Saturday, December 19, 2015

Middle Ages Core G Week 17 C Dec. 13-19, 2015

Middle Ages Core G

Week 17 "C",
Dec. 13-19, 2015
61th week on this core

  
This is the Beginning Band that Dd is in, and that Mrs. March conducts.  There were about 25 different groups doing their thing at the Christmas Performance on Thursday night.  

This is the Beginning Choir that Dd is in -- with her funny teacher, Mrs. Soy!  We didn't get a picture of her.

We have been going to that nice, LOCAL church still, and last Sunday they had a really nice Christmas program.  We really enjoyed seeing all the teenagers in the program that we hadn’t seen during the service.  We didn’t know there were that many teens in the church! Pleasant surprise!

I had been having some medical issues last week, and my doctor referred me to a specialist.  I had the exciting opportunity to have an EGD (upper scope) done on Tuesday.  Of course nothing is easy for me, and I had a reaction to the procedure…nauseous and sick for the whole day.  I think I will be getting back to my normal medicine and my insurance company will **finally** let me go back on the medication that my previous specialist had prescribed.  It really is such a sad state of our time that our insurance companies can literally keep us sick for years due to them not allowing us to take the specific medications our doctors prescribe to help us have ‘normal’ lives.  It is so hard to process the fact that insurance companies can say ‘no’ to us taking the medicines prescribed to us!!!  I know I am not the only person who struggles with this.  This was mostly a week dealing with my medical issues…such bad timing as I wanted to be working on Christmas stuff.

Last week was dentists, and this week was medical.  I hope that this will see us through the winter, as I don't like doing either (dental or medical) appointments during the winter due to snow.  Speaking of SNOW....oh my. did I have a horrible drive home this week!!!  I drove 45 minutes to drop Dd off and then had to drive home, and the whole time it had been snowing, harder every minute. It turned out to be three hours of the worst driving.  After I dropped her off and got back on the road and immediately almost got in an accident.  The cars in front of me couldn't stop and were swerving across the lines, and my brakes locked up, so I had to pump my brakes repeatedly (pray) and the car finally stopped.  Then I had to get on the highway and drive almost 30 miles in blinding blanket of snow, in which I couldn't see past about 200 yards.  I passed many cars in the grass along the way.  I drove between 25-40 mph on the highway...it was THAT bad!  That night I looked on the local internet news and saw reports on how bad the roads were--one local highway had 80 different cars in accidents!  I am so glad I was able to drive slowly enough to get home.  Going down the many hills was especially difficult as I couldn't keep my speed down without having to break!  Yes, this was super scary for me.  I went home and ate way too much chocolate!  Luckily by the time Dh came home the salt trucks had been out and the roads were safe.  I just happened to be out before the salt trucks and at the worst possible time!!!  But, I made it through by the grace of the Lord...so thankful (but still a bit shaken up!).

As far as our lessons---all the months of choir and alto sax practices lead up to the Christmas Program on Thursday night!!!!  It was an amazing show!  I was beyond impressed with all the different bands and groups!  It went from 7pm to 10 pm!  Each group did one song only. I will do a post specifically on it.







Bartholomew’s Passage (in process)
By Arnold Ytreeide
read by Pappa, which makes it even more special.
Ytreeide Advent Stories, 4 Volumes
There are four books in this series, and this is our third one.  The fun thing about this series is that each book has a main character, and he/she runs into the main characters from the other books in the series at some point!


The Hidden Treasure of Glaston by Eleanor Jewett: In Process
For some reason, I just didn't think I was going to like this book...and once again, my judging a book by it's cover has proved me wrong!  This is a very sweet story about a young man named, Hugh.  I think he is eleven years old when his father takes him to a monastery to stay as their family is being chased down due to their connection with the murder of a pope.  Soon the young man has two new friends, and they are on the search for the Holy Grail.  In the process, Hugh gets insight on where to dig--but instead of finding the Holy Grail, the spot is the resting place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere!  I really wasn't expecting King Arthur to be in this story! We just finished three weeks listening to the audio by Howard Pyle: King Arthur and His Knights---so we were pleasantly surprised to keep our King Arthur theme sticking around!    


Dd’s Reader:

Black Horses For the King by Anne McCaffrey: Completed



Dd’s FUN books:


Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery


Product Details

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 1: The Sword of Summer

Oct 6, 2015
Magnus Chase by  Rick Riordan



Busy Hands:

Crocheting a Christmas poncho for Momma.  




Cheesecake (all from scratch) on Tue.

Tuna Melts on Baggets on Tue.

Blueberry Muffins from scratch on Fri.


This is our music teacher, Mrs. March on the left of this picture.

Music:
Band & Choir practice on Wed.
Band & Choir Performance on Thurs. night

Daily Practice of both—each day she has 30 minutes of sax, and 15 of choir.
Plus, Dd is still playing on the piano each day.  There is a Hobbit song that she has figured out and seems to make a point to play it each day.

Progress on our house:
This week I didn't get anything done until the end of the week--but, Friday and Saturday I was able to get seven paintings and two dry-erase boards hung up.  We finally have some of "OUR" things up and on the walls!  It is amazing how much that has helped our house to look more like 'our' house now!  

I had also stored about 55 boxes of books in our spare bedroom and laundry room (mostly picture books).  I had thought we would get the Rec Room (in basement) done by now, and I would get those books in bookshelves in no time.  BUT, here it is the end of December and we haven't been able to fit in time to work on that room.  So, this week I moved ALL those boxes (again!) to a new spot so I could use the laundry room and spare bedroom.  It looks SO much better not having stacks of boxes all over the basement and I am so glad to be able to work on our laundry in the laundry room instead of the living room!!!  So, that is kinda progress! 


Japanese Sculpture Garden at Fredrick Meijer Garden Dec. 11th, 2015

Japanese Sculpture Garden at Fredrick Meijer 
Garden Dec. 11th, 2015

We made it back to the Fredrick Meijer Sculpture Garden, and this time spent as much time outside as we did inside.  They opened a new exhibit; called The Japanese Sculpture Garden that we hadn't walked through yet.  The weather being so warm; we decided this was the perfect day to wander around.



 








The "Japanese Garden" had LOTS of rocks, bamboo, evergreen's, waterfalls, moss, and interesting pairings of natural things.  They did a great job making the walking trails very exciting and varied.






The rock is engraved:
Come Out Bat
Birds, Earth Itself
Hauled off by Flowers

Many of the larger rocks had haiku's that were nature based.
 

In this picture you can see the glass buildings that house all the plants and tropical areas we so love.  This is a great picture of the glass buildings.  Remember all the pictures of the butterflies we shared in April---that was from inside these buildings.

This picture shows how they combine so many different types of rocks, granite, limestone, pebbles....etc. all together in such a lovely way.  They did this throughout the exhibit.







This hanging glass sculpture is by Dale Chihuly---he is/was a contemporary to my deceased sculpture teacher, Dale Eldred.  My professor invited Chihuly to visit our school and we got to meet him...  I love seeing his work.







We went through the Christmas tree section again, but I didn't want to show all the same types of pictures again, but couldn't leave out this one pic.



There are sculptures all around the place--I try to include a new one in my posts as I go along.  I don't think I've shared the picture of this Lipchitz yet:





There was a pottery gallery of  Asian ceramists on exhibit--we enjoyed seeing all their works, and are sharing a few of our favorites.





I always love seeing tea sets!

The following two are pictures of the same piece--one of the inside, and one of the outside.  

We just loved seeing ALL the sparrows & finches swarming around these feeders!
.......