Harry Potter 7 and Caleb

(if you haven't read it, there will be spoilers)




Caleb is reading the 7th Harry Potter to begin his summer. He has read the first six over the past year. Today, we were driving home from Britnee's graduation/birthday party when we heard a big sigh from the back seat. I looked back, and there was Caleb, a little pale with his hand on his forehead.

"What's the matter Cale?"
"Dobbie just died."

A heaviness settled over all of us. I remember when Dobbie died the first time for me. One of the saddest book moments that I have ever had. But I think seeing Caleb try to come to terms with it was even more heart-wrenching than Dobbie's death itself.

Firefox 3

Firefox is releasing version 3 on Tuesday. As part of their publicity campaign they are trying to get the Guiness World record for most downloads in 24 hours.

If you go to spreadfirefox.com, you can pledge and play with a really cool map that shows how many people in each country you mouse over have pledged to download on Tuesday. It's quite fun and a little mind-bending.

Iceland: 998; Uruguay: 2, 747; Bangladesh: 538; Cuba: 364.....

Who knew?

New Hat

Here is my new hat. In between morning and afternoon tasks of weeding and planting, I made this! Cool what can be made from scrap fabric, isn't it?

cool words

I just spent some delightful time browsing this list of words:

http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Alison/lexophilia/coolwords/index.html

I can't tell you why, but it was just too fun to remember some and learn some new words.

Futility?

I just spent an hour and a half with an Ortho gun shooting all the dandelions in our yard. And there are a LOT of dandelions in our yard... like you would think we seeded dandelions instead of grass lots of dandelions.

futility noun uselessness as a consequence of having no practical result

(*bloggers disclaimer* I am not saying that Ortho is a futile product. In fact, we have had great success with the product in our war against dandelions in past years. I will keep you up to date with this summers battle to have a 'proper suburban yard' - um, if I remember.)

Off on adventure

For more information, check this blog www.PDV2008.blogspot.com.

Mothers Day

After church today we went to the Penobscot Observatory and Fort Knox. Here is a link to the picts.

Mothers Day 2008

Romans 8 movement

During church this morning, I mentioned this that had been brought to my attention through Facebook. Here is a link to the site:

http://www.romans8movement.com/

Early Mothers Day Present

How cool is that!?

Homeschool evaluation

As a homeschooler in Maine, we are given a couple of options about how we will report our student's progress to the local and state authorities. We opted for standardized testing, because we figured that later in life our kids would need to know how to play the standardized test game. Fortunately, through BJU I am qualified to administer IOWA tests, one of the common tests out there.

Just got this years results for Caleb (Anna won't begin to test until 'second' grade) today. While we don't hold much stock in the tests, because we live with the kids and know how well and what they are learning, I still look forward to the feedback.

Today the news felt especially 'good job' mommy, with the summary of the test saying that Caleb our 'third' grader is performing at the level of a fifth grader in the third month of school.

and the ONly thing hE needs to Work oN is CapitALizatioN.

We are so proud of his hard work this year.