Central Park Zoo

I can cross this one off the bucket list.  Finally went to The Central Park Zoo.  My sister came into town with one of my nephews.  (She took each boy on his own weekend trip.) We decided to play tourist and do something we have never done.

 Here we are at our awesome parking spot across the street from the entrance.  I never have this kind of luck.  Not only did we not have to pay for parking (even though hubby scored me an excellent coupon) but we were right across the street!

Here we are deciding where to go first.

Sea Lions rock!

Chilling with the Sea Lions

This was an excellent photo op in the shade on this incredibly hot day.

The Sea Lions performed for us.

They are just so gosh darn cute.

Wonderful clock on the way to the children's zoo.  It moves when the hour chimes.

After the Zoo we headed to www.dylanscandybar.com for a snack.

So much candy!  How to choose?

Posing with the candy.

We had a great day.  We saw the feeding of the penguins and the feeding of the Sea Lions.  We saw a red panda, monkeys, a polar bear (very sad, the other polar bear died a couple of months ago.  Hopefully they will be able to get a new polar bear soon so the one that is left is not lonely.) lemurs, parrots, and assorted other rain forest animals. The snow leopard was hiding somewhere cool so we did not get to see him.

Our original plan included Top of the Rock and Serendipity for Frozen Hot Chocolate but it was close to 100 degrees out and the wait at Serendipity was an hour and a half.  So Dylan's was a great option.  We spent an hour just wandering around the 3 floors of candy looking at stuff.  Yes, you read that correctly-3 floors.  My sister picked up a couple of packs of candy cigarettes.  Who else is old enough to remember them?  My kids were horrified that cigarettes were a candy.  Mortified that my sister and I used to love to blow out the white powder so that it would look like we were really smoking.  The 70's were a fun time.  You know those cigarette executives sat around trying to figure out how to hook the kids on smoking.


Hopefully we will get together with my sister and her family soon.

Summer!

Go Team!  This is Mister B's hands making the letters of our team

Getting ready.

Little Miss M doing the Freestyle.

Swimmers Take Your Mark!

Little Miss M doing the Breast Stroke.  She came in 1st.  Notice her competitors are nowhere near.

Diving in for the Breast Stroke.

Basking in her Victory Glow!

Summer is underway and we are loving it.  Summer swim team started at the end of June.  We are at the pool Mon-Fri for swim practice at 9am.   The kids had the second meet of the season today.  Both kids swam hard and had a great time.

Summer school is progressing slowly.  It is hard to get a good groove on after being out in the sun for most of the day.  We have settled into a 3 days a week routine.  Swim team only goes to the end of July so the academics will get stepped up in August.  It will be easier on all of us to do school work before heading out to the pool.

Wrapping up the School Year

This is our last official week of the school year.  We will take next week off and then summer school will begin.  The children are not too thrilled with it but they know it has to happen since we had those 2 really light months leading up to Mister B's Bar Mitzvah.

That said, Little Miss has been very enthusiastic about her lessons this week.  She has approached them with energy and delight and has been finishing up everything by 11.  Mister B, well, he is less then enthused.  He is dragging himself to the table, dawdling his way through the morning, and being a general grump.  Not to mention the constant "I am getting a drink.  I am going to the bathroom.  I am going to stretch my legs." Then he has the nerve to be annoyed that his sister is done and he is still working at 4pm.  Today he has started an outline for the essay he is going to write on Religion and the founding of America.  From the head banging, groaning, and heavy sighing you would think he was being asked to perform in a drama.

Yesterday for Discussion Group we had a year end party.  The kids were thrilled.  They all had a great time playing games, eating pizza, and enjoying each others company.

Monday Update

This past weekend was birthday celebrating for Little Miss M.  She had her friends over on Saturday for a Cupcake Wars party.  Little Miss loves that TV show.  If you have not seen it, it involves baking some unusual cupcakes that look and taste good.  Since I was not about to have 6 girls whipping up unique cupcakes in my one oven kitchen I modified the idea.  We baked all the cupcakes ahead of time and then for the party I put out all kinds of things to decorate with and different colored frosting.  It was a processed food extravaganza. Giant marshmallows, mini-marshmallows, sno-caps, chocolate chips, M & M's, writing icing, sprinkles, and sugar stars.  The girls had a lot of fun and Mr. B was the judge.  Sunday we had family over to celebrate.  More cupcakes and fun with great grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Needless to say, after all the sugar today was not the smoothest school day of the year.  But it did happen.  It just took a bit longer. 

