Reviewing the Molecular Model of Photosynthesis with Zometools

I first had the kids make molecular models of photosynthesis back in 2017.

Look how wee and smol they were!

Both kids love biology, and it's one of the numerous science subjects that we're constantly studying (current science studies also include psychology, environmental science, geology, and meteorology). So it shouldn't be too surprising that this summer, during a study of wildflowers and trees, I wanted to review photosynthesis.

Fortunately, an activity that was awesome and fun two years ago is still awesome and fun, and kids who are two years older are can take that fun activity and make it even more sophisticated and instructive.

So out again came the Zometools, and once again the kids modeled the process of photosynthesis!

Here are the sets of Zometools that I own. I've had the Creator set for several years, and I bought the molecular modeling kit in 2016, Amazon helpfully informs me:


We use both of these kits often, often instead of various other types of modeling kits that we now don't have to buy.

Here, again, is the chemical formula of photosynthesis:

6CO₂ + 6H₂O + sunlight ------> C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂

Very simply (as in, there's lots more to it, but here's what you can easily model), carbon dioxide and water combine with sunlight to create glucose and oxygen. Here are the six carbon dioxide and the six water molecules:

In this production of photosynthesis, the role of sunlight will be played by a young Indiana Jones:

Our favorite little murderbrat also used to be so smol and wee!

Always destructive, though:

Seriously, that cat is DESIGNED for destruction!

Once you get the murderbrat distracted trying to murder something else, then you can take apart your carbon dioxide and water, and challenge yourself to reform it into glucose, with an oxygen remainder:

I love how much more complicated the glucose molecule is than the components that created it:

And look! Syd is also so impressed by how beautiful a glucose molecule looks in three dimensions that she's keeled over!

Either that, or Jones was busy murdering her...

How To Earn the Girl Scout Buckeye Stops Here IP Patch: It's an Ohio Unit Study for Teenagers!

I mention a lot that when I travel with the kids, one of my favorite things to do is help them earn related council's own fun patches and badges or retired IP patches. Having a project to complete on our trip encourages us all to do and experience things we wouldn't have chosen on our own, and having a goal in mind makes exploring historical, natural, and cultural sites more fun.

And since we homeschool, any one of these is a terrific spine for turning something into a miniature unit study. For the younger kid, this Ohio study for the purpose of earning the Council's Own Buckeye Stops Here IP patch was part of a US historical, cultural, and geographical study for eighth grade. For the older kid, it's the same, but her study is more comprehensive and long-term and will eventually count as part of one high school course that we're currently calling "America's Best Idea": A Multi-Disciplinary Study of the US and Its National Parks.

Pretentious-sounding high school class names are my specialty!

Here's the lovely Buckeye Stops Here IP patch:

Image credit here

And here's what a kid has to do to earn it!

Tangentially, many of these retired badges and IP patches can be challenging to find, and you'll pretty much never find them in a council store. The Girl Scout buy/sell/trade community is HUGE, however, and you can find just about anything in one of these spots if you search and ask and lurk and be ready to pounce when something is offered:

• GS Treasure Hunters
• Girl Scouts Stuff for Sale/Trade
• Badge Fairy (for Cadette badges that have the same graphic as Junior badges)
• GS Interest Project Page

I don't remember which of those Facebook groups these physical IP patches were offered on, but it was for sure one of them! I claimed two as soon as I saw the listing, paid the seller via Paypal, and had them in my hands within the week.

Here's what we did to complete the seven requirements for the kids to earn this IP patch:

Skill Builders #1

Ohio is known as the “State of Eight” for having 8 U.S. Presidents call Ohio home. Find at least ten references (street names, cities, parks, libraries, schools, highways, etc.) in your area which commemorate these 8 Presidents. If you are working as a group, your group could put all the girls’ lists together and see how many different ways your area is carrying on the legacy of the “State of Eight”. 

This step was in some ways a bust, but was actually really fun to try, and it encouraged the kids to be very observant and inspired a lot of discussion. Before we went on our Ohio road trip in the summer of 2019, I had the kids research and record the names of these eight US presidents who called Ohio home.

Then they forgot my instruction to pack the list.

