Graham Feis

Graham switched to a new venue this year. The feis took place at the St. Charles Convention Center -- it was a great choice.

Most of the stages were in the large hall, along with the vendors, several tables (which ended up being used for camping), and some of the concessions. More concessions were out in the hallway, and further down the hall. The restrooms were large and clean. Overall, there was plenty of room to spread out.

Once again, Graham made some really nice stages, coated with a mix of primer and chalkboard paint to help with slickness (although during Thalia's first dance one of the dancers twisted her ankle and hobbled off the stage, leaving me to wonder if her foot caught on the surface -- but I don't know of anyone else with the same issue, so maybe that girl simply landed wrong).

The only problem was in the stage scheduling. We arrived close to 7a.m. so the girls could get ready for ceili at 8a.m. They danced their ceili, then headed to their stages for their solo dances.

Thalia's stage moved briskly through the dances. She competed in seven solo dances, changed clothes, and was totally finished with the feis by about 11a.m.



Overall, she had a great feis. She medalled in a bunch of her Beginner 2 dances, got a 4th place in one of her Novice dances (she was thrilled to get anything -- even a token ribbon -- in her Novice dances, given that it was the first time she competed in that level).

On the other hand, AnnaBeth waited and waited and waited, watched friends dance, waited some more, and finally started dancing around 10a.m. By this time she was tired and hungry, yet too nervous to eat.



She started complaining that her foot hurt, and by the time she got to her hardshoe dances (sometime after lunch) she had a blister that popped. It didn't look that bad, but she was hobbling around to make it to the stage. She needed to place in hornpipe to make it into Novice in that dance, so we told her to try to make it through that dance and then we'd leave. She was signed up for another dance after that, but we ditched it (after she checked in for the hornpipe she was crying and saying "I wish I could just dance in my socks"; the stage manager was trying to console her, and asking me if this was her last dance -- I answered "it's going to be -- we've decided to skip the rest"). She ended up not even placing in the hornpipe -- her comments read that she needed to get up on her toes more -- which is exactly what she couldn't do due to the blister. Sigh. It was after 2 o'clock on a long, long day, she was in tears about the whole thing, hated the feis, hated everything ... heck, a LOT of the dancers were in tears by then. I think everyone had just reached a state of exhaustion, having been there and in a state of nervous anticipation for hours and hours.

(The next day her heel was purple and swollen. So apparently she wasn't just being dramatic about a blister; her foot was really hurt. We're grateful that she can go barefoot or in flipflops for a few days, and generally take it easy, not even walking very much.)

I do wish the younger girls could've gotten through their dances a little more quickly. I think if AnnaBeth had been finished as early as Thalia her day would've gone a lot better, injured heel or not. What is it with this age level that they often end up on the stages that drag on and on and on? Why not have the Under 9s on one stage and the Under 8s on another? Those are 2 huge groups, and splitting them up would help immensely.

After we got home we crashed. AnnaBeth took a nap (heck, I did, too). We ate normal, non-feis food. We looked at the personal feis results and comments on Feisworx. And as AnnaBeth was getting ready for bed she commented that it had been a pretty good day. Amazing what some sleep and food can do for one's perspective.

Weekly Report -- Sept. 26

As far as Thalia has been concerned, Language Arts this week has consisted of writing thank you cards. And the thank you cards have also counted as arts and crafts.



I think these came out really cute. It's wonderful that she has the patience to do this. I don't.

AnnaBeth has also started on her thank you cards, but had plain ol' bookwork to do, too. In First Language Lessons Level 3 she has started memorizing A Time to Talk by Robert Frost. I'm hoping this poem grows on me with familiarity; so far it's not one of my favorites. She's also studying prepositions. She had memorized a long list of prepositions in First Language Lessons Level 2 last spring, which is repeated in FLL3. FLL3 adds the concept of prepositional phrases.

In Writing With Ease we continue to work with 101 Dalmations. I've even found copywork featuring prepositional phrases. Yes, I'm pretty impressed with myself. And AnnaBeth is impressed with her increased ability to summarize a passage.

In Math Thalia has asked for help with several algebra problems this week. At first I thought she wasn't getting how to think through and set up the problem. Now, though, I see that she is doing fine with that; she just needs gobs of practice on those tedious bits about making sure to work through the equations accurately. I had a sudden brainstorm in the midst of this week that what she's doing in algebra (practice practice practice solving relatively simple problems that are all similar) is akin to what AnnaBeth is doing in Writing With Ease (practice practice practice writing simple passages).

