The Infamous Castle Black

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not a fan of homework projects that just end up being parent projects. Well, Paige had a doozy this year. In her AT (academically talented) class they read a novel about a medieval night and the enrichment project was to research medieval castles and build your own.

Okay, Paige did the research and learned all the vocabulary - she knows what ramparts, coat-of-arms, and drawbridges are. The hard part was the building. I don't build, Dave doesn't build. Honestly, I truly thought about making a castle of cake or rice Krispy treats, but that was going to be too complicated.

In the end we used cardboard boxes and paper towel rolls. She painted all the boxes black and I helped her hot glue things in place. She also painted a moat and made little pennants. It was a lot of work at a very busy time for our family but Paige was so happy with the final results. And I quote, "I love my castle SO much. I think it's going to be the best."

Definitely the best this mom could do!

I Dreamed a Dream

Ashley sang, "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables for her school choir recital solo. She has been practicing before school and during lunches for a few weeks. She has also been a little shy about singing in front us, so I was looking forward to seeing her performance at the recital.

Honestly, I do not have the vocal talent to do anything like this and I don't have the guts either. Basically, the performers go up by themselves in front of an audience and sing. There is also a clinician there who takes notes and then gives feedback to the vocalist right in front if the audience. This involves asking them to re-sing certain measures, etc. It's a great experience but it's definitely not for everyone.

Here is a video of Ashley's performance, she is a little quiet so turn it up. Dave and I are very proud of her. She would also like me to mention that her hair looks bad because she just got out of the shower. She had an away soccer game right before, so she had just enough time after to run home and shower before her recital.

Ashley's Math Competiton

Ashley competed in her school district's junior high math competition again this year and her team took 2nd place! Her school took first place overall, as they have every year for the past 6 plus years!

Way to go Brainy Bulldogs!

Sick Day Entertainment

Paige has had to stay home from school the past two days. I think she has Fifth Disease. A very mild viral illness, but communicable so I kept her home from school. Other than a runny nose and a rash on her face the second day she has been okay. So pretty much she and I have just been hanging out together.

The timing of her illness was good and bad. At school she missed two days of ISAT testing that she will need to make up, but at home she was around to help me get her room ready for the new bedroom furniture that was delivered.

I've had to change my schedule up a bit because she has been home, but I have had my fair share of entertainment:

1- One night Paige woke up with a bad dream. When I mentioned it to her the next day she said, very seriously, "Mom, I had a very bad dream about a possum." She was sleeping on her mattress on the floor because we had to move her old bed out in preparation for the new one to be delivered. Apparently in her dream a biting possum crawled up through the vent into her bedroom to get her while she was sleeping on the floor.

2- She and I were listening to the Les Mis soundtrack while in the car. When the song "Master of the House" came on Paige said, "I don't like this song, can we skip it?"

I said, "you don't like 'Master of the House'? Okay."

Paige - "Mom it's 'Master of the A __ __". (She spelled it out "A", "S", "S")

We then had a big discussion, in which I had to convince her that it was "house". I even pulled over and ejected the cd to show Paige the title! After she agreed it was house, she said, "okay, we can listen to it.".  Funny girl, at least she was trying to be good.

3- We also had a bird adventure. While driving through the neighborhood, we saw a HUGE hawk sitting in a neighbor's tree, we pulled over to watch it and take pictures. Paige rolled her window down to get a picture. Then we decided to use a bird call app on my phone to see what would happen if the bird heard another hawk call. Let just say as the hawk took flight and swooped by our van, we both had moment of thinking, "uh oh, I hope he doesn't try to fly in through the window!" More exciting than we expected, but we did get a very close up view of that huge bird.

Ashley's 8th Grade Science Fair

All 8th graders at Ashley's school are required to do a project for the science fair.  Ashley's project was called, "Testing the 5 Second Rule".  She wanted to know if you drop food on the ground is it safe to eat if it was on the ground for less than five seconds.  What it if the food was on the ground for longer than 5 seconds?

She decided to run her test using the carpet in the cultural hall at church.  It's a high traffic area that is used for both eating and recreation.  She dropped a moist (sticky) food like cheese and a dry food like a cracker and timed how long she left each item on the floor.  She then swabbed the food and applied the swab to a petri dish to try and grow bacteria.

We incubated petri dishes for a couple of weeks at home and viola we were growing stuff.  The results were basically that it didn't matter so much how long the food was on the ground but the type of food that was on the ground.  As you can imagine, the sticky cheese grew the most bacteria and the crackers not really anything.

So, 1)there is nasty bacteria on the church floor.  2)if you drop something sticky on the floor don't eat it, even if it's only been for a second!

Our family, went to support Ashley at the Science Fair.  There were tons of projects, but she did pretty good, took 4th place in the Microbiology category.  Good work Ashley!

Super Bowl Party

Our awesome friends hosted their annual Super Bowl Party.  I got this fortune the day before with my Chinese food:

I don't know about "strange" but they do have some fun customs.  Like wearing our football gear and crowding around the tv

and eating copious amount of delicious food including catering from Portillo's

playing with friends and talking about good times when the game doesn't keep our attention!

Here Come the Irish.....

Okay, we were all ready!  Notre Dame undefeated and in the National Championship Game.  They have one of the best players on the country playing for them.  It's going to be great!

We are all ready for the big game, we have the plate, napkins, etc.  We all have Notre Dame t-shirts.  We have a great basement and TV to watch the game, food is ordered all we need is the game.

All the foodie goodies - hot wings, mac n cheese, cookies, eclairs, etc.

Well, we quickly learned that last thing we needed was the game.  Alabama beat down Notre Dame.  It wasn't pretty.  It was bad, pretty much exactly what we hoped wouldn't happen, worse case scenario.  Oh well, I guess we will save the plates for next season.