Parentheticals

It still feels like we're just getting back into the swing of things, even though we have been home for weeks now. We're restarting all the kids' social activities: nature groups (three a week!), ballet class from a friend's older sister, library trips, etc. And of course getting the basics of school happening. January is always an exciting time in our homeschool. Every year, we retell the Montessori Five Great Lessons: The Story of the Coming of the Universe, The Story of the Coming of Life, The Story of the Coming of Humans, The Story of Communication in Signs, and The Story of Numbers. The goal is to put all learning into context and make it exciting! We did the first Great Lesson this week, which covers the Big Bang up to the Earth being covered with water. The big hit of this one is always the volcano, which did not explode in a very satisfactory way this year. Alison wants to remember to use a disposable water bottle for the reaction chamber next year. Rea mad...

Monday we had family night because we were driving last Sunday. As the treat we made another tray of fudge (we really need to stop that) On Tuesday we had park group during the day, and excepting Rea, the kids all got cold and whiny. It ended when Gideon wet himself and we got fined and kicked out of the park (that last part was a joke) Mike is feeling constantly exhausted recently because baby Elizabeth is having such a hard time sleeping through the night. We probably haven't ever had such a hard time getting a kid to sleep. On Wednesday Rea and Sara went to Activity Days. It was Sara's first activity days activity. They wrote down things about themselves on pieces of paper and then ate cupcakes. It was fun. On Thursday we had a party to celebrate Carnival. It was Timmy's choice for a theme, so we had an Amazon Rainforest themed party. The cake had amazon themed animals for toppers, and we had some kids from Timmy's class over as party guests. During the day...

Last Sunday evening late at night we arrived at Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig's house, and we arrived home this Saturday night, so we spent almost a full week there. Mike was doing an ordinary workweek from their house so this didn't count as a vacation for us. Rea wants me to add that it still counted as vacation for Alison and for the kids. Rea and Sara had also just got home from a trip to Disneyland with Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig, so a lot of this post will be about Disneyland. Also, Rea is the only kid interested in blogging today, so most of this will be from her point of view. Rea's favorite picture from Disneyland Rea's favorite thing to do in Disneyland was walking with her grandparents. She also liked going on the rides. Her least favorite thing was her feet hurting after she walks so much every day. Rea's favorite foods from there were broccoli cheese soup in a bread bowl that she had at one of the restaurants and also pineapple i...

On New Year's Eve, we had a one-shot role-playing game day. Sal and Caitlin came, and we played Lasers and Feelings. It was very fun. We were a group of spacefarers, an Android, a diplomat, an engineer, and a pilot, trying to stop the bad guy from building a machine to destroy the universe. We planned to blow his machine up in multiple ways (in case one failed) and then discovered that his machine was on a holy site where the natives were gathered for a ceremony. So we tried to undo those things to keep from blowing up the natives but still stop him. It was ridiculous and we all laughed a lot. That's the best sort of one-shot roleplaying game. We continued working on Organized Simplicity this week. We did the shed, the bathroom, and the hall closets this week. All that is left is the spare room. Every time we do this, we find that we do have enough space in our small house after all. Mike went to Board Game Design Guild on Thursday. That was valuable. He's getting ...