Swedish fish in the pond watching the wolf.

Doesn't the house look scared?

Why the Zoomlians Like Being Home Schooled

2011-11-16T07:24:00.000-08:00

Because their teacher considers Weird Al to be a critical part of American cultural development from the 80s forward. Also, of somewhat lesser importance, but a part of our Futures Past segment of US History, Star Wars. So, on a relaxed Wednesday morning, we find ourselves watching this:

Choclo and the Tooth Chicken

2011-11-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

There are good things and bad things about being the fifth kid.

On the one hand, your ~~worn down~~ ~~broken in~~ highly experienced parents may forget to tell you that your baby teeth will fall out.

On the other hand, by the time you get your first wiggly tooth, The Tale of the Tooth Chicken has grown to epic proportions.

Some explanations were necessary, and we are very grateful that there were a good three weeks between, "Why is my tooth moving?" and, "My tooth came out!"

And the Tooth Chicken came through in a blinding flash of rainbow feathers. This time he left a glittery ball and a light up top, both inexplicably green.

US History: the Totally Awesome 80s (Dude)

2011-11-13T18:02:00.000-08:00

You know you're a dedicated home schooler when you use your high school yearbooks to define "big hair".

Since I have not given birth to you, I will refrain from showing you my yearbook and instead give you a picture of Morgan Fairchild because I wanted my hair to look like hers.

Do I even need to say it didn't?

Actually, my hair was very short all through the 80s, so I missed out on the big hair thing, but I could dream...

What else was there in the 80s?

Why, yes, we were still doing the Cold War! In fact, we reached new heights of anxiety, or at least I did. In the beginning of the decade, I was absolutely convinced we would have a nuclear war before 1990. At least until Gorbechev came into power in the USSR. Watching The Day After in 1983 did not help.

Mt. St. Helen's erupted, covering a great deal of my extended family with an inch or two of ash.

I remember they sent us some. Evidently everyone sent out of state relatives envelopes of ash, many of which broke open and gummed up the postal machines.
My grandma cleverly sent ours in a plastic tub in a bag in a box.

I also remember visiting the site ten years later and seeing the curved ash embedded trees jutting out of the mountain like fossilized ribs. In between were drifts of pink wild flowers.

The 1980 election was the first one where I understood what was going on. Our school held mock elections and Reagan won by a landslide. This was about a week before the real election in which Reagan won by a landslide. I remember being weirded out that he had been an actor.

The Challenger exploded. Chernobyl melted down. Reagan, Lennon, Pope John Paul II were all shot.

It was the age of "Just Say No" to drugs, red ribbons (AIDS awareness) and MADD.

It was the decade when we got a microwave, an Atari, and a Commodore 64. This computer was so primitive that instead of a disk drive, it used cassette tapes....

This is also the decade that gave us boom boxes, cordless phones (slightly smaller than a shoe box but slightly more clunky) and VCRs.

The 80s were a wild time: The colors were black and neon anything! I learned to drive! Gas was 99 cents a gallon! Rubic's cubes! Pac-man! Members Only jackets! Sunglasses (at night!)!

I graduated High School, went to College, and, somewhere in between, met the Emperor! He rocked my world enough that I don't remember much else after that.

But if you really want to know about American culture in the 80s, you can't go wrong with a look at Michael Jackson!

Guest blog by Mxyl

2011-11-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

Today we went to the US History Museum to wrap up our war section on our US History mega unit!

1st, we went to the Revolutionary War section.

Here Choclo and Oob are watching a short Revolutionary War video and then--I think--looking into barrels to smell the kind of food that they had in that time(you know, the kind that molds fast--I decided to skip that section).

Next, we did the Civil War (not to be mistaken for a civilized war) in which we learned (painfully) how long setting up for a picture could take, which explained why there were very few pictures had people smiling in them.

Then, the Prime Minister decided
we should do a less, shall we say,
somber picture. Please observe.

Well. Moving on.

