drum, dress, wedding, homeschool, hospital

A few updates… went to drum circle this weekend, which was enjoyable.  The boys didn’t want to go this time so Boy #1 spent the night at his friend’s house and Boy #2 hung out with my cousin (and was an angel!). I made chicken tortilla soup and peanut fudge brownies.

My mom sent me a clone of my wedding dress - a muslin version for me to try on.  Even without it’s decorations, it is beautiful.  It fit fine.  Now I need to measure the straps and send them back to her.  However, I have no huge rush to take care of this now (don’t worry, mom, I will send it back soon), because we are going to postpone the wedding.

Basically, we reviewed our finances and budget for wedding, reception, honeymoon, etc., and decided it would be, well, fairly impossible to throw a respectable wedding reception this year.  So, we’re going to reschedule the whole thing and push it back til next year.  We’re already married by law, and in spirit, so while it disappoints us to do it, it’s not the end of the world.  Hopefully next year we’ll be able to manage our money better and plan accordingly.

By the way, we were not planning on sharing this information with my step-mom.  Why?  Earlier this year, she said she couldn’t make the wedding because she had to do the photography for her nephew’s wedding, which was on the same day (even though we’d had our day picked for almost a year or more).   Against my husband’s opinion, I offered to move our wedding date so that they could still attend.  It was up in the air for a little while, possibly even moving to June.  Then she came back and said not to worry about it because her nephew had moved his date back to later in September, so we could keep the 6th.

Just recently, in the last few weeks, my step-mom said again that she would be going to his wedding on the 6th.  I reminded her that she said it was moved to the 20th, and she just seemed confused on how that could have happened.  She said that she would have to see if, depending on timeframes, she could attend both weddings in the same day (even though the locations are at least 4 hours apart), and if she couldn’t, she would have to make a decision about which one to attend.

So, we’re just going to leave it out there as if the wedding is going on, just to see if she will plan to attend ours or her nephew’s.

Next challenge… we’ve been discussing having Dad homeschool the boys full time instead of my step-mom, for various reasons.  He recently decided that yes, he is up for the job.  He would continue to work evenings as scheduled and I would move my working hours to 6 to 2:30 to accomodate.  We hadn’t yet decided when to begin this plan.

And then… last night my dad calls and says I need to find someone to watch the boys for the next few days.  My stepmom is in the hospital due to chest pains, possibly a heart attack.  He insinuates that this hospital visit is caused by stress caused by worrying about the boys (this is a whole different story).  I don’t respond to this insinuation.  So, today begins the 6 to 2:30 shift instead.

The Wonder Blog, and some links

Not much to report for today.  The boys had a field trip to a Honey Bee Farm, in which they learned about honey bees and brought home some honey and honey candy.  Boy #2 was inspired by this enough to begin a blog, called The Wonder Blog.

Tomorrow the boys have another field trip to a recycling center.  They have some crushed cans they have collected up to submit for cash.

Also, Grandma and Grandpa M. brought home some plain looking rocks from their trip to New Mexico, and the boys discovered that the rocks were actually geodes when they cracked them open with hammers.

Some links of interest…

• 25 Things That Are Not What They Seem
• Space Bubble Real Estate
• Books as home decor items
• Seasonal Ingredient Map

Apples to Apples; Monkey Pony Monster

First off, here are a couple of pictures of the cats:

That would be Raisins.

And Peanut.

Most of the rest of this post will be about a new game we played, called  Apples to Apples.

You can read through the rules here, but basically, it is about comparisons, and matching descriptive words with nouns.  A good vocabulary and knowledge building game, without the kids knowing they are learning.

Does this boy look like he is learning?

Or this one?

Here’s an example comparison (we only had 3 players, so the boys put down cards and I judged)…

What’s more scenic - an oil spill or a trailer park?

Are Flying Monkeys normal?

And lastly, there was the Genetic Engineering card:

The original subtext on the card was “What DO you get when you cross a monkey with a potato?” but I scratched that out and replaced it with What DO you get when you cross a monkey with a PONY?” in honor of the Jonathan Coulton song, SkullCrusher Mountain…

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

Tuesday morning

Yesterday, the boys stayed home and were schooled by Dad, who taught them about probability and the ancient Sumerians, among other things.  Apparently some sort of experiment involving chocolate chips, chopped nuts, and a microwave was involved.

I was extremely tired yesterday after a long night playing Sim City Societies (damn you, SimCity!), so of course as soon as I had the chance last night, I slept played Sim City again.  Not as late, but enough for me to regret it in the morning.  I have a Sim City hangover I think.

Dad discovered a tick in Boy #1’s hair today, leftover from the farm trip last week no doubt.  It was successfully removed by Dr. Dad.

Sunday afternoon

Let’s catch up.  Friday night my love was working.  I got the boys back, who had a good time at their uncle’s farm.  There was a lot of rain so not much fishing going on, but they did get a chance to go mushroom (morel) hunting and trampoline jumping (not at the same time).  They were happy to be home, and I read them the first chapter of A Spell for Chameleon, the first book in the Xanth series by Piers Anthony.  I read all of his books when I was between their age now (perhaps earlier?) and into my teens.

Once, Boy #2 and I were cuddling on the couch and he asked me to read him a story.  I did a short paraphrase of A Spell for Chameleon and he quite enjoyed it, so I decided to get it for them to read together. At first, they found it a bit boring, perhaps just because of their recent long trip, perhaps because of it’s sophisticated vocabulary, but eventually, they enjoyed it and seemed immersed in it.