So for that entire road trip, they observantly noted the names of streets, cities, parks, libraries, schools, and highways as we passed them, and kept saying a lot of things like, "Columbus! That's a famous name! Is that a president? ...wait, no. Oops!" and "Montserrat St... surely that's SOMEONE famous!" and "Indian Hill. That seems kind of racist, no?", etc. We had a lot of interesting discussions about why public spaces get named the way that they do (I horrified them by telling them about the KFC Yum! Center, bless its heart), what it means to leave your name as a legacy (did you know that the Wilder Medal, named for and first presented to Laura Ingalls Wilder, was recently-ish renamed because it's an unfortunate fact that Laura, though awesome in lots of ways, was also low-key racist?), and why the word "Indian," like all other exonyms, is problematic in certain ways.

We did NOT find ten discrete references to the eight presidents, but nevertheless, I called this step completed and well worth the effort.

Skill Builders #3

Learn about a “tragedy” in Ohio history from a book or website—maybe a school history book! Create a dramatic skit, poem, story, or song about it and share it with families or a class or another group. 

This step was such a bummer! We cut this one short because during the research stage, the younger kid basically IMMEDIATELY discovered Jeffrey Dahmer, who, it turns out, lived off and on in Ohio!

... awesome.

She started screaming, eyes glued to the laptop screen, and I essentially ripped it out of her hands and then gave the children a VERY elided summary of his Wikipedia page. 

Like, seriously, have you READ Jeffrey Dahmer's Wikipedia page? That whole story is BONKERS! Yikes, you guys. And I hope that those police officers who dismissed bystanders' concerns and literally gave an injured, kidnapped child back to his kidnapper to be tortured and murdered haven't had a good night's sleep since, because that was some epic workplace incompetence there, fellas.

The children did not include Jeffrey Dahmer in their Slides presentation on Ohio, and for Pete's sake they certainly did NOT create a skit or song about him and share it with anyone! But they can both name one cannibal serial killer now, so... that's pretty cool.

Technology #1

Every state has their famous inventors, including Ohio! Find out what inventions have been “born” in Ohio—are they still being used today or have they been replaced with more “modern” versions? 

For some of these steps, I asked the kids to combine the information that they were researching and prepare a final Google Slides presentation of their complete project. Thanks to previous visits to Dayton, the kids know quite a lot about one particular Ohio invention--

--and used several of these resources to find out about others:

I especially like children's non-fiction books because they're an easy jumping-off point for further research.

Also, the kids now know that it was an Ohio native who kind of invented the hot dog in the US, and I feel like they have successfully worked that tidbit into every single conversation that we've had since that discovery.

Technology #3

Collect 10 Ohio history facts (you could have these facts from school studies in history or civics). Create a timeline of the events and present the time line using one of the following methods: Poster, Scrapbook, Hyperstudio, Power Point. etc. 

The kids worked on this requirement at the same time that they worked on the list of inventions. I actually gave them each a checklist that asked them to note 10 important inventions or inventors and 10 interesting facts or historical events, so not everything in their presentation was a historical fact.

Service Projects #7

“Beautiful Ohio” and “Hang on Sloopy” are not the only songs associated with or written by Ohioans. Make a list of “Ohio Songs”, learn to sing or play them, and present a special “Ohio in Song” program for a group of senior citizens—bet they’ll sing along!

I think the kids liked this step the most of all! Spoiler alert: they did NOT present a program of Ohio songs for any of our Hoosier senior citizens. Instead, they created a shareable Spotify playlist of Ohio songs. And during this process, they discovered our collective FAVORITE SONG EVER.

The kids did this step before I'd started listening to Dolly Parton's America, or I would have recognized this song immediately, and immediately known its sub-genre:

That song, my Friends, is what's known as a murder ballad! There's a great analysis of murder ballads in the first episode of Dolly Parton's America, but when we first heard it, the kids and I were just like, "WUT."

And then we rewound it and played it again. Still crazy!!!

"On the Banks of the Ohio" was the finale song for their Ohio presentation, because of COURSE it was.

Career Exploration #1

Interview, shadow or research a female politician from Ohio. Find out what interested her about politics, what is interesting about her job, preparation she had for her office and aspirations she has about her role in changing the world for the better. 

Instead of this exact step, I asked the children to research the life of Victoria Woodhull for inclusion into their presentation. You might know her by the claim to fame that she's the first woman to run for the US presidency (years before women obtained suffrage, even!), but the kids also made the astounding discoveries that she super wanted people to live in communes and practice free love, she was jailed for publishing a lot of dirt on Reverend Henry Ward Beecher's alleged affair, and, alas, she thought eugenics was a great idea.

