February BBall, Spinach, Treats, Trips and Finals Drama

 The boys are both loving basketball.  They both advanced in the Elks Hoopshoot Competition making 19/25 free throw shots.  Jacob's personal best in practice was 22/25 which I think is pretty amazing!  They beat me in Speed the majority of the time despite my height advantage.  Unfortunately in the District Finals they both shot 16/25 and weren't able to advance to State, but it was still a positive experience.  After the awards banquet, Jacob and I were able to talk with a few of the men who run the Elks Lodge about some of the other programs they run to benefit the community.    It brought back memories of my first interaction with the Elks lodge when I was fortunate to receive an academic needs based scholarship for college years ago.  Despite some of their differences in beliefs and the thick smell of smoke from the bar below, I was pleased with Jacob's observation as we left as he said, "Those are good guys."

 To make homeschool a little more exciting, we've planned out activities to do for "Fun Friday" once Emily completes her lessons for the week.  Last week we made sugar cookies to decorate and take to a few friends.  This is a tradition that I enjoyed growing up, but as a mom I only bake sugar cookies about once a year because of the extra work involved.

 Josh is officially potty trained and is typically running around the house sporting his "Speed" "Buzz Lightyear" and "Mater" undies or his double breasted suit which he wants to wear all week long, not just on Sundays.

 I am loving the extra warm February temperatures although it scares me a little to see my flower bulbs already sprouting so soon, when the cold is likely to return.

 Alyssa was elated to discover some spinach growing in our garden from last year's leftover seeds.  She loves eating raw spinach and gathered a bunch to share with me.  I love the sweet subtle flavor of fresh homegrown garden veggies too.

Rebecca successfully pulled off another trimester with straight A's, but not without a lot of stress.  For her English final she had to compile a video trailer depicting a book, which if you have an i-device with awesome apps can be a pretty simple project... but we don't.  

She really wanted me to go buy her an ipod to complete the project in 3 hours like her friend.

She spent more than 10 hours, gathering props, costumes, filming, and mostly trying to figure out a completely new program with a huge learning curve despite watching tutorials to learn how to incorporate music, edit clips and add text.  I started to feel my blood boiling when I  read the rubric of what was going to determine a large portion of her grade... things  like "the quality of the editing and music"(which you have to pay for) and "multiple appropriate voiceovers." (which require a microphone).  What does that demonstrate about her knowledge of English?  Maybe it just brings up issues for me from my childhood about the discrepancies between opportunities for those who "have" and "have not."  But one thing she is lucky to have is a bunch of siblings willing to help her out on the project.

For a  preschool field trip we took a tour of the local bakery.  The kids thought the large stacks of pans, giant mixer and grand oven were pretty cool, but the cookies at the end were the best.

Jacob did a report on Bigfoot, and now he thinks he sighted him near our home.  Look closely.