Emma's Writing Assignment

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Emma's writing program this year is fun. She chooses a photo from a pack, ranging from animals to family groups to landscapes, and then flips the card and picks one of three writing exercises on the back. Today she chose a picture of a sleeping orange kitten, and on the back the assignment was to write about the fun dream the kitten might be in the middle of. This is her story, in case you can't read it in the scanned image of her notebook....




My Long Nap

Once I dreamed I went to space. It was incredible! I had a shiny space helmet. Also, I had a gray space suit. Anyway, I met all sorts of things.

I met an indestructible blob. It just kept on oozing out of metal rock.

There was some space coral. They were all kinds of shades of blue, pink, yellow, red, black, green, orange and brown. Also, I saw planet squids. They were a blinding shade of scarlet. Then unfortunately, my dream ended.


I give her A+ for spelling, vocabulary and imagination....she could work on the plot a bit, but then again, dreams tend to be a bit open ended. Smiles.

Every Day is Mother's Day

This morning I was checking my email and Facebook, as is my habit when we have nowhere to go early in the day. Julia, Ben and Emma were in the living room, reading. Ben came into my room and asked, "Did you hear what we're planning?"

Sounds like an innocuous question, unless you're a mom. I tried to remain calm as I answered that I hadn't.

"Well, just stay here for a while, OK?"

I made him promise that they weren't planning to burn anything down and then agreed. They are usually pretty sensible, after all, so I wasn't worried there'd be much I couldn't handle.

After about 15 minutes, they called me into the dining room. They'd set my usual place with a place mat, cloth napkin, china, a tiny goblet, a water glass, a coffee mug, silverware, and even a tiny china plate with an extra fork. There was a folded paper on the plate. It read:

To Mom--a token of appreciation that you can manage ALL the cooking, cleaning and work. We don't know how, though....you must be magical! --Julia, Ben & Emma <3 <3 <3

Look at all the choices! And note that everything is FREE! This was my lucky day. I had coffee, orange juice, cubed pineapple and a cheddar omelet made by Julia. Ben and Emma did the order taking, serving and sous-chef jobs. And they sat with me while I ate, and we talked.

I love those kids.

First Day of School

The kids have been asking to start school for several weeks now. I have been putting it off as long as possible, as usual! This has less to do with school itself than it does with wanting to prolong summer and the long, lazy days I quickly become used to every year. However, it's finally time and I can't put it off any more. I am always amazed to see how a few months off can really improve everyone's skills. Handwriting changes for the better, or a math concept that seemed just out of reach in June comes easily. Growth in their brains and rest for their bodies helps across the board.

Emma is now in second grade--whatever that means as a homeschooler. I should say, I report Emma for second grade, but in all actuality I know she works mostly above that level. I got an interesting thing for writing this year for her. Over the years of buying curricula for the kids, I have noticed that finding good language arts programs are difficult for us because all my kids are great readers and they all have enjoyed writing too. So if it is labeled second grade, it's usually...boring! Spelling words are the "cat" and "man" variety, and writing is being able to write a three word sentence. Reading involves picture books--and not very interesting ones at that. So I need to find creative solutions in the language arts department.

I found something for Emma this year called "Writing Styles Photo Prompts," by Edupress. It's a simple pack of 5x7 photos of a variety of things. Animals, family groups, kids playing, a beach, a snowy landscape, etc. On the back of each card there are three writing prompts that demonstrate different writing skills. You could write a story about the family going camping, or a letter to this grandma, or a newspaper article about this county fair. You get the idea. Emma has been looking at these pictures for weeks now, deciding which ones are her favorites and which she'll choose first. My idea was that each time we do these lessons, I'll let her pick a card, and then she can choose which assignment on the back sounds best to her. The point is to get her writing, and I don't really care if she tends more towards creative writing, for example.

I was not surprised when she chose the card with two dolphins racing and jumping through the ocean, since dolphins are a big favorite of hers. What did surprise me is her choice of assignment. Two of them were creative: imagine you're a baby dolphin and tell about your underwater adventures or, pretend to be a dolphin trainer and write how you train your dolphin to do your favorite trick. I would have bet money she'd have chosen the baby dolphin story. However, she chose the third: Use an encyclopedia or book to find out about dolphins and write a short article telling about what you learned. Here is what she wrote: (I left the spelling/grammar mistakes in--she is only 7, after all!)