Damnit, Victoria! All you had to do was, you know, NOT THINK THAT THE CONTROLLED BREEDING OF LITERAL HUMAN BEINGS WAS AN AWESOME IDEA, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT AN AWESOME IDEA.

And as a kid she traveled in a family medicine show and did psychic readings on the rubes. Good times!

Career Exploration #3

Local newspapers are published in many communities. Some are daily, but most are weekly or even monthly in smaller communities. Locate a local newspaper reporter and interview him/her about their favorite stories about your community or invite them to attend your troop meeting to speak about their favorite local news stories. Maybe your troop could even get “in the paper”!

The kids have already done a few interviews and tours, etc., with TV and print journalists, so for this step I had them instead check out online newspapers from Ohio. 

Here's the Columbus Dispatch!

And the Akron Beacon Journal!

And the Brookville Star!

It's surprisingly interesting to browse through some random town's random local news. Their headlines are simultaneously slightly exotic and as mundane as ever. 

And just like that, there's seven activities completed and one IP patch earned! I was actually quite surprised at how many interesting things the kids found out, and how widely they ranged, intellectually, in pursuit of this patch. We learned about exonyms and eugenics, cannibal serial killers and murder ballads.

And hot dogs. DON'T forget about the hot dogs!

Logic Games and Puzzles That Teens Genuinely Like

Logic is something that I have been griping about since the beginning of our homeschool. I kept feeling, for years, like I wanted something "systematic," A baby debate club, perhaps, or a Socratic reasoning curriculum. Something!

I don't know why I felt this way, because otherwise, most of our homeschool years have been very much anti-packaged curricula. Following someone else's instructions or sequential study very rarely fit in with what, and how, my kids wanted to learn. So I just keep feeling like maybe I did want a formal sequence but also didn't want anyone else prescribing it for us but also didn't want to do it myself.

Instead, I regularly offered the kids logic games and puzzles.

And that's what I still do, now that they're teenagers, and honestly, it works great! It turns out that the kids practice plenty of logical reasoning with the essays they write and the presentations they create and the discussions that we have. If they ever want to engage in the systematic study of the form of arguments, they're well set up to do that. What I'm mostly interested in doing with them is the kind of logical reasoning that doesn't necessarily build up your formal knowledge of the form of arguments, but your deductive, critical thinking, analytical, and pattern-making skills.

And that's exactly the kinds of skills that you improve when you regularly play logic games and work logic puzzles!

Even better is that lots of logic games and puzzles are super cheap or free. Most of ours come from thrift stores, yard sales, and our local libraries.

Even EVEN better is that they can take as little or as much time as you need. The kids and I can while away a full hour on a school day, or just a few minutes.

Even even EVEN better is that they're really fun! We do logic games and puzzles every week, but the kids don't always notice that they're part of school, because sometimes we do them in the evenings or on the weekends as part of our family time.

Here, then, are our favorite logic games and puzzles. We don't cycle through them with any sort of system--rather, often we'll get super invested in one particular type of puzzle or game and do it a LOT, then move onto something else, or I'll pull out something that the kids haven't worked with in a long time and they'll fall in love with it all over again, etc. The list below, though, are the ones that we return to most often:

New York Times crossword

Matt and I work the New York Times crossword daily in our newspaper, saving them to work later if we don't have time to do them that day. This year, we started setting aside the Monday crossword for the kids, which means that on some evenings, we can all sit at the kitchen table, wine in a couple of glasses, and trade the crossword around. 

Matt and I switch off when one of us is stuck, and when a kid gets stuck, she'll hand her crossword to one of us and we'll solve a few before handing it back to her for another go.

For larger sets, I bought Matt a couple of the New York Times crossword omnibuses--particularly Thursday, which is always the "tricky" puzzle!

The puzzles increase in difficulty throughout the week, so you can buy an omnibus of just the Monday puzzles and have a whole set that's perfect for a young teenager:

every single ThinkFun game

Every single time I see a ThinkFun game at a thrift store or yard sale, I buy it, and I have never been disappointed. The kids' favorite ThinkFun game, by FAR is this one:

We don't own it, but every couple of years I check it out of the library, the younger kid zones into it until she solves every single puzzle, and I return it and check it out a couple of years later when it's brand-new again. As a matter of fact, guess what's waiting for Matt to pick up from our local university's library right this minute (along with two different botany ID kits, a portable weather station for an APES microclimate project, and a human body model that I want to check out as a possible resource for our biology study)?