We had a fabulous time with the WWI/WWII (our Grammie Ann was a WAVe in WWII--and she reads this blog; go Grammie!) and Cold War sections (no pictures, though...) and then did the War of Vietnam! This was what we'd been looking forward to, having our grandfather as a Vietnam Vet and all, and we learned that the Vietnam War was noted as a "TV War" (though I have no idea what so many cameramen were doing in the middle of a full-fledged war) and
even got a photo or two of us next to a helicopter from the V. War.

And then we finished it all off with seeing the real star-spangled banner!

And we are up to the 21st century on our history unit! We'll post the '80s, '90s, and '00s in later posts!

Driveway Math

2011-11-09T01:23:00.000-08:00

With the nice weather, we've been spending afternoons outside.

All that nice blacktop makes me think of hopping on the driveway math!

I did a space theme. There is an ordinary number line on the left, but on the right, we go from 2 to 20 counting by twos, each on a different space thingy.

Trust me, I'm a scientist, space thingy is the correct terminology, the way I draw them! (Did I mention my field is immunology?)

At any rate, I was quite pleased that I could come up with 10 space thingys to draw, and particularly pleased with 12 which started out as the sun and turned into a supernova (but actually looks like a chrysanthemum in this picture).

Naturally when I got to the end, Choclo and Oob had conflicting opinions on the final number and drawing...

I ended up going up from 20 to 100 by tens, although you have to loop around a bit to hop on them all in order!

Golden Afternoon

2011-11-08T01:18:00.000-08:00

Choclo: Dinosaur Hunter

2011-11-07T04:30:00.000-08:00

We've been watching Planet Dinosaur , (not to be confused with Dinosaur Planet, although their website is fantastic!) and this seems to have reignited Choclo's fascination with all things dinosaur.

We have also been taking advantage of mild weather and the peak of the leaf season to go on frequent rambling walks. Choclo uses these walks to hunt for dinosaur fossils!

Among his recent finds, we have (from left to right): a tooth from a small T-rex , two neck bones from a rockasaurus, a tail bone from an armored dinosaur, and the club of an ankylosaur.

I know this, because he told me....

In case you aren't up on your dinosaurs, here is an ankylosaur, swinging his club at a T-rex.

As for the rockasaurus, well, I guess only professional dino hunters know about them.....

Math Snacks

2011-11-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I run across a truly sublime bit of cross-curricular educational fantasticness. Many of the Math Snacks videos hit close, but Bad Date is pretty much the apex of perfection.

In three and a half minutes, it teaches math, rudimentary social skills, advanced social skills, nutrition, and why you should never admit that you listen to country music backwards.

All Souls

2011-11-04T01:54:00.000-07:00

For All Souls Day, we went to Mass and then to Arlington National Cemetery to visit the graves of the Emperor's dad and grandparents.

While there, we were privileged to see a funeral procession with a large band and two flag draped coffins, one caisson pulled by black horses, and one by white.

There was also a riderless horse, which I think means one of them was a commander of some sort. They were followed by, literally a "bus full" of mourners (walking). I have no idea who were being laid to rest, of course, but we prayed for them.

I thought of what my Dad says: the price of freedom has to be paid by each generation.

The generations we were visiting were in a quiet part of the cemetery. Dad was a WWII vet and Grandpa a WWI vet. I never met Dad (he died when the Emperor was 13) but I've heard enough to really wish I had.

He loved roses, in fact, he planted a rose that still blooms for me, so we always bring him roses when we visit. We had little bouquets for the three graves of our loved ones, but I also brought a few dozen camellias and gave them to the kids. They could pick any grave to put a flower on and pray for that person.

It was a lovely, peaceful, prayerful visit. I love All Souls Day. It's a beautiful reminder, in this dying season, that nothing is lost in God, and that, in death, our bonds of love are changed, but never broken.

All Saints

2011-11-03T11:54:00.000-07:00

We had a great All Saints Day! We made it to Mass and then went home to feast on Halloween candy.

In the morning we did Fun Blocks in honor of the feast and in the afternoon, we played a saint game.