Dolphins

Dolphins are very smooth. It helps them to glide across the water. The fins are used for changing direction fast when chasing there prey. Dolphins have a toothy beak, helping it to grab hold of there prey. Compared to the adult human body, Dolphins are pretty big.

Dolphins are very loyal. If a Dolphin is sick, another from the Pod pushes the Dolphin up to the surface for air. The dorsal fin helps to keep the Dolphins steady. I think Dolphins are beautiful animals.


I guess we'll be reviewing homonyms and capital letters this year!

Great Adventure

Kingda Ka


Summer is flying by. We had a week of beachy fun in Delaware with my extended family--30 of us in a rental house. We've gone swimming endlessly, to the movies, read in the hammock, enjoyed air conditioned splendor when it was too sticky outside, caught fireflies, collected shells, seen plays, spent time with friends, had Grandma here for a week from Georgia, worked in the garden, celebrated Ben's birthday and barbecued. There's still a lot more fun to come before we call summer over--but yesterday, we had what the kids have all said is The Best Day EVER. We went to Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, a place I haven't been since I was a teenager.

Being me, I have to get my complaints out of the way first. Beginning with ticket prices--which have gone up to $59.99 for a one day ticket! Excuse me?? That is, quite simply, insane. We got four tickets FREE because Julia, Ben and Emma participated in the (pathetic) Read to Succeed Program, where they read for 6 hours and got a ticket in exchange. What a joke--they completed that in days, but hey, we're not complaining, especially since I also got a ticket, being their teacher! The best deal I could find for Matt's and Rachel's ticket was $36.99 each, and then when you add gas, tolls, and $20 parking, $15 for a free-refill soda cup, and the left lung they charge for food...let's just say it's a good thing they have this reading program! Their other moneymaking scheme that pissed me off was the Great Locker Conspiracy. We brought a backpack with us--we needed sunscreen, an extra shirt, wallets, cell phones--the usual. What we didn't know was that many of the rides no longer allow you to bring ANYTHING with you! I have never seen an amusement park where you can't stuff your bag under your legs, but they take it a step further--not only do you have to rent a locker at a buck per rental, you can't even leave your things there half the day till you're through with that part of the park, because lockers have a 2 hour time limit! And yes, before everyone tells me the minutiae of Disney and all the ways they extract money from you, I'll say, Great Adventure is NOT Disney World!

That said, once I shoved all financial thoughts from my mind, we had a great time! The day began on a sour note when we realized that Ben's head didn't quite reach the 54" mark required for the most extreme rides--which he'd been desperate to go on. Nonetheless, he went off with Matt and Emma and rode other things while Rachel, Julia and I waited nearly an hour for the Superman Ultimate Flight coaster. I've never been on a roller coaster tipped forward before, and it was worth the wait! Ben was cheered by the fact that they were able to ride three rides while we only rode one, and happily, the park has plenty of roller coasters for 48"+. There are just six rides that kids under 54" are excluded from, so it isn't too bad. The girls and I loved Nitro and the Batman coaster--which we rode late in the day and went twice in a row with no line! And we all got to have a blast on Rolling Thunder, the Runaway Mine Train, Skull Mountain, and El Toro (which I just have to say I thought was fantastic, and I'm not sure why the under 54" crowd can ride this, but not the extreme rides--it was scary! I guess it has to do with the constraint systems not fitting properly.)

Two rides we found disappointing: the Dark Knight, which has a great setup for the ride, with a line that looks like the Gotham subway, giant TV screens playing Gotham news that Ben assumed was really a news station!, lighting effects and menacing graffiti from the Joker everywhere...but the ride itself was pretty lame. It was dark, but you could still see enough to know where the cars were headed, and there were twists and turns, but no heartstopping drops. The biggest letdown went to Green Lantern--I'd had such high hopes for this ride. I'd never seen a roller coaster where you stood up! And the upside down and twisting straight towards the ground effects looked terrifying. However, my head was rattling back and forth in my constraint like a piece of popcorn, which made it impossible to concentrate on the fun--I was trying so incredibly hard to keep my head and neck stable that the ride was over before I could enjoy it. Also, they adjust the height of the constraints depending on the rider, but there is an unfortunate bar between your legs to keep you steady...let's just say I don't see how men can be comfortable on this ride!

