Easy Does It

TAKE 'ER EASY: We purposely 'underscheduled' today because I had planned on having to be home all day waiting for the Fed Ex truck to make a delivery that required my signature.

So, we started our morning by picking up the place, by working through a couple of math assignments and by reading down the stack, as I call it. (You know that's a sign that we have library due dates approaching.)

Imagine my pleasant surprise when the Fed Ex man knocked at the door 'round 10 a.m. bringing these ...

Sweet! Though the tickets are for a game I won't be attending, as a lifelong Pac 10 (well, now 12) football fan I still got a thrill out of just touching them. : ) Word to the wise - if you want to go to the Rose Bowl, hop right on the Tournament of Roses official site on or before the last day of the Pac 10, er 12, season. That's how I scored Christian face value tickets that I know are legit.

But back to our day. We did math and read a number of books, including "Stuff," a cautionary tale about hoarding, and we watched a "Reading Rainbow" episode featuring the book "Mama Don't Allow," a book by Thatcher Hurd. The show demonstrated how learning to play a new instrument can be fun, but it's not easy. The show included a visit to an alligator farm and an interview with a professional jazz saxophone.

The last book we read today was "My Hands Sing the Blues - Romane Bearden's Childhood Journey." The very first page featured a striking collage - appropriate, as collage is what made Bearden a famous artist.. I immediately thought, "We'll make some collages after we read this."

We hadn't hit page 3 before Annabelle chimed in, "Can we make collages when we're done reading this?"

Of course. :)

And so afterward, I spread out all sorts of things on our kitchen island (feathers, shells, stars, stickers, magazines, foam, felt, silk, satin, and more) and asked the kids to create some kind of scene. Annabelle went to town, creating a collage she called "Sun and Moon Share the Day."

CJ went to town - in his own way. He carefully selected a few items to cut out and combine (one character from the front of a parenting magazine and three coins from a National Geographic). He carefully cut a surprised shaped mouth on the character and placed the coins in its hands, as well as one on its hat, since there were three coins and only two hands. He glued it on a sparkly black background and titled it "The Legendary Coins."

As I hung the collages up on the kids' bedroom door, CJ said, "Sorry about the lack of creativity,"  sounding sincere, right before he bounded off to play Minecraft.

BOXING: I recently bought a new crockpot (since my old one has exposed wires hanging out its front). Annabelle was thrilled not so much by the crockpot but by the box it came in. She asked if she could have it (of course). She punched a couple holes in it and wriggled into it and waddled her way over to me, declaring "It's a tadpole costume. I just put my head in it. And my torso. And squeezed my arms in too. It's a giant killer tadpole. It's gigantic, and so it scares you."

She waddled over to the bathroom door, to wait for CJ to emerge, with high hopes of startling him. Happily, he was not scared to death. Unhappily, he was unimpressed. Back to the drawing board for Bee.

ZIPPER: This afternoon, after returning a whole stack of library books, we hit the Discovery Park playground. There, the kids enjoyed the zipline, running around, and some swinging.

HARD HAT AREA: Poor ol' Phobos-Grunt, the ill-fated Russian mission to send a probe to a moon of Mars, is still incommunicado in orbit. But not for long. For, you see, it's expected to start crashing down to Earth in parts, come Jan. 6 or so. Tass doesn't mince many words in their story outlining what's to come:  http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c154/299727.html

 
FRAMED: When we were leaving the kids' science class on Wednesday afternoon, I saw these words on a license plate holder: "Test your beliefs: Read, reason and research."