Little Miss:
Math:Continuing to work with reducing fractions.
Grammar: Pronouns
Science: Chapter test.  She received a 90.  She has not quite mastered writing the complete answer.  For example: What do the turtles need to survive? A pond with a soft, muddy bottom.  The missing part: Sufficient food, and basking places.
History: The liberation of South America.

Mister B:
Math: Dividing with decimals and review of finding the area of a rectangle.
Grammar: Diagramming sentences
Science: Continued work with his sundial
History: The Mayflower Compact and how it relates to Democracy

Tomorrow is a new day.

Happy Birthday Little Miss M

11!  My baby girl is 11!  I can not believe it.  Where did the years go?  Where is my baby?  She has been replaced with this poised young lady.  Okay, she is not always poised and does not always behave like a young lady.  She is often telling me that ladies don't have any fun.  It is difficult to argue that point.  Truthfully, I do not expect her to sit and be silent and dainty all the time.  Only when we are, say, at a restaurant, or with family.  She has started to make the foray into shoes with a small heel.  Oh, how I remember wanting to wear heels and here that click clack of them across the floor.  Little secret-I still love the sound of that click clack.  We now spend a lot of time discussing-lady steps.  One can not clomp around like a horse.  If you are going to wear grown up shoes you have to walk gracefully.  Little steps.  Glide across the floor.  Did I mention how ladies don't have any fun.  As Little Miss is learning-there are shoes for different occasions.  You want to run around and be less then graceful-wear sneakers.  I digress from the birthday.........My beautiful girl chose ice cream pie for her birthday breakfast with cookies and cream ice cream.  It was yummy. 

School wise everyone is progressing along.  Little Miss is reducing fractions and learning how that relates to a ruler in math.  Grammar-picking the proper pronoun.  Science-she finished a short unit on bats.  We love bats.  They eat mosquitoes.  She is now working on ants.  She conducted an experiment as to which food they like best.  Sweet (honey), protein (a piece of hot dog), oil based (peanut butter).  We all knew honey would be the favorite.  We were all surprised that the hot dog was preferred over the peanut butter.  History-The Spanish and Portuguese enslaving the people of South America and taking their gold because The Pope said it was okay because they were not Christians.  Okay, there is more to it then that but that sums it up.

Mister B is dividing with decimals.  This week he is mastering dividing a whole number by a decimal.  Grammar-diagramming adverbs and appositive adjectives.  Science-he made a sundial and is enjoying telling time.  History-The first settlers and The Mayflower Compact. Literature- Helen Keller-The Story of My Life.

Today, in honor of Little Miss M's birthday they only did math and grammar and we are watching movies.  Which seemed like an excellent plan since we are in the midst of an awful heatwave.  Over a 100 today.  Even the dog does not want to be outside and he loves to be outside.  I am saying a little prayer because I am very thankful for my ac.

So much happening

I realized today that I have gone from updating this blog 3 times a week to "Oh my, when did I last update the blog?"  Now that the kids are older our school days are longer and we seem to be doing a lot of running around and I have less energy to update the blog.  How was that for a run on sentence?

Lessons have been progressing.  Mister B and Little Miss M are steadily moving forward.  I have been planning out next year and purchasing everything that will be needed.  Mister B is making a workload leap (Perhaps I should make that sound more positive-Hmm, Mister B will be rising to the challenge of additional course work.  Well, I'll work on that).  8th grade-time to get ready for high school.  Little Miss will be in 6th grade.  She will also be feeling the joy of an increased work load.  So hard to believe. 

For Discussion Group this past Wednesday the kids watched My Fair Lady.  I remember watching this movie when I was younger and thinking of it as a wonderful romance.  Now I look at it and think "What an abusive jerk."  The kids enjoyed the movie.  They agree with my assessment of abuse and wondered why she put up with it.  This led to a discussion on the time period, the choices woman had, and class.  On a side note-at the end of the movie when Eliza returns to the house (typical - repeat the patterns of abuse) and Henry asks
Where the devil are my slippers?" We think she should throw them at him again.  Overall, I think they all preferred Oliver to My Fair Lady.  It will be an interesting discussion at the next meeting when they compare the 2 movies.

Monday

It was another nice lesson day. 

Little Miss: Math-Reducing Fractions.  Grammar-Diagramming subject, verb, and direct object.  History-Finishing up India.  Science-Competition among animals for resources.

Mister B: Math-review of dividing fractions.  Grammar-Verb Phrases and Indirect Objects.  History- Jamestown and he started reading The Landing of the Pilgrims.  Literature-Finished Alice in Wonderland and moving on to writing assignments.