We got soaked on the Congo Rapids--all of us except Emma, who was really disappointed that she had the one seat in our 12-person boat that avoided a huge wave! And Emma loved the Twister, the sort of ride she's never been big enough for before--one of those spins-around-and-tilts-with-gravity-keeping-you-in-place kinds of rides. I asked Matt what he'll do in a couple of years when Ben and Emma can ride whatever they want, and he said that he'll stop going to amusement parks, because I can ride all the insane rides with them and he won't have to. Spoilsport.

We had a sudden rainstorm at lunchtime, which subdued the mood of everyone there. It poured for over an hour and closed many of the rides--the worst part, of course, being that we couldn't tell if it would ever stop! Matt was getting cranky, since walking in the rain is one of his least favorite things to do; but I was NOT going to sit under an overhang somewhere waiting for it to stop! We ate lunch during the deluge (along with everyone else, giving us a 40 minute wait on line for our incredibly pricey burgers and chicken!) but that was as long as I was willing to loiter. We waited in line for rides that were under cover that we probably would have skipped otherwise--tea cups and the carousel, for example. We went to Houdini's Great Escape, the closest thing we found to a haunted house and which has a really cool effect as if the room is turning upside down (in fact, it's just a buccaneer-type ride where the backdrop of the room turns upside down, but the physics of it makes your head spin!) Things were looking grim as the rain continued--but just as suddenly, the rain dried up--and the rest of the day was cooler and the lines were far shorter! I think people may have actually left the park, which was just great for us.

We had to leave around 8pm, which was good in a way as we were all getting tired. It's a 3+ hour drive back home, after all, and Matt went to work today. However, I am plotting that if we go back next year we should make it a long weekend camping trip so that we can use one of the middle days at the park, allowing us to stay till closing. An amusement park at night is particularly magical, and as I said, the lines had opened up ridiculously, which was fantastic. However, I think I can say that nobody was exactly unhappy to collapse into the car and feel the air conditioning!

On our next visit, we plan to ride the few extreme rides we missed. The lines made us avoid a couple of coasters that we thought we'd get back to, but we simply ran out of time. (Another reason to stay till closing!) First on my list will be Kingda Ka--which looks completely impossible! Seriously, it doesn't look like the car could even stay on the tracks. It is described as follows: "Experience the thrill of a lifetime as you shoot 45 stories high at 128 mph on our world-record-breaking Kingda Ka — the tallest coaster in the World, fastest in North America." Who wouldn't want to ride THAT??

Best Painting Tool Ever!

A lot of work is going on at my house right now. The winter destroyed our front patio, and the resulting expense and home line of credit is allowing us to do other projects that we've needed and/or wanted to do, such as renovating our formerly horrible bathroom, installing a greenhouse window in the kitchen to replace the broken louvered window and allowing me to have a year round herb garden, and replacing our broken stovetop with a nice new five burner model. It has also made me remember my desire to get the bedrooms, kitchen and the hallway between the first floor bedrooms painted this year. Something about a shiny new bathroom with fresh and lovely paint made me remember that it's been five years since I last painted these parts of the house--especially when the workers painted the inner part of the bathroom door, but left the outer part with its old, crummy paint!

Anyway, I loathe painting. And I am the one in the house that ends up doing it. Matt is a superior painter, because he is far more patient than I am...but he does have a job, and as I just said, I have little to no patience! So once the supplies are in the house, I want the job done. Yesterday. The kids want to help....but I can't quite bring myself to allow them to. All I see is the potential for disaster, for drips on the hardwood floors, for freshly painted trim to be smeared with a careless switch of a brush, for sloppy corners, for missed bits. If Rachel volunteers, I think she could do a great job, and probably Julia could too, being artistic and having her dad's patient nature for details.....but it hasn't happened yet.