It went like this: I wrote out ten male saints and ten female saints, cut them into slips and put them in separate bowls. The kids pulled names and head ten minutes to come up with a costume.

Why, yes, we do have a lot of dress up material in the house! Part of the deal, however, was that you did not need to dress up as the saint. Your costume could be a symbol of the saint, or something the saint was the patron of, or something else associated with the saint.

I so wish I had taken pictures!

Mxyl picked St. Florian and dressed as a firefighter (yellow slicker, fire hat, ax - patron of fire fighters).

Klenda picked St. Helen and made a crown and grabbed a cross (empress and finder of the True Cross).

Zorg picked St. John Bosco and dressed as... a boy! (spent his life helping boys)

Leena picked.... hmmm.... I can't remember! I'll ask her and update it later!

After that, we had a relaxed day. My dear MIL came over and we tea - a perfect feast day!

Costumes

2011-11-01T14:23:00.000-07:00

Here we have Klenda as St. Dorothy, an early martyr. On the way to her execution, someone laughed at her for saying she was going to heaven's garden, and wanted her to send him some fruit.

After her execution, an angel showed up at his door with 3 golden apples and three golden roses!

Leena was St. Mary Magdalene... She's traditionally depicted with a cross and a skull because she is contemplating Jesus' sacrifice and the shortness of our lives.

Usually the skull is not so creepy, however.

Also, she kept losing it, and we were constantly looking for Leena's skull.

This was Mxyl's first year on the other side of the door - he liked giving out the candy and seeing all the kids in costumes.

He himself is dressed as a more modern looking St. Michael.

Why have St. Michael always dressed like a Roman soldier?

The only down side was that one young trick or treater thought he was dressed as "a dead soldier..." Ummmm. NO!

Choclo wanted to be St. George, so, of course, Oob wanted to be St. George.

Fourteen years and four boys later, we probably own enough knightly garb to have all six kids be St. George, so this was not a problem!

Plus they could whack each other while waiting for everyone else to get ready.

Zorg went as Daniel, complete with pet lion.

We had just finished reading the book of Daniel, so Zorg was very authentic.

He began every statement to me with, "O Mom, live forever!"

Pumpkins!

2011-10-31T00:04:00.000-07:00

Before we get to the promised pumpkins, I would just like to say that the spider webs, after a few weeks of wind and rain, just keep getting creepier...

Now, on to the pumpkins!

Half the Zoomlians tried something new.

This kind of carving just scrapes the surface of the pumpkin. You swab it with bleach, let it dry, and then paint it with glow in the dark paint.

Nicely creepy! I had a a hard time getting a picture of the glow, however.

The manga pumpkin is Leena's. Zorg's has giant eyes, and Klenda made the ghost.

The other Zoomlian's took the classic approach.

Aided by some spiffy LED lights, we have Mxyl's Super Pumpkin, Choclo's Punky Pumpkin, and Oob's Freaky Pumpkin With Lot's of Pointy Teeth.

Why We Learned to Read

2011-10-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

So we can spend large amounts of time sprawled on Mom and Dad's bed, reading comics.

Please note that Mxyl additionally spent a great deal of time (and his own money) getting PJs that clash quite so supremely!!

Halloween Cupcakes

2011-10-26T04:55:00.000-07:00

Also for Scary Movie Night, we made cupcakes. After looking at all the great ideas on the web, everyone had a different idea of the ideal Halloween cupcake.

No problem! Each of the older kids got six cupcakes to decorate.

Here you see Zorg making his "Eyeball Surprise."

Were you surprised?

And here we have Leena's "Brains."

Or maybe, Brrrainz!

And Klenda's spider webs. I really like her spiders, cut from licorice.

And last, but not least, Mxyl's graveyards. The tombstones are Oreos, the ghosts are peeps and the pumpkins are the same kind we use on the number line.

Yum! Yum! It's hard to wait for the party!

Biohazards!

2011-10-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

Tonight is Scary Movie Night! This is an annual event with the scout troop, and this will be the second year it's been held at our house (this year's scary movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark).

