School Days

I love observing my children as they learn about the world and all the amazing things it has to offer. It is exciting to watch them as their minds develop and their knowledge increases. Here is to wonderful teachers that inspire kids and get them excited to learn. We are lucky that each of our kids has phenomenal teachers this year. And can I also add that I am in love with our kids curriculum? Core Knowledge is outstanding (E.D. Hirsch).
Here is the "culminating activity" for Anders when his class studied the continents and oceans:
Anders got to wear something from Japan and set up a display about Japan (seen behind him) which as you all know, and now he knows, is part of the very largest continent, Asia.


(can anyone tell me why I still can't upload video on blogger?  Is it a comcast thing?)

This is Lucy's culminating activity. They just finished up a big unit on Native American tribes. I got to go to a museum of Native American History and Culture and was given a tour by the very knowledgeable Lucy and her friend M. It was very impressive. Parents weren't allowed to help (take over) the kids projects and they did a terrific job.   Now I need to take her up to the Natural History museum so she can see  my Uncle Tony's very fine collection of Native American artifacts.  She would love it.  

Telling me about the Navajos

Zuni mask 

Seminole Chickee, made unassisted by Lu

Hopi kachina dolls

Best Time of The Year

I absolutely love this time of the year. It isn't quite spring but some days we get glimpses of warmth and reminders that winter is coming to an end. I think some people think it is a really ugly time, because the grass is brown and matted down, and things seem dirty, but I love it. It's time to start anticipating the bulbs poking shoots up through the mud, and buds starting to form on the lilacs. It's time for the grass to start thinking about photosynthesizing again. And it may very well snow again, but you know that the following day could easily be warm enough to forgo a coat. I don't know if it is the anticipation of plenty of good outdoor time to come or the relief that we survived another winter that make me love this transition time. But whatever the reason, I can't think of anything better than the days when we can throw on a jacket and get outside and rediscover the fun of bike riding, scooters, swings, slides, climbing trees, and going to the park. It may be the only time of year when mud tracked through the house makes me excited. I'm starting to eye my garden plot, thinking about planting spinach seeds and other cool weather crops. And at the same time there are still some good ski days to be had (for the kids, not for me, lest any of you think I actually got into skiing.) This time of year makes me feel sorry for those that live in climates that never experience the four seasons. Mid-winter I'm jealous, but now you couldn't pay me to do without them.

Book List

I got this list from Maren's Blog, and since I love a good read about more than anything, I
thought I'd give it a shot.
The BBC reports most people will have only read six of the 100 books on this list.

So, these were the instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an x after those you have read.
2) Add a + to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x + (I'll read this yearly till the day I die)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x+
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x+
6 The Bible *
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x (long ago, so *)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x+
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x +
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x+
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (love what I've read, maybe I should aspire to a complete read, but like the Bible, hmmm)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier*
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien*
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger*
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot *
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x +
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x+
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens * (have been meaning to since seeing the FABULOUS BBC adaptation last year)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams*
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh *
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky x +
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x+++
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen x+
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x+
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell *
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving x +
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins x
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x ++
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan x +
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x +
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons *
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x+
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x (two thumbs down)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x +
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x +
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (I have no desire to read this after Reading Lolita in Tehran. Molesters aren't my top characters).
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas * (I am reading it next month for book club)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy*
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x+++
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie *
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X (no thanks)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker *
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray *
80 Possession - AS Byatt x
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro x
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x +
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad x
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x (in french no less)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole *
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute x +
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas *
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x +
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo * (I tried the unabridged once...)

Take that BBC booklist!

Good Old Days

I found a bunch of old photos and when the scanner is cooperating, I've been uploading them to iPhoto. I think as I organize them I'll be doing some retro posts. Anyway, here is a small taste:

This is was at Johnny Hopkins the fall of our senior year.  We look 

like babies.  I would love to find the picture from the Christmas dance

that has the entire 90210 crew in it.  I love that we all have flannel shirts

(it was the year of grunge after all) and I love that Ted's eyes are closed

and I love that Matt is making one of his dance picture faces.  From left

to right the couples are Rachel and Ted, Greg and Jennette, Kelly and Tom, 

Me and Matt, Tammy and Kevin.

This was us, just arrived at the BYU center in London from Paris 

after a month of touring Europe.  My favorite part of the picture has to 

be Challey holding her Prague eggs!   But they sure are beautiful.

Mindy and Jennette on the back, 

Challey, Me, and Jen on the front.  

I can't remember where this picture was, but I have

a vague memory of a party in Challey's backyard.  I 

know this was the summer I got married.  I'd forgotten

that they used to make pants come up to the waist.  I kind of 

miss it.  But I don't miss overalls or flannel shirts.

Becky, Chris, Jennette, Mindi, Me, and Challey.

Stay tuned for more.  I love old pictures.  They remind me of how great my friends are, how wonderful my family is, and what a good life I've had.  

