Judo
I'm not a soccer mom. I'm just not. I think I have known that I won't be a soccer mom for a long time. Not that there is anything wrong with soccer, (or basketball or football or those other sports akin to them) and there is nothing to say that at some time or other my kids will play them if they so desire. In which case I will join the other moms on the sideline and cheer my heart out. I just

Coast trip part two
After the Science Center, we headed down to Mo's on the Newport waterfront.Jake got a little tired of waiting and decided to make his own seafoodMax liked the idea of crumbling crackers into his chowder... But I think we should have waited until they were done to tell them it had molusks in it. Jake liked it anyways. This was his "I like it" face. Convinsing? After lunch, we headed out where the

Molluscs, Ecinoderms and Cnidarians Oh My!! (Coast trip part 1)
For the past month or so, our science "curriculum" (still working on finding a good actually curriculum for science) has focused around the classification tree including the phylums Mullusca (from molis meaning soft, including snails, slugs, octopus, squid....) ecinodermata (ecino = spiny and derm = skin, including sea stars, sea cucumbers and sea urchins), and cnidarians (from knide meaning

Presentation Day
Public speaking. At some point in our lives, we all have to do it. But how many actually enjoy it? It is important to me that the kids have some experience in these early years of standing in front of people with a specific thing to tell while remaining somewhat composed. This was the first of the character presentations and it was a blast.Of course, they were much more comfortable and put

That time of year again...
I never was a huge fan of Halloween, and yet I didn't really like the idea of avoiding simple, fun things like collecting loads of candy from local businesses and houses. So...after a couple of years of randomly dressing up, I decided upon a new family tradition. The rule is: you can dress up, but it must be a real historical character. Yet as I am typing, I am remembering more of how the