Almost Christmas 12/17-12/23

Christmas cards were mailed on Thursday, presents will all be wrapped today, and I'm looking forward to a wonderful, relaxing week.  We're having Christmas Eve (and Christmas Day) dinner at my mom's house.  She decided on something other than the fish we've been having ever since I married into an Italian family.  I get it - it can be a huge mess and cleaning up that kind of dinner is the last thing we want to do on Christmas Eve.  But B couldn't imagine not having that, so he made it all himself last night instead.  K's boyfriend, J's best friend, and W's friend from next door all came over to eat.  B made crab-stuffed mushrooms, shrimp parmigiana, fried calamari, & stuffed flounder.  K's boyf brought over a red velvet cake from Martha's Bakery (my absolute fave) and a gift for me (a really nice wrought-iron hanging decoration that holds 5 photos).  He's certainly scoring some brownie points with me.

On Thursday, some of W's show choir and a bunch of other kids and adults got together for some street caroling.  We also ventured into some restaurants to sing to the patrons.  A burger place gave us a huge clam-shell of half-moon cookies, a pizzeria gave us all free pizza and soda, and an upscale Italian restaurant gave us a generous donation to help fund a new piano.  We didn't expect anything from anyone, but it certainly reaffirmed my belief in humankind - and that NYC is a friggin awesome place.

So, since I'm anxiously waiting for the day when I can switch my work hours to mornings rather than evenings - mainly so W can be a part of more activities and sports during the week - I decided to start going to the gym with him.  That's right.  They allowed him to take over K's membership (K will be joining a new place more easily accessible for her). The minimum age is 13, but they agreed to let him join since he does look like a teenager.  Eh, he'll be 12 soon.  I'm happy that he'll have a place to go to work out whenever he wants.  And it gets me there too!  I've been slacking lately because K has been so busy with school and work and I don't like going to the gym alone, leaving W at home.  So this seems like the ideal solution.  We'll see how it all works out.  (heh heh, works out...gym, get it?)
 
Academics

Math:  Rounding and estimating review
Language Arts:  Continuing with simple subject/predicate, types of sentences, run-ons, fragments, and another lesson in the dyslexia workbook
Science:  Another really cool experiment.  We put some vinegar into a 2-liter soda bottle.  Then boiled a few leaves of red cabbage until the cabbage water was a deep bluish purple color.  Then W poured that water into the vinegar.  Even though the cabbage water was a deep blue, the vinegar turned it to a bright pink.  He then took a balloon, funneled in about 2 Tbsp of baking soda, and secured the balloon over the top of the soda bottle.  He lifted up the balloon, pouring all the baking soda into the bottle.  This caused the balloon to inflate due to the vinegar reacting with the baking soda - but since the baking soda neutralized all the vinegar, the bright pink color turned back to blue.  It reminded me of how litmus paper works.  W wrote about it in his student notebook and we read about science at the time of the Roman Empire and about alchemy.