Wordless Wednesday: Franciscan Monastery

Fun With My Sister

 We put up the Nativity!

 And the penguins!

 We painted the Judgy Camel!

We made candy cane cookies!



She painted my windows!!

We played games and watched movies!

But mostly we've been talking and laughing and having a great time!

Thanksgiving Recap

 Actually, we had three Thanksgivings because we have a lot to be thankful for!

The first one was with our cousins, and we just had pizza since we thought people would get tired of turkey if we had it three times in a week.

The second was a traditional dinner with Pop and Bill, the Sunday before Thanksgiving.



The third was up in NJ with my folks and my look alike sister.  No kidding, Choclo told her that it was hard to tell us apart, to which she replied that that was why she wore gray.



A great time was had by all, and much pie was had by all.

And we found three colors of cauliflower, and that was yummy and fun!

And, we brought my sister back with us and are we are having fun with her until she returns to New Mexico in a few days!

Poem of the Week: Advent

ADVENT
(On A Theme by Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Pamela Cranston

Look how long
the weary world waited,
locked in its lonely cell,
guilty as a prisoner.

As you can imagine,
it sang and whistled in the dark.
It hoped. It paced and puttered about,
tidying its little piles of inconsequence.

It wept from the weight of ennui,
draped like shackles on its wrists.
It raged and wailed against the walls
of its own plight.

But there was nothing
the world could do
to find its own freedom.
The door was shut tight.

It could only be opened
from the outside.

Who could believe the latch
would be turned by a pink flower —
the tiny hand
of a newborn baby?
© by Pamela Cranston, 2011

HT: Journey With Jesus

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving!

Poem of the Week: Autumn

Autumn

By Amy Lowell

 

All day I have watched the purple vine leaves

Fall into the water.

And now in the moonlight they still fall,

But each leaf is fringed with silver.

 HT: Poetry Foundation

 Image: Porcupine Hollow Farm

 

 Extra Bonus Poem!

 

The Consent

By Howard Nemerov

 

Late in November, on a single night

Not even near to freezing, the ginkgo trees

That stand along the walk drop all their leaves

In one consent, and neither to rain nor to wind

But as though to time alone: the golden and green

Leaves litter the lawn today, that yesterday

Had spread aloft their fluttering fans of light.

 

What signal from the stars? What senses took it in?

What in those wooden motives so decided

To strike their leaves, to down their leaves,

Rebellion or surrender? and if this

Can happen thus, what race shall be exempt?

What use to learn the lessons taught by time.

If a star at any time may tell us: Now.

 Also from Poetry Foundation
Image from the wonderful Rachel Cohen

Moon Walk

I don't mean this kind of moon walk.


Or this kind:

I mean the kind when the moon comes up and Oob urgently requests a walk to admire it.

We really enjoyed the "super moon" this week- it made for an epic moon walk as we went through the neighborhood, trying to find a tree free space so that we could watch it come over the horizon.

Here it is caught between the lower branches of a tree near our house.

I hope you got to see it, too!

Wordless Wednesday: Cryptography Museum

Chemistry Update

 The Chemistry class has been going really well.

I really enjoy the kids, and having two classes has been more fun than I could have predicted.

Partly that's because I like the subject and they like the subject.

Partly it's the questions and the interactions.

And partly it's the fun of labwork!

It's also been interesting to teach the class twice each week.  I think the second class may be reaping the benefits of that.


I can see if the first class gets confused on something, and try to figure out a better way to explain it with the second class.

But both classes are having a great time and learning a lot!

I'll have to get some pictures of the girls' class. I am usually so wrapped up in the experiments that I forget to grab a photo.

Poem of the Week: November

November

By Maggie Dietz

 

Show's over, folks. And didn't October do

A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated cries

Of migrating geese, low-floating coral moon.

Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees.

Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage,

While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees

Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of forage

And gone to shiver in their winter clusters.

Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge

On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster

Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin,

Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters.

Even the swarms of kids have given in

To winter's big excuse, boxed-in allure:

TVs ricochet light behind pulled curtains.

The days throw up a closed sign around four.

The hapless customer who'd wanted something

Arrives to find lights out, a bolted door.

HT: Poetry Foundation

Harvest Bazaar!

I have to say that the Harvest Bazaar, my parish's annual fund raiser, is pretty epic.

What I love most is seeing how everyone in the parish pulls together to give their best, and how everyone that shows up is welcomed like a long lost friend.

It's a funny and fun experience of living as the Body of Christ!

We have an enormous yard sale.

And the Boy scouts do their fabulous chicken BBQ.

We did 200 Scouts Honor Rolls for that.




Plus some mocha pecan pies for the bake sale- there's something to be said for having a house full of bakers!

Klenda and Leena volunteered for the Coke Toss.

The Emperor, Choclo and Oob ran the Softball Toss.

Mxyl and Zorg did the BBQ and helped at the popcorn booth.

Our friend, Fr. Conrad helped advertise the popcorn...

And our pastor, Fr. Mark (but not that Fr. Mark), gave the Emperor a run for his money on a vintage Centipede console.  So fun!


And it looks like the crafts  we did were selling well, especially the saint quote tiles!

Awesome Modern History: World War II

 These were chapters 86 and 87 in  A Child's History of the World.

For our active activity, we trained the kids to extinguish incendiary bombs, like the Brits did during the bombing of London.

Everyone in London had a kit, since even one incendiary could cause serious fires in a city where most of the houses are connected.  If the incendiary wasn't taken care of immediately, it could explode, flinging even more fire over a wider area.

Step 1: Douse it with water.  This doesn't put it out, but it cools it down enough that the next step works.

Step 2: Cover it with sand. This smothers it and stops the actual burning.

 Step 3: Pick it up carefully with your long handled shovel and broom, and put it into your sand bucket.




Step 4: Get it away from your house!

I think what was most interesting to the kids was the idea that during the war, everyone needed to know how to do this.  Kids had real responsibilities.

Of course, most of the children were sent away from London, but they still helped on farms and collected salvage and so forth.

We talked quite a bit about rationing.  The idea that you couldn't just go to the store and buy whatever you wanted was a bit hard to grasp.

For our snack, we had a treat my dad remembered that his grandmother gave him during that time: a little bit of precious sugar sprinkled on the table, with a slice of bread to press into the sugar.

The kids all loved it!



The art project was from Shelli, and she called it "oil bar." 

I've never seen anything like it, but she gessoed a large piece of sturdy paper to make it waterproof.

 Then she spread the whole thing with a bar of black oil paint.

The kids drew on it with gloved hands, and the results were amazing!

They did lot of tanks and explosions, as well as slogans like, "We will never surrender!"

It was a big messy art project that was totally worth it- the kids are going to be talking about this one for a long time!

Wordless Wednesday: Sugarloaf Hike