Bye Bye Birdie

Kate was in a musical at school this month, her part was a member of screaming/swooning girls's group B.  She did a good job.  

For about two weeks after, all the little girls sang the "We love you Conrad" song over and over, at least when I was in earshot.  I think they were trying to make me crazy or something...

Hope

Every year we visit Hope's grave.  This is what we looked like this year.  Adam's hiding his face from the sun, not crying...

We also have a tradition to go out to eat together.  We went to Denny's this year.  I ordered all you can eat pancakes, and biscuits and gravy with hash browns, and biscuits and gravy with eggs.  The kids seemed impressed when it came out, the hash browns weren't that good...

Posts on the way

I've got some posts on the way, to get caught up on the past few weeks.  Stay tuned...

This is not entirely my brother Dave's fault...

Our front room has been feeling a bit corwded of late.  One reason was because I left the Christmas tree up for 3 months, but it came down last week.  

Our back room was feeling a bit crowded as well, and we have outgrown our dinner table.  We have a bead on a bigger table, but there was no way it was going to fit in the back room with every else that was back there.  Several years ago, I put flooring down on the carpet back there as a temporary measure to keep the kids from making a mess, our results varied.

Two weeks ago, I started pulling up the carpet in the front room.  We had decided to move the dinner table to the front room, where we had more room to accomidate a bigger table when we've got one.  The initial peek under the carpet showed wood in really good shape and the second bigger peek showed more wood in good shape.

Today I finally finished the place.  (I finished  pulling the carpet out several days ago, we finished cleaning things up today.)  Tara likes how it helps the sound of the piano in the room.

It looked kind of dull until I cleaned the floor, which really brightened it up.  Noticed the rows of screws they put in the flooring.  (Didn't find them until the 4th section of carpet came out.)  I'm going to pretend the screws are not there.

The table's now moved in, and ready for dinner tomorrow.  It's also ready for breakfast and lunch, but I likely won't be participating in those meals at home.

We have 11 six foot bookcases, and 3 three foot bookcases in the house, all full of books.  In the process of pulling the carpet out, I moved all the books in the house.  We've got a lot of books.   More than some small town libraries, I am sure.  :)

Anyway, I hear 2013 is the year of pulling out carpet to expose the wood underneath.  Dave started it...

Story Telling Festival

The Elementary school has been doing a storytelling workshop for several years.  They have the kids stay after school Fridays for several weeks learning how to tell stories and getting a story ready to share.  

Emma told "The three little bacons and the big bad waffle"

Ruth told a story about Bob.  Bob is her imaginary friend.  We didn't really hear the story.

Mary told the story of Cinderella.

Book Review

Star Wars
The Force Unleashed
by Sean Williams

A book based on a video game!  (I've not always had good experiences with this type of thing in the past, but in this case, it's a book based on a video game that I haven't actually played before.  Maybe that helped...)

Interesting book.  It's about Darth Vader's secret apprentice in the days before the Death Star is finished.  He travels the outer rim, sent on missions by Vader.  Then he has an accident, and retraces his steps.  (Spoilers redacted)

I thought it was an interesting book.  The main character's name throughout most of the book was "the apprentice".  He's got a shape shifting robot pal whose primary objective is to kill him in combat.  (Teaching him in the process.)  There is a ship pilot used as a foil to the main character.  They just wander the galaxy and think about their angst.  Then land and start fighting.

The main thrust of the book is the apprentice retraces his steps in the second half, and starts learning the results of his actions.  In the end, we all learned a valuable lesson.

It was a good book, and I see that the author wrote a book called "The Force Unleashed II", I'm guessing based on a second video game I never played.  I'd read it if I ever came across it, just based on this one...

Book report

Doctor Who 
More Short Trips
edited by Stephen Cole

This book is a collection of short Dr. Who stories (some very short) from the first Doctor to the eighth Doctor.  Each story had a different combination of Doctor and companion in some random adventure. I think they managed to get every Dr. Who companion in the book, with the corresponding Doctor for that companion.

Because it was a collection of short stories, it took me something like six weeks to read the thing.  I thought it was interesting.  They didn't compile the thing in any kind of chronological order, which is appropriate, really.  What they did do, however, is do a good job switching between very short, and slightly less short stories.

There were only a couple of weird stories, most of them were interesting in their own right.  I was a good book.

The last story was quite weird.  The story jumped back and forth in it's own timeline, it took about 12 pages to really figure out what in the world was going on.  I guess that's sort of appropriate as well, if you think about it...

Anyway, good book, may be out of print, found it at the University library a while back.

More to come...

Noel reading a book

Fritters

We had an apple in the house last night, I made low sugar apple fritters. Here are Tara's fritters, complete with ice cream. Pretty good.

I would try blueberry fritters, blackberry fritters, strawberry fritters, etc, but I might want to consider some sort of exercise program first...

Pasta

Adam made pasta at school today. He left it in a ziplock, by evening it was one single lump of dough again. He still wanted to cook and eat it, so I whipped out the pasta roller. He seemed impressed, not sure any other preschool kids got thinner noodles like Adam did...

Guest post by Emma

Two poems by Emma:

Cheetahs

See the yellow eyes
I can run the fastest
Such a blur to watch


Zebras

Black and white with hooves
Can not tell them all apart
See us eat the grass

I don't understand a word these kids say these days...