At least when you can't talk, you can write. I have the worst case of laryngitis I've had in recent memory. Actually, when I think about it, I'd say that laryngitis is my illness M.O., my own sickness idiom. Almost every year I lose 2 weeks of read-aloud time and basic communication to my lost voice. This time around, and it's been a while, I have been having Ollie read aloud to me. Sometimes I alternate with him by reading a page or two in whisper, but mostly he has been taking my usual role. It's working out nicely. We are halfway through the Invention of Hugo Cabret right now.

Today we played with our friends Asa, Isaac, and Charlotte at the park in Ashland. The big draw of the Ashland park is that there is a skateboard park right next to a playground, so everyone can be happy and appropriately supervised in a compact area that has plenty of shade. Ollie and Walter's skateboarding skills have improved since last summer when we were there. Okay, so they're hardly thrashers, but they were riding very confidently on their bottoms on the boards down even the biggest ramps and then going across the small ramps and platforms and catching air and landing. I hate to think of the bruises that they will have on their butts tomorrow. Frances, as usual, met a girl while she was there and was off playing all kinds of imaginative things.

We are going through Ukrop's White House rolls like they are going out of style, or going stale, or whatever it is that you would say about fresh baked items. They make life easy, but I have to face the facts: they are white bread. And not just white bread, but white bread of the whitest, sugariest sort. But man are they yummy with the tarragon chicken salad on them.

I have a confession: I am in love with XM radio. Crazy, madly in love. I love XM15, which is the folk station. At any given moment, I might hear Christine Lavin or Richard Shindell or Mary Chapin Carpenter. Yeah, there's a lot of Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary and other things that I'm not totally turned onto at the moment (don't worry--it's just a life place, not a lack of love or admiration for them; at other points in my life they have meant practically everything to me), but I'm finding this station filling my cup most of the time, and I'm already cringing at the prospect of life without it. XM Kids is also a pretty good station. I find myself listening even when I'm alone, although I did have to pull the plug on a rather rockin' rendition of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" tonight; a girl has to have standards.

It's not just XM that I love--it's the whole sound system. I'm loving the ease of popping in my iPod. And I'm loving having a 6 disc changer to make our audio books go more smoothly. Today we had a boom box hooked up through the plug in the back so that the boys could listen to "Tucket's Gold," by Gary Paulsen. Because we were in the car so long today going to Ashland, they got through almost the whole book. But when you're cradled in brand new leather seats and taking long drags of that new car smell, a long ride with a good book is no punishment.

This morning, the kids watched Alvin and the Chipmunks. I felt too wretched this morning and had no voice for doing much cracking of the whip...or work with them. I also was out of printer paper, which meant that I couldn't photocopy the math review pages I've decided we're going to concentrate on for a while as we get ready for our test. I remedied that situation today, so tomorrow it's back to hitting some of the books. I'm also printing out an endless (400 or so pages) science program that I'm planning to do with all three of the bigger kids over the next few month. The printer, not surprisingly, is balking a bit. Since we don't always "do" a lot of science, my plan for the summer is to work through this life science sequence, participate in www.quickstudylabs.com's Summer Science Club with weekly material, and work through our three Young Scientist's Club kits. The boys will read the nature reader I picked up a few weeks ago. And I'm hoping to pick up this one particular Critical Thinking Company science book for young elementary kids for Frances. The RRHE used curriculum sale is coming up soon, and I already have my list prepared.