Cafe De Valentine

I need to say right at the outset of this post that it contains some very embarrassing photos.  But we were being silly in the name of entertaining the troops.  (Besides any of you that have been my roommate or sister or close friend have seem me be rather silly at times.)

This year we decided to go all out for the kids Valentine's Day.  We set up the Cafe De Valentine restaurant in our dining room.  Rob played the part of the crazy chef, Robespierre, and I played the role of the eccentric silly server Fleur (note the flower theme in my ridiculous attire).  Rob made a hilarious menu.  I hope you are able to read it.   Everyone had a fabulous time, Rob and I included.  Sometimes it is just really fun to be so silly that the kids can't stop laughing.   When Lucy went to bed tonight she was on the verge of tears.  I asked what was wrong.  She said she was sad because she didn't want the day to end.  Hoorah for the times we actually get parenting right!

(Please don't think we are encouraging alcohol consumption in our children.  It was just juice and no one pretended otherwise.)

Chaps My Hide

We got a Hoover bag old school vacuum when we got married, ten and a half years ago.  It lasted a long time.  We had to make a few repairs, but thanks to Rob's old job as a BYU vacuum repair guy, no problem.  It didn't have great suction, but it did the job.  Then this summer, whilst Rob was in D.C. it died once and for all.  It was beyond repair.  So I went on over to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and picked up the highly recommended Hoover wind tunnel.  I really wanted a Dyson, but wasn't quite ready to fork out the big bucks yet.  Anyway I got it home and within a week the handy dandy attachment used for cleaning stairs wasn't working right anymore.  And within a couple of months the motor would overheat half-way through vacuuming the house.  What?  And then it would lose suction because it would get clogged up.  So Rob took it back to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, where they took it back and gave us store credit.  They told Rob that most vacuums are designed to last a year!  DESIGNED TO LAST A YEAR????    That really chaps my hide.  It is called planned obsolescence.  Planned obsolescence is this: 
A manufacturing decision by a company to make consumer products in such a way that they become out-of-date or useless within a known time period. The main goal of this type of production is to ensure that consumers will have to buy the product multiple times, rather than only once. This naturally stimulates demand for an industry's products because consumers have to keep coming back again and again.

I can't even tell you how angry that concept makes me.  What a wasteful disgusting unsustainable practice.  May manufacturers rot in hell.  And may we consumers that buy new phones and new iPods yearly get a freaking clue!!! It really does chap my hide.  I'd like to know if there is any economy that can succeed not based on consumption.  It sucks that the best solution to the current economic crisis is for us all to not save but consume.  Enough already!  Bring on the law of consecration baby! End wasteful consumption now!  That is going to be my slogan when I run for president. 

And so, being the consumers we are, we bought a Dyson, which is supposed to have a longer shelf life.  I hope so!  It also works about 500x better than any vacuum I've ever used.   Here is wishing my Dyson years and years of useful and fulfilling service in the Hastings' household.

London Calling

It's just one of those weeks where I would sell my soul to hang out in London with some of my favorite traveling pals.  Sigh.






I know, I have posts like this periodically, but I can't help myself. It is a disease.

Remote Control Woes

Our VCR remote (yes we still have a VCR, don't laugh....) was missing.  For several days.  And I searched and searched for it.  And it bugged because it is usually the kids who lose it.  And I hate to have to get up to change the channel. Plus it just really bugs when things go missing, things that belong in a set (legos, puzzle pieces, doll shoes, socks, remotes, etc.) And I kept asking the kids to look for it.  And they "did" (say did in a whiny helpless voice and you will get the jist of it), but they just couldn't find it.  So yesterday I called a meeting and announced a $2.00 reward for anyone who could find the remote.  Two minutes later Anders came up with the remote in hand.  Anders?  That kid can't find his own shoes when they are on his feet.  

Volleyball

I've been thinking about this today because of a friend's post about her daughter not wanting or being willing to do certain activities.

I hate volleyball.  I always was terrible at it.  I never enjoyed it.  In high school there were picnics and barbecues with friends during the summer and always volleyball.  I remember Kim W. hosting a picnic at the park below her house and when I showed up and the net was set up I wanted to tuck my tail and run for my dear life.  The horror of having to face those ordeals lives on to this day.  In YW there was volleyball.  I didn't participate.  In 9th grade PE when it came time for the volleyball unit(now this memory may be totally wrong because in some of my memories of 9th grade PE, it wasn't co-ed, but..) I was totally the last one picked to be on a team.  And Josh T. the popular, athletic, across-the-street neighbor was on my team.  When the ball came flying at my face and I ducked for cover he groaned in annoyance. A painful memory.   And it was just sooooo embarrassing.  The moral of the story:  Don't force people that hate volleyball to play volleyball.  No good will come from it.  I could write a similar post about softball.  Or the Hershey track meet in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades.