Math Winners

In March, Haleigh and Carter's school had Math March Madness where they logged the number of minutes spent each day doing math activities and homework.  They were both determined to do as many minutes per day as they could squeeze in to earn a few things:  If the whole school reached 150,000 minutes then the principal would stay on the roof for a whole day.  That was reached after about a week and two days ago he spent the day on the roof throwing candy down to the classes that came to see him. The second goal was to reach 250,000 in week two which the school did and so soon, the principal will be found in a dunk tank.  For each class, the boy and girl with the most minutes logged were chosen for a special field trip to Pizza Pie Cafe for lunch with the principal.  Carter and Haleigh couldn't wait to surprise each other with the good news...they both had won for their class.  Doug met them to be chaperone and they ate and ate till they could eat no more.  See Carter's blog for a description of the event at http://carterinthedell.blogspot.com/2011/03/pizza-pie-cafe.html .  They came home with gift bags from the PTA filled with coupons and gumballs too.  Let's see if April can top that!

Their pass to board the bus for Pizza Pie Cafe!

Getting Ready for Baby #5

Our New Side Hobbies

As I've been traveling, I needed something to do.  With no time to go to the library for a book on tape.  (I know...shame on me) I decided one day that it was also shameful that I don't know anything about the Beatles.  Here's what I knew.  There were four of them.  They were from England.  They sang Imagine.  Apparently, Doug informed me that the last one was incorrect.  So the little I knew wasn't even accurate.

So, on my drives around the state to see teachers, I have been informing myself of the Beatles Anthology of Music.  There are so many of my friends that are HUGE Beatles fans that decided I better learn a thing or two.  Like did you know that they collectively were named by Time as some of the top 100 influential people in the 20th century.

I watched "A Hard Day's Night" and thought it had a definite vibe to it.  I felt like wearing turtleneck or something.  Here's a little story of the history of the title from Wikipedia:

The movie's strange title originated from something said by Ringo Starr, who described it this way in an interview with disc jockey Dave Hull in 1964: "We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day...' and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, '...night!' So we came to A Hard Day's Night."




I kept thinking of the Monkee's which I had watched in my childhood, which definitely mimicked this movie and has been said to have influenced a lot of 1960's spy movies.  I'll have to look into that more since I'm also an expert on James Bond flicks from my dad.

I hadn't known that "A Hard Day's Night was nominated for two Academy Awards; for Best Screenplay (Alun Owen), and Best Score (Adaptation) (George Martin)."


Now I need to learn about the later years...I've heard I need to learn about Abbey Road, Yellow Submarine, India...Anything else?


Doug has similarly decided in the past few months to become more informed about chess.  I wanted to as well, but my brain just can't wrap itself around it.  I've tried, I really have.  He is getting quite good though and is now looking for his next side project.  I think he's going to go back and do more family history.  He's been searching for birth certificates, etc.  The fun thing about that project is that once you start, it snowballs fast as though it takes on a life of it's own.  Last year he reconnected with many relatives in Indiana (where's he's originally from and was born), and is still searching for a few other close relatives