And AnnaBeth is at lesson 144 in RightStart C, so near the end that there's a temptation to just zip through the remaining lessons so we can yell "DONE!" We are finally finished with fractions, finishing up with a game of Fraction War -- playing cards with fractions on them used in the card game War. Today was an odd lesson on AM/PM and the equinox. I call it odd because I thought everyone knew this stuff, and am surprised it's a Level C math lesson. We ended up discussing the Latin roots of things like AM and PM (the book suggested remember that AM means morning by thinking of "At Morning", which I thought was sort of dumb, mostly because it could just as easily stand for "After Morning" -- "at" is a really awkward word to use in a phrase like that, really).

We continue to learn other Languages as well. We're finally finished with fruit in French. We took a day off today before starting the next unit. In Spanish Thalia is learning about ser and also about gender. In Latin Thalia is looking at ordinal and cardinal numbers, while AnnaBeth is starting to learn about commands.

Science has consisted of Prentice Hall Science Explorers. We're currently learning about the Earth's surface. The PH Science Explorers tend to remind me of Girl Scout badge books for some reason -- I keep thinking we'll get a badge after we finish one of these sections. Thalia said she feels the same way.

Read Alouds this week have been The Tree in the Trail, Burgess Animal Book, Little House on Rocky Ridge (actually goes nicely with Tree in the Trail at the moment, since both are currently about traveling around in covered wagons), and 101 Dalmations.

Piano! Choir! Swimming! Dance! All of it done!

As usual, I'm sure I'm leaving out some major component of our week, but we must zoom along to other things this afternoon, so this will have to stand as our summary of what we accomplished.

True Cat Stories

In the morning we found socks outside our bedroom doors, where none of us had left socks.



We quickly pieced together what had happened. The Evil Sock Creatures had been creeping up to harm us in our sleep, but were thwarted by a vigilant patrol cat.





Patrol cat had left the bodies behind. After all, she needed to race off to try to save her companion cat from the Grocery Bag Monster that was starting to devour him.



It isn't easy patrolling the household, but she is ever vigilant.

Work in Progress Wednesday

I'm working on tracing another Ottobre pattern, #5 Canvas cargo crops from issue 5/2008.

I've pulled sheet A as per the instructions, and I'm tracing the pieces that are outlined in black onto Pattern-Ease, which is a Pellon product (last time I bought it at JoAnn's it had a different name on the bolt -- it's the stuff that's about 45 inches wide). I'm tracing the lines for size 36.



The shapes to the right are the pieces I've already traced; I've written a number on each one. The upper left shows the Pattern-Ease over the pattern sheet -- you can see that it's very translucent. And the bottom left shows what the pattern sheet looks like.

At this point I haven't added any seam allowances. Some people do slick things to add the seam allowances while they trace, but I like to trace the outline first, then add the seam allowance later. Also, I've traced these pieces with a Sharpie. Really, this is considered Bad. Drawing pattern pieces with marker is messy and imprecise; also, it bleeds through the Pattern-Ease and gets on the original. But my cutting is rather messy and imprecise, and I have loads of Sharpies available.

Next photo, I'm starting to add a 1 cm seam allowance using my hem measure and a fine-tip Sharpie ... and we see that I have help making sure that big piece of Pattern-Ease doesn't drift off of the table:



Yes, besides the fact that Pattern-Ease is translucent, it also holds up to marauding cats. If you've ever had cats searching for stray "mice" in your tissue patterns, you know why that's important.

Hey, look what else is on the table:



Another lace collar is drying! You think you're getting tired of looking at lace collars every Wednesday WIP? Yeah, well, just imagine crocheting the things. Yikes. I was halfway through another one when I realized I was going to run out of crochet cotton. I headed to the store to get more, and realized the store was closed ... had to go to a different store, which had a different brand, and I swear, the brightness factor of the white was different. So, ditch the half-made collar, and start over with a new brand of thread. I don't know if I'll ever get all of these done.

100 Species Challenge

1. Strawberry
2. Black-eyed Susan
3. Rose of Sharon, Althea
4. Potentilla

5. Vinca
We like to use annual vinca for border planting. I always get white, because I think white flowers make such a nice, visible border for the walks.




Sometimes I do get another color for pots, though.






The foliage is a nice glossy dark green. The entire plant gets bushy on its own, without any pinching back. And, best of all, the deer don’t eat it! Truly a carefree plant -- just pop it in the ground in spring, and make sure it gets some water now and then .

