A Day Late and a Dollar Short

My plans to write each Sunday fell through this week.  I've been in a bit of the dumps, so I'll blame my lack of enthusiasm on that.  None-the-less, one must persevere.  I'll channel a little Countess of Grantham and do just that.  Have I mentioned that the girls and I have become Downton Abbey watchers?  How can I resist a historical fiction with multiple loveable/hateable characters?  Wouldn't I love to dress that they did then, even if I did have to wear the same thing over and over.  And I do so love it that my girls love to watch it.  We won't let them stay up late on Sundays to watch it, so we have been watching it on the computer on Monday evenings.  While Gwyn likes Lady Mary best, and we all feel bad for Lady Edith, and we all cried for Lady Sybil, I think my favorite characters are Violet for her spunk and Cora for her general niceness and level head.  For all it's worth, Matthew is too whiney for me.

 It finally snowed here.  Not that much actually.  I think we got and inch or two.  Not quite the blanket we're used to, but enough to play in.  We went over to the apartment playground and the girls sledded.  I don't think this hill is meant to be sledded on, but it was the nearest thing we had.  I just had to stand in a certain spot and make sure the girls came down to my right so they wouldn't hit the playground barrier, the sidewalk, or a huge boulder.  They had a blast though.  They also discovered yet another "house" in the "woods".  Next to the apartment buildings are patches of trees with vines and bushes.  The particular vines that grow here make excellent places to play house or fairies or forts.  So that's generally what they do when we go behind our apartment or over to the playground.  The snow made it extra ethereal.  We found bird tracks.  We also discovered what I'm assuming were rabbit tracks in the snow.  I haven't seen any rabbits here, so maybe it is something else.  But the girls had fun trying to track the animal by it's tracks back to it's hole.  I'm not sure what Lyla found, but she insisted that she did not find it's hole, but did find it's den.  Her attention wasn't captivated quite enough to take the time to show me what she meant by this though.  The snowy hill was calling.  

We keep on keeping on with school.  It has gotten more fun as Lyla is learning to read and showing interest in writing on her own.  I don't know if the writing wall supplies helped, but she has been making letters for us all for a few weeks now.  It's often hard to read what she has written, but she is sounding things out and spelling them the way they sound to her and I think that is SO COOL!  I love it! So here's the test - Can you decipher what she wrote is her dream for the world?  She's also "getting" some of the counting games and activities that have her adding, without calling it adding.  Gotta love that sneaky learning.














The girls got to do some neat-o DaVinci projects this past week too.  Jason had taught them about DaVinci before, but I found this kit where they got to build parachutes and an ornithopter and look at sketches of DaVinci's other inventions. Then today we wrapped it all up by looking again at a few of his most famous painting and putting them in a mini-book.  Now we're on to Michelangelo.

So this past week has been good in retrospect even if it felt like a turd in the moment.  I finally cooked a pineapple cheesecake with a flour crust and fresh pineapple glaze that I liked. We played, learned,and dressed the cat. (I think that's a little harmless payback for putting up with a cat in heat in an apartment)  It's Mardi Gras, the Superbowl is this weekend, and Sunday is also Candlemas, so this coming week looks to be full with possibilities.