This morning I got up, determined to get some work done. We bought the paint over Memorial Day weekend, but because of various activities and the work on the bathroom, it's been sitting there mocking me all week. Primer was needed because the hallway was a bright lemony yellow (NOT the color I'd originally wanted, but a very long and old story that I won't go into...) so I started off doing that, and in about ninety minutes, I was finished. I took a break for a few hours to let it dry, and I almost allowed myself to slough off doing the color today because I'd changed from my painting clothes...but in the end I put them back on and decided to power through. At least when I'm putting color on the wall I feel like I'm making progress. I gathered all the new supplies, including a Shur-Line edging tool I'd picked up on a whim when we got the paint....

Oh. I. Am. In. Love. With. This. Tool! When we moved into the house in 2006 and I painted the entire house in ten days (not something I would recommend or ever want to do again, by the way!) I didn't have this tool. And so all the molding, the baseboards, the doorframes, the ceiling lines were a gigantic thorn in my side. No matter how carefully I tried to make straight, even lines, I messed up. Frequently. In the last five years I have noticed these mistakes constantly. They aren't the sort of thing that a guest would remark on; some guests might not even notice at all. But I did. When I asked the Home Depot paint guy if this was a good tool, he said it was pretty good, if I followed the directions rigorously (something I often have issues with) and was very careful.

Well, I am happy to report he was W.R.O.N.G. You do have to be sure you aren't putting too much paint on the pad. But as long as you make sure you're scraping off the excess, it is a dream to use this. I was able to whip along the door frames--and in this hallway, there are five door frames--two bedrooms, a bathroom, a linen closet and the doorway into the dining room--in less than twenty minutes, and then it was a snap to fill in the spaces that were left. Best of all, it looks quite professional, with nice sharp lines along the ceiling and no marks on the molding. I did the hallway in about an hour, so I definitely can't complain.

Next up, our bedroom. I am probably going to split that up across several days, just doing one wall at a time so I don't have to completely dismantle the room. Here's hoping for continued success.

Garden Growing

Emma took this picture, love the angle on the rose




pink peony, too lovely

My weeding resolution is going reasonably well; I haven't quite managed to get out every day, but I'm keeping up with the perennial garden. I need to remember to handle the wildflower garden in front, especially since my beloved neighbor is an avid (and sort of obsessive) gardener who puts me to shame in the weeding category--he literally spends hours in his yard every day and no weeds are to be seen, so I get a bit embarrassed when he looks at my efforts! However, I kind of figure that once the wildflowers are tall and blooming the weeds won't be as noticeable--the cottage garden style lends itself to weed camouflage in a way that my orderly perennial bed does not.




roses the size of dessert plates



my lilacs seem to bloom later than other people's, even in my own town. Maybe they're a different variety?

The vegetables are coming along; we're picking snap peas and lettuce almost daily, and I'm trying to remember to use my herbs. This will be easier next week, after my greenhouse window is installed in the kitchen! Then they'll be in easy reach while I'm cooking...always assuming that the cats will leave them alone, of course. The tomato plants are getting taller, and the beets have great foliage; I was advised I can leave them in as late as December if I want the biggest beets possible (I only have 4 plants) and the carrots are coming along too. These I can't wait for, since I got a Carnival Blend with purple and white carrots as well as orange ones. Should be fun! One of our watermelon seedlings seems dead, but I'm frankly all right with only having one watermelon vine. I guess that's going to have to live in the perennial bed since our veggie patch isn't big enough to hold it.



can't resist a rosebud



pretty yellow roses

My climbing roses are doing wonderfully, which makes me really happy. There are blooms and buds all over it, and indeed, the roses in the perennial bed and at the side of the house seem to be thriving, too. My very favorites are the peonies and the lilacs. I'd really like to get more of those.



these pink ones are in the perennial bed



but these darker ones climb the back fence

Ginger & Bella Houses

outside view of the house; notice the steps they made on the right, going up to an outdoor patio! The bundle of sticks is a camp fire, and behind that is a stool made from a rock balanced on twigs.



the pink flower at the right is in a vase made from the tip of a bamboo shoot. Bed on left, side table made from a scallop shell, with the inside piece of a conch shell on top for decoration. The big scallop shell at right is a table and also a place to cook.



love the moss pillows on the bark bed--they chose this spot because moss was already there for a carpet. Desk in the back right of the room, with a bark stool.




bathroom with seashell sink. A broken piece of flagstone from our patio is the floor.



outside view of bathroom.