There’s a perennial named Vinca which is a totally different plant. The annual vinca I’m showing here is actually Catharanthus roseus. Here is a nice summary of annual vinca.

And, what new thing did I learn about vinca while composing this entry? I learned that it's a bit fussy to propagate from seeds. I'm sort of surprised, considering we've had it come up volunteer some years. But, of course, in that situation it was just a fun surprise to see it popping up in the spring.

More information about the 100 Species Challenge here, and a link to all my 100 Species entries in the sidebar.

Weekend Update

Our dance school had a performance at the Missouri River Irish Fest. Actually, every Irish dance school in the area had a performance at the Festival.

IMG_0477
Originally uploaded by GailV

Thalia is dancing hornpipe with a couple of other girls. ("Why are their faces so smeary, Mommy?" "Because I don't know if their parents want their pictures online, dear.") Bonus: the collar on the right as you're viewing the photo was crocheted by me. A world premiere!

It was raining when we left the house, but turned into a pretty day by the time we got there. We've never been to the Irish Fest before -- apparently it had moved a bit due to the high river. St. Charles is a pretty area to wander around in, and the setting was nice. The stage was rather petite, and inclined to bounce around, but the crowd was appreciative.

Afterwards Aunt L and Uncle M came over for supper and birthday celebrations. Aunt L brought cake:



This is the 3rd birthday cake we've had this month. Oh, wait, really it's the 4th. And still more to come!

We also played games. Uncle M brought marbles:



He won every game, but he left 2 bags of marbles here for us to practice with for future matches, not to mention the carpet square with the pre-drawn circle. We also had the usual bottle drop, bean bag toss, and also played Ladderball in the entrance. AnnaBeth cleaned up in LadderBall, consistently wrapping her bolos around the 3-point rung. Prizes were distributed to the winners, birthday gifts were opened, and we were all up way too late once again.

Weekly Report -- Sept. 19

Math

AnnaBeth continues to blaze through the fractions section of RightStart C. She loves playing with the wooden fraction chart. The other day she was messing around with it while I was getting out the rest of stuff for the math lesson. "Hey, look what I just did!" I looked. Oh, honey, you just did the lesson. On your own. Under the guise of playing around. "Ummm, keep doing stuff like that and write it down, okay? That's math for the day."

Thalia continues to work through Life of Fred Algebra. This week's questions to me involved misplaced decimals, and were simply a matter of going over the work carefully. Many conversations along the lines of "why is this 15? Shouldn't it be .15?" occurred. Tedious, but necessary.

Writing

AnnaBeth and I are still forging our own path through Writing With Ease, finding selections in 101 Dalmations. AnnaBeth is feeling good that she's getting the hang of narrations, copywork and dictation -- all are notably easier for her now. I feel good that I'm finally getting the hang of how to find my own selections for copywork, narration and dictation. I think at this point I might be able to get out those Classical Writing books that are hanging around on the shelves and actually do something with them -- I finally get the point.

In First Language Lessons Level 3 we have completed everything through lesson 45. Sometimes she seems to get a bit confused when diagramming sentences, but I know this will come up dozens upon dozens of times in the next few years, so I'm not too worried -- eventually it will all sink in.

Thalia wrote a rather anemic essay for Lightning Lit. She had some good ideas, but seemed unsure how to develop them. She was also supposed to write thank you notes. If you're waiting for one, don't hold your breath -- it will be a few more days before they appear.



Latin

We have reached chapter 6 in Minimus. AnnaBeth is spending more time with flashcards. She makes them from the vocabulary lists in the book.

Thalia continues to work through Latin for Children B.

And I spent time working on Henle. Yay me.

Language

Ecoutez Parlez unit 2 continues. Still learning fruits. We practice every time we go into a grocery store.

By the way, in answer to km's question last week. I don't know French. I can read it silently, but am fairly clueless about pronunciation. That's why the curriculum we choose MUST have a strong audio component, which limits our choices. The pronunciation rules for this language drive me batty, frankly.

Thalia still prefers Spanish for Children to Rosetta Stone. She wants to get more grammar down before returning to Rosetta Stone. Also, sometimes the RS disc is wonky, and takes forever to load, which is annoying.

Reading

Little House on Rocky Ridge, Burgess Animal Book, 101 Dalmations, Tree in the Trail (I really do not like books by Holling C Holling, but I keep trying; right now we're reading this at a brisk pace so we can be done with it), Our Island Story.

I am leaving out something. What? Hmm, we also had Scouts, dance, choir, piano, swimming. Another busy week.