All in a Day's Work

Ellie is running this funky virus where she has a headache, stomach ache and sore throuat, but only has a fever at night.  I kept her home Monday, and she dosed on the couch for an hour with rosy pink cheeks, then did great the rest of the day, only to falter and feel bad again last night.  I sent her to school, even though she had a fever last night, against my own will, but she was doing ok this morning and she has missed so much school from her asthma.  The nurse called and said Ellie had no fever, but a stomach ache, and she just wanted to let me know, but it is in Ellie's best interest to keep her at school.  So I did.  And I hated that feeling.  When I picked her up, she asked why I  didn't come get her. I had to give her the "That's Life" talk.  Somedays you just don't feel great, but you just have to get your "game on" and keep on.  She was ok with that.  :)  This picture is Ellie working on Math (she did school with me all day, since I had to teach the girls), and she learned to tell Time.  She had a blast, it was so much fun!  This age is great, because you are learning new things everyday that seem so monumental to them.  So neat. 

Whenever I need to make Erika happy, I go to www.deepspacesparkle.com, and find a project for her.  Today she needed something to look forward to after math, so we made these very cool oil pastel portraits from http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2009/01/modigliani-inspired-self-portraits/.  We watched a beautiful video of some of his paintings, and some were nude, so we had the discussion of lots of artists paint nude paintings.  The girls were so grossed out.  Erika asked, "Why are they all women?"  I look at her and say, "They're all men that feel they need to paint nude portraits..."  Just food for thought :)

This was the quietest night I remember in a long time.  Kind of nice, it was raining out, and we had a long, but fun, evening at their yoga class at the Y, then Ellie's Theater class at Dancekids.  The girls are on their 7th and last book of Harry Potter, and I had to capture this moment of them both reading at dinner.  I have to tell them to stop reading, when they are punished, they are banned form their books, the other day, Emily played hide and seek with some friends and hid so well just so she could read and she knew they wouldn't find her...  I have no idea what will ever keep their attention as much as these books, thinking about C.S. Lewis.  We'll have to see.