Emma's newest creation--a sofa with rhododendron cushions, a seashell bottom and a lilac leaf for comfort. Not sure how long that will hold up, but very pretty!



I am so proud of the imaginative play that goes on in my house every single day, and one of the longest running games around here involve tiny animals (Only Hearts Pets, if you're a parent who keeps abreast of fad toys) of varying species. I can't keep all the names straight; cries of, "No, Mom! That's Kirby!" or "No, Mom! That one is a girl!" are frequently heard in my house. But the two stars of the game are Ginger and Bella, a cat and a panda. They own a very spacious dollhouse upstairs, they are the stars of coloring books, drawings and comics galore, and they also have a vacation compound under our dogwood tree. Emma was showing me some new features this morning, so I asked her to take some photos so we could always remember this game.

New Year's Resolutions--Yes, In May!

I know, I know, it's May, not the time for resolutions. But really, I have a good reason, and that's my garden. You might recall that last year I overhauled the perennial garden in the backyard. When we moved into this house five years ago, I thought "perennial garden" meant that I never had to do any work in the garden, because after all, the plants are perennials...doesn't that mean they take care of themselves? That's what it should mean! I am the worst mix possible: I love having a beautiful yard and flowers to fill up vases in my house all summer long....but I really, really hate yard work! And after pricing out what it would cost to have landscapers do all the work for me....let's just say that if Matt had only cared about being rich, he should have saved himself the trouble of getting that Ph.D. and gone into yard work instead!

But I digress. I finally got tired of my formerly lovely perennial garden being an overgrown weed patch and last year I decided that I was going to do something about it. So I worked. HARD. And with practically no help from my family, I might add. Matt and Rachel gave me a bit of help when it came to buying the forty tons of mulch I needed and humping it from the store to the car and from the car to the back yard...but once it was in the back yard, it was up to me to heft it all over the garden. The kids helped a tiny bit, when it came to planting, and Matt dug a few holes when I needed a deep one for roses or peonies. He also worked with our neighbor's rototiller to turn everything over before I began. And the kids helped a bit collecting the three hundred thousand pounds of beautiful stones I collected from local beaches over the course of the summer, so I could ring the garden in (and hopefully keep the lawn from encroaching while I did it)...so okay, I STILL don't have that project completely finished...but in my defense, rocks are heavy, it's a pain in the neck to collect so many, and my garden is large--I'd say it's probably 30 feet long by 10 feet wide (but don't quote me, because I'm terrible at eyeballing measurements!)

My theory was simple. The former owner of the house was apparently a master gardener, or at the least she could afford to pay for people to do it for her. The perennial garden featured gorgeous flowers, but the problem was that I had a hard time telling weeds from flowers, so it all got very out of control. Also, she stuck to a pretty boring color palette of yellow, purple, and tiger lilies in orange thrown in--I happen to hate tiger lilies. I like them on roadsides, but I hate them in gardens. They are messy looking with their massive foliage and they don't make good bouquets because they wilt as soon as you cut them. I decided a better plan for my style of garden was to plant bushy perennials that might spread out...I used various butterfly bushes, coreopsis, roses, peonies, lavender, Montauk daisies and others of that nature (OK, yes, I've forgotten some of their names!) so that when weeds pop up, it would be easy to tell them from the plants I wanted. Then I could yank those troublesome little buggers before they became a problem. The fresh mulch looked so pretty, and I laid landscaping cloth underneath too...so really, weeds wouldn't be a problem at all. No sun, no growing.

