Day 34, 35, 36

Wow!

How can so many days have gone by?  What have we been doing?  A lot of getting work done, actually.  We managed English and Math days 34 and 35, despite heavy running on day 35.  We had dance, went to the Saugerties lighthouse, went to Aikido since we won't be going Friday, and went shopping in the evening for Emily's dress for her Uncle Ben's wedding.  Long day.

The lighthouse was pretty neat, though.  The walk was very pleasant and wound around so we were walking along the edge of the Hudson, then through the (very) tidal marsh and finally to a walkway to the lighthouse itself.  One walks up to it, then around it, and when you get to the other side, there is an open area with picnic tables and you feel like you are on a boat.  One of our number unfortunately took that too far, and ended up falling in.  If it had been a hot day, and the girl could swim, it would have been fine, however neither of these were the case and the poor thing called it a day.  The others went to the edge to sit, and I told them that if they fell in, they should swim to the stairs, because I wasn't hauling them out if there were stairs they could climb out on.  :)  Next time we go there, we'll check the tides a bit more carefully, as we did get a tad wet on our way out to the lighthouse.

Today we learned about Marco Polo, who I found very boring when I was in school, but now he seems like such an interesting person!  I'm going to try to find The Travels of Marco Polo for my kindle so I can read some of it to the kids.  Not that they find it very interesting...On the other hand, I found a site with instructions for dioramas that was really pretty cool, so we may try that.  I sometimes wish it was just me learning these things as I seem to be the one interested.  Oh well.

At least music went well tonight.  Especially for Luke.  He sounded a bit harsh at first, but after a little while, he was able to match the sounds of his teacher.  I'm impressed!  I think this was the last evening session, which may be good as we are approaching winter, the I-don't-want-to-be-out-in-the-dark season.  Ugh.  I was glad to hear the kids become enthused about playing their instruments.  The one site I keep going back to is 8notes where I found finger charts for the clarinet, several free sheet music pieces for each instrument in our house, and midi files so you can hear how the piece should sound.  I have been using this site for a while, and I'm still finding it useful.

Now, I'm truly pooped.  Tomorrow we're going to Family Mole Night at SUNY New Paltz, so that will be fun!