Other Stuff

 Aren't these guys great? And so old and long-legged!

Backyard fires are the best. We love this as a simple family activity. The only downside is having to wash your hair afterward due to smoke.

At some point, the kids named our backyard fire Bartholomew.

This is Annie's class pet at Classical Conversations. Not the horse. The stuffed warthog on top of the horse. His name is Chad. They take turns bringing him home and giving him adventures. Homeschooled 13 year olds still know how to have a good time. 

We had a lot of bananas. 

The answer to the following questions is no: Did we adopt a troop of monkeys? Were we making banana bread to send to soldiers overseas? Is it banana season in Texas?

The answer to the following questions is yes: Did I make an online grocery order at HEB instead of Walmart? Does Walmart sell bananas by the banana and HEB sell bananas by the bunch? 

The guy who loaded my groceries at HEB was like, "I just have one question. What's with all the bananas?" 

Everything's bigger in Texas, right? Including your banana order at HEB.

Science Fair

 This year we have been participating in a group called Classical Conversations. It has been quite the change from the unschooling we've been doing the last two years or so. But it has been good. The big project for Annie this year was a science fair. She and I tackled it together. We made a ton of mistakes, and I think it was those mistakes that taught us the most about science!

Clickbait title cred: Aaron Dennis

One of our big mistakes, which Annie had a brain wave about at 3 am, was that we had an extra variable! Classic mistake, but one that you really learn if you learn from your own sad experience. Also, we learned how to grow bacteria on petri dishes. And it was fun! The seed germinating mat was the key. Further knowledge included the fact that your phone maybe isn't actually that dirty. When we first took samples from the phone, we couldn't get any bacteria to grow. We ended up spraying the phone with a bacterial solution and then testing our cleaning products. 

The best and most useful thing we learned from this project was how to make homemade bacterial solution. Here is our special recipe:

1 dirty dishrag 

1 spray bottle

1 tsp of human saliva

tap water

Annie got the dirty dishrag wet. Then she squeezed the dishrag and collected that dirty water into a spray bottle. Then she spit into the bottle. Repeatedly. She might have gotten a little carried away. Then she shook that up and sprayed it on her phone. Voila!

A Play! A Play! We Did Another Play!

Apparently, once you start doing plays, it is hard to stop. It started with helping direct the children's summer play in Aberdeen. Then we did a play with our homeschool group. Then we did a play with the youth in our ward. See below:

In January, I headed up the production of a 25 minute long play performed by the youth in our ward. We practiced for four weeks during our regular activity time (extended by half an hour) and then performed. We snuck in an extra practice due to an ice storm here in Texas. That practice was very, very useful, and so I'm considering the ice storm a miracle for our play, even though it wasn't at all a miracle for our poor, Texas trees. 

The play was a big success. Everyone worked hard, and by performance night, the youth had really gotten into their parts. They remembered their lines and said them loudly enough! That was another miracle because the acoustics in our performance venue were not the best. We invited the whole ward to come, and they were a wonderful audience. They laughed at all the right parts. And most of the stake young women presidency also attended, which was so awesome of them. I sat backstage during the performance and made the thunder sound effect. Aaron ran the music and helped direct some of the scenes during rehearsal. Annie was Queen Orlena. And Scotty ended up being in it, too, as Traveler #2. He's not officially in the youth program until next year, but he ends up joining us for a lot of things since the rest of us are heavily involved.  

I took one single picture:

 Our play was about a prince cursed with a gigantic nose. And to make herself feel better about her child, the queen demands that everyone in the kingdom wear a large nose and praise large noses as the height of beauty. When it is time for the prince to get married, he is presented with several large-nosed princesses and one regular-nosed princess. These are the pictures that our props mistress made for the show. I loved them so much. Of course by the end of the show, we learn that nose size doesn't matter; it's character that counts. 

I didn't take any other pictures because I was too busy running around. It's really a bummer since our whole family was involved in it. Here are some I stole from IG.