Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Catching up on October




OK, so Thanksgiving is almost here, and I haven't even caught up on my October posting. So in a nutshell, our major excitement in October was a visit to the Maryland cousins and D.C. area art museums during ProfDad's fall break. J and G, and their parents, were wonderful hosts as usual, and we had a great time. We also visited the Baltimore Museum of Art and the National Gallery, which was a great thrill for the budding art historian. The homeschooling thing is really paying off-- Dagfari pretty much gave us a guided tour of the museums and filled us in on the history, techniques, and significance of many paintings.

In keeping with the art theme for the month, David went out on Halloween as Vincent VanGogh. This costume was received very well (we seem to have a fairly artistically literate neighborhood) and earned him extra treats from an appreciative art teacher neighbor.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Obamarama!



Lots of excitement in the past month, which I'll need to catch up on soon. But this week SGS is winding up an intensive civics unit! Dagfari had been suffering from election fatigue (who hasn't?) and was less than enthusiastic about political signs in our front yard detracting from his Halloween decor. But the actual election was so exciting that he was quite won over. D was the one following the electoral results on both the NPR and MSNBC websites on Tuesday night, and he now has a much better understanding of the electoral college than I did at any time before November 2000. We all stayed up for the acceptance speech, and we celebrated again today when NC was finally declared officially blue. I like the fact that this is the first presidential election D will really remember.

D is now having a mock election with his stuffed animals (who are a contentious bunch), in which the big issues are national security, regulation of the candy mining industry, and an overhaul of the currency system. If the art history thing doesn't work out, I'm beginning to think D may have a future as a policy wonk.