Dropping balls left and right...
because I'm not a great juggler these days. The biggest ball to drop is the house, as attested by my disaster of an office, Mount Washmore's growing pile in the bedroom and the basement that I dare not enter due to the toy minefield. I won't even delve into the storage room mess. Let's just say that I need a week of nothing but spring cleaning to happen around here, but it will not likely be soon.
Thankfully it is the end of basketball season this week, praise be to God! Last night was supposed to be their final practice. Mrs. Z told the kids at the end of the school day that the school gym that they use would be unavailable, so no practice. Then when I went to take Dove to Cadettes last night, one of the other moms tells me, oh no, her husband found a gym they could use, so there may be practice after all.
Thursdays are our very full day. I volunteer at school. Then Dove has band, then play practice, then half an hour to eat / do homework, then scouts, then basketball. It was a busy scout night for us as Thinking Day is this weekend and both our Brownie Troop and Dove's Cadette troup had a lot to do. Usually the girls leave scouts early to get to basketball, but last night, I was already at the end of my basketball rope and Dove still had homework to finish. I decided that they were blowing off the last minute rescheduled practice, and good thing, because Dove ended up until after 11 finishing homework as it was, anyway.
So this weekend is Thinking Day, the yearly cultural celebration that the Girl Scouts hold. Robin's troop will be representing France, and our plan was to meet at my co-leader Fan's house so that the girls could try some French foods, finish their display and work on swaps for this weekend. I did a lot of work with the girls on the board and a lot of the "All About France" instruction. We learned to sing the ever popular "Make New Friends" Girl Scout song in French, which I had to write out phonetically on the board for the girls to learn, because words like "aujourd'hui" do not sound like they look. Happily, we have two girls in our troop who attend the Robert Goddard French Immersion school, and they are fairly fluent, and will probably be doing the intro presentation for our troop at Thinking Day.
But my big task was figuring out the food we'd be providing at Thinking Day. It has become the custom here that many troops give out a tiny food sample representative of the country they were presenting. To 200 plus girls. So there are the factors of cost, ease of preparation / transportability, and girl-appeal. After soliciting input from a variety of sources, I went with the suggestion of my friend Tom's wife Ellen, who is a Scout Leader extraordinaire. Ellen is like the Martha Stewart of scouting - her Thinking Day presentations put everyone else to shame. This year she got objects on loan from the Japanese embassy and had all her girls in authentic costumes doing a Japanese dance. She's amazing. (Meanwhile, our girls have the standard tri-fold board with picture cutouts of the Tour de France and Eiffel Tower and will stumble through singing in French, except for our Immersion girls who can sing it perfectly and even bust out a step routine while doing it.) Ellen suggested doing an easy faux French chocolate mousse, which has high Girl Appeal, requires no cooking and uses only 3 ingredients compared to the real French mousse which I would screw up.
To be honest, I managed to screw up the Desserts for Dummies Mousse 101 recipe this weekend, but thankfully I made a few practice runs while tweaking the recipe. First batch was low on milk and gummy. Second batch was fluffy and perfect, though not as firm as a true mousse should be. Third batch was too dense, more like pudding, so I went with the batch 2 configuration, and filled up two dozen tiny sampler cups with it, squirted some whipped cream on top and garnished with red and blue sprinkles, and voila, ready to roll!
So we pick Dove up from play practice, and head to Fan's house for the Brownie meeting, and arrive to find two huge fire trucks outside her home. Visions of the French crepes she was making going up in flames danced through my head as I saw a fireman in full gear with an axe go into Fan's front door. Uh oh. Next thing I knew there was a gathering of Brownies on Fan's front lawn, and Fan was telling me that no, it was not a kitchen issue - she sent her girls up to play in the second floor storage room, and they all started smelling a strong and unpleasant burning odor from the room. No fire, but she was worried there was an electrical problem in the walls, so the fire department was called. We could smell the burning odor all the way downstairs, but after going through the attic and inspecting the room, the fireman can down with the culprit. A stinkbug had died inside the inverted globe of Fan's corner freestanding lamp, and had come to rest on top of a halogen bulb. The horrible burning smell was a cremating stinkbug, which the fireman brought down with a smile and tossed in the sink. No damage and our meeting did not have to take place on the lawn. :)
The girls were given a trial run of "easy French foods": strawberry crepes, brie and a fresh baguette, and chocolate mousse for dessert. The brie was uniformly rejected as "stinky" "leaves a bad taste" and "what is this crusty stuff on the outside?!" by all but one girl. The crepes were a minor success but following on the heels of Fat Tuesday pancakes, not as sweet. But the faux mousse was a huge hit, so I am hoping it will go over well with the two hundred girls we'll be dishing it out to on Saturday morning.
Had to leave in the middle to get Dove to her GS Cadette meeting. They are doing India, and all the girls had to bring material to turn into a sari. I showed Dove how to do it, and she headed in happily to make her elephant swaps, but when I picked her up, it seems that some of the girls got a little too creative with the material, as a few sari bottoms had a distinct "diaper" look to the wrap. Will be pinning Dove's in place before we go on Saturday morning!
