Short & Sweet

I LOVE LUCY: This morning CJ asked Christian if there were any cousins (related to humans and Lucy) who came before Lucy. Christian told him yes.

Then Annabelle asked how Lucy got her name. Christian hopped online to get an answer. According to Wikipedia

They learned that Lucy was named after the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," which Donald Johanson and his party played over and over on a tape deck the night of Nov. 24, 1974, when she was discovered in Ethiopia.

That led, of course, to Christian finding the song on YouTube and playing it for the kids. The photo above is Annabelle tripping to the cool animation of "Lucy" from "St. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band."

SUGAR RUSH: Today's post is going to be brief. VERY brief. I have been working on sugar related items since six-thirtyish this morning. It's nine-ish now, and I've got another hour or two of stuff I gotta get down tonight.

The kids have helped some - mostly by licking beaters. ;) Annabelle does love to help with the fondant and has been there for every step of the way.

BLANK STARE: Big news at MPA - the new math books arrived yesterday! As I posted a couple of weeks ago, after researching what's out there, I opted to order Singapore Mathematics. Our order contained a textbook, an educator's guide and two workbooks. (I got the entry to second grade level for both of the kids).

I made a big deal about the great new books that will make math so easy. The kids were actually excited to dive into them. :)

For our initial foray, we reviewed counting by hundreds, tens and ones, and the kids completed four pages worth of several exercises.

When he got to the third page, I heard CJ sigh and complain, "Filling these in is wasting my time when I could be doing math. ...

Poor Mr. Literal. He thought "fill in the blanks" mean that he had to color in all the circles!!!

We had a good laugh about that. :)

ALLEY ANTICS: This afternoon, Christian was out working in the alley so the kids took the opportunity to go outside in the alley and play around for awhile. At one point they were riding scooters across a sheet of plastic, pretending it was a patch of ice. Quite the daredevils.

They also did some tomato plant pinching. Gramma R gave us the hot tip that our tomatoes might ripen if we get rid of some leaves and yellow blossoms. Makes sense - then the plant will direct more energy toward our green tomatoes!