Weekend on Chocolate Avenue

Yes, it's been A Long Time. So far, not so great at blogging regularly, but here's an update.

For our daughter's birthday, she decided that she would accept a family weekend trip in lieu of a birthday party with her friends. And for those of you who have not yet paid for a child's birthday party at a kid-friendly location with cake, refreshments, favor bags, decorations and balloons. . . yes, a weekend trip for four is cheaper.

Sleeping in a hotel room is so cool!

Thankfully, Meg had a good example in the form of her brother, who had chosen similarly last January, when we spent a weekend in icy Erie at Splash Lagoon, the indoor waterpark that advertises that it is 84'F year-round, which, in January, was a major drawing card.

Meg chose a visit to Hershey Park. Unfortunately, the kids are getting to the point where they really don't want to stand for pictures, so there is not as much pictorial evidence as in trips past (for said evidence, I would present the 600+ pictures we took at Disney, however it would take 56 hours to upload them. You're welcome.)

In front of the Milton Hershey statue.

Chocolate World. Almost as good as Spaceship Earth at Disney.

Very excited to see VERY large chocolate bars.

Face painting at $15 a pop. We made her spend her own duckets on that one.

M.J. and Eth

O.K., Mom. We'll smile if you absolutely require it.

Parakeets, or why I was holding a dead bird on New Year's while my husband was in Florida.

The Parakeets

What are they good for? This is the question my mother-in-law asked the other day, and she has a good point. What are the parakeets good for?

First, I need to tell the story of how we came to have Snoopy and Woodstock. Yeah, I know, real creative on the bestowing of names, but I can only blame that on the kids. We didn't actually start with Snoopy and Woodstock, but, instead, Snoopy and Jack. However, Jack is now in the backyard, so Woodstock stepped in to keep Snoopy from being lonesome.

My friend's mother has had parakeets for years. They were trained, and would talk; they would sit on the back of the couch and watch TV. Low these many years, they started laying eggs!! For awhile, my friend's mother would toss the eggs, reasoning that no good could come of this development. But, then, as animal lovers often do, she felt bad, and let them keep several eggs. Predictably, the clutch hatched and suddenly, she had not two parakeets, but eight parakeets. At this, she decided that eight were too many, and started searching for appropriate homes. And, animal lover that I am, I caved. They would be fun for the kids! They would talk and sit on my shoulder! How fun this was going to be!!

Jack and Snoopy

Christmas break of 2007 found us bringing home two cute little parakeets in a shoebox, spending an inordinate amount of money at Petco, and setting up parakeet home within our own house. This involved figuring out a way to fasten the cage to the table, as the dog and cat were very interested in this new development. After bungeeing the cage to the plant table, displacing all but one plant, we were good to go. We spent the rest of Christmas break watching them, trying to get them to sit on a finger, and singing repetitively to them. Also, we spent it packing for Matt, who was going to Florida to see Penn State play in the Outback Bowl. Since he would be returning one to two days after the rest of us had to be back at school, I stayed home with the kids.

Jack and Woody, eating special baby parakeet food. Actually, we now believe that only Woody was eating it, as he was territorial towards Jack, and Jack was too passive to fight for sustenance.

Unfortunately, the two selected parakeets had some sibling rivalry issues, and New Year's Eve found me looking concernedly at one little guy sitting in the bottom of the cage with his aqua-colored feathers fluffed and dusty-looking. At 10 p.m., he was looking decidedly unwell, and I called the vet, to find out a sick call on New Year's Eve would run about 150 smackers. Before I could make a decision, the thing died in my hand. Ethan and I sat and cried our eyes out over little Jack. There is something so pathetic about a dead bird, and little Jack was no exception. We put him back in the shoebox, and set him out on the porch to await burial.

Beautiful Florida, where Matt was blissfully unaware of pending parakeet death.

I then had to call my friend to relay that I was an unfit parakeet mother, and was offered a third bird (she was getting desperate for homes at this point, as she'd had no other takers). Woodstock came home (in a clean, non-dead bird shoebox), and took up residence with Snoopy. No other issues arose, and they have lived happily with us for almost three years.

Woodstock

So, how has it gone? The training, the speaking, the flying about the house?? Not well. These birds are afraid to leave their cage, and when taken out, they fly immediately back in. Every day I chirp, "Hi, boys!", and every night, I sing, "Good night, boys!". Nothing. They mimic no household sounds, no whistles, no words, no computer chirps, even though they sit right beside the thing. They bite when we have to hold them to clip their wings. They live only for themselves and for the fun of throwing all the seeds they don't like on the floor. That, and ringing the bell in their cage in the early mornings, usually on Sundays.

Woody and Snoopy, freaking out when I open the cage door to snap a picture.

They think I am going to try and take them out.

What are they good for? No idea.

Well, they make a cheerful noise in the house. And that's about it.

Summer School Topic 1 Culminating Activities

Well, after not a little fighting, whining, and yes, learning, our first summer school theme is complete. Thank God. I nearly didn't make it. Bless all those homeschoolers who toil on throughout the school year; I do not know how they do it. Finding topics and fun activities isn't the problem. Having earnest conversations with people about little known and perhaps boring (analemmatic sundials, anyone?) topics isn't the problem. Stopping summer school involving brother-and-sisterly-love from becoming alternative placement programming would be the number one problem. We almost didn't survive the teasing, taunting, and bickering. That aside, it was a good first theme.

