Guest blog by Mxyl: Happy Confirmation, Klenda!

 The day before yesterday, Klenda just underwent an extraordinarily successful confirmation!  We are currently preparing for a confirmation party with family and friends!

 I often tend to think of confirmation as the beginning of your adulthood in the church, so congratulations Klenda!  You are now a full Catholic and are able to experience God's love much more completely!

 I thank the readers of this blog very much for their prayers!  Did you notice that every one of these sentences ends with an exclamation point?!


Honorable mentions include Fr. George, Klenda's sponsor; Bishop Gonzales, who confirmed her; and the Prime Minister, who was the sponsor of one of Klenda's friends.

The following picture is of Klenda next to Bishop Gonzales, who is next to Fr. George, and I have no idea whatsoever who the other guy is.







As a footnote, I would find it completely illogical to write a matter of this level of importance subjecting around another person without him/her having a saying within it; therefore it would highly please me if the primary subject of the post would speak in her own words (and yes, I really do talk like this some of the time):

Klenda: (if this is the beginning of my talk, why is it below the foot note?  Anyway...)

 I can only think of one thing to describe Confirmation: indescribably AWESOME!!!  I mean, having a relationship at all with Jesus is one thing; but being Confirmed and welcomed as a full adult member of the Catholic Church is totally different! (Okay, not totally different, but you get the idea.) Thanks so much for your prayers!

Happy Birthday, Klenda!

In honor of Klenda's 14th birthday, we had a princess party!

Well, we already had the castle, so we figured we'd go for it. Klenda, being Klenda, decided that for this party, she would not be the only princess!

So, the girls all had a great time making tiaras, watching The Princess Bride,  eating red velvet cake, and filming their own musical (!).

It was a slumber party, so, naturally, they spent a great deal of time not sleeping.  What did they do in the wee hours?  Laughed a lot, evidently!

Fourteen Fun Things About Klenda

1. She likes to experiment with creating her own recipes.
2. She has taught herself to play the recorder.
3. She's a leader.
4. She can walk 15 steps on the slack line.
5. She's always willing to help.
6. She is teaching herself watercolor painting.
7. She likes to do calligraphy.
8. She's almost done with Geometry.
9. She's a fast and deadly punster.
9. She's good at all sorts of arts and crafts.
10. She sees the good in others and encourages it.
11. She can do sumi-e painting.
12. She's already a good cook and a great baker.
13. She can compose her own songs.
13. She can knit, sew and embroider.
14. She can count!
14. She's herself, and herself is pretty fantastic!

Marching Through Time!

 Mxyl, Klenda and I went marching, anyway.  The Emperor took the rest of the Zoomlians to the BSO.

We saw friends, Romans, and countrymen...

OK, we made new friends, and saw a fair amount of country folk.  And we did see Romans (shown here advancing on a barbarian while beating their shields with their swords).

 We saw Celts!

We saw Charlamagne's encampment!  We saw Charlamagne's living descendents!  No wait, we were Charlamagne's living descendents...

We saw Vikings!  This meant entirely differnt things for Klenda and Mxyl...

 Klenda tried on armor!

Klenda danced!

 Mxyl plotted to take over the world with the Infinity Gauntlet.

Mxyl:"And I plan to rule it with an iron fist".

He got this from the Six Little Ducks:
Six little ducks that I once knew
Fat ones, skinny ones, cute ones, too
But the one little duck
With the feather on his back
He ruled the others with

AN IRON FIST!!!!

I'm sure we didn't sing it that way with the first few kids...

 Mxyl also tried out a sword (100 Years War).

And  another sword (War of the Roses).

And a bunch of armor not pictured.

And some swords not shown here, including some really interesting zweihanders at the Renaissance German encampment.

We discussed the finer points of swords and arrows (so to speak).

Klenda went back to dancing.


We were having a wonderful time, but we were starting to get hot and a little tired.  That's when I realized we had been there nearly three hours!

We'd seen barely half the reenactors!  We hadn't even made it to the Americans yet!

We decided to go get lunch and go home while it was still fun!  Maybe tomorrow....

Happy Birthday, Klenda!

 Klenda is now sweet 16!

To celebrate, she had a Hawaiian Tie Dye party with her friends.

It's hard to see but that's a pineapple shaped cake.  On the inside it's a pineapple-banana- coconut-tie-dyed cake (because we like to keep things simple).

