Toothless

Rowan lost her 2 bottom teeth recently, making her entirely toothless in the front! The new ones are poking up, but the top teeth are still MIA. She's got a few more loose, too!

Our little girl is growing up!

Fun with Fine Art

We took a trip to the National Gallery on Monday-spur of the moment. We joined a tour of American Art, and the girls really enjoyed it!
Not surprisingly, if you know the girls, they talked the tour guide's ear off. She seemed to enjoy their enthusiasm.
















After the tour, we went to see the Impressionists, since they are our favorites, and we are studying Mary Cassatt. I thought she'd be in the tour of Americans, but as she spent most of her life in France, and was part of the French Impressionist movement, her paintings are hung there. Gryphon loves Monet's Waterlilly series, who doesn't?











Here are few of the Mary Cassatt paintings we looked at. Her favorite subjects were women and children, so her paintings have a very sweet, nostalgic feeling to them.

One of the benefits to seeing the original work of art-especially with the Impressionists-is you can see the paint strokes. The girls love to get veeerrryyyy close, and see only paint blobs, then back veeerrrryyyy far, and see the picture emerge.












Here they are being goofy on our way out!


We went home and later did an art unit on Mary Cassatt, with the neighbor kids. Here they are proudly showing off their creations. Mary Cassatt used hats and bonnets as a natural frame for her subjects faces-so we made hats and profiles.

I was having a good sleep, in my car...

...in the parking lot of the Showboat Casino Hotel

I say I remember you
You drive like a PTA mother
You bought me draft beer
In a plastic cup

I'm feeling thankful for the small things today
I'm feeling thankful for the small things today

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me,
And to you!

Yes, its my birthday, and I'm listening to the Happy Birthday song. I listen to it every year on my birthday, because it makes me happy. Since its all about me today, I thought I put up some pictures of me for once. Here I am in all my glory!

Happy Birthday to me!

Took a snow day today

School was closed, so we closed up shop, too, and the girls played all day outside.

They headed up the block to their friend's house, to slide down their hill.

Here is Gryphon about to bean me with a snowball, and Delia.

Mark took the dogs for a walk, they love the snow! It was Beaulah's first time ever seeing snow, being a Mississippi born dog. She likes to eat it, but isn't as excited about snow as Cleo. Mark is proudly holding aloft a poop-bag, if you're wondering.

And here is Rowan bombing down the hill on a saucer sled, by this afternoon, it was more mud than snow,but they still slid!

Later all the kids came in and had hot chocolate and roasted marshmallows on our rinky-dink little Smore maker.

It was a great snow day!

We finally got SNOW!!!

It started snowing today at about noon, and its still going! We're only supposed to get a few inches, but hte girls are sure excited to get some real snow at last.

Here are Rowan and ben Catching snowflakes.

Yippee for snow!!!

Medieval Festival

The Corcoran Gallery in DC had a Middle Ages festival to coincide with a special exhibition on Joan of Arc, and since we're studying that time period in history, the girls and I headed down there today.

They had all sorts of neat crafts-we made swords.



















The girls got their faces painted, too.




















We met "Queen Elizabeth", and they had a knighting ceremony.





















They had a magic show, minstrels, medieval dancing, and games, but the number one, far-and-away best part of the day was......JIM WEISS!!!!!

He's a fantastic storyteller, and has many CD's available of his retelling of Greek myths, fairy tales, history and audio books. The girls were enthralled, and it was very exciting to meet the man behind the voice of the stories we have enjoyed for years now. We went to both of his storytelling sessions!

And...it might snow Monday! A whole inch. Whoopee.

Wednesday is "feed the cats" night for us!

We volunteer with a cat rescue called FourPaws. Each Wednesday night, we go to the Fairfax, VA Petco, where 4Paws has adoptable cats in cages.

There are two cats at a time at the store, and i must say, the Fairfax store is GREAT one for getting cats adopted-they usually stay only 2-3 weeks before finding a "forever home".

This is Gypsy, she was taken from a home with too many cats- like, 45. She is 5 years old, and used to be shy, but in the 3 weeks we've known her has really warmed up to us. If you pet her for very long, she starts to drool!

This is Dobey, with Rowan, he's a lucky boy who was rescued on the day he was to be euthanised from a pound in West Virginia. He is very, very sweet, and doesn't even mind Rowan's hugs. That's why we do it-to help animals, but also so the kids can get a "cat fix". Our cat, Rocko, doesn't like the kids, but the rescue cats are lonesome and love to play.

The girls go into the grooming room and play with the cats, give them wet food, brush them and love them.

While they play with and love the cats, I do the heavy cleaning-scooping boxes, sweeping out cages, wiping down with sanitizer. The girls usually help me refill food dishes and water, and empty the trash when we're through.

They love "feed the cats" night!

Well, crap

Nemo doesn't look so good, huh? He's not-he's in the freezer right now, having gone belly-up. I swear, we did nothing to him except weigh him and observe him! Personally, given my track record with fish, I'm impressed he lasted 2 weeks. Poor Nemo, if only he'd stayed at the Wal-Mart tank and gone home with someone else...

...if your wondering about the freezer, its because the girls want to "bury him at sea" with full military honors. So when their buddies get home from school tomorrow, guess what we'll be doing? Don't worry, I'll take pictures! (Bwahahahaha!)

Our day in photos

Yes, she still sleeps with us more often than not. But just look at that sweet face-how can you say no? And of course, the stuffed animals need to come, too, in this case Shorty the Husky.

Good Morning!






After some sit-around-watch-TV time, the girls make their beds, get dressed and brush teeth, followed by chores (Gryphon cleans the sink, Rowan empties the trash and Swiffers).

We head to the playroom, get out the whiteboard, and do school. Math comes first for Gryphon, followed by reading for Rowan.
Here is Rowan doing math with Littlest Pet Shop guys, and doing her phonics workbook. (She likes to add bows, hair, noses and funny ears to the drawings in the book!)



While we are doing math, Gryphon is working on adding dialogue to her rough draft retelling of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".










Here are both girls working diligently on handwriting.






Then its time for geography-this week marks the beginning of studying Africa.





And we did some science-observing and weighing (!)
poor Nemo, who against all odds is still alive
after almost a week.

After school is playtime-promptly at 3:30, the doorbell starts to ring! Here is Gryphon playing Nintendo with Delia.











Rowan and her buddies practiced a play in her room-it involved lots of dress-up, and dancing!

Mark made dinner- woohoo!He was not exactly thrilled with the whole picture thing, though.

After dinner, bath and show and snack (tonight's show: Wild Alaska, due to a serious Arctic kick the girls are on) its time for bed.Gryphon has been enjoying some books I read as a child, she finished "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase" last week, and picked "Peppermints in the Parlor" next. She is all about the orphaned, mistreated children stories right now. Nice bed-time reading, huh? :)

...and that's our day! Hope your was wonderful, too!

And last but not least, we stopped at the National Archives

Since we recently read about it in history, we took a peek at the Magna Carta.

Ice Skating at the Sculpture Garden

The National Gallery Sculpture Garden is filled with oversized sculptures and includes an ice skating rink in the winter months. Today we tried out the rink-it was both girls first time in ice skates.



Mark likes the "giant art eraser" the most.

I'm partial to this fabulous 3-D optical illusion house, myself.