This is the first time Mxyl has been a patrol leader (troops are broken down into smaller patrols). His troop has two patrols, the Bats, and the Biohazards.

Can you tell which patrol Mxyl and Zorg are in?

Can you guess who came up with the idea of having Biohazard patrol?

The third (honorary) Biohazard is Klenda, naturally.

Considering the costume, maybe we should say, "unnaturally..."

At any rate, the costumes were easy peasy and will look great under black light!

They are painters coveralls (less than $10 at Home Depot), randomly splotched with fluorescent green and yellow spray paint.

Oh yes, we did masks and gloves, some of which we had, but that still kept the total (per costume) under $10.

For the biohazard symbol, I had to look it up on the internet. I traced half of it on piece of paper (held up to the monitor) so that I could make it as large as possible.

Then I laid the half symbol on a folded, larger piece of paper (mine was a store circular done on stiff paper) and cut away the symbol on the folded side. It opened into a stencil that I used with black spray paint on the kids.

Did I mention that all spraying was done with the kids wearing the costume? Naturally, since they were wearing painter's coveralls and masks, they were completely protected from paint. I, of course, was not...

Why does this never occur to me until after the fact?

On the plus side, these costumes actually are (except for shoe covers and eye protection) fully functioning biohazard suits for most biological contaminants...

Family Fun Night

2011-10-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

We went out to Holy Redeemer's Family Fun Night and were greatly surprised....

All the cool carnival games, face painting and balloon animals were free!

We had a great time, especially with the big bouncy obstacle course and the big clown (on stilts) who made balloon sculptures for the kids.

Mxyl and Zorg were there to support the Scouts by selling popcorn, but they had plenty of time to try all the games, too.

Thank you Holy Redeemer! In this economy we would have had to ration the fun. It was really nice to just let the kids do everything they wanted.

Seven Quick Takes: Pumpkins and stuff

2011-10-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

1. The Zoomlians have painted their pumpkins!

Going from left to right are the Zoomlian's pumpkins in order (note the glow-in-the-dark insane asylum picture). Klenda has a headless horseman asking, "Have you seen my head?"

We actually paint our pumpkins as soon as we get them (to keep them from being stolen by people who think we can spare a few pumpkins), but we will also carve them closer to Halloween.

2. We have also decorated the house!
We used glow-in-the-dark spider webs, old tree branches and the unforgettable insane asylum sign that I mentioned earlier.

3. Three of the Zoomlians have been getting piano lessons! Our friend, Star (who will be staying with us for a few years when she gets her Master's degree), has agreed to give free piano lessons! Klenda, Zorg and Leena can now play beautifully. No kidding! Like Bach and Pop Goes the Weasel, and stuff.

4. We skipped our adventure this week (we were supposed to visit the Museum of Natural History), and will go next week instead. We actually skipped because other people in our group were sick, but it was nice to have a relaxed day at home, especially since it was cold and rainy.. We puttered around and got lots of little projects done. Plus I introduced the kids to the Addams Family! (Warning: this clip is an entire show, some 20 minutes long)

5. We've had a lot of beautiful days and long walks picking up leaves.
What to do with all those leaves? A leaf tree, of course!

The trunk is a paper bag or construction paper, and the leaves are taped to the wall. Eventually, we'll tape leaves "falling" from the tree and a "leaf pile" near the floor.

It's a nice way to do leaf identification, too.

6. We continue our assault on the 75 pounds of apples! I think we only have 20 apples left.

The score thus far:
Apple Pies: 4, Applesauce: 2 qts, Apple Butter: 10 pts, Apple Dippers: 15 apples, Apple Fritters: 3 large piles, Apples Randomly Eaten: 25, Apples Given Away: 10,

I'll be glad when we can finish the apples so I can start on the 30 lbs of squashes. Mmmmm. More pie....

7. And back to the pumpkins: On Winblog (a property of Failblog) we found out exactly how creative with pumpkins you could get. I mean, honestly, who wouldn't want a Doctor Who pumpkin?