Centers in third grade went well yesterday morning. Once again, I got the "fun" science center, since the kids are learning now about electricity and currents, and I got the fun group where they get to build a closed circuit that would power a mini lightbulb or make a fan spin. Great excitement from the kids to get to my small group, and oh, they were so delighted to hook up the wires and contact to make that fan spin! They are such a boisterous group, and when I come in after morning recess, Mrs. Z looks positively worn out some mornings. Well, Louis, one of the usually difficult kids, was having a bad day. He was held back from recess, and had his head down on the desk and was unwilling to talk to Mrs. Z when the other kids came back. She was very patient and let him choose when he was ready to go to the hall with her to smooth things out.
My first group were all sweethearts, excited to learn, picked up the vocabulary easily, happily read long in their science texts and answered my questions about the illustrations in the book before getting down to the fun hands on stuff. I got Louis in my third group, and he and Anthony, Aphrodite's brother, came bounding over, grabbing wires, shouting, trying to jam things together, while the two girls in the group sat quietly as I tried to give instructions. I looked at the clock - ten minutes until lunch and centers were over, then stopped talking and sat quietly waiting for the two boys to settle down. After a few seconds, they glanced at me. "Well guys, we have less than ten minutes left now because I cannot give instruction over the two of you. We need to get our reading selection done BEFORE you can work on the fan and lightbulb. And I will be asking you questions about what we read as you work, so you need to settle down and focus, or you may be the only group today that never gets to try making the fan work." I was amazed at how quickly Louis settled down, and Anthony got right on task. Louis has been very impulsive each time I've watched him in class, calls out a lot, leaves his seat, goes off task, etc. During our group, all I had to do was stop talking and look at the clock, and he would check his behavior and get on task at the thought of not getting to work that fan. It was good to see him work to stay on task, and he and Anthony got that fan working in record time. :) As for the vocabulary retention - probably shakier than the other groups, but hey, one small step at a time. :)
Today I have the bathroom repair guys coming back, wayyyyyy too much housework to do, and taking my sister in law Melanie out for her birthday tonight...then Thinking Day and the girl's last basketball games this weekend. Robin's team has done very well this year. Poor Dove, her team has lost every game. In fact, in the last three years she has played, her team has NEVER won one game. I am not expecting a miracle this weekend, but it would be nice if SOMETHING went well for them before they called it quits for the year. Two more weeks of play practice for Dove, and then THAT will be finished as well, and I won't be running all over God's creation as much as I have been.
At least, that's the plan...
Thankfully it is the end of basketball season this week, praise be to God! Last night was supposed to be their final practice. Mrs. Z told the kids at the end of the school day that the school gym that they use would be unavailable, so no practice. Then when I went to take Dove to Cadettes last night, one of the other moms tells me, oh no, her husband found a gym they could use, so there may be practice after all.
Thursdays are our very full day. I volunteer at school. Then Dove has band, then play practice, then half an hour to eat / do homework, then scouts, then basketball. It was a busy scout night for us as Thinking Day is this weekend and both our Brownie Troop and Dove's Cadette troup had a lot to do. Usually the girls leave scouts early to get to basketball, but last night, I was already at the end of my basketball rope and Dove still had homework to finish. I decided that they were blowing off the last minute rescheduled practice, and good thing, because Dove ended up until after 11 finishing homework as it was, anyway.
So this weekend is Thinking Day, the yearly cultural celebration that the Girl Scouts hold. Robin's troop will be representing France, and our plan was to meet at my co-leader Fan's house so that the girls could try some French foods, finish their display and work on swaps for this weekend. I did a lot of work with the girls on the board and a lot of the "All About France" instruction. We learned to sing the ever popular "Make New Friends" Girl Scout song in French, which I had to write out phonetically on the board for the girls to learn, because words like "aujourd'hui" do not sound like they look. Happily, we have two girls in our troop who attend the Robert Goddard French Immersion school, and they are fairly fluent, and will probably be doing the intro presentation for our troop at Thinking Day.
But my big task was figuring out the food we'd be providing at Thinking Day. It has become the custom here that many troops give out a tiny food sample representative of the country they were presenting. To 200 plus girls. So there are the factors of cost, ease of preparation / transportability, and girl-appeal. After soliciting input from a variety of sources, I went with the suggestion of my friend Tom's wife Ellen, who is a Scout Leader extraordinaire. Ellen is like the Martha Stewart of scouting - her Thinking Day presentations put everyone else to shame. This year she got objects on loan from the Japanese embassy and had all her girls in authentic costumes doing a Japanese dance. She's amazing. (Meanwhile, our girls have the standard tri-fold board with picture cutouts of the Tour de France and Eiffel Tower and will stumble through singing in French, except for our Immersion girls who can sing it perfectly and even bust out a step routine while doing it.) Ellen suggested doing an easy faux French chocolate mousse, which has high Girl Appeal, requires no cooking and uses only 3 ingredients compared to the real French mousse which I would screw up.
