February

Back to Starr! We saw the girls play basketball. All stars! Plus made lotion. Plus collected a million eggs. Plus all the usual animal fun. Plus a new baby donkey was born the night we stayed. So magical. One of my children likes the farm life a lot more than the other. 

 

 

Funny story... I was putting Rory and Lizzy to bed and they wanted to listen to Mrs. Gorf from Wayside Stories so I say, "I hope she doesn't turn you into apples!" The next morning I discover that they had gotten up, put apples in their bed and proceeded to sleep in the bathtub so we would think they had been transformed. Might have been genius except 1- Sleeping in the bathtub sounds like torture and 2- They got up in the morning and came tromping in the room before we could even realize their prank. 

Upon returning home it was a Monday of high highs and low lows because Silas got into his middle school program (250 applied for 100 spots!) and Rory got in the elementary one whose campus adjoins! (Lottery- but who knew if there would even be an opening in the 2nd grade cohort.) Thrilled about each individually but both was a long shot dream! Then I found out that Julianna's baby donkey didn't make it, so that was devastating and I spent the rest of the day airing my grief by being a huge nag to all my students. 

Rory requested a scavenger hunt as an activity recently so I worked something up for Valentine's Day. I should have gone for "Here is a clue, go look in Dad's shoe." But no, I set up a whole scenario where our Valentine gnome turned bad and tried to get them to join his mischief gang, only with apparently vague clues and vocabulary because they were confused through the whole thing. I had to keep yelling at them to "Read it again!" Pretty sure Rory still had no idea what he had just (barely) participated in when he found his gift tied up in the oven.

I read my old copy of Jillian Jiggs and we made our own pigs with Rory's class. I felt like my 6-year-old self would have been proud. He also got his artwork displayed at the district office! (pumpkin)

The last exciting thing of note was attending USC's Engineering Day. They had about a million cool stations and the boys got to add a pin to their lanyard at every one. They had trains, plane flying simulations, running across oobleck, landfill pudding, rock layers, earthquakes, hydroponics, coding, cell models, pulleys, dna, rocket launches... It was like every science lesson all in the same day.

January

Rory (finally) lost his front tooth! That guy had been dangling for weeks. Silas had his interview for the middle school program he is applying for. I was terrified but held it together for the good of the cause. The cousins spent a long weekend with us. We hit up the state museum on dollar day to make up for Rory's missed field trip. We got to see my cousin, Nevin, get married virtually! I was generally in a poor mood due to lots of holocaust reading. Writing from February and this is already all I can remember.