Or a pumpkin based on the ring from Tolkien's classic, for that matter?

One based on a cannibal would be less appealing, but nevertheless it it very original.

See what I mean?

Mxyl, on the other hand, says, "When I get better at pumpkin carving, I so totally want to carve one that looks just like THAT!"

Um... Link from Legend of Zelda?

And no, none of these are Photoshopped.

NOTE: Failblog and Winblog aren't always G-rated (not even "G-rated Failblog", which is more PG--PG-13) so it's best to do it when you just feel like sitting back and relaxing when all of the kids are in bed.

And thanks to Mxyl, my co-blogger on this post! More with Conversion Diary!

Didn't We Have Some Short People Around Here?

2011-10-20T04:52:00.000-07:00

It's high time we had a post about them!

Choclo and Oob are having a splendid school year. Anything either of them can do, the other wants to do (better). This makes for amazing progress...

Choclo is on the very last of the last (fifth) box of Bob Books. Hooray, Choclo! He has also started reading everything he sees. The other day we were driving on the highway and every time we passed an exit sign, he would announce it with a cheerful, "EggggZIT!"

I had no idea there were that many exits, let alone that each one was marked by two or three signs...

Oob is in the middle of the second box of Bob Books, and has just shifted from sounding the letters individually to saying the sounds slowly together. Go Oob!

Both boys are adding and subtracting, but with varying degrees of reliability. I took out the chalk and a bag of mellocreme pumpkins and we headed for the driveway. The key here is to make a number line with the space between numbers about the size of the kid's stride.

We started with just the number line and I waited while they ran up and down on it, counting forward and backward (it's actually faster to let them get that out of their system and then try your lesson - if they never finish, they weren't ready for your lesson but they still learned).

Then I showed them my bag of pumkins and asked how many pumpkins they had.

Zero. Right!

Then I asked, if I gave them four pumpkins (place four pumpkins, one on each spot on the number line, counting aloud), how many would they have?

Four. Right! Zero plus four is four!

But if they came along and ate two pumpkins (they each eat one) how many would you have?

Two. Right! Four pumpkins take away two pumpkins is two pumpkins!

Continue until they are sick, you are tired, or both.

Actually, as I did numbers that were larger than I wanted them to eat, I had a "big pumpkin eating monster" gobble up large numbers of pumpkins (I put them in my pocket and belched loudly).

The big trick is, whether you are picking them up or putting them down, count the pumpkins as you move them, then restate the question conventionally: 11 pumpkins take away 7 pumpkins are 4 pumpkins!

Jamming

2011-10-19T03:41:00.000-07:00

I've been making jam, and lots of it! I love to make jam this time of year, and I often give it as Christmas presents.

From left to right, we have apple butter, pear ginger, peach mint, wine jelly, and ginger jam (who could that be for?!).

If anyone is interested in recipes, leave a question in the comments.

Off for More Adventures

2011-10-18T00:29:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday (in my continuing attempt to catch up with my life!), we went off on a quick trip to the World War II Memorial. This was really lovely, and a great reminder of all the stuff we finished last month. Best of all, we got to see and thank lots of actual WWII vets.

Suddenly, I realized: when I was a kid, I saw WWI vets, and now they are all gone. I told the kids to thank the WWII vets now, because, by the time you are grown, they will belong to God and history.

The WWII Memorial was actually a bit of a side trip while waiting to visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. This was a great tour!

They were printing hundred dollar bills while we were there, so we saw tens of millions of dollars! This picture (from the web) shows "bricks" of ones. The bricks we saw were $400,000 each... more than a house!!!

US History: the Something 70s

2011-10-17T02:58:00.000-07:00

And weren't the 70s something? I ask you, just take a look at that collar! (DISCLAIMER: I was born in 1970).

Kid: I'm really looking forward to this decade.

Me: Why?

Kid: Disco!

Me: (stunned incomprehension).

So we watched excerpts of Saturday Night Fever on You Tube. The things I will do for education!!! And, yes, you can thank me for not posting it.

