Frances has officially quit gymnastics. Our official written notice was given, as well as our verbal notice to her coach and the gym owner. Everyone is sad to see her leave. We heard again what we've heard all along about her: she is a very gifted gymnast who naturally does what other girls take a great amount of work to learn. Both gyms have said that she has the most potential coming through the door that they've seen in years. Alas, she's a burnt out gymnast.
Her first and last meet. She's the very short one at the far right, the shortest person in a short-people sport. Tonight was to be her second meet, but she's not there. Waaah!So today she was signed up for soccer, which won't start for another month or so, which gives her a nice break from too many activities. I'm not sure I'm ready for soccer--all those weekends, all those freezing practices in March and early April, the kind of boring games to watch and keep Rutledge out of trouble at. She'll be playing with the Chesterfield United club, which is one of two clubs close to our house, but not the one that Walter played for a few years ago.
She also is adding into the ballet and flamenco classes she needs in order to be up to snuff as part of the Little Company at her ballet company. She hates flamenco, so it's going to be a little battle, but flamenco is to Latin ballet what tap is to classical ballet--you generally are kind of sort of expected to be able to do at least some of it, and it's part of the basics that make up a well-rounded dancer. Plus it runs back to back with ballet, which is convenient. To top it all off, there's a woman teaching conversational Spanish to the other parents waiting, and I want to be in on it. I can passably read Spanish, but I can't speak it to save my life and can barely understand a word of it when other people speak it. This woman has a child in the class and also teaches high school Spanish, so I hope that Frances will be a flamenco girl for at least a few weeks so I can get some benefit myself.
Right now, Frances is at the river with her friend Lainey. Her goal for the weekend is to see another dolphin. She saw dolphins mating the last time she was there. Unfortunately, last time she was there she also sprouted a 104 degree fever and had to come home early. We're hoping to avoid a replay of that one.
Next weekend Frances goes with Annie and Tim for three days to see a theater production and visit with some friends she has made in Lynchburg. Busy, busy girl.
We are making our own plans for upcoming adventures. I am signed up for a tennis trip to Hilton Head at the beginning of next month, and I have been excited since the summer to go somewhere where we aren't weighed down with the stress of a huge tournament and where it's all about the clinics and the party. Then I might be going on a beach trip with some friends at the end of next month. And I'm working on setting up a long weekend in April at a friend's cabin in Southwest Virginia near Mount Rogers. In May we have booked a beach house in Hatteras, NC for a week. I can't remember correctly now, but I think we chose a different house than the one we had last time, and it might not even be quite as far down as Hatteras. I feel so fortunate that we are available pre-season, when rates are super low. We are also working on fitting in a weekend trip to Washington, DC for Kerry to do some things with his business and when I can see the Postal Museum and the Spy Museum and the various memorials, something we frequently miss on our museum trips. Then we have a lull for most of the summer--things tend to grind to a halt when swim team season begins.
I am into my 4th week now of being gluten free. So far, I'm not ready to throw in the towel, though a lovely delivered pizza does make my resolve weaken, and I'd just about kill for a really awesome sandwich. But I think it's mostly the allure of the forbidden. I have been eating fairly well, probably even better than I did before this experiment. We are having more things like chicken or hamburgers or pasta dishes for lunch. I've made some really good chocolate chip cookies--good even in comparison to regular old gluten cookies--and some pumpkin bread and muffins which don't taste gluten free to me. But mostly I've steered free of baked goods as a whole and concentrated on things naturally without gluten, and there are tons of them: fruits, vegetables, cheeses, salads, corn puffy things, meats that I make myself, Chinese foods. I made spring rolls last night, something I probably never would have attempted if I wasn't spurred on by my new diet. They were so good! And I felt rather accomplished working with the rice skins and getting a pretty and tasty result. I took the kids on a little impromptu field trip to Tan-A, the largest of the Asian markets here, and they were so enthralled by all of the stinky fish sitting out and the non-American products, like canned squid and dried jellyfish and all kinds of parts of animals that we get grossed out by. They all got candy, and Walter has nearly built a shrine to Pocky now. And I was able to stock up on many staple items for my pantry much more cheaply than if I buy them at Ukrop's or at the natural foods stores: white rice flour, sweet rice flour, tapioca starch, and rice noodles and bean threads. I know it's hard to get into the excitement that is $.90 a pound sweet rice flour, but it really is cause for gluten-free celebration! There were also a lot of little snacky things that were inexpensive that I can actually eat. Cool.
