Don't forget to P

Today in church Adara was following along in the hymnal as we sang the opening hymn. She commented that the word pray looks like the word play, and started singing it that way. It was a wonderful substitution:

"Oh, how playing rests the weary
Play will change the night to day.
So, when life gets dark and dreary,
Don't forget to play!"

Kindergarten Math

Adara had an extra-large slice of pizza, so I cut it in half. As I suspected, she came back with one of the pieces uneaten.
"I'm glad we cut it," I said.
"I wasn't hungry for two pieces of pizza," she said. "If you didn't cut it, I could have finished."

Too Quiet

The house, normally joyfully echoing the sounds of playing children, is now totally silent. The youngest is napping, his sisters playing at the neighbor's house. My main afternoon chore ostensibly finished, I sit in a sort of confusion. What am I supposed to do now? I actually finished a task without needing to promise my attention to someone else as soon as I had "a chance." I know there are more things on my list of preparations for the trip we're taking tomorrow, but I can't focus on what would be most important to do now.

I sit as if in mire. Mental mire. Mud. that means mud. Only I think it implies a conglomeration of more than simple dirt and water. My mind envisions a medieval "road" on which all manner of sheep, goats, and the occasional horse crossed, leaving a remnant or two of themselves behind, to be mixed with the dirt. I wonder if someone ever thought to change the course of the road just a bit so they could use that well-worked and well-fertilized ground for planting crops?

I feel a little better now: having mentally travelled several hundred years gives me a sense of accomplishment despite my real physical immobility.

Stand up. Yes, I will start with that.

Solar

This is good weather time here in Southern California. We got our energy bill today. The solar panels we had installed this summer made their first full-month impact on our energy bill.

Consumption = 188
Net Generation = 160

Total energy we are paying the electric company for this month = 28 kWh
Price = $0.94

I am super curious for what will happen next summer and we need the A/C.

*Note (never mind the cost of installing the panels. In the long-term, it will balance out, right?)

Batman on Toast at the Beach

Batman is looking for candy.

Dairy free "pizza". If I could find more variations like this, living with the lactose-intolerant guy wouldn't be a sacrifice at all!

We went to the beach. On November 3rd. It was beautiful, and not at all crowded. Why do we have a stuffed bear at the beach? It was part of Kindergarten: Adara was chosen as this week's spotlight child, or "Star Student."

Reasons to visit California

The Birds of Paradise are in bloom now.

We have avocados for less than $1 each -- and we can sit comfortably outside at 10:00 in the morning. 

We have cute kids. Who don't like clothes.

Sentences!

Warning -- pictures not necessarily related to story.


My little Keenan, who turns two tomorrow!!, has recently begun stringing sentences together. Nevermind that his pronunciation leaves much to be desired. I was awestruck on Saturday of last week by what he said when he was eating breakfast.

 I had told him he needed to finish his eggs before I would get him a bowl of cereal. When he had finished his eggs, he said, "Eat all eggs. Now have cereal." I had no idea a child so young would be able to articulate an idea this complex, let alone think it in the first place.





Today's sentence was less awe-some, but it was terribly sweet. I was making lunch. The girls went with  their dad for the afternoon so it was just Keenan and me. Keenan was eating and I was still preparing more food.

"Mama," he half-shouted, and I thought he was about to start screaming because he was so hungry and I hadn't read his mind yet to put more food in his bowl. But instead, he said, with that same tone of voice, "I like that song."

I had just finished singing, "My Heavenly Father Loves Me," from the Children's Songbook.
 And then he started playing a game with me: What's the sign for _____. That was a fun game, since I had to decipher his spoken words and hope that the sign I made matched what he was thinking.

And now some fun from Adara:

 The school work that came home with her today said that she "needs improvement" on "using beginning sounds, phonetic spelling and resources for each word."  I will write her sentence and let you be the judge of whether she was spelling things phonetically.

"I like when the lef wr n re tre." [Translation, in case your phonics is different than Adara's: "I like when the leaves were in the tree."]





Finally, here are a few Halloween-related pictures.

 

(I wasn't going to put a headband on Keenan, but when he realized that, he started to get upset. So he had no one but himself to blame for this blackmail picture.)