This is the encampment of all the historical reenactors, lined up chronologically.
We had a lot of fun with the Romans- they let us do a little sword fighting!
And we had a great time with the War of the Roses camp. They let us try on armor!
Leena and Zorg squired for Mxyl with impressive results!
We like armor!
We had a lovely time chatting with all the reenactors.
We also enjoyed watching these Hessians drilling and firing on the parade ground.
In the distance, you can see the historic house (Marrietta House). This was the first year we toured the actual house, and we were very impressed!
We loved the 12 foot ceilings and the quirky layout of the building (added on rooms for a family with 11 children!).
I think what impressed the kids the most was that the original family had 9 children, but only 4 survived past the age of 5- tragically, a common story in those days.
I know that without modern medicine, only 3 of my own children would likely have survived to that age, and that is not factoring in any epidemics! Modern medicine, one of those things I thank God for!
1 The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. 2 Fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose. Near restful waters he leads me; 3 he revives my soul.
He guides me along the right path,
for the sake of his name. 4 Though I should walk in the valley of the shadow of death, no evil would I fear, for you are with me. Your crook and your staff will give me comfort.
5 You have prepared a table before me
in the sight of my foes. My head you have anointed with oil; my cup is overflowing.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life. In the LORD’s own house shall I dwell for length of days unending.
1. I don't usually go political on this blog, but this campaign season has been... unusual. I keep wanting to tell Mxyl (my oldest and a first time voter): I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry! No, I'm much sorrier than that!
But there is a solution! Zoom Times is proud to offer it's first ever candidate endorsement!
Rick Astley! A candidate who will never give you up, let you down, run around, hurt you, say goodbye, make you cry, tell a lie, or hurt you.
2. It's been an incredible week around here. Leena was confirmed!
It was wonderful! She was thrilled!
The bishop was fantastic!
His homily was the kerygma! He didn't use the word, but it was a very well done encapsulation of our Faith and why it matters.
It looked bigger in real life!
3. In less fun news, Oob asked why there was a bump on the water heater.
The bump turned out to be a large bulge with an ever widening crack at the seam.
Clearly there was no time to panic, but I tell you we made time to panic!
4. Here's a happy picture. No, I'm not being sarcastic.
You wouldn't think having your car totaled could be a happy thing, but it was because:
A The kid driving was completely unharmed, in fact no one was injured at all.
B The kid avoided getting squashed by a truck (the actual cause of the accident was a truck cutting in).
C The kid avoided hitting any other cars (on the Capitol beltway during rush hour!), he just skimmed the jersey wall.
D This car had a number of expensive repairs looming!
E All of the above.
5. How about an easier quick take?
I now have 7 sweet little bird houses hanging from the roses in front of my house!
The kids have been sporadically painting these for a while, and I suddenly realized I could make it look like I totally meant to do that!
6. In other warm weather news, we've been spending more time outside which has meant more hiking, tree climbing, fort building, and obstacle courses, sometimes all at the same time.
And gardening!
7. Speaking of having a lot of energy, I found Oob's to do list.
It just said: TUESDAY! THINGS TO DO!
We learned that pen knives really are the best tools for turning feathers into pens!
We also learned that cutting a perfect nib that will stand up to lots of writing is pretty difficult.
Fortunately, cutting a simple nib for mucking about is easy!
The snack was an Ethiopian spiced honey bread called ambasha. It was very similar to this ambasha recipe, except it had about 1/4 cup of honey also (you would add it along with the water).
Traditional ambasha is flatter than mine came out, but it was seriously delicious! We ate ours with butter and honey and drank diluted honey as "mead."
We did chapters 46-48: Arabic technology, Charlemagne, and Alfred the Great.
Our active activity was Prisoner's Base (for all of Charlemagne's battles).
Our art activity was supposed to be making metal lanterns like we did here. We were feeling pretty under the weather, so I still have a bunch of ice filled cans in my freezer!
We kept the snack, of course! We had "Alfred's Cakes" for the cakes King Alfred burned. With unintentional historical accuracy, I lost track of time and burned them a bit on the bottom! We also had Brie cheese, reputed to be Charlemagne's favorite.
At this point I'm 3 classes behind in blogging these classes, so I'll keep doing double until I catch up...
We've been off being sick, finishing Lent, and celebrating Easter, but I think we're just about ready to get back in the saddle.
If we can fit back into the saddle after the amount of chocolate consumed during the Easter octave.
So! Things you might have missed!
Leena went on her Confirmation retreat!
It was lovely, and she is super excited about her Confirmation which is coming up next week!
Mxyl built a bat box for his Evolutionary Biology class!
This class, which features the Massive Biology Book of Epic Proportions (his description), was chosen when he needed a science to fulfill a graduation requirement. He picked it because he was interested in the topic.
It's rigorous, even by my Biology major standards!
But he likes it, and he's doing amazingly well, even with the biochemistry bits.
He's the only art major in the class.
Homeschoolers! We take what we like because we like it!
Which makes us sound like pirates, actually. Arrrrrrrrrr!
In other news, during the month we were down with pneumonia, Spring breezed in with flowery smiles, tossing her green gold hair. We've been spending as much time as possible outside enjoying the garden!
We started out talking about the shape of the Earth. It's mostly a sphere but not quite!
If you take two paper strips, staple them into an X, then place them on a pencil top, you can make a hollow sphere.
If you spin that sphere, you can see the sides bulge out, just as the Earth bulges at it's center from the force of it's rotation.
And while we're spinning things...
I have the kids find out which eggs are raw and which are hard boiled by spinning them.
If you stop the egg briefly, a raw egg will start spinning again because of the momentum of the liquid yolk. If it's hard boiled, it stays still.
I had them identify a hard boiled one, then, trusting to their skills, I chopped it in half with a large knife!
Fortunately, they were right! The egg is a good model for the Earth: the shell is proportionately as thick as the crust, the white is the mantle, and the yolk is the core. To be perfectly correct, the yolk would be a little smaller (and have an inner core).
Crunching the shell a bit, you can model how the tectonic plates connect to each other.
Looking a bit more at the tectonic plates, I had cut some continents out of sponges.
I floated them on water, then put the pan on the stove. To visualize the convection currents, I dropped in a little dye.
I had to use a push pin to keep the sponges from sticking to each other, but they separated and wandered about the pan, pushed by the heat driven motion of the water.
The kids had a general idea that the continents on our planet had moved in the past (they knew about Pangea), but the idea that they were still moving (at the rate your fingernails grow) and that the world would look different in a few million years were new and fascinating.
We looked a bit at plate boundaries using books to show the plate interactions.
Transform: the plates are pushing past each other (causing earthquakes).
Divergent: pulling apart like the Great Rift Valley or the plates in the center of the Atlantic.
Convergent: pushing together to form folded mountains like the Himalayas and the subduction zones in the Ring of Fire.
I showed the mountain making by pushing together layers of towels - this was a good introduction to the layering of rocks and sediment as ecosystems change.
In my case, the blue towel was a layer of sea sediment, the yellow was desert sand, and the brown was a forest.
Very often convergent plates lead to one plate going over and one going under (subduction). The plate underneath melts back into Magma, but often presses up against the other plate causing volcanoes!
Did someone say volcanoes?!
We used small soda bottles surrounded by salt dough.
The kids built them on the plates, and I loaded them up with a few tablespoons of baking soda.
Then the kids named them and we took them outside.
Leena and Zorg squired for Mxyl with impressive results!
We also enjoyed watching these Hessians drilling and firing on the parade ground.
