Highlights of the past few days include:

Zoo with friends Augie and Louisa on Thursday where NT took a complete inventory of all the fish at the zoo to see if there were any breeds there that he could get for his tank.

Gymnastics for Lizzy on Friday morning. While we were waiting NT and I went through a good portion of the a first grade math workbook (for me) so I could feel comfortable that he does, indeed, know the kinds of things first graders are "supposed" to know.

Friday afternoon NT had homeschool science club at the Science Museum which turned out to be a disaster. We have been repeatedly disappointed with the calibre of those classes and have decided to find other more exciting places to participate in science classes. While NT was being bored to death in class, Lizzy and I hung out with Runa and her mom at the museum. After class all the kids ran crazy together to burn off all their pent up energy!

This morning NT had a basketball game and had Grampy & Maria and Minna & Grandpa Alan in the cheering section. He is making great strides and is really enjoying the game.

After basketball we took a family field trip to the fish store where we spent a huge amount of time talking with the staff about our cloudy water problem, learning about what kind of fish food we need (we ran out of what the fish came with), and asking about what to do about our Betta who doesn't eat. NT got two new powder blue fish for his tank (I can't remember the kind...).

NT has been keeping up with PBS's Cyberchase, and for days the kids have been building with the big cardboard blocks I brought up from the basement. They have also been getting tons of entertainment out of the huge Rubbermaid container that the blocks are stored in. It is fascinating to see the kinds of games the kids come up with on their own.

NT has been drawing, wrote a letter to Ezra, has been asking about the meanings of sooooooooo many words, has been reading his fish book like crazy, and asks so many questions about so many things I can't keep up! :-)

NT watched PBS's Cyberchase this morning. The topic was deductive reasoning.

NT was in a crabby mood, so I chose the music selection and put in hip hop again, since it really seems to perk the kids up.

Lizzy had ballet class this morning and NT worked on one of his numbers workbooks the entire time. He read all the clues and found all the numbers. He worked on some spelling as he went along. He learned how to check his answers in the back of the book and practiced looking things up by page number.

We went to the library and NT checked out 27 books on football--books about each of the different teams. He laid them out all over the living room floor when we got home and looked them over while listening to the audio book Dinosaurs Never Say Please by Bill Harley.

Before leaving for his cooking class, NT helped me make homemade egg noodles. We measured out the size of the noodles with a ruler so we knew we were cutting them to the size the recipe called for.

While NT was at cooking class, Lizzy and I discussed how icicles are formed. We read several picture books while we waited to pick NT up after class.

Back at home, we cooked the homemade noodles and decided to give them only 2 stars and cross them off the repeat list. They weren't too bad, but they were a lot of work to chew!

This morning we chose an acoustic guitar CD, Fingerdance, for our morning music. At first NT claimed to be unimpressed, but later he requested that I put the CD back on.

We played a trivia game that NT made up, and then he worked on some tinfoil inventions while pretending that he wasn't listening to the Hello, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle audio book. Since it seems to him (by the title) that it is a book that girls would like, he wants no part of it, but I caught him listening when he didn't know I was around.

Today was Lizzy's first day of "big girl" gymnastics--a class that parents don't have to be in. NT and I watched from the lobby and NT worked on two different math workbooks--which also involved writing and spelling--and his ice cream truck brain-teaser puzzle while we were waiting.

We grocery shopped for much of the afternoon. Along the way NT and I discussed a surprising number of "big life" stuff. We talked about who Elvis Presley was and how he died. We talked about what it means to overdose on drugs and how that can sometimes happen. We talked about why it seems like that happens to a lot of famous people.

We also talked about how "St." is an abbreviation for both "Saint" and "Street". We talked about what a saint is and what it might take to become a saint.

We talked about pro football contracts and how they might be negotiated and how a player gets signed to play for one team or another.

We talked about how hard he would have to work and how long it would take him to save the $5 he wanted me to spend to buy little individually-wrapped Bonabel cheeses that I think are outrageously expensive (over $1 apiece!).

This evening we tried a new recipe for dinner--Croque Monsieur--and NT gave it four stars--five stars when he tried mine with the fried egg on top. I am so proud of him for really stepping out of his comfort zone and trying new foods from the cookbook we are working out of together.

Tonight NT and John went to the Cub Scout pack's game night and had a lot of fun. NT was excited about it all day and was not disappointed. They didn't get home until after 9 p.m.!

The kids spent most of the day tearing around the house, wrestling, playing basketball (NT was trying to teach Lizzy how to play after he saw the Timberwolves game last night), building pillow forts, and jumping off the furniture onto the pillow forts.

NT listened to an entire Encyclopedia Brown book on CD.

In the late afternoon both kids spent almost two hours playing outside in the snow with the neighbors.

This evening John and NT watched a fascinating segment on 60 Minutes about Birdmen and then NT retired to bed to work on a spelling workbook.