After settling down, Ethan and Meghan picked their spelling words, and wrote sentences, similar to their school year assignments. They also practiced some random math facts that they selected - Ethan choosing 6's, 7's, and 8's multiplication tables and Meghan some triple digit subtraction.

Then we got into the nitty gritty. Meghan began to take some data on the daily comics, reading them all for several days, circling the ones she liked and crossing out the ones she didn't like or understand. Then we took her data and made a bar graph:

(Peanuts, Hagar the Horrible, The Phantom, Zits, and The Family Circus)

We did a little online research, and discovered the current longest running comic was the Katzenjammer Kids, and that and the actual longest comic (yes, that was what she meant, not the longest running, but the longest, physically) is one that was created for the London Comedy Festival and was on display in Trafalgar Square; it was 88 meters long. Peanuts, Meghan's favorite, is the longest told by one person, at 17897 strips.

Meghan's final activity was to make her own comics:

Cute, no? Slippy the Babydoll and her adventures feature prominently in many stories and drawings of Meghan's.

Ethan drew his own ideas for a candle clock and a water clock:

Ok, I think I get the candle clock. However, the water clock leaves a little to be desired, in that I don't think he got the connection between how fast the water runs and how fast the hands on the clock go around. Dry in the summer and the days are longer? Maybe, but I don't think that's the level of understanding we were going for. . .

Then Ethan did some research on timekeeping in general. After choosing a timekeeping instrument (the astrolabe), and after reading a chapter from The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon (yes, my favorite book series, why do you ask??) in which a Revolutionary War-era family receives an astrolabe, he began writing a fictional story of his own titled The Cursed Astrolabe, using what he learned about the history of time keeping.

**Insert The Cursed Astrolabe here

in APPROX. THREE WEEKS

including whining time**

Ethan suggested we make a fieldtrip out of visiting a museum in London in which the oldest working clock is displayed, as well as Trafalgar Square to visit the longest comic, but I think we'll need to pass on that, barring some heroic fundraising on their part. . .

Picking our first topics for Summer Homeschooling

This summer, the kids decided they wanted to be home-schooled. This stemmed from a conversation about how 'boring' summertime is, and how they didn't want to just watch TV and go to the pool everyday. Then I called the aliens and told them to bring back my biological children and take these ones back to Mars. The community pool and watching TV were what I lived for every summer, but apparently, my kids have taken all my lectures about being 'life-long learners' to heart. And I thought no one was listening. Lucky me.

They had no problem devising a list of topics, which included Quantum Physics, as well as how to make stop action videos with snapshots. Hmm. Well, we decided to start out a littttttle less ambitiously.

Day One of the Cutshall summer homeschooling project. Ethan has picked the history of timekeeping for his first project and Meghan wants to know the history of comic strips. They picked spelling lists, developed "I wonder..." statements, and wrote down what they already knew about their topics.

Meghan: I wonder why comics are called comics.

I wonder how many comics are in color.

I wonder how long is the longest comic. (I think she means longest running.)

I wonder if there are comics in other countries.

Ethan: Are there ways to keep time other than sundials, watches, and clocks?

How do clock makers know where to put the gears in order for the clock to work?

Are there different types of of time keeping in other parts of the world?

Surprisingly, they seem to have lots of facts about their topics, and have come up with good spelling lists. Ethan's includes horology, sexagesimal, and chronometry. I think we'll be doing some definitions this week!

Zaniness, disguised as a girl

My baby is a crazy girl. And I can prove it.

Let's look at take 2 first, shall we?

This was taken after her older brother's orchestra concert. All I wanted was a nice picture of the two of them, dressed in something other than t-shirts and sweatpants.

"Stand up by the piano, and I'll take your picture."

Here's the reason we had to have a 'take 2':

It does have that certain je ne sais crazy to it, no?

Freaky Fotos, part 2

More freaky photos...

Meg, sporting a Na'vi blue look.

See?

On this one, I couldn't figure out what that blob was on the left.

Um, yeah, that would be my son.

Freakity freak:

Not freaky. However, we are showcasing the large chin inherited from his papa:

Meg, laughing at another picture.

A bit freaky, but I love this one the most! Green teeth and all.

Freaky Fotos, part I

I was fooling around the other day, attempting to get a good shot of the kids that we can use for a four piece photo that I've been trying sporadically (sporadically = when I remember. ADHD much?) to get together. (Those of you who see me on facebook know that sporadic is indeed the word, as this has been my profile pic for about a year.)

I'd like to get one of each of us, and then frame them in one large frame.

Here's mine:

Not bad. Took some fooling around to hide the double chin, but it's acceptable. I figured I would get the kids' next, as it's best to leave the least cooperative (read = Matt) until last.

And here is Ethan's first take:

Meh. Ok, take two:

Better, but weirdly cross-eyed? Take three:

Oh, my.

Ok, take FOUR:

Hmm. Love Meg on the right, nosing in.

And nosing would be the operative word:

There is something Psycho-esque about this one:

SERIOUSLY. I think this may be a project best revisited at a later date.

Survey says?

YEP!