"A Playdate with Shakespeare"

We have all survived another season of Shakespeare. N played three parts in this latest installment. A grand time was had by all and S can't wait for her turn. As always, we have ordered extra DVD's to share with family and friends.

This group of children aged 6 to 9 were absolutely astonishing in their performance and delivery. "Shakespeare" conjuring up the witches for the "Macbeth" portion was uber-fantastic!

Congratulations to all in the Much Ado About Shakespeare programs all over Southern California and congratulations to Rebekah Czarnecki (who is having her baby as I post this!) and family on the arrival of "Linda Lee Rose"....

"A Rose by any other name, would still smell as sweet."

~~ShakyMama )O(

The Farm of the Painted Pony

Riding Painted Ponies




EQL Academy's Thursday field trip this week was to a private farm called the Painted PonyFarm in Upper Ojai.

We had tons of fun! We learned that some chicken do lay green eggs (and they are Polish chickens, so thats a plus!) and that white eggs come ONLY from chickens with white feathers. Growing up in New England, my husband and I recall TV commercials for eggs with the jingle "brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are FRESH!" I have no idea why they used that little silly jingle.

Oh my, there truly is nothing like an egg fresh from the chicken. If we could, we would raise chickens for their fresh eggs. The kids tried to smuggle one of the chicks, but I was ready.

The "kids" milked a goat.
















I was going to milk the goat, but she became impatient and kicked everyone that came near. She also booted over the bucket of milk (it wasn't full). So, I just decided to leave her alone rather than risk a boot from a nannygoat.

After the kids all had their turn at milking, they all toddled after the baby goats who were calling frantically to their "Maaaaaa"'s and then we retired back to the house for goat's milk ice cream made fresh on the premises. Yum (and I am NOT a fan of goat cheese)! Really, though, it was absolutely delicious.

We tried to pet the painted ponies, but alas....they like to bite little fingers.

Our next project is to figure out how to build an incubator so that we can hatch some chicks of our own. We'll have to return them to live on a farm, but the project will be fun nonetheless.

~Mama )O(

Quilting On

Here is my finished quilt top for BabyGirl. She picked out all the fabrics herself. Christmas themed as they are, there is an interesting significance to it which I will share once the entire thing is completed.

~~Mama )O(

This episode sponsored by "Dogfights" (only on the History Channel

"Dogfights" is a program on the History Channel that we accidently happened upon at the last CHN homeschooling conference. Since then, we've seen many episodes, purchased Season 1, learned quite a bit about aviation, World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict and much more. Nicolas and I have been inspired by several episodes, and so we present our tribute to "Dogfights" in Lego of course:

========================================================
Jets
========================================================











Type: Jet
Make: Mig-17 (Russian)
Conflict: Korea (N. Korea)
Armament: 3 Front mounted 20mm cannon
Max Speed: 711 mph at 10,000 ft
Range: 1,290 miles
Ceiling: 54,460 ft

Type: Jet

Make: Mirage-III (French)
Conflict: 6 day war (Israel)

Armament: 2 wing mounted 20 mm cannon, 4 air to air missiles
Max Speed: Mach 2.2
Range: 1,450 miles
Ceiling: 59,000 ft

========================================================
Bi-Planes
========================================================

Type: Bi-Plane
Make: Spad-13 (French)
Conflict: World War I
Armament: 2 Vickers .303 front mounted machine guns
Max Speed: 138 mph
Ceiling: 21,820 ft

Type: Bi-Plane
Make: Fokker-7 (German)
Conflict: World War I
Armament: 2 forward firing Spandau machine guns
Max Speed: 190 mph
Ceiling: 22,900 ft

"California Criminals", Continued........

At the tail end of March, the 2nd Appellate (Headache) District decided to throw out it's very controversial decision that caused such an uproar at the start of that month.

Here is excellent commentary regarding these events by John Stossel.

So, we are all waiting until June for the decision of the court.

In the meantime, it's EAU (Education As Usual).


~Mama )O(