One thing that I DON'T like about these games is that they're all plastic, and lots of it. I like to think that we somewhat mitigate that by buying them secondhand, and keeping them in good condition so that we can pass them on again someday.

Here are the ThinkFun games that the kids have played and that I know they love!



And here are the ones that are still on my wishlist to try out someday!

Sudoku

The younger kid and I are the ones who super love Sudoku, but the older kid is pretty game to try one out if I put it in front of her. Sudoku also comes in our newspaper every day, and the younger kid can handle the Monday and Tuesday games pretty handily. I've also got a gameboard version of Sudoku that I don't adore and won't live through our next purge, but it's a different setup and so feels novel to the kids whenever we pull it out:

I don't own this Colorku game, but it's been on my Amazon wishlist for the kids for practically their whole lives, lol, and if I can ever find THAT at a thrift store or yard sale, I'd replace our current Suduko game board with it in a hot minute. I like that is more lovely, has a much smaller profile, and divorces the reasoning skill from the number system:

manipulatives

The kids have grown out of their childhood love of pattern blocks, but our love of tangrams is nine years strong by now! Miraculously, we STILL have all of the pieces of that tangram-a-day calendar, and it still gets played with.

Our love of pentominoes is more recent, but they remain a favorite, as well.

Similar to these is one of the younger kid's favorite games: 

I bought it for her for Christmas a couple of years ago, and she loves it so much that I've been on the lookout for other Brainwright games, but nothing has come on the secondhand market for me to try, alas.

games

I don't think we're social enough, because as a family, we don't really enjoy a lot of whole-family games. The kids went through the odd obsession with a particular game as they grew, most notably that year that I think we played Sorry! several times a day, every single day, but now whenever I suggest a game, if I don't agree to Cards against Humanity both kids lose interest and instead just humor me... with a varying amount of good humor. 

But occasionally, if I ask just one of them, I can get them to play happily with just me. I managed to get the younger kid as into Blokus as I am for quite a while, and that was AWESOME. We prefer this two-person travel game setup, and at one point I actually managed to find a second set of pieces being sold in a bag in a thrift store, so now we have enough pieces to have pentominoes, too! The younger kid and I also like to play SET together, although frankly, she prefers to play the online version by herself, humph!

The older kid has been my chess buddy for nigh upon a decade by now, and she'll also happily play Scrabble with me whenever I want. But honestly, we'd all prefer to play solitaire games or puzzles while in the same room, chatting occasionally and listening to music. Shrug!

puzzle books from The Critical Thinking Company

When I was a kid in pull-out gifted classes in my local public school system, Mind Benders were my FAVORITE thing. I devoured them, and if I'd known that they came in real puzzle books that you could buy, and not just in mimeographed hand-outs given to me by my teacher whenever I looked especially bored, I would have been asking for them for every Christmas and birthday. 

Neither of the kids love Mind Benders quite as much as I still do, but they still like to work them occasionally. What the kids really like, though, is for me to lay out a whole assortment of puzzle books from The Critical Thinking Company, including my favorite Mind Benders, so they can choose whatever style of logic puzzle they feel like working right that second. I get out a whole pile of puzzle books and put on some music, and it's a lovely way to spend an afternoon!

Here are our favorites, although don't necessarily use these specific levels as your guide:



To me, the variety is the best part; I like to see what types of puzzles each kid is drawn to, and it might lead me to sneakily assign more of that, or specifically something else, at a later date.

Especially now that the kids are getting so grown up and ever more ready to go off on their own, I think that doing puzzles and logic games is a nice habit to enforce, completely apart from the goal of advancing their logical reasoning and deduction skills. Brain games like these will keep their brains strong as they grow old, you know, when I'm not around to remind them to eat blueberries and wear helmets when they ski and memorize poetry.

Hopefully, Matt and I will keep remembering to do all that stuff as WE grow old, too!

It's Possible to Have an Entire Nutcracker-Themed Homeschool Semester (Ask Me How I Know This...)

Because #nutcrackerlife, amiright?

Seriously, all fall and into the winter, when the kid wasn't doing this--

--she was thinking about it.

How do you get a homeschooling kid to think about something that's not her right-this-minute passion?

Friends, you don't. Instead you just... lean into it. That's the phrase we're using these days for just giving into what you've gotta do instead of griping about it, right?

