Hello in there? *tap tap*

There I go again trying to disappear. I really want to work on posting more often. We finished The Merchant of Venice (all 4 of us). We attended Shakespeare Club and had a great meeting. We did reader's theatre, had discussion, the kids showed off their projects and then we talked about the next play we will be doing. It will be King Lear and it will be spread out over 2 months since we will be doing a little more with it. In the past reader's theatre has been a translation and not Shakespearean English. This time we will be using Shakespearean English in the script. We are trying to add more for the kids now that they have some Shakespeare under their belts. We will also be acting out more of the play instead of "just" reading it. We already have some props & everything. So in March we will do the first half and then we will finish up in April. This should be fun.

The kids had Harry Potter Club and participated in a living labrynith. They had a great time. This Friday they will go to movie night (yea, date night for mom & dad) and next month they have house games. HP Club is wrapping up for the year. After this they will have a Quidditch match at the park and then all the points will be added up and they get to go shopping with their points in the Magic Market. Part of their school work has been to work on HP projects.

Bowling is going very well. Alex's game has suddenly improved and he is having a game or two each week that is much higher than his average. Morgan did this as she improved too. Near the end of March they will both participate in the Pepsi tournament in Clarksville, TN. And then in April they will participate in the state bowling tournament in Chattanooga, TN.

As a family we've been perusing the seed catalogs and talking about what we want to plant in our garden. We are also talking about increasing our garden area. I think we will be ready to make an order at the end of this week. We will be getting some pecan trees to plant at GC's house. We have committed ourselves to our CSA for the spring/summer season. We have really enjoyed our first year (spring/summer & winter seasons) and look forward to the delicious goodness that we will receive from them. Our CSA is Avalon Acres and they are wonderful. Tim & Jen send our newsletters to stay in contact, are great people and have some great people that work with & for them.

We have been doing much better with our schooling organization and schedule. The kids are doing really good with doing their school work daily, much less fussing (phew). We are making progress with our science and history curricula. We seem to have no problem with math & grammar. Morgan has been reading like crazy (as usual) and Alex is increasing the amount he is reading. He still likes reading with someone or to someone but is getting better about spending some time reading by himself. As we head into spring we will be bringing more nature into our schooling. As a family we try to reduce the packaging & amounts of products, energy,etc that we use. We recycle what we can. We compost what we can. We buy our meat, eggs, and produce locally. We have taken steps to green up our energy and reduce our energy usage. We would *LOVE* to be able to incorporate solar power into our house. What we are focusing on right now is decreasing our energy usage some more. This spring we will be using our compost in our garden. Yea! We are getting the kids more involved in the garden this year. They are picking some things to plant and we are going to let them be in charge of taking care of that section of the garden. We are also getting a small fruit tree. Woo! This is all very important to us and we plan to keep doing all we can and moving forward with as much as we can.