Peabody’s first grade class visited the Zeum in San Francisco to create claymation movies. Stories and characters were put together last week in class and animated at the museum. Peabody’s group came up with a story about friends rescuing a mermaid. It is a silent movie.
Inspired by the 250th anniversary of Guinness and watching Timeline the night before, Annabel baked Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Guinness Cake in our Nordic Ware castle pan. Much tastier than a Three King’s Cake. Trebuchet!
We don’t celebrate Epiphany in a major way. With both St. Nicholas and Santa Claus visiting us, it would be too much to expect Balthazar, Melchior, and Gaspar to stop by. But we’re always ready to try a new dessert and I’m hoping Annabel might make Three Kings Cake tonight!
Peabody’s after-school carpentry class has been working on bird feeders. The students do all of the work themselves with real tools. Peabody enjoyed hammering, sawing and measuring. He even broke his first drill bit which has become part of the structure. After applying a final coat of varnish at home, we’re ready to start feeding our Towhees, Robins and Scrub Jays.
We brought in the New Year by breaking open Battlelore, a two-player fantasy wargame. The basic game mechanics were easy enough for 7 year old Peabody to handle. He mastered them well enough to repeat Henry V’s victory at Agincourt in the game’s introductory scenario. Set up took about 15 minutes. The actual battle lasted about 45. The action is very fast paced, keeping us both in the game the whole time. Battlelore includes more elaborate rules for fantasy battles. There are several expansions also available. For now Peabody and I will stick with the basic rules, but we’ll be coming back to Battlelore soon.
St. Nicholas filled our shoes with chocolates and gifts last night. He usually brings a Lego Advent calendar for Peabody and a Playmobil calendar for Nettie. We keep them with the Christmas decorations and set them up around the tree. St. Nick left a note with Nettie’s boot saying there were only Pirate and Police calendars from Playmobil this year. Imagine Santa being arrested for breaking and entering or shanghaied elves burying his sack of toys! We’re a little sad about it, but we have plenty of marzipan pigs and chocolate sardines to help us get over it.
Recently I have been reading the Cherry Ames mystery series, about a young nurse in the 1940s. The pink hardcover on the far left of the photo is “Cherry Ames, Department Store Nurse”, the last in the series, the first one I read, and the funniest so far (the department store Santa frequently visits her for aspirin). In the book I just finished, “Cherry Ames, Army Nurse”, Cherry is in the army, making new friends (and enemies) and saving lives. “Cherry did not know what new life she would find [in the Pacific], what new challenges she would face. But whatever it was, she was ready for it!”
For the ilpast couple years, I’ve been playing a Risk clone with friends through GamesByEmail.com. It’s isn’t played in real-time, so you can enter moves whenever you have a moment and your friends don’t need to be online at the same time. It makes it easy to play with people in different time zone. I introduced Nettie and Peabody to the Risk this weekend, It was a short and frustrating game for Peabody as the yellow army quickly overran the blues and reds.
This mini pretzel is the newest addition to my charm bracelet. Father likes Snyder’s Sourdough Pretzels, and on a recent box I saw an ad for a “FREE Pretzel Charm!”. One more box of pretzels and three dollars later the envelope went in the mail and was forgotten. The day of our school Halloween parade I came home and found an envelope waiting for me. (Poughkeepsie? Who do I know who lives in Poughkeepsie?) My pretzel charm had arrived! It now hangs between a passport and the St. Louis World’s Fair ferris wheel.
I was happy to see Nettie employing some sophisticated carving techniques with her Totoro pumpkin. With the same gouge I used on R2-D2 and Daruma-San, Nettie shaved Totoro’s belly, eyes and body. The mouth and nose were cut out to make his smile prominent. My globe pumpkin was carved without a template. To create a solid background for the rear of the pumpkin, I didn’t carve most of Asia and Australia. Peabody’s Jack-o’-lantern was original too, a geometric pattern of lines and large dots.