To be honest, I managed to screw up the Desserts for Dummies Mousse 101 recipe this weekend, but thankfully I made a few practice runs while tweaking the recipe. First batch was low on milk and gummy. Second batch was fluffy and perfect, though not as firm as a true mousse should be. Third batch was too dense, more like pudding, so I went with the batch 2 configuration, and filled up two dozen tiny sampler cups with it, squirted some whipped cream on top and garnished with red and blue sprinkles, and voila, ready to roll!
So we pick Dove up from play practice, and head to Fan's house for the Brownie meeting, and arrive to find two huge fire trucks outside her home. Visions of the French crepes she was making going up in flames danced through my head as I saw a fireman in full gear with an axe go into Fan's front door. Uh oh. Next thing I knew there was a gathering of Brownies on Fan's front lawn, and Fan was telling me that no, it was not a kitchen issue - she sent her girls up to play in the second floor storage room, and they all started smelling a strong and unpleasant burning odor from the room. No fire, but she was worried there was an electrical problem in the walls, so the fire department was called. We could smell the burning odor all the way downstairs, but after going through the attic and inspecting the room, the fireman can down with the culprit. A stinkbug had died inside the inverted globe of Fan's corner freestanding lamp, and had come to rest on top of a halogen bulb. The horrible burning smell was a cremating stinkbug, which the fireman brought down with a smile and tossed in the sink. No damage and our meeting did not have to take place on the lawn. :)
The girls were given a trial run of "easy French foods": strawberry crepes, brie and a fresh baguette, and chocolate mousse for dessert. The brie was uniformly rejected as "stinky" "leaves a bad taste" and "what is this crusty stuff on the outside?!" by all but one girl. The crepes were a minor success but following on the heels of Fat Tuesday pancakes, not as sweet. But the faux mousse was a huge hit, so I am hoping it will go over well with the two hundred girls we'll be dishing it out to on Saturday morning.
Had to leave in the middle to get Dove to her GS Cadette meeting. They are doing India, and all the girls had to bring material to turn into a sari. I showed Dove how to do it, and she headed in happily to make her elephant swaps, but when I picked her up, it seems that some of the girls got a little too creative with the material, as a few sari bottoms had a distinct "diaper" look to the wrap. Will be pinning Dove's in place before we go on Saturday morning!
Centers in third grade went well yesterday morning. Once again, I got the "fun" science center, since the kids are learning now about electricity and currents, and I got the fun group where they get to build a closed circuit that would power a mini lightbulb or make a fan spin. Great excitement from the kids to get to my small group, and oh, they were so delighted to hook up the wires and contact to make that fan spin! They are such a boisterous group, and when I come in after morning recess, Mrs. Z looks positively worn out some mornings. Well, Louis, one of the usually difficult kids, was having a bad day. He was held back from recess, and had his head down on the desk and was unwilling to talk to Mrs. Z when the other kids came back. She was very patient and let him choose when he was ready to go to the hall with her to smooth things out.
My first group were all sweethearts, excited to learn, picked up the vocabulary easily, happily read long in their science texts and answered my questions about the illustrations in the book before getting down to the fun hands on stuff. I got Louis in my third group, and he and Anthony, Aphrodite's brother, came bounding over, grabbing wires, shouting, trying to jam things together, while the two girls in the group sat quietly as I tried to give instructions. I looked at the clock - ten minutes until lunch and centers were over, then stopped talking and sat quietly waiting for the two boys to settle down. After a few seconds, they glanced at me. "Well guys, we have less than ten minutes left now because I cannot give instruction over the two of you. We need to get our reading selection done BEFORE you can work on the fan and lightbulb. And I will be asking you questions about what we read as you work, so you need to settle down and focus, or you may be the only group today that never gets to try making the fan work." I was amazed at how quickly Louis settled down, and Anthony got right on task. Louis has been very impulsive each time I've watched him in class, calls out a lot, leaves his seat, goes off task, etc. During our group, all I had to do was stop talking and look at the clock, and he would check his behavior and get on task at the thought of not getting to work that fan. It was good to see him work to stay on task, and he and Anthony got that fan working in record time. :) As for the vocabulary retention - probably shakier than the other groups, but hey, one small step at a time. :)
Today I have the bathroom repair guys coming back, wayyyyyy too much housework to do, and taking my sister in law Melanie out for her birthday tonight...then Thinking Day and the girl's last basketball games this weekend. Robin's team has done very well this year. Poor Dove, her team has lost every game. In fact, in the last three years she has played, her team has NEVER won one game. I am not expecting a miracle this weekend, but it would be nice if SOMETHING went well for them before they called it quits for the year. Two more weeks of play practice for Dove, and then THAT will be finished as well, and I won't be running all over God's creation as much as I have been.
At least, that's the plan...