Forging Ahead

Distanced and masked, they forged ahead with forging class. 

And they loved it.

Now I have several hooks to hang...

Gaming

While we may often hear Ben off in the background yelling at video games, we're as likely to find the girls in more traditional endeavors.  As with all puzzles, they started off one afternoon gangbusters to finish this one. 

Then my painted ladybug rocks showed up on the kitchen counter one day. 

They were looking for a game board to call home, it seems. 

And not too many days later, the bumblebees showed up and there was a game of tic-tac-toe.

The puzzle, as with all puzzles ever started by us, has lingered now for many days.

With school here, I imagine we won't ever finish this one. 

Father's Day

Guess which steak was Patric's on Father's Day?

And then, Alida with Elaine's help engineered an escape room adventure for us as the evening entertainment. 

We were locked in until we could find the key to escape. 

The scientist working on the Covid vaccine had perished just as he made the potion. 

There was much science involved and a bat. 

And once we got the hang of it, we worked together and riddled through all of the puzzles.  And actually drank some mathematically puzzled through concoction. 

Lastly, we celebrated with some nose swabbing, for no apparent reason...

Summer Camp Arts and Crafts

I hated the ugly "No Diving" stickers we had. 

So Elaine made me a new sign. 

Army 10 Miler

Patric and I slipped away for a relaxing weekend in DC running the Army 10 Miler a few weekends ago. We had dinner with a friend the day before, who wisely advised: You won't win, and you won't die.  She was exactly right.

While we were away, the girls were ever industrious and helped kick off Halloween Season with a cake.

 

Nick, on the other hand, kicked off Halloween season a little differently. 

The text I received: "I think I did something to my arm."

I told him to drink some water and go to bed.  It solves most problems, even foolish ones...

And so it happened quite coincidentally that we were in DC the weekend of the Kavanaugh vote and confirmation.  We stayed inside most of that day, and we ventured out after it had all died down.

The Theater

Opting not to run: Alida.

 

She has been hanging around the musical crew, and tried out for the play.

Here she is finding out she was cast as one of three napkins.

 

First piece of comfort: we all start somewhere.

Second: Have fun.  There is no way there are three napkins in a play who aren't there for the purpose of having fun.

Those Skies

Never end

And Alida is getting pretty good at framing a good photo.

 

 

And Elaine wound up just blond again...

 

Elaine's Art Portfolio Fifth Grade

Not a deer.

Chi Wawa. Ears, oddly, stayed put.

 

Self Portrait

And a tree house in the sky

Alida's Fifth Grade Art Portfolio

This is a deer.

We had to fix the ears when it arrived home.

 

A tree house in the sky.

 

Self portrait.

Ben's Sixth Grade Art Portfolio

Ben's representation of his way home.

 

3-D representation of Dr. Butter's Home.

 

Dr. Butter's

He is funny and experimental and smart.  He is also weird and speaks with a British accent.

 

Pre clay sculpture drawing.

Nick's Sixth Grade Art Portfolio

He calls it Monstrosity.

He says this is Alex, not Nick, although there is a resemblance...

 

This is Alex's room where the thing that looks like a Pez Dispenser, actually is supposed to be his candy machine. It is not unintentional I'm sure that all of the electronic equipment is so large it can't be confiscated from the room at bedtime.

 

Nick's representation of his walk home.

Oh Boys

You could not for the life of you figure out why you had to attend the Elementary School musical and art show.

 

We could not for the life of us consider leaving you home.

 

That you then got into a full conversation about the difficulty of creating shadows in artwork, that made us smile.

Fifth Grade Art Show

Elaine--as a parachutist. 

 

Elaine's tree-house in the sky.

 

Alida learning shadows.

 

Alida on the balance beam.

 

And Ben being a good sport at the show.

Alida's Family Picture

Nick is tired.

Ben is angry.

Elaine is happy!

Dad and mom love each other very  much.

And, the act of kissing makes Alida throw up.

 

Seems just about right.

Don't Make Mom Mad!

Because you can see there that when mom is mad, she puts on her pearls and her eyebrows sharpen...

 

We had a make your own board game set sitting around here and the girls put it to use the other day.  The rules, that seemed to keep changing, made me mad...

Kojo Coding

Last week, we were able to attend the boys' last coding class of the year and try out their maze games they created--think PacMan.

 

Super cool, and they loved it.

The first night Ben got in the car and told me he killed six sprites in an hour all because he didn't know to turn them 90 degrees in the coding.  Instead they would just fly off the screen each time he ran his game.  By the last night, we got to sit down and try to win their maze games.  That's a pretty big turnaround in six weeks.

Our Artist

Elaine brought this back from her drawing class the other night.

I was pretty impressed.  She admitted the teacher helped her with the shading.  But still, impressed. She said the only thing he added was a few extra branches on her tree.  

 

And the next day, she began tattooing her sister.

 

The turtle with the big eyes at the top of Alida's arm, crazy cute.