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to sneakily sneak real-world study skills, handwork, knowledge-building, and practical life activities into a kid's Nutcracker obsession, whether she's a tiny angel bringing light back into the world, a tin soldier hardened from a lifetime of fighting in the mouse wars, a deadly assassin/Baroque-costumed child of the Creature Known Only as Mother Ginger, or a young party guest/spy attending a Christmas party and low-key planning to steal a certain magical nutcracker that turns into a real person and controls an army of ensorceled children and fights giant mice for you.

First step: read the book:



It's plenty weird, and there's a LOT to talk about. There's a ton of plot that's completely different from any staging of the ballet that you've ever seen, so you can use it as a reference to compare to all of the further picture book and theatrical productions that you feel like watching.

Because you should read and watch as many different versions of the Nutcracker as your kid can stand! Syd has gotten progressively more interested in this as she's gotten older, and this year I swear we watched the first act and at least the overture and Mother Ginger scenes from the second act in every Nutcracker ballet available on YouTube--even the desperately amateur productions, bless their hearts. There are a lot of interesting aspects of how different productions are choreographed and staged, and once you've seen a few so that you've got a baseline of a typical Nutcracker production, the ones that have made atypical choices are really fun to find! Did you know that the Bolshoi Ballet casts an actual kid as the Nutcracker doll? There's also a production somewhere in which the mouse soldiers are small children, and some of them get killed during the battle, fall over dead onto their backs on stage, and are then dragged off stage by their fellow mice! It's BONKERS!!!

There's also a production in which the soldiers, including Fritz, LOSE THE BATTLE and are carted off stage in an actual cage. Later during the second act, when the Arabian dance begins, the dancing couple come on stage dragging Fritz by a chain that's attached to a collar around his neck! Because apparently the child soldiers who were captured were SOLD INTO SLAVERY?!?!?!?!?

See? Fascinating stuff!

I also really like these other retellings of the Nutcracker story or the Nutcracker ballet:



Most of those are picture books with beautiful art, and wonderful inspiration to draw your own  magical Nutcracker scenes--or perhaps create your own picture book/stop-motion film/shoebox diorama/puppet show/live reenactment?

There are also a ton of backstage, behind-the-scenes resources that can fascinate kids. Syd's absolute favorite ballet book is this one--



--about a kid cast as Clara in the NYC production of The Nutcracker. If your kid actually dances ballet, though, you do NOT want to feed her only on books about the kids who are cast as the lead roles, because only a couple of kids a year get those roles and it's already going to suck bad enough when it's not your kid. Therefore, MY favorite backstage Nutcracker book is this one:



It's about a kid who gets the lousiest part in the whole production, feels lousy about it forever, and then doubles-down into it and learns to find its magic. It's a far more realistic version of what it's like to dance in the Nutcracker, with a healthy, wholesome message.

That being said, it is really fun to watch backstage documentaries. Most do follow the kids cast as Clara, but documentaries often give a more well-rounded picture of the production, so they're not as focused on how great it is to get the great roles. Syd and I watch all of the Royal Ballet videos:



Boston has some crazy sets, so this one is fun!



Here's a video all about the Mouse King, who should obviously be everyone's favorite character!



We also liked this series focused on Nutcracker auditions:



It's related to a bunch of other audition and ballet school and rehearsal videos that Syd also likes. There are a lot of interesting Russian ballet behind-the-scenes videos!

So you've got the story to study, you've got the dance to study... and you've got the music! If you think that the Nutcracker is not playing constantly in our house from October through December, then you... well, you are wrong, because it is playing constantly in our house from October through December. Honestly, it's playing for a good portion of August and September, too, if you count audition prep.

Syd sometimes lets me jazz it up by playing Duke Ellington's version, instead:



Kid-friendly composer studies can actually be challenging to find, because most children's studies don't include classical music. Charlotte Mason DOES, fortunately, so there are some resources around. Here's a good template for a composer study, complete with lots of free handouts, that includes Tchaikovsky.

This video is also interesting, because it takes one song and shows you the main instrument playing at each moment:



This CD doesn't tell you a ton ABOUT Tchaikovsky, but it includes a lot of his music and it's really fun!



So now your kid has studied the story, the dance, the music... but what's the weirdest part of the Nutcracker?

The NUTCRACKER!!!