This Monday, our little learning group did another Zoom/Think! challenge. This one involved 100 pennies and stacking them into a structure that had four pennies on the bottom layer touching the ground and was at least 5 inches wide and 2 inches high. Most of the kids had some trouble with this, so I'm not sure we totally had any who achieved the original challenge, but above is one of the attempts. I'm seeing more than 4 on the bottom...
Previously we have done other challenges, including this one where teams of two had to build a "box" that would insulate an ice cube and keep it from melting at the same rate that the control cube did. The materials they had were a shoe box, newspaper, aluminum foil, tape, rubber bands, and waxed paper.
That same day we also designed these "Puff-Mobiles." The materials given were one sheet of paper, four Life-Savers, three straws, paper clips, and Scotch tape. The goal was to make a vehicle that could move 6 feet in fewer "puffs" of air than the competitors' vehicles and to make a vehicle that could move further than the competition. We did numerous heats to find winners, but all of the creations were fun to see and performed well.
Our several family history group is heavy into World War II right now. Last week the boys wrote about the Battle of the Atlantic and the Battle of Okinawa, and this week they will be talking about home front matters. I would love to see them write a little bit more, so I might slip some small assignment in on a related topic. Then next week we will have a couple come in to talk about their war experiences. A friend of one of the participants in our group was in the Battle of the Bulge, and he is going to come in to tell about his experience and answer our questions, and his wife is going to tell us what it was like at home in America while the war was going on. I think this is going to be a fabulous opportunity and am so pleased at their generosity in spending time with us. Frances and the girls will continue with an American Girl club of sorts, and I think we're going to concentrate on the roles of women in the war--women pilots, women in administrative positions, women in the military, and women working at home. We'll also probably do something related to the use of dogs in the war, the qualifications for dogs who would serve in the Army, and how the dogs were trained. Knitting went over pretty well, so if we have extra time, we might knit some more, and maybe we'll try one more ration recipe.
Tonight, in preparation for next week, we read a book about the Battle of the Bulge and came up with some questions to ask our guests. Ollie and I also read about 70 pages of a book about the Nazi occupation of Denmark called _Hitler's Canary_. It's a great book so far, though I think that there's just a lot for Ollie to grasp. Ollie, Walter, and I are also reading _Big Red_ together, and we all love it. Earlier this week, Ollie and I read the second book of the _Island_ series and the first of the _Dive_ series by Gordon Korman. Huge, huge hit. And before that, we read _Nory Ryan's Song_ and _Maggie's Door_, both fabulous books about the immigrant experience in the 19th century and the Irish potato blight and English occupation of the 1840s. It was a very productive reading week, probably because it was freezing, crazy cold this week and there was little else to take our time. I would have been happy to just sit in bed all day reading and never leave the house.
And finally, today we went rock climbing with one other friend. It was our regular homeschool group climbing day, but other obligations and probably climbing interest were taking their effect. While I would definitely say it was kind of nice to have the gym pretty much to ourselves for most of the time, it also meant a non-stop belay fest for the two adults. There was not a minute of break in there! Both boys climbed about 11 or 12 walls, so my shoulders and neck are definitely going to be feeling it tomorrow. Not a help in a week when I had to regain my bowling pro status on the Wii, which has left my back and arms less than happy.
You know how when you download your pictures from the camera onto the computer there are often some, well, unexpected ones that you know you didn't take? This one showed up on mine.
"What is this?" I exclaimed. And guess who claimed the photo? That's right. Walter. "That's Cheese Wax Man!" Cheese Wax Man. With buttons all over him and googly eyeballs. On my bedroom window.
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