Doing these more recent decades has been interesting. On the one hand, they aren't in any history books suitable for kids (that I could find). On the other hand, we have tons of primary sources floating around (and I believe that is the most dignified thing ever to have been said about Saturday Night Fever - it's a primary source!). I actually found Wikipedia to be the best comprehensive source.

What else besides disco? More Cold War, of course! And the energy crisis (which seems to me the beginning of today's environmental movement), the Iranian hostage crisis, more Women's Lib, Sesame Street, a string of bad Disney movies, Skylab, the eradication of smallpox (my brother, a year older than I, was among the last to be vaccinated), the Walkman, the beginnings of VCRs, personal computers, and microwave ovens (although my family had none of these until the 80s), the rise of women in the workplace, crock pots, latchkey kids, no-fault divorce, and even more societal change!

Oh, and I missed bell bottoms, VW beetles, and plaid shirts.
UPDATED: I don't mean I MISS these things, just that I forgot to talk about them in the unit, despite the fact that they are among the things I remember the most clearly from that decade...

US History: the Swinging 60s

2011-10-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

Now I'm playing catch up! We actually finished the 60s a while ago.

Let's see: the Space Race, Civil Rights, Women's Lib, computers, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam War, anti-war protests, the Kennedy Assassination, the moon landing, the first video game, social revolution, the Cold War.

Did I miss anything?

Oh, yes! Star Trek!

And the hippies and the rise of "free love" and the drug culture. And LOTS of music!!

We listened to everything from the Grateful Dead to the Kinks, but, believe it or not, the kids favorite was the Beach Boys!

I Found my Camera!

2011-10-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

I had left it at Larriland when we went apple picking! Here are the lost pictures.

We actually found this little fellow in the front yard. Praying mantises are Choclo's favorite insects, so he was delighted when it crawled on his pants.

Eventually, it jumped off and Mxyl picked it up. It crawled slowly up his hand, which was very cool. Then it gave a spring and climbed rapidly up his arm towards his neck, which was much less cool!

He (the mantis) flew off into the garden.

Here we have kids picking apples

A Million Roses for the World

2011-10-09T08:53:00.000-07:00

I thought this was really cool! The Family Rosary Crusade of the Phillipines is sponsoring this thing where they are getting a million people (in the Philippines, but I want to do it, too!) to say the Rosary every day for 200 days, with each day being for a different country with the ultimate goal being world peace.

I heard about it in Zenit and the eLumen (Dominican newsletter), but I had a hard time tracking down which country was which day. That information (and the website) is here.

To reach the individual countries, click on the region (e.g. they are starting in Africa, so click "Africa" to get the country list - it looks like they are doing everything alphabetically). I think that the countries go Monday through Saturday and Sundays are set up to pray for your own country and for your family.

I'm thinking this would be a great ongoing Geography lesson. We could do a little Wikipedia session on each country as well as finding it on the globe. UPDATE: If you click on the country names, it gives you the flag and a bunch of information about the country (including what problems you may be praying for).

If you aren't Catholic, it would still be great to be united in prayer for peace with that many people. I'm sure you could just pray for each country on that day.

If you'd like to say the Rosary but are hazy on the details, you can find it here. The usual would be 5 decades (one set of mysteries - this usually takes about 20 minutes) a day, but you could certainly do more or less.

It is starting October 10th, just after the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and ends May 30th on the feast of Mary, Queen of all Nations. Wow!

Apple Crazy

2011-10-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

The score for Larriland Farms: Apples,75 lbs, Broccoli, 10 lbs, Beets, 10 lbs, Pumpkins, 100 lbs, Bizarre but Tasty Squashes, 30 lbs, Funny looking Gourds, 2 lbs

Our Score (thus far): Broccoli Salad: 1, Beet Greens: 1, Apple Pies: 2 (although the pi pie should count as two), Applesauce: 2 qts, Apple Butter: 10 pts, Apple Dippers: 8 apples, Apples Randomly Eaten: 15, Apples Given Away: 10,

Apples to Go: 50