You don't have to be Einstein.

To be 1 step ahead of the Holidays Half Past Kissing Time has started Friday Fragments early here are mine . . .

Our home school co-op ended this week. One of the teachers was teaching a physics class for 1st-3rd Graders. Earlier in the semester she asked me to speak the last week of the class as Albert Einstein.

So I donned a wig (cotton balls taped to a stocking cap) and my best German scientist accent and had a lot of fun with it.

It turns out you don't have to be Einstein to play Einstein. I was able to perform an experiment that illustrated what Einstein discovered about light having gravity.

************************************************************************************

My parents came to the closing festivities for the co-op for the first time this year. I think it was the first time they ever got to see my kids in action in a true home school setting. I shared the emceeing duties with two of the speech classes. The presenters went up in pairs and they were very polished, so it had a real awards show feel to it. At the end of the evening I handed the microphone to puppy and she told this joke . . .

Who was the most important knight at the round table?Sir Cumference

***********************************************************************************

As I posted Sunday, Christmas shopping has seemed to begun in earnest all around us. If you make it out to the malls and big box stores take the sales advice with a grain of salt. I have noticed that some sales people through ignorance, poor listening skills, or just to sell more product don't always give correct product information.

For example, I wanted to buy Amy something she could listen to radio programs with when she is out and about. On several occasions we looked at ipods and we asked several associates if those ipods would play pod casts. Each time we were told no. Sometimes we were told that only a Zune would play pod casts, sometimes we were told that only an ipod touch would play them. Both those pieces of equipment cost more than what I had to spend on her birthday present. We then decided to just buy an old fashioned Walkman type radio and were told by an associate that the store no longer sold radios like that.

I walked back to where they "used to be" located anyway. They were still there and we bought out. We found out later that day through the miracle that is Facebook. That ipods do indeed play pod casts. (I mean they are called "pod" casts for a reason.)

I marched (figuratively) back to the store returned the Walkman radio, and proceeded to buy Amy an ipod; at a different store.

***********************************************************************************

Those are all the fragments I have. I hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving. For More Friday Fragments click here.

Of Blog Awards and Carnivals

A little Homeschool Blogging news for a Tuesday evening.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is in it's 256th week. If I were hosting this week I would call it the four to the fourth edition. This is probably one of the main reasons I am not hosting it this week. Mrs. Mama Hen is doing the honors this week and she is calling it the Our Great Nation edition. She must be from Switzerland, because only those stinking Swiss would think they were the only country using the internet. Greatest nation, indeed; their cheese has holes in it. Alpine (or other) ethnocentricity aside, it is an excellent carnival.

The HSBA award winners were announced late last night. I don't think anyone I voted for won (including myself) but many excellent blogs were honored. I will be listing all the winners on a separate page laterin the week; you can check them all out here. Congratulations to them all. Special appreciation to the fine folks at the HSBA who spend so much time and energy on the awards each year.

Go Ask My Dad

HSD Rewind time again. Going back to March 2009 when I wrote this . . .

Some of you may know that I would someday like to write a book. I often say I am working on a book, but that does not do justice to my friends who are actually working on a book. I have ideas for a book on relationships. From time to time I may talk about some of those ideas here. Recently Mama Archer's post was about relationships. In the post she linked to something she wrote in a blog called Weekend Kindness. What she shared was actually from a paper her daughter had written about finding a spouse.

Many of the standards her daughter mentioned are those I am imparting in my daughters. Specifically, a courtship model, that involves the active role of the parents especially the father. When my 9 year old was younger, I taught her what to say if a boy ever wanted to marry her. The response is "go ask my Dad." She still remembers it, and has not fought with me about it, yet, but that day may come.

My youngest child, also a daughter, is 3. She is leaving what I call the "save them every day" stage. The part of their life when you seem to be keeping them from physical peril at every turn. We spend so much of their early child hood keeping them from physical harm, making rules to keep them safe. Before they use a tool that could hurt them, we instruct them, and give them careful supervision while learning new skills.

I am not sure why with all that care giving I would be willing to withdraw all that guidance when they become of dating age. Many parents seem to think they have no chance of asserting control in any of those areas, so they do not try. I was greatly encouraged to read that Mama Archer's daughter plans to allow her parents an active role in determining her future husband.

I will write more about these issues in the future.

Meanwhile back in 2010. My youngest is no longer in the save her every day stage. It's more like the save the house from her stage. I have still not gotten very far with the "book". I have written a few more posts about relationships.

Thanksgiving Cancelled

Today was a strange day. I spent several hours on errands that should have taken 1/3 of the time. We've all had days like that, I'm sure. What was the most frustrating was when I went into a craft supply store called Michael's this afternoon. I had to get a few pieces of card stock for Emma's scrapbooking class. That was easy. I then went to look for some orange frosting for some thanksgiving treats we are going to make for Thursday. I found the cooking section very easily but then I realized they only had Christmas colors. I then realized (I am not the most visually observant person in the world) That the whole store was filled with Christmas products. The store was packed with people. I have been at Michael's many Sunday afternoons this Fall and there is usually 1/5th of the people there. For a minute I thought I had time jumped from a week before Thanksgiving to a week before Christmas. (I have been watching some of Season 1 of Heroes this week and that may account for the time jump theory.)

I looked in vain for 5-10 minutes for Thanksgiving decor while I wandered through the crowded store, I finally asked a staff person where I could find it and He said they had taken down all the Thanksgiving merchandise in order to prepare for Christmas. I reconsidered the time jump theory for a split second and then inquired if Thanksgiving had been cancelled? I don't know if he knew for sure, so I just bought my card stock and left.



As I exited the store I read a sign on their window that they would be open 5 hours on Thanksgiving. So I'm thinking why would they be open on Thanksgiving? They don't have any Thanksgiving stuff! Then I read the sign further and it said that there would be door busters.

So that was it, with almost a week before Thanksgiving they had remove all traces of it from their store but are trying to lure us back there on Thursday afternoon when the triptifan is supposed to be kicking in just so we can buy Christmas stuff!

This was not an isolated situation. My SIL had the same experience yesterday, She went into Kohl's, TJ Maxx, and a dollar store looking for Thanksgiving decorations and came up empty.

I read a joke in a letter in the mid 1980's. It said that when you see all the Christmas decorations up you can tell that Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I remember reading it that it was an exaggeration of the truth. In the past 25 or so years, that joke has become the reality; and the reality is not very funny, especially when you need orange frosting.

Operation Christmas Child

Six Word Saturday: At least for another 90 minutes. You can go to show my face to check all the other 6 word Saturdays. Here are mine . . .



Our Family Loves Operation Christmas Child



To find out more about this excellent program by the Ministry Samaritan's Purse click here.



In the interim these pictures explain our involvement pretty well.

Keith Time