Seriously, it's a ballet about a NUTCRACKER. My kid doesn't even like nuts, and yet she owns something like sixteen nutcrackers by now.

Mind you, none of them are functional, but there you go.

We like this How It's Made video about the traditional nutcracker form:



And this is an interesting video on the history of the nutcracker and how it all got wrapped up in Christmas, anyway:



And, of course, you know that this would not be a kid-friendly unit in MY homeschool if it did not include a very impractical video of something over-the-top. We are NOT going to be building this giant nutcracker that can crack coconuts for us:



Instead, here are some nutcracker crafts that you CAN build while watching ballet videos or listening to Tchaikovsky!

• stenciled banner. I like the idea of a nutcracker banner as holiday decor, and I'm thinking that felt (which I have a ton of) would be just as nice of a penant material as the burlap that the tutorial calls for. You can find lots of nutcracker-related stencils online (I think one that featured a timeline of Syd's participation would be really cute!), but a good art project would be teaching the kids how to make stencils and then getting them to freehand some for this banner.
• real nutcracker. We do not have the equipment for this, but if I can ever access it, this is going to be one of the first projects that the kids and I make together!
• popsicle stick nutcracker. If you don't have the miniature popsicle sticks that this project calls for, you can cut the larger ones to size. 
• nutcracker cube critter. These little dudes remind me of the LEGO brickheads, but you cut and assemble them from cardstock. 
• clay nutcracker and angel. This is a very accessible tutorial, but if you're an able crafter and want to use polymer clay, you can search for some very intricate and elaborate tutorials on YouTube. Or just wing it!
• clothespin soldiers. You can reenact the entire battle scene!
• guided drawing with nutcrackers. I love this art activity! You can make it as simple or as in-depth as suits you.

If you're attending the ballet, I like a lot of the activities from this educator's guide to the Nutcracker. This one, though, has activities that you can print-out--maybe you can use it to keep a kid entertained before the show starts?

It's strange to think of what a small part of Syd's entire life these childhood Nutcracker seasons will be, considering what a large part of her life they take up right now. Ballet isn't really one of my own big interests, but I never regret the time that it takes, or how deeply I have to dive, myself, to help a kid dive deeper into her passions.

Anyway, now that Nutcracker is over for a few months, it's time for Syd to immerse herself into her designs for our town's big Trashion/Refashion Show. No regrets on this project, either, but just between us, I like Nutcracker more than I like fashion design!

P.S. If you like study resources and weird videos of people making giant nutcrackers and cracking coconuts with them, you'd like my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Have the Best Winter Break

1. Survive Nutcracker season!

Considering that there's probably only one kid in the entire production who gets exactly the part she'd always dreamed of, and it's never my kid, Nutcracker has a lot of hard lessons to teach about grace, professionalism, work ethic, grit, perseverance, poise, and how even if you hate the ginger wig the MOST, the ginger wig is always assigned to you because it suits your complexion the best.

Fortunately, Nutcracker also teaches that even if you don't get your heart's greatest desire, you can still have a truly great experience. Because your friends are with you, and you still get to dance!

Next adventure post-Nutcracker: pointe shoes!!!

2. Play in the snow.

Thank goodness for this sole December snowfall, because it was something like 50 degrees on Christmas Day!

3. Choose an absolutely glorious Christmas tree. 

Will dreamed of getting the tallest Christmas tree we'd ever gotten, so we measured the height of the highest point of our vaulted ceiling (10 feet!), took her to the tree farm, and let her take her pick.

I wasn't enthusiastic about the idea, but I LOVE this tree more than any we've ever gotten. I love it so much that I delayed putting away our Christmas decorations (they're still up!), just because I don't think that I'm going to be able to stand taking it down.

4. Watch a lot of movies, and take a lot of naps. 

For probably the first time ever, we did not travel anywhere for Christmas break, not even for one day. We did a couple of errands and a few chores, sure, but we also watched a lot of bad disaster movies, and a lot of bad Christmas specials, and while we watched them, some/most/all of us dozed. It. Was. GLORIOUS.

5. Play a lot of games. 

We always deal Luna in on Cards against Humanity, and the above photo commemorates that on this memorable night--SHE WON!!! It turns out that in our family, apparently you can win more often by having the most random answer than you can by having the most apropos one...

6. Make epic gingerbread houses. 

 

The kids designed their own gingerbread houses this year (don't tell them that this was sneakily educational!), and I found my new favorite gingerbread house and royal icing recipes. 