We had paper leias which we attempted to tie dye, and shirts which we actually tie dyed.

We had homemade palm trees with brown coconuts.  Klenda explained that even though we know they should be green, most people do not recognize them unless they are brown.

We told Zorg she was having a horror themed birthday party.

It was a sleepover, since tie dying takes time.  The girls watched Persuasion, talked, giggled, played a ukelele (Klenda had jokingly told her friends it was BYOU, and it turned out one friend had been to Hawaii and actually had a ukelele! And, yes, Annebelle, I am now pronouncing it correctly, thank you!!), and did not sleep.

In the morning, over pancakes,  the kids had a wide ranging discussion. They talked about philosophy, Catholic and Christian apologetics,  language in Jane Austen versus Shakespeare, and the laws of physics.  Is this a home schooled thing, or do other teens talk like this?

 In other birthday news, on her actual birthday, we went to the National Gallery, out to the Silver Diner for dinner, and then home for this remarkable cake (which she helped bake the day before).

It has layers of torte, chocolate mousse, seedless raspberry jam, and chocolate whipped cream coated with shavings of white chocolate. 

I think we'll call it Chocolate Bliss. Pretty sweet!

16 Sweet Things About Klenda

1. She can carve wood really well.
2. She's one lesson away from finishing Pre Calculus!
3. She paints Bionicle portraits in watercolor.
4. She plays the piano and recorder by ear.
4. She writes all kinds of stories.
5. She loves to go to Adoration.
6. Puns!  Did I mention puns?!
6. She does a fantastic Irish accent.
7. She loves Jane Austen books and movies.
8. She can make a swoon worthy chocolate mousse.
9. I'll bet she could make a good chocolate moose, too!
9. She bakes wonderful bread.
10. Ella habla Espanol!
11. She can drive!
11. She's a Junior Lady of Charity.
12. She writes her own poetry!
13. She's a spot on hilarious mimic. 
14. She loves to swing dance! 
14. When she's baking, she does a ridiculous French accent.
15. She can make movies!
16. She is a kind and patient sister.
16. She is a good and loyal friend.
16. She is a sweet and loving daughter!

Home School Blocks

This is how it works:

We always start with Prayer Time/Bible Time/Violin Time (usually also nursing Oob time).
The other kids can then take a 15 -30 minute break while I play with Choclo.
Now we start the blocks. I have 4 kids, so there are 4 blocks of time. Everything in a block happens at the same time.

Block 1:
I spend time with Myxyl, maybe doing some math.
Klenda works independently in a workbook, reading a book, or on a project.
Zorg does a chore say, cleans a bathroom.
Leena does something fun, either pouring water in different containers or her own idea

Block 2:
I spend time with Klenda, show her how to make designs with a compass
Zorg does independent work
Leena washes walls
Mxyl draws robots

Block 3:
I play Dolch knights with Zorg (sight word game)
Leena does her wipe off alphabet book
Mxyl cleans a bathroom
Klenda plays with sculpey clay

Block 4:
I do math manipulatives with Leena
Mxyl works independently
Klenda washes windows
Zorg draws on more index cards (he is making a game)


This leaves me time to do stuff together: Child's History of the World (I read while the kids draw about it, or do related activities), and an enormous unit on the human body (lots of experiments!). It also leaves us with large swaths of time free in the afternoon for kids to do their own thing.

Marching Through Time

Of all the the events we got to, this is my favorite. The March through Time is an encampment of historical reenactors arranged chronologically. They have Celts, 3 Roman legions (from the Western and Eastern Empires!), knights, American Revolution, Civil War, Vietnam War soldiers, you name it! It was really jaw dropping to see them all camped out next to each other. We missed the last few years because I didn't remember until it was too late I actually looked them up in January this year so I wouldn't miss it.

This first picture is a Frankish warrior fighting for Charlemagne (the Emperor was able to trace his line back to Charlemagne, and this fellow was delighted to be able to defend actual descendants!). He's showing the kids his francisca.

Here we have Klenda being outfitted with a helm from the War of the Roses. I love it that the all the reenactors were so patient and kid friendly. They really seemed to enjoy the kids questions. Actually, they all seemed to be just enjoying themselves!

