Spring Break '10 and Word Power

The girls are out of school this week. Hooray! Its so fun to have them home with me. We won't be going on vacation till later this month. Instead, we're having a staycation. Nothing too exciting... out to lunch a few times, the aquarium on Friday and we're hoping for a cousin sleepover too. Utah weather can be temperamental in the spring, we all know this, so we didn't make any outdoor plans. We weren't thinking it would be this fickle!

This is what our neighborhood looked like Tuesday morning.

Our trees and shrubs were heavy laden with wet snow.

Even our patio furniture is tired of getting snowed on.

A pair of finches were glad we still had seed in the feeder.

On Monday, we finished the fifth and last book in the Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull. This has been a great read aloud series. Sarah's comment was, "This is so much better than those Twilight books" (she's read the first two) "Fablehaven beats them into the ground with a stick!" I concur. Sarah took this pic of me from across the room and in low light, hence the grain. We were getting close to the end and things were getting tense!

One of the things we like about Brandon Mull is he doesn't dumb down anything, even though these are books for young adults. In this picture, I'm trying to figure out the pronunciation of a word. Stumped? Possibly. If a word comes along that I think the girls might not be familiar with, I stop and ask them if they know what it means. Halberd? Anyone?

Here's a quote from near the end of the book:

"...they carried slender spears and swords, and gave haughty looks to the astrids"

I asked Em if she knew what 'haughty' meant.

"Umm. Does it mean that they think the astrids are hotties?"

Oh Emily. What would we do without you?

Happy spring break all!