Sick Sparkle

Sparkle is rarely sick, but when she does get sick, she gets really sick. She has spent the last two days on the sofa hardly eating a thing. She even turned down strawberry jello. I dug up our old sippy cups, trying to encourage her to take some fluids.

Needless to say, she hasn't done any school.



On the other hand, when she had enough energy, she poured through such schoolish books as "George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt" by Lucy & Stephen Hawking, and "The Story of the World" by Susan Wise Bauer.

Dino Fossils

I really like our docent at the science museum. He doesn't do anything official with our group, but he always recognizes us and says hello when we're there. On our most recent trip, he gave my girls an impromptu tour of the jewelry vault and show them the Josephine Tiara through his magnifying glass. He also showed them some dino stuff.

Here's Sparkle with fossilized dino poop.


Here's Glitter with a replica of a t-rex tooth.

Glitter had a party

Glitter had a party and I forgot to take pictures.


One of our family traditions is balloons for birthdays. We still have a few of the balloons kicking around the house. They find their way into the strangest places. I don't throw them out until they deflate naturally.

After too many fiascos involving birthday cake coming in close contact with the floor, I no longer make birthday cakes. Glitter wanted a Barbie cake, so it all worked out.


Glitter finally finished writing her thank you notes and mailed them off. It took a few days because I only had her do one thank you per day. (I'm not up to supervising more than that!)

Sparkle Cooks

A little over a week ago I was going out for supper with some friends. Wander asked if I would still be making supper for the family. Sensing a possible out, I said that I could throw something together if he didn't feel like cooking. Wander then suggested that I could make a simple meal of stew, salad, and bread.

So, I got Sparkle to make supper that night. Although I supervised, she did everything from turning on the range to cutting the carrots. I only helped with microwaving the bread, since she isn't tall enough to reach inside the microwave without a stepstool.

Sparkle was quite proud of the meal she made. It's nice to know that if push comes to shove, I can depend on Sparkle to feed the family.

I'm a lousy writer

I'm a lousy writer, and I don't particularly enjoy writing. Ideas come to my head in a jumble. I rarely feel like sorting out the ideas and organizing them. I have been blessed with a decent sense of spelling and grammar, but that's about it.

I have come to view good writing as a combination of (1) mechanics, (2) ideas, and (3) organization. Right now Sparkle's writing is in the stage of learning the mechanics: spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, etc. This is the area of writing where I feel most comfortable. I have less experience with idea generation. Possibly this is why I became a technical writer: I didn't have to come up with original ideas; I learned the concepts from the SMEs. Organization is either easy for me (the answer seems obvious) or difficult (I struggle to find a different way to organize the information).

I am sometimes tempted to add vocabulary, sentence fluency, and voice, as separate qualities of good writing, but I don't. For me, vocabulary and sentence fluency go hand and hand with ideas and organization. Part of a good idea is using the right word. Part of organization is arranging ideas within and across sentences.

I have learned *how* to write a finished piece. (That's how I got the BA & MS degrees.) I can say why a piece of writing works or doesn't work. When I'm motivated, I can even whip a passage into shape. I just choose to not do so.

I plan on teaching Sparkle (and Glitter) to write through these concepts (grammar, mechanics, ideas, organization, vocabulary, sentence fluency). I have picked English programs that support these concepts: dictation, MCT, BraveWriter, Killgallon, The Paragraph Book.

Oh dear, this is such a rambling post. I said I'm a lousy writer. But, I think in words and sometimes typing a bunch of *&^%**@# helps me think. You are not obliged to read any of this.