Someone really ought to give weeds some kind of award. Really. I have had trouble many times in the garden--with veggies, herbs, flowers--I plant them and sometimes they just die. For no reason whatsoever. Really, no reason! And yet--I am a champion with weeds! Landscape cloth? Mulch? HA! Those weeds just come right through it. No trouble at all, don't mind if I do! I'd imagined that this year I could sit back and watch my beautiful garden, maybe spend three or four hours (all summer, as in three or four hours TOTAL) pulling out the weeds that would sprout, and finally finish up the rock collecting to border the garden at my leisure. All done. Finito. Flowers to enjoy and that's all. We bought a new hammock and I'd envisioned reading novels while I looked at that beautiful garden....I guess the lesson here is that gardening is a series of endless chores that make you want to stab yourself repeatedly. All those people who say they love gardening? I think they are either Stepford wives, compulsive liars, or are quite simply insane. What's to love about backbreaking labor that never ends? I just don't get it!

I should pat my kids on the back here and say that sometimes they are willing to help me. Emma and Julia, especially, will help me weed and plant things. They are all willing to pick things from the garden. And Ben can be counted on to pick yellow dandelions for me--at least that way they won't go to seed and make more of their horrible clones. Gardening is an area where I can say Matt is a terrible husband, however. (And this is not something I can say of him often; he is mostly a very good husband. But gardening? He is a jerk about gardening.) He mows the lawn, and will trim bushes if I nag him for a few weeks first. He will rake leaves in the fall (again, with the nagging) and he's aces at shoveling snow. But work in the garden? N-O-P-E. No can do. Never. Not in this lifetime. He tells me "I hate gardening, and I don't care what the yard looks like." I've tried pointing out that he enjoys vegetables and herbs that we grow. I've tried tantrums. I've tried the whole "if you LOVED me, you'd give me some help..." I've tried pointing out that this should be a family project, and by not helping me, he's subtly encouraging the kids not to help me....all for nothing. This seems to be the single area of life where I simply cannot budge him. (*sniff*)

This spring, the weeds have been really bothering me. Every time I went out in the yard and noticed new weeds sprouting in the garden, I wanted to punch someone. Every hour I've spent weeding has bred resentment in my mind, that I have to do all this alone, even though I already do so much for this ungrateful family....and every time I stop to buy four bags of mulch so that I can drag them home and dump them over the garden in the hopes that it will slow the growth of these pesky weeds (and I can only buy four bags at a time because otherwise we'll wreck the new shocks in the van that we had to put in because LAST year I supposedly wrecked them bringing home too many bags of mulch and beach rocks...blah blah blah...and by the way, four bags of mulch weigh about a million pounds and cover about nine square inches of the garden) every time I do this all I can think of is that it's going to take a hundred MORE trips to buy enough mulch to cover it all, and what's the point anyway because obviously the weeds grow right through it anyway...and so, here is the resolution part.

My resolution is simple and beautiful in its simplicity. Every day (assuming the weather is fine, and that I'm home, of course) I will get outside in the garden or yard, and I will weed. For half an hour, or possibly forty five minutes if we're home all day and I feel like it. I set the alarm on my cell phone and put it in my pocket, and I work like a machine till it rings. This is going to make all the difference in the yard and in my levels of psychotic rage, because it breaks the job into tiny pieces--rather than going out once in a while and spending hours working like a crazy person while the rest of the family does something fun--which is basically anything that doesn't involve yard work!--muttering to myself about how I'll never get it finished, how horrible it is, how nobody is helping me, etc. --I am working steadily and daily, and in short bursts of time. In half an hour, I can get a surprising amount accomplished, and more importantly, I know the job won't be finished, so I don't care that it isn't. I'll be back out tomorrow, and after I've worked for a month or so, maybe I'll even be scrounging around trying to find something to do. At least that's the hope. There I go, being terribly optimistic again....at the least, I can use it to make my husband feel extremely guilty that he's such a lazy sack when it comes to the yard, and maybe I won't have to nag quite so much when it comes time to trim the bushes again.

Easter Picture, by Emma

Emma made this Easter bunny picture, so I thought I'd share.

Spring Craft, by Emma

Emma wanted to make a spring craft for art last week, and she worked and worked for almost two hours to make this Easter egg. The bunny is made from individual pieces of paper she meticulously cut and glued--she discarded many parts before she was satisfied with her work. I really loved seeing her so intent on getting it just the way she wanted it!








If it's hard to read, she wrote "Emma 2011 (for art)" in the middle of the mosaic.