I must add these fellows - US Navy War of 1812. The kids ran off to see the privateers, but I talked Horatio Hornblower with these guys til the kids came back and dragged me away.



Here Klenda is swabbing a cannon. You can see Zorg in the back - he's finished ramming the shot, but you can't see Leena who was lighting the charge.




And look, here we all are in the Zulu War!







I was very interested in the large WWII encampment, partly because I've seen so many movies and pictures from that time period. These GIs were hanging out in a foxhole and all I could think was, it looks just like Foyle's War!

Zorg asked me to take a picture of the guns...


Zorg and Klenda were able to answer enough questions from what they had seen that they were both knighted. Quite a satisfying end to a great excursion!

I will have to download the rest of the pictures from Klenda's camera. She recently bought herself a very nice camera with a 10 gigabyte card (!) and has been taking a truly amazing number of pictures.

Seven Quick Takes: Suits, Prunes, Flowers, and Squid

 

1. My younger boys!  And my Sweetie! All dressed up for the Scout Suit and Tie Dinner!  They had a great time at East Pearl, a restaurant that does great sushi, Thai, and Chinese food.

We're usually pretty casual dressers around here (Choclo has kept wearing T shirts and jeans through this mild winter), so it's a bit of a surprise to see that they clean up so handsomely.

2. But it wasn't as big a surprise as discovering this quote from the back of a jar of prunes: "So go ahead, live a little, and enjoy [eating prunes]!"

I actually don't mind eating prunes.  I would go so far as to say I like prune filling in filled cookies.  But.  The only way I can think of eating prunes as a daring act of self indulgence, darned be the consequences, would be to eat the entire jar in one sitting.  Which I was not tempted towards.

3. I really liked our Lenten Video Retreat last year.  One of the difficulties as your kids get older is finding new things to help out your teens as they age out of the younger kids' Lent stuff.  Last year I posted a video a day from Fr. Mike Schmitz.  That was amazing!  But I only had enough videos because I mined his archive.

For this year I'm planning to do videos from Aquinas 101.  We actually started this a while ago, but couldn't keep up with their twice a week schedule.  I can do every day, I can do once a week, but not twice a week, go figure. Anyway, we'll be starting with #9 "The Science of Theology" on Ash Wednesday, if you want to catch up on the earlier ones.  They are usually less than 5 minutes and are a great springboard for further discussion.

Of course, you can also just sign up for it yourself, and they have lots of supplemental reading and so forth.

4. My dad turned 82!  After a really tough few months, he seems to be on the upswing again.  Thanks be to God!  And a heartfelt thank you to any readers out there who prayed (or will pray: hint, hint) for my parents' health.  I'll be saying my Rosary for you today.  I have loved having them living with us, but it was pretty scary for them get so sick so soon after moving in!



5. Spring seems to be happening.  I can't tell how much it's bizarrely early because the winter has been so mild, and how much it's bizarrely early because things have been so crazy that it feels like we just had Christmas.

Probably both.  Still, I'm loving he crocuses in the lawn and the Lenten Rose "Wedding Party."






6.This oil painting that Klenda just finished reminded me that it's Mardi Gras next week!

I need to get sausages for our annual sausage and pancake dinner.

Also, she's developing into a yet more amazing artist!

And, yes, that's her real life name, so you can follow her on Instagram.





7.We are kind of crazy about tea around here.

I was restocking my tea tins (one is caffeinated teas, one is the decaf selection).  I love having people over for tea!

Anyway, I got really anemic quite suddenly (thank you Peri Menopause) and I've been off my feet for the last couple of weeks.  My friend Bill brought me this get well tea llama!

Because as crazy as those tea tins are, they are all the teas in bags and we also have loose tea.  And as crazy as we are for tea, we are even crazier for puns!

8. BONUS TAKE!  Actual conversation yesterday.

Other Art Student: It's hard to imagine how incredibly large giant squids really are.

Klenda: Oh, I know how big they are.

Other Art Student : ...Really?

Klenda: Yes, we had a life sized one on our ceiling.  

Other Art Student: ....

Klenda: Twice.

Other Art Student: ...Were you home schooled?

More takes with Kelly!

Guest blog by Mxyl: Happy Demidolthood Klenda!

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--

Probably Bad Ideas

Klenda: Next time we get a pet, can we name it Peeve?
Me: Peeve?
Klenda: You know, so I can say, "This is my pet, Peeve."