On Saturday, Boy #1 went to his friend’s house for the day, as he often does, while we hung out at home in the morning.  In the afternoon, my brother came over to watch the kids, but he showed up early so we got to hang out for a bit.  My love and I then headed up to Chicago to go to the Jonathan Coulton show.  We got there in record time, with plenty of time to kill, so we stopped for a made-to-order salad (yay, garbanzo beans!) and some window shopping.

We’ve seen JoCo once before, last year, but this show was even better.  Paul and Storm opened for him again and were hilarious as usual.  JoCo rocked the house and we had a great time.  His version of Code Monkey was acoustic and slow, causing it to seem more melancholy than normal.

If you haven’t listened to JoCo, I suggest you go to his website and listen to his songs, many of which are free downloads.  You might not get his humor, but that just means you are not a 1337 interwebs geek like me. 

Oh, yeah, and one more thing about that.  You may or may not be familiar with the recent internet meme known as “Rick-rolling.”  Check the wikipedia entry to understand exactly what that means.  Anyway, in the show, JoCo pulled out his sythensizer to play Mr. Fancy Pants for us, and pushed a button that started playing Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.  He rick-rolled us!!   It was awesome, not only because we got it, but because the entire audience of fellow internet geeks got it, and even more awesome because JoCo got it.  Yay internet.

Lastly, today we went to Dave & Buster’s to celebrate my cousin’s graduation from college.  Boy #2 won over 2000 tickets and was overjoyed.  Now we’re just hanging out and vaguely working on household stuff.  I might even mow the lawn today (gasp!).

Tuesday morning

We had an impromptu extended geography session with the boys yesterday.  Seems their knowledge of where places are (and basic things like how many continents there are) are a bit lacking (worse than me!).

So, we reviewed some geography basics over at BrainPop, while Dad showed them various aspects on Google Earth.  I pulled up a video from UnitedStreaming (which wasn’t really that great - reminded me of snoozing during social studies in elementary school) that covered the basics of geography - most of which was very simple and known to the boys, but showed the holes in their knowledge, like the meaning of “prime meridian.”

Afterwards, we did a little testing at the Traveler IQ Challenge.  The boys didn’t make it past the first level.  I didn’t make it past the 5th.  Dad, in his infinite wisdom, made it past the 10th.  Try it out and let me know how you did!

So, this was a wake-up call to focus them more on geography.  Any other resources you would recommend for 5th-6th grade level geography?

Meanwhile, here are a few links of interest…

• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
• My current wallpaper: Northern lights as seen from space
• 8th grade exam from 1895

Monday night

Long day at work.  Seems like I am always busy now… hardly any time to aimlessly surf the internet. 

I guess that’s good though, because it keeps me busy thus provides more job satisfaction (I’m glad we are finally doing stuff).

Tonight, the boys each learned more about some elements, specifically Boy #1 had Helium and Boy #2 had Hydrogen.  They researched the basic stuff like atomic numbers, symbols, and mass, and then looked up interesting facts / trivia about their chosen element.  Boy #2 was amazed that it would take 6,000 helium filled balloons to lift just 75 pounds.  Boy #2 was amazed that Hydrogen was an ingredient in sugar (sucrose) and wondered if it would be as reactive, since hydrogen mixed with air and lit will explode.  I proved him wrong on this one.  He was also reminded that the Hindenburg had been filled with Hydrogen (which he vaguely remembered from the Mythbusters episode on the Hindenburg).

Later, we played a round of Dungeons and Dragons (the basic version), which they have been begging for for weeks.  They quite enjoyed it, and didn’t complain at all when I ended it.

Now, they are sitting on the couch together, laughing and reading The Far Side. (Thanks, mom)

Meanwhile, here are some links I’ve collected up over the past however long of intermittently surfing…

• I’d like to locate some Kudzu to cover my house with
• Scientists on their “life-changing” books
• I wish I knew more about math so I could understand how music translates into geometry

Tuesday

The boys and I spent the afternoon making atoms and molecules out of candy and toothpicks.  Dad came home for a simple dinner of tuna sandwiches.  When the boys were done making atoms, they made their own candy/toothpick creations - mostly building structures and robots, and tiny little men being attacked by said robots.  While they were playing, we watched a ton of BrainPop videos, on matter mostly, but also on the Black Death, WWII, and binary numbers.

For our nighttime reading, we read the beginning of Rules.  The boys had a little skirmish on the couch, so we ended the reading prematurely and Boy #1 took Rules with him into his room to read while Boy #2 read Calvin and Hobbes.

cooking, jello, and reading

Last night’s spectacular supper ended up to be red beans and rice with sauteed sage chicken.  Turned out to be not too bad - no complaints from the youngens.

Our future chef, Boy #2, cooked with his first recipe from the Cookie book we picked up on Sunday.  It was a tea cookie recipe, which I will post later.  They turned out great, and he is very proud.

Meanwhile, Boy #1 made lime jello in a Lego mold.

In the evening, we read The Westing Game together, and then after bedtime, the husband and I worked on his taxes.

Pond Critters

Last week the boys took a field trip to Pilcher Park Nature Center in Joliet to learn about pond critters.  They netted in the pond and found all kinds of interesting life forms, including mayfly larvae, fish, crawfish & lots and lots and lots of little water worms, larvae & bugs!