egads

 

now it's 4 out of 5 in our family doomed to wear glasses - bosco you're our last hope!

fierce & bosco on the roof

yes
nanny's gonna kill me
 

holy crap!

and i mean crap
this is the pile of stuff we carted to the dump, thanks to glenn and his truck.

MYC recital

 
 
rob is trying to make a crown on bosco's head (did i mention that - after 5 consecutive years of this - it's a bit of a bore to wait for our turn? so we entertain ourselves any way we can)
 
 
finally
 

student of the month

 

another year, another dessert party

another year volunteering (this time craft table and then candy table)
 
doesn't take bosco long to find his budds
 
 
couldn't resist getting this for bosco from the craft table (that would be a cool template to have!)
 
 
 
psst... if you want a deal at the candy table, show up 10 minutes before closing - prices started at 1/2 off and quickly moved to 3/4 off

gone fishing

they look like seasoned pros
 

 

the $2200 weekend

the first long weekend of the summer
some people go away on a mini-holiday... we stayed home so we wouldn't have the expense
- ha -
this weekend costs us:
$260 glasses for fierce
$700 glasses and sunglasses for rob
$300 table saw
$500 kitchen sink
$200 kitchen faucet
$ 80 stuff at the garden centre
$ 70 rob's birthday dinner
$ 80 shrek 4, popcorn & drinks (crazy, huh)
$ 40 painting supplies
$ 25 pick up cat from humane society - yet again

thank goodness the mall, etc is closed tomorrow - no more spending!

meanwhile
the kids updated the bone museum with some new paint and a flower box.
 
 
 
 
 
(and it's gonna look so much better once we remove all the crap hiding beside it)
 
 

pepper's new, weird, art form

hmm...the contrast makes everyone look like the un-dead

fierce's wishlist

 
 

the apple doesn't fall far from the tree

 
 

Fierce makes us name cards for the dinner table

 

one uphill battle in the never-ending war

this is what pepper wants:
(a cookie cutter to make mini punch-out sandwiches)
 

this is what she does to retrieve it...
(understandable, except that was a full 4 hours ago)
 

this is pepper reflecting on why she can't tidy her own messes
(to sum her note up: she forgot)
 

and this is one small corner of the world righted
(now on to the next battle...)
 

mideast

it's a mystery how to define the borders of the middle east. some definitions include northern africa, some include turkey (sort of the straddle between the arab world and europe). actually we loved reading turking folktales and we may have chosen our next big trip: whirling devishes, turkish baths, greek and roman ruins, sunning ourselves on the Mediterranean Sea, and investigating underground cave cities.
turkey is not that far from egypt... for some reason, i'm still attracted to islamic countries. maybe they are the polar opposite of our lives / culture. if we are going to travel someplace foreign - i guess i want it as foreign as possible
 
 

we also read (but forgot to photograph) Shadow Spinner, and The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio
i highly reccommend both these novels but for different reasons. for Shadow Spinner, each chapter started with 'instructions for storytelling & life' and they were useful and charming. i, for one, enjoy the direct nature of junior fiction. The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio was a classic case of how to craft a novel for a young writer. i plan to use it as a temple in the writing course i'm leading next year.
. . . . . .
in both these novels, and in Seven Daughters and Seven Sons as well, the main characters are continually asked, rhetorically:
What ever will become of you? - their lives seem fraught with danger...
is this theme so prevalent because these (western) authors also see the mideast as the most foreign of places?
it makes me want to read more -

paper route treasure

another early saturday morning, another easy pillage
 
 
 
it's junk
but they are so proud of themselves
we've decided they are allowed to fill up the 'bone museum' to their heart's content, but that's where their treasure must live

storybox

 
it must be the influence of public-school -
fierce had a subscription to storybox for a year and only did the mazes. but bosco does every activity, dutifully matching up and writing out words. his reading in english improves daily, and - mostly - without help!
 

music co-op finale

the moms worked long and hard this year: we studied folk music, jazz, opera, gospel music & negro spirituals. we explored Handel's messiah, reviewed the genres of baroque, classical and romantic music, saw an operetta in Hamilton, and attended numerous professional and student concerts at the university. our last 'block' was musical theatre, so we capped off the year with a visit to Stratford to see Kiss Me, Kate
 
 

it's ninja day

 
 

'making' cells

 
let's see: we've got jello for cytoplasm, green jelly beans for chloroplasts, vermicilli for microtubules, non-pareils for ribosomes, pretzels for endoplasmic reticulum, smarties for lysosomes, orange segments for mitochodria, marshmallows for nuclei, black jelly beans for the nucleolus, gummy worms for golgi aparatus, bananas for cell walls.. i know i'm forgetting something...
 
 
...oh yes, the frenzy with which our eukaryotic cells would be devoured!