Also Klenda: I want to get a parrot.
Me: Really?  You know they live 70 years, right?
Klenda: I want to teach it to say, "Help me!  I've been turned into a parrot!"
Me:....
Leena: Oooooh!  And we could teach it to say, every time some one left the room, "You are DIS-missed!"
Me:...
Leena: And when they came into the room, it could say, "Hiya, scrubs!"
Me:...
Leena: And it could say, "I DEMAND food!"
Me:... I could send it to my sister!

US History: Industry

Industry covered a lot of ground. We looked at the movement of people from farms to cities, as well as people moving from other countries to America. We also looked at the explosion of new inventions, the sudden abundance (and cheapness) of manufactured commodities and conflict between workers and owners. It was seismic cultural shift.

As it happens, one of my all time favorite movies explores all these themes (although in England) so we all watched North and South. How did I watch a 3+ hour Victorian epic with this constellation of ages? I fast forwarded the part before Milton and explained the essentials of what happened. I intended to fast forward more of the "grownups talking" parts, but as we (or I) got sucked in, I found I skipped less and less! Here is nice clip:



It's available on Instant Watch on Netflix, although be sure you get the BBC Victorian drama instead of the 1984 Civil War series!

I am also thinking of showing the older kids part of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which has many similar themes about class struggle as well as an elegant solution: "Between the Head and the Hands must be the Heart." I have to go back and see if there is any objectionable content, however.

I had asked the kids to come up with their own hands on activities, and they did: Klenda and Zorg demonstrated a monopoly. Klenda was selling oranges to Zorg at increasingly higher prices. Zorg, at a certain point, would refuse, and Klenda would wait until he got too hungry to refuse. Interestingly, as he began to run out of money (he was using his actual bank), she lowered her price just enough to so that he could afford it if he spent almost all of his money.

That was instructive to me because the only thing I had told them about a monopoly was that if only one person had an item, they could charge a higher price - everything else they deduced for themselves through experience. Also, I learned never to play Klenda at Monopoly!

Knitting Projects

How do these things get started? Leena went with me to a yarn store and fell in love with a multicolored fuzzy yarn. Could I make her a scarf? Why not?

Klenda saw the yarn and decided she wanted to knit, too. Back to the store! She picked out some beautiful (literally: that was the name of the yarn!)blue stuff. She knitted a scarf for Mumpy for Christmas while I knitted the multicolor for Leena. She's lost it already, but I'll post a picture when she finds it.

I had gotten 2 skeins of each, unsure of how much I would need. One skein does a scarf nicely, so Klenda took Leena's extra skein and is knitting a scarf for herself. I took the extra skein of "beautiful" and did another scarf for Klenda.

It may help to know that I am a fantastic scarf knitter and a less than mediocre hat knitter and that's really about the limit of my knitting.

At any rate, I finished Klenda's scarf last night and Zorg admired it (always dangerous when I am in knitting mode!). So, I asked him if he would like a scarf.

Zorg: No, thank you. Can you knit me a beard?

Well, as it happens, I inherited skein of brown hairy yarn that I never used because I thought it would look.. uh... brown and hairy.

My new score:
Scarves: fantastic!
Hats: less than mediocre.
Beards: I have been wasting my time on scarves, I was obviously born to knit beards!

Gingerbread!

 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?

Klenda Lost a Tooth

And the very next day, Oob found it! Or at least he got a tooth of his own.

The Tooth Chicken brought Klenda a horse puzzle. Klenda is convinced the Tooth Chicken let Oob borrow her tooth, but Oob didn't want to give it back.

"Oob sanded it down with a power saw (Zoomlians are very intelligent and good with power tools). It also explains why we heard so much noise one night."

Curiously, we do not have a Tooth Fairy, but we do have a rather odd Tooth Chicken who likes to collect teeth and leave children presents. The thing is, chickens have a rather strange idea about what children like. We've had little magnetic people, pictures of a bald man, flying chicken fans, interesting pebbles and shells, gaudy jewelry, sugar free gum, and always an assortment of multicolored feathers.

Baking Bonanza

I have been having a great time doing holiday baking. We usually start in November and do one kind of cookie a week, storing them in the freezer. Whenever we have a Christmas event or friend drop by, I just open the freezer and assemble a cookie plate!

