what did your USer do today? - Page 7

[Greenmama2]

Floated through the mist. That and reminisced about how it snowed on Winter Solstice this year. It is nearly Summer here but very rainy ATM and since we live in the mountains that meant today was shrouded in a glorious soggy mist. We stayed home (and dry) until 3pm when we walked the few blocks up to the community hall for DD's final rehearsal before her ballet concerts on Sat & Sun. DD did well, she only turned around once to make shadow puppets on the backdrop and the girl next to her only had to shake her arm to remind her to start skipping twice lol. 'Twill be fun to watch what happens at the first concert. In the last concert DD did 2 years ago the performance of this age group completely fell apart. It's a tough age I think, they are too old to get away with having older students dance on stage with them and some of them are too young to remember an entire routine by themselves. Whatever happens DD will have fun
Then we donned our wet gear again and walked back through the mist to hot chocolates with marshmallows and cheese on toast. Did some drawing with wax crayons - very Steiner, both littles watched some online tv. They ate dinner in front of the computer while DD did some reading eggs (she is nearly finished and not that interested usually but I reminded her yesterday that her subscription will be over soon), then we cleaned up and headed to bed.
Tomorrow is a rest day before two days of concert mania.

[purslaine]

Originally Posted by Greenmama2 
. Did some drawing with wax crayons....

The wax crayon comment reminds me of this - we intend to try it soon.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/diy/back-to-school-diy-melted-crayons-on-canvas-154672

[BaileyB]

only on page 2 but...

these are nice to read

[incorrigible]

We overslept and missed church. It's a lazy lounge around the house day. Today my kids are making a box and pillow fort for our very hyper kitten. I have a project for them later. We have a storage closet on our porch that we use for pet and plant supplies. They are going to build the organizational system for it, then organize it. DH is filling out job applications. I'm doing some laundry, picking up, etc. We're going to try to watch Puss in Boots later. We've tried like 3-4 times to watch it as a family, and somehow never finish it. None of us has seen it other than those attempts, either. lol

[2mama]

Kids read to themselves in the morning, asked to do math, went to the beach and read some history, then off to swim and gym.  Came home drew with chalk on the deck, ate dinner, and I read aloud to the 2 little ones while they played with Kiva planks and dd#1 drew and drew and drew.  That was about it.  :)

[SweetSilver]

We are starting to clear out the house for staging.  Finally getting to the piles of coins on the bedroom dresser.  Dreading counting them, I had the inspiration to have the girls count them.  100% of the value of the pennies, 50% of the value of the nickels, 20% of the value of the dimes.  The quarters I save for their allowance.  Worked well, but I'm surprised they are not wanting to earn more.  They even stopped counting the nickels, which I thought would be easy earnings.  I'll leave them out for when they are feeling greedier.......

[zebra15]

SweetSilver- are you moving?

[SweetSilver]

Only five miles from our house in town to our new house on the property we've had for 15 years.  Finally!

We don't actually live in Olympia, like it says.  And I'm afraid that isn't really my picture there on the left.

Close enough, though, on both counts.  :)

[Qalliope]

SS - congratulations on the move; you sound really excited.

Today was jam packed and utterly mad.  This morning I did some cleaning and laundry and read a couple chapters of The Mouse and the Motorcycle to dd(3) while ds(8) tried to beat Luigi's Mansion. Then we all plopped down on the rug to do some activities from a Big Backyard magazine. Lego projects for a bit until the kids got restless.  We all played hide and seek, but ds and I took turns one-upping each other using skip-counting when it was our turn to count.  So dd would count to ten, but ds or I might count to thirty by 3s or whatever. Then I sent the kids outside to explore while I got some cleanup done. Ds roamed the woods next to the house while dd picked flowers and collected stones. And some neighborhood kids came by because they're on spring break this week. DS helped his friend figure out how to play a video game while her little brother played legos, and after a bit, their dad stopped in to see if I could keep an eye on them while he went to run some errands. DS read aloud with my help from a book he's been trying to get through for a while now, tried to finish a metal model of a dinosaur even though he'd lost the instructions, worked a bit on a robot kit, made some label cards with Chinese vocab words for stuff around the house, all while the neighbor kids were hanging out, sometimes participating, sometimes on their own adventures or projects. It was nice to have them around to spark new conversations, get new ideas into the mix. The girl was really interested in how school worked for us, how ds learns grammar, why we don't work from textbooks or take tests, how our projects translate to learning, all that. Her little brother had a million questions, like how skin grows back when it peels or you get a cut or how people in other countries learn to speak their own language so well.  I got out games, played with play-dough, lent a hand when needed, made lunches and snacks, vacuumed messes, read, and talked and laughed and generally had an awesome time.  At 4, ds went to his kung fu class, and his friend lamented not being able to go along. After a bit the neighbor kids' dad came home, and they ran off and played, and dd and I got busy in the kitchen making fried rice and broccoli with garlic sauce. She ate on the back porch and chased an umbrella all over the yard as the wind kept blowing it inside out and carrying it all over the place, giggling like crazy the whole time.  Ds came home and shoveled down a plateful of food so I could take him to a friend's to spend the night. I ran a couple of errands and came home to give dd a bath, and another chapter of Mouse and the Motorcycle, and an extended hair brushing while we sang songs because she says it makes her feel like Rapunzel, like she's magic. And now I am too wired to even sleep, so I will tidy and read, poke around until I can doze off. Tomorrow's mission is yardwork.

[SweetSilver]

Oooooh, Chinese!  My youngest daughter has me learning French (well, Usbourne's First Thousand Words, books she loved for Spanish and German which at least I can pronounce admirably).  Thankfully they have the books internet-linked and I can sit here and learn the pronunciation.  I'm starting to guess pretty well now, and now my girls are also saying HA! when they get something.  Still working on that French 'R', and it still sounds like the German.  Oh well.  I thought I had some the umlauted 'U' right until some German guy kept correcting me.  Sounded like I was doing it right but apparently not.  Never mind, he knew what I was saying........

Yesterday the baby chicks arrived and I am a nervous wreck.  It is cold here and they are in the garage and I am obsessing over the temperature of their pathetic duct-taped-cardboard brooder box.

Still reading Harry Potter.