Frigid Friday

THE BEAT GOES ON: The kids continued their percussion unit at Musikgarten today. During the parent participation part, teacher Nancy showed us a video of her son's senior project - an hour long percussion performance. He was playing everything from tambourine to marimba, tympani to snare drum.

During the video, I leaned over to CJ and asked him if he thought he could ever play instruments like that. He said, "No way!" I told him I thought he could, and that his brother Ken had done just that. CJ was wide eyed at that bit of information - and I reminded him that when he was a baby, we'd take CJ to football games where we'd watch Rick play football and Ken perform with the marching band. I don't know if CJ has any recollection of that at all. He was awfully young!

Watching the video definitely made me miss the football games and marching bands days when Ken was in the marching band "pit." doing likewise.

PHOTO JOURNALISTS: Yesterday, I had decked our spiral staircase with dozens of ornaments, turning it into a steel Christmas tree of sorts. This morning I had the kids pick their favorite ornament on the staircase and then had them each take its photo.

Next, we downloaded the photos to the computer (I showed them that process), and together we cropped them a bit, and then I showed them how to insert them into a Word document so that we could print out the photo and leave space on the page for them to write why they picked that particular ornament. They were instructed that kidnappers' notes (mixing upper and lowercase letters) and caveman language (poor grammar) were not acceptable. Bet you won't have too hard a time guessing which ornament CJ photographed, and which one Bee chose.

ROLLIN', ROLLIN', ROLLIN': This morning we watched the live rollover of Endeavor on NASA TV. A rollover is when the space shuttle leaves its hangar and is transported to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rollover is a major milestone to get a shuttle ready for its next mission.

We'll be following the shuttle launches in the coming months closely - in preparation of when we go to Florida in May to see a real live launch in person!!!

FROSTY STROLL: Despite the fact that the temperature was still well below freezing, we ventured out on foot today. We didn't go far - just to grand Bay View Park - but the kids were having a blast, running off steam, and we were out in it long enough for the cold to hurt!

FERTILE GROUND: Today we took a little field trip to the Ballard Library. It used to be a regular haunt when the kids went to preschool in Ballard, but we haven't been there in ages.

We made pigs of ourselves, checking out a boatload of books, CDs and DVDs. I am both giddy and ashamed with our haul.
HOMEBUILDERS: This evening, Christian took the kids to the Magnolia Community Center where, for a donation of canned food, they got to build 'gingerbread' (graham cracker) houses free of charge. They both came home smiling, pleased with their sweet creations.

PHONE HOME: Tonight Annabelle was carrying around an old, non-working phone and asked if we had another one so that she and CJ could pretend they were calling each other. I suggested that they use Christian and my cell phones instead and really call each other. So they made a couple of clumsy calls. Frankly, they both should know by now how to use a phone proficiently and they don't. So that's something we'll do more of in the future. (I should probably teach them how to text message while we're at it!)

BILL NYE THE BEDTIME STORY: Before bed, the kids watched a Bill Nye the Science Guy DVD about the seasons, which fits nicely with the BrainPOP work we've been doing on seasons lately. The DVD was one of the treasures we scored at the library today. His programs are so great - entertaining but really informative. It's also fun to watch because the show was filmed in Seattle, so familiar sites pop up inthe footage.

Just moments ago, Annabelle came tearing out of the bedroom, "Mom! Come quick!! It's an experiment!!! It was a demonstration much like we did a week or so ago, how the weather is warmer when an area is in direct sunlight (summer) as opposed to sunlight at an angle (winter). And she came out again, begging to do an experiment with a sundial. I promised we'd recreate it in the days to come. It's great to see them so excited about science.