Lets see what's on this year's plate:

1. Mxyl chose chocolate cherry cookies. These are easy: make chocolate chip cookies, but add 1/2 c. cocoa after you cream the sugar. We also add cherry extract at that point, but you could skip it if you can find cherry chips at Target. We did extract and red cherry chips and white chips and chocolate chips, but then, we're not really into understated.

2. Klenda chose candy cane cookies. We added peppermint oil instead of almond extract. This is one of my favorites from childhood - I remember shaping them with my sister! As it turned out, however, they weren't what Klenda wanted.

3. Klenda actually meant the chocolate chip cookies where you crush candy canes and put them in the batter when you add the chips. Since I now can make chocolate chip cookies in ten minutes, in my sleep, with one apron tied behind my back, that was an easy yes.

4. Leena chose chocolate chocolate chip mint with candy canes (are you detecting a theme, here?) These are chocolate chip cookies, but you add 1/2 cup of cocoa after you cream the butter and then add peppermint oil. The finished cookies are frosted with buttercream frosting (we added more peppermint) and topped with crushed candy canes. Very pretty.

I wonder if my kids are super into candy canes or do they just like baking projects that involve smashing things with hammers...

5. Zorg chose meringues. I love meringues... We have to make another batch...

6. I chose these lovely caramel oat bars. I drizzle them with chocolate and cut them into diamonds. So pretty! So tasty! Probably a billion calories a piece!

7. We made some Jello spritz cookies, but not a lot made it into the freezer. If cookies using a hammer are popular, cookies using a "gun" cause stampedes. We made raspberry ones. I used some cream cheese for part of the butter with the idea it would be like raspberry cheesecake, but I used a touch too much and they were a little too tart. Still very yummy, and a good looking one for the plate.

8. I also made eggnog cookies for the Emperor. Not flashy, but one of his favorites. I used eggnog extract to boost the flavor.

9. OK, this is getting silly, but a dear friend told me her favorite was shortbread...

10. And then I made fruitcake... I tried it last year because it turned out that my Mom likes it. I never liked it, but have discovered that what I don't like about fruitcake is the corn syrupy glaceed fruit. Made with dried fruit and home made orange peel candy, it is really quite nice.

And I think that's it! You know except for cinnamon rolls and that kind of stuff...

Good Friday

Have a blessed Good Friday

Update by Mxyl and Klenda: our pictures
Minnasan, ohayou.  For contemplation, we drew some pictures of our own.  Here they are:

The first one is Angel's Tears (Tenshi no Namida) by Klenda.  Depicting the terrible events of the Second Sorrowful Mystery from more than one point of view, this not only shows (even aside from the angel) a soldier, a jeering onlooker and Jesus but also Mary, John and a head in the middle--as if uncertain where to go, Klenda tells me.  She also says that the core message is that the head represents us--are we jeering with the bystander, or praying and joining with Jesus's suffering with Mary and John? 

This one is おわり？(Owari?) by me, Mxyl.  It describes the event perhaps moments after Jesus's horrifying death--the loss of His last three drops of Blood.  At the bottom left, the verse Isiah 53:5 shows (but He was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity...).  I personally like the name (highlight field below for translation); I find that it seems to imply hope. 

The end...?

Changes

So, presuming that you have just come back from a four day, three hour jet lag, whirlwind trip of non-stop fun, and then you lose power for several days while one of your favorite house guests in the whole world is visiting, and you are about to take a week long trip out of state to visit your family, but you have only two days to prepare, what is the obvious thing to do during those two days?

Of course!  Have all the kids randomly switch their (densely packed) rooms and paint all those rooms twice!  Did I mention you have your portfolio review coming up and you need to learn Chemistry this summer? Ha!  Ha!

 Klenda and Leena, who have been in their room ever since it was built (2003) decided it was time for a change and moved into Choclo and Oob's old room.

That meant the room went from purple and penguins to...

 Yellow and blue and pink and butterflies!






And horses, of course.














They have the art desk set up near a sunny window. 

We've all been doing quite a bit of drawing and sketching with art books and videos this summer.

This room was painted twice because it took two coats (of each color) to cover the dark purple.

On the plus side, Klenda and Leena (especially Klenda) were old enough to do a lot of the taping, painting, and room shifting themselves.