For the second year in a row, Will's house fell completely apart and had to have a dinosaur added to the scene to make sense of its shambles. Next year, I think I'm just going to give her the hot glue gun...

7. Drink cocktails. 

Matt always makes me something really fun and really chocolatey!

8. Do a puzzle. 

We LOVE puzzles, but we hadn't worked one since June, because we were afraid that the murderbrat would bat all the pieces off the table. He didn't, but he DID insist on sitting on top of fully half the puzzle, including every piece we needed right then, and supervising us.

9. Decorate cookies. 

I always get stressed out on Christmas Eve with the cookies. We make too many, and then I convince myself that we haven't made enough, and then I discover that I'm out of powdered sugar, and then we go to get some but all the stores are out of powdered sugar, too, because it's Christmas Eve, and then I get panicky that Christmas isn't magical without powdered sugar and the children aren't going to make happy memories, and then Matt makes me sit down and hands me a cocktail with extra chocolate, and we all eat a lot of (unpowdered) sugar, and it's magical and happy memories are made.

Also, Will made jam-filled sandwich cookies, and they were EVERYTHING.

10. Speaking of sugar... have a little more!

Santa spoils those kids...

I have had my fair share of Turkey 'n' Torture holidays, and I know it's okay if Christmas isn't magical and you're just excited to get past it, but this was one holiday that that I am legitimately sad to have finished. It WAS magical, you guys. It was fun and stress-free and restful. Out of 43 years of Christmas holidays, this one was my favorite:

Now... back to work!

PSA: You Can Start the New Decade Whenever You Want

I don't even know why I have to tell people this, except it turns out that a real, live Calendar Police Officer lives in my hometown. Can you imagine how excited I was to read this Letter to the Editor in my local newspaper?

Spoiler Alert: I was not at all excited.

You're going to be so sad, Eddie, because that actually IS an opinion, and not a very sound one, either.

Because, you know, math exists.

So here's a run-down of the "controversy" (and OMG, did we seriously not JUST do this ten years ago, and then ten years before that, as well, only more hysterically?):

It's the fault of early Medieval Europeans, who, unlike a lot of the rest of the world, had no concept of zero. They didn't have a word for it, and they didn't have a number for it. So when a sixth-century monk, Dionysius Exiguus, sort-of invented an entire calendar while he was actually trying to figure out what date Easter, a moveable feast, would be in the future, he just went from 1 BC to 1 AD, with no 0 in between.

Except, you know, OBVIOUSLY ZERO EXISTS. And OBVIOUSLY WE MEASURE TIME USING ZERO. Your newborn baby isn't instantly one year old the second it's born; there's a whole year zero for it to get through before it gets to have its smash cake. Friends, that's just how time works, and also common sense, and you don't have to live your life celebrating every decade a year too late just because everyone in Europe 1,500 years ago gave babies their smash cakes before they were old enough to eat solid food.

If you must have everything in even tens, and can't possibly fathom celebrating our 202 decade of the Common Era if 201 decades have not completely passed, then you can also just say hey, Father Exiguus didn't know what zero was, so his first decade (or first century--take your pick!) only had nine years, the silly dude. Because ZERO IS ACTUALLY REAL.

Or you could use the mathematically correct non-religious calendar system called Astronomical Year Numbering. It includes the year zero and then starts negative numbers. It's a real calendar--endorsed by astronomers, even!--and fully stands up to Calendar Police scrutiny.

OR you could utilize yet another piece of practical common sense and remember that the word decade literally means "ten years." It does not mean any specific ten years. You can start counting the next ten years whenever you flipping want!  You can start counting a new decade this year, in fact, when common usage dictates that it makes sense!

Or you can start counting it next year, if you super want to do that. I actually don't care, as long as you don't write a letter to the editor of my local newspaper acting like you're the Chief of the Calendar Police and I don't know things. Dude, as soon as I finish reading the articles, I do the New York Times crossword AND the Sudoku. I know things!

Anyway, Happy New Year! We didn't have as splashy of a celebration as we did a decade ago--

--(how on earth did I have enough energy a decade ago to turn New Year's Eve into a weekend getaway?!? My New Year's Resolution this year is to spend more time channeling the Julie of 2010!), but we had a lovely evening together, Matt woke me up just in time to ring in the new year as a family, and I'm looking forward to a happy 2020.