What We've Been Up To - 8/5/11

I'm scared!

• The kids (mostly Josh and Will) are STILL painting Josh and Sean's bedroom.  The walls are done, the color is beautiful.  However, we are trying to paint the trim too.  I think we are possibly the slowest family on earth.  We just can't focus on a job like this for more than a couple of hours a day!  LOL!  So Josh painted the trim of 1 window yesterday.  Two more windows, closet doors, bedroom door and the baseboard that runs around the bottom of the walls.  We can't figure out how to paint that because of the carpeting.  The carpeting that I want so, so much to be rid of!
• One day, Becky painted her face like The Joker which was really terrifying.  She has a future as a make up artist, I think!
• We saw a rainbow out our front door.
• I forced, er, encouraged Sean to read a book.  He hasn't picked one up in two months.  After a bit of trouble choosing, he finally settled on Beorn the Proud.  We read a chapter a day for three days but of course there's that attention span issue again.  Mine I mean.  Because I completely forgot about it yesterday.
• Sean's brain is busy bubbling with script ideas, which made me second guess my idea of having him do a full Language Arts program.  I mean he already likes to write and think about writing.  I think if I do the time but not content thing, where he'll have a specific time to write anything he wants, that should serve him.  I might do the grammar book, Magic Lens, with him too.  We'll see.  I'm waffling again!
• Will and Sean, enamored with all the famous voice actors in the new Winnie the Pooh movie, went to see it.  They couldn't persuade Becky to go with them, to make them look legitimate, but they are so into animation and voice acting that they braved any possible jeers aimed at 19 and 12 yo boys and went to see it.
• I read David Copperfield out loud for a hour on Sunday (or was it Monday?) about 20 minutes on Tuesday.  Thursday night I got in another ten minutes.  We are about 3/4's of the way through, maybe slightly more.  It is a race to the finish.  HA!
• Becky finishes her music camp today.  She said this has been her favorite year.  That is saying something since she has loved it every year, but she loves playing the trumpet.  The music school is starting up a beginning concert band and I've enrolled her in that.  She's very excited!  It'll mean more driving next year.  But then, I'll already be living in my car anyway.......... 
• On Wednesday night we invited friends over to watch Hamlet with us.  Josh had read Hamlet together with one of the kids and we had planned to watch it together a couple months ago.  Better late than never!  We only got through half of it though. We stopped when Hamlet (Derek Jacobi who is INCREDIBLE!) was telling Ophelia to get herself to a nunnery.  Long play!  So they are coming back over again tonight to finish it.
• Will has been doing his regular stuff:  mowing the lawn, helping to drive Becky and other kids places, practicing lots of music, hanging out with Sean, finishing up stuff for Berklee.  He's also dealing with the car.  The one that Hannah is going to drive to TX in a couple of weeks.  The one we just spent so much money on getting it a new engine!  Seems Will ran over something that somehow damage the oil pan (???) and that made the oil leak.  So it is back in the shop!!!
• Hannah is really talking about plans for law school.  She wants to work at NRLC next summer because it'll be election year stuff.  She's also getting ready to back to school.  She's going to be an orientation leader and she got her assignments, etc.  She's also in charge of the Faculty Talent Show which is something they do during. . . can't remember the name of what they call the week that everybody does crazy stuff to raise money for charity.  Hmm, might be called Charity Week!

The rainbow came out very faint in this picture, but you can still sort of see it.