Day 19

Sam worked on Lego stop action videos today, as usual. He's coming up with ideas and story lines all the time. I love the creativity. The girls have made a few videos with him too. Sarah worked on it with him today. We got an app for the iPad that lets him just clap or snap his fingers to take the picture, so he doesn't have camera wiggle like he used to. It also has an onion skin feature that lets you see a shadow of your last picture so you can tell how far you're moving things. So fun!

Sarah's concerned about not having the piano to practice on while we're on our trip. I'm trying to figure out a way to take Wilson and Kamille the electric keyboard so they can teach piano if they need some extra money. Sarah would love that; she hates to go one day without practicing. If we can't fit it in the car, Wilson and Kamille will have to find a way to play a piano regularly too. That's been their whole life (individually and together) for several years. Maybe they can snag a key to a practice room at their new school.

We did some yard work today. Oh, how we wish the grass just went up to the walls of the house. We rent, so we can't remove any of the owner's bushes, flowers, shrubs, tall grasses, trees, and on and on. When we moved here in the winter, it didn't look like this much yard work! I guess it teaches us to do things we hate because it needs done anyway. Well maybe not, I'm still always leaving the dishes because I hate doing them even though they need done anyway. I wish I cared whether they got done, but I really don't. It's just terrible. Jeff does though, so I usually get them done before he comes home from work.

Rachel went out tonight with one of the ladies from our church that leads activities for the teenagers. They went to a pottery place and painted some pieces of pottery. The place puts it in the kiln and you pick it up later. She painted a little bowl. I can't wait to see it. Then we had to figure out which book had kilns in it, The Golden Goblet or A Single Shard. We decided it was A Single Shard. Obviously, because that one's about pottery!

We did some copywork today from And Then There Were None. It had a bunch of quotation punctuation in it. I love copywork. It makes so much sense to use other people's writing to study mechanics. It's so impersonal. You know, it doesn't bother anyone to point out what's going on in writing that the child isn't emotionally connected to.


See you tomorrow!