March 30, 2007

It's certainly been a while since I last blogged. What can I say, life is pretty busy. :-)
Annika finished the alpha course for her Math-U-See program earlier this week. She was so proud of herself, and I immediately got online to order the books for the beta course. They arrived yesterday, and Annika was very happy about that. She decided to get busy doing some math right then and there, even though she was nervous about doing more difficult math. She doesn't trust herself to be able to know the material, and so I told her not to worry, that I would help her if she got stuck. The first pages tend to be mostly review work, so she was pleasantly surprised that they were easy for her! She did really well.
Also yesterday was the children's Aikido class, and Annika found out that she has been invited to test for the orange belt! Her teacher feels that she is ready now, and so I will be paying extra attention in class to the moves that are being practised. Her original testing date was set for mid-May, but I let the teacher know that we'd already be in Germany by then. So she moved her testing date up to late April, and Annika will have to practise hard for that test. I'm hoping Christopher will be able to help her with the moves.
Last Saturday I took the children to the Mesa Southwest Museum. They had an event there for children about mammoths. The kids did mammoth-themed crafts, and were generally very happy with the visit. We always like going to the Southwest Museum, especially panning for gold (technically "fool's gold"). The kids all got wet.
My car broke down yesterday when we were on our way to Christopher's chess class. The serpentine belt fell off, and I lost my power steering. I was able to wrestle the car into a parking lot, and sat down to lunch at NYPD Pizza while waiting for Mike to come to our rescue. He did, and spent most of the rest of the day making sure the car got fixed. It's fixed now, mostly. It's still leaking in some places, but those are slow leaks, and we're not that worried about them right now.
It is surprisingly cold today, and I'm tempted to turn on the heater. Maybe I will later tonight. It seems a bit odd, especially after we've already had some rather hot days.
Christopher and Annika are attending their weekly home school program, Casa Vida, today. Lily and I stayed a bit later than usual at the school so she could play on the playground for a bit. There was another Mom there, with 4 more kids around Lillian's age (not all of them her own, of course), and we had a nice time talking to each other. I'd seen her around many times, just never had an actual conversation with her that lasted longer than 30 seconds. I forgot to ask her name. But I know the names of her children.
Lillian found a marble in the sand, and was very impressed with it. She called it her "diamond", lol. She enjoyed alternately throwing it and burying it in the sand, then digging it back up, and ultimately lost it. She says she'd like to go back to the playground to search for her "diamond" again. Funny kid.
Annika and I collect some seeds off of my friend's Desert Willow earlier this week. We are still studying plants, and are thinking about trying to make the seeds grow. I attempted to call the plant hotline for the Desert Botanical Garden, but was unable to get through to an actual person. It was disappointing, since I was hoping to get some planting tips for the seeds. Oh well, I think I'll just try and wing it, and see what happens. I don't have much hope of actually growing a Desert Willow from seed, but it can't hurt to try. I will use cheap materials we already have from home. I read somewhere that you can make your own biodegradable seed pots by using toilet paper rolls, and shoving crumpled up newspaper at the bottom. I will fill those up with soil from our yard, and put one or two tree seeds in, and will just see what happens. It would be so exciting to actually start a tree ourselves!
My friend has invited us to come back to her house so Annika can make a sketch of the tree, and maybe we'll collect even more seeds. Wouldn't that be fun?? We love our nature studies.
Well, I must go. I'd like to spend a little more time on the computer doing actual work before driving back into Ahwatukee to pick up the kids.