Lisa Zahn

Last night George was a guest with his former band, Ring of Kerry, at a big (sold out again! 700 seats at $16 each!) show at the Paramount Theatre here in St. Cloud. He really enjoyed playing with them for the night and was, rather, "glowing" about it this morning. I thought I'd post a video of them, taken three years ago at a Christmas show in Cambridge, Minnesota. Except for the new band member Karie, who I've heard is a fabulous singer, the show last night was probably very similar to the one three years ago. (One of George's beefs and reasons for leaving was that the guys aren't willing to learn new songs fast enough...) If you want to read an article from this week's St. Cloud Times about the show and band, click here . George was at the rehearsal pictured; you can see him playing his flute in front of the fireplace. Here's the website for the band, if you want to see what they're up to these days. (Warning: bad writing!)

When it comes time for the formal study of physics, Elijah will have such an intuitive knowledge of it. He has spent countless hours folding and flying paper airplanes, experimenting with different forms of propulsion like balloons. Airplanes are one of his passions! Here's Rose actively pursuing one of her passions-- music. She's composing her very own piano piece called The Little Ducks , an assignment for this week's lesson. We managed to squeeze in half an hour at the library today before homeschool "Y" in the afternoon. Next week I hope we can get lunch going earlier and spend more time at the library, but hey we're glad we got there at all. Thursdays will be the day we go, which is practical since it's on the way to the YMCA, where Elijah and Rose have what is basically phy. ed. for homeschoolers every Thursday from 2-4 p.m. They love it. Right now they're playing softball mostly, and both kids have several friends also doing the program. Toda...

I haven't felt much like posting lately. For one thing, we've been busy. Since we made the major transition to homeschooling, my life of course got more complicated. I do love being home with the kids in the morning, and working in the afternoon. While the kids do their thing, I can often get housework like a load of laundry and some cleaning done. This was actually harder when I worked three days a week 8:30-2:30. Mornings were taken up with getting the kids off to school and getting ready for work. Then after work I certainly didn't feel like doing housework. This left my two days off and weekends for housework. Well, I didn't always feel like doing housework on my only days off, and weekends are usually packed with family stuff. So, my house suffered and so did my pride, self-confidence, and feelings about my home environment. Now, I'm still working basically the same amount of hours but because I'm home in the mornings I can get at least small bits of housew...

George and Rose riding the log ride at the Mall of America We took a day to "splurge" Sunday and get out of the house. It was the last day of Spring Break and we'd mainly worked all week. So, we went to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota just an hour and a half from our house. We bought wristbands for the rides in the Park at MOA, window-shopped a little, and ate a really nice lunch at Napa Valley Grille (my favorite restaurant there, but then it may be the only one I've gone to at the MOA since we rarely get there). Oh, and we stopped at the Lindt Truffles shop for a few treats in the mid-afternoon. That store is amazing, wall to wall chocolate. Rose and George went on the most rides. You can see them above on the water/log ride. They also rode the Ripsaw Roller Coaster countless times. (Actually, Rose tried to keep count and they got up to 9 times on it she says...) I rode it once with her and my comment afterward was, "It was fine, but it wasn'...