So part of why I’ve dropped off the blogging map is due to the vast majority of my brain being swallowed by the all-consuming endeavor known as homeschooling, part of it is due to Facebook making it easier to post one line synopses of what is going on at any given second (and really who doesn’t want to read another status update that says, “Oh no! Henry just spilled cereal on the carpet” or similar?), and part of it is because I’ve started working on long-form writing projects.

For half a dozen years+, I wrote the opening to Gymboree News every week and I have always been pretty good at short form writing (which I define as “whatever is small enough that I can just wing it as I write without having to organize around a coherent plot”). However, ever since I’ve known George he has wanted to make movies. Small problem, he’s not much of a writer of any ilk, which means his film masterpiece would need to be written by someone else.

Confession: I’ve thought for several years that writing for him would be lovely, but oh the work involved in a) learning how to do so, and b) actually doing so! The last couple years I have slowly been working through the learning part. There are tons of good books out there, and I can now pretty well pick a movie apart for story structure, movie theme and how well the film exposits that theme, what made the movie work/not work, what each scene is doing in the film and how it contributes to character development/plot, and a few other important items.

I have four stories that I liked well enough to start working on in my script software, Movie Outline 3, one of which is actually all the way outlined and maybe 1/3 the way through the first draft but is probably too girly for George, one of which I got stuck on and am going to need to chew on for awhile before heading back to it, one of which I like very much and which, hmmmm, now that I think about it might be able to be combined a little bit or merged into #4 which George actually came up with the inspiration for and is the one I am currently actively working on.

Don’t get all excited. You will not see any of these in the theater next summer. I’m starting to realize that perhaps what everyone says is true, that the hardest part about getting a script done is getting the stupid script done!! It’s just slogging through all the work and revision and throwing things out and rewriting until it all actually works. This takes large chunks of time which can be committed to linear thought. This is something of which I am chronically in short supply. Plus, when this type of time block is available, I typically need to do things with it such as plan my education attack on my children (bwahahahaha!). Stupid priorities.

Anyway, this all means that unless I get an all expenses paid trip for a month or two by myself for maybe with either George or my SIL Masha, who is also writing and extremely helpful for bouncing ideas around with, to somewhere far away and which also includes a replacement me being provided at home to take care of all the practical things I do every day, this screenwriting process is likely to be lengthy.

So, in addition to explaining to my three readers my very tedious screenplay endeavors, I know several others of you, particularly at church, are working on your own projects. To be helpful, which I have decided to try to be on a once-a-month, trial basis, I am going to start blogging about my screenplay stuff when I need an excuse to procrastinate actually working on my screenplay stuff or when I get stuck and need to write about why I’m stuck so I can figure it out. Also, I will be posting links to other sites, programs, books, software, etc. on a sparkly new, custom Screenplay menu on the sidebar which so far consists of two links and this post.

Here is the real reason for this post, which I originally intended to be two sentences long: George got me hooked on a brilliant site by a couple of established screenwriters, and it has a whole series of very informative articles. It’s called WordPlayer, a title which makes me jealous just by its very existence. Enjoy!

Rachel

“Oh bother,” said Winnie-the-Pooh, “whatever shall I do? I have to many thoughts floating in my head and they are all running into each other, making a terrible racket.” Well, that’s probably what he would have said if he were a 36-year old woman who looked like me.

Since my Gymboree website closed down two years ago, I haven’t done much blogging (sorry, Grandpa). Part of the problem has been indecision. At any given time, I am in the middle of a few major projects and several minor ones, and I can never decide whether the major ones should be spun off to their own blogs or not. So far my strategy has been to start a new, single-topic blog for homeschooling, say, post once, and then let it sit there for a year and a half before finally deciding to let the domain name drop. Good plan, no?

So after having several silly, disposable blogs littering the internet and the dustbin of my brain, I have decided to just use this one blog that already has articles on it. At any given time, I am working on such disparate items as a) trying to find a house (again!!), b) trying to educate small children so they don’t grow up into easily swayed imbeciles, c) long-form writing projects for which I am still in the “research and education” phase with a little bit of actual writing, d) interior design research for the house I someday hope to live in for more than three years, e) organizing the home I currently live in and cooking for myself and the nine other people who live here, and f) trying very hard not to turn into any sort of –icidal maniac whatsoever. I plan to now clog up this blog with rambling blobs of mediocre, probably un-proofread writing on any/all of these topics.

Maybe I’ll see if there’s a way to make an RSS feed by blog category so people who are interested in screenwriting don’t have to listen to me complain about the way Zillow simultaneously manages to have both the most current and out-of-date listings data of any housing place on the net. That is not a project for today, however, since it has the air of an item which should be easily scratched off the agent in three minutes or so, I know it will take a least three hours and I have other things to do. So now you know just how important your RSS feed comfort really is to me.

I am, however, going to go reorganize my blog categories a tiny bit and post a link to a great screenwriting site that my husband got me turned on to. Then – up and at ‘em! Thank you for sitting through the entirety of this terribly dull informational message.

Rachel

We have six kids. That fact alone prompts stares virtually anytime we venture out with the whole group, but this week my charming nieces and nephews are in town from Florida, so Thursday evening we had the four of them spend the night with our six kiddos and then Friday we took all ten children (ages 3 to 13) on a wee field trip to our local museum of science and industry (OMSI).  

The lady at the ticket counter didn’t seem to think two to ten was high enough adult/child ratio. What she didn’t know was that there are tricks to taking bunches of kids out. Hehe. So here is a brief tutorial of how to take ten kids on an outing, which I’m sure you all do on a regular basis and will no doubt find completely invaluable.

1. Pick really nice kids to take. If you don’t know any nice kids, rent some. They’re worth the extra money. We chose these (in case you’re wondering why there are only nine here, Henry didn’t quite make it into this shot):

2. Own or steal a huge van:

3. Make sure there are two or more adults (or a couple of teenagers). Very important!

4. Fortify yourself. And no matter what they say, do not let them con you into buying them any of this:

5. Get there as close as possible to when your destination opens. Get them out of bed, stuff them with food. Then leave. Every moment you delay is one fewer minute you get to spend doing something fun with them before they get hungry, tired, or both and turn into lunatic. You do not want to be around when that happens to ten children. Think Zombieland: (and yes, this is actually my arm and watch).

6. Make them wear hats (or headscarves for the girls in the summer). Yes, you guys think I’m just hat-obsessed for no logical reason whatsoever, but guess what? It makes the kids infinitely easier to spot in a crowd. When I look around, instead of having to scan every head for hair and faces that look like the ones I want, I can skip most of them and just zero in on the ones with hats. This sounds absurd but it definitely makes them stick out more:

7. Now that you’re all organized, everyone pick a buddy! Guess what? You don’t actually have to have eyes on ten kids at all times. Before you go inside (at which point if this isn’t done they will be too distracted to function), tell each child that they need to pick a buddy, older kids with younger kids. Remind them that each older child is responsible for keeping track of their little one and each little one must mind the older one. Our guys immediately paired themselves off as follows:

Skyler and Faith

Anika and Silas

Georgie and Henry

Trinity and Olivia

Nichol and Kyra

What was funny to me about this was that none of these pairings are the ones I would have anticipated, but each set seemed to have a great time together. The older kids were extremely conscientious about keeping track of their little guys and the smaller ones were excellent about staying with their very own big kid.

We’d explore a particular section of the museum and each set of kids would go check out what looked interesting to them. When it was time to go to the next section, we just looked for pairs of hats. Easy peasy!

8. Have fun!

Do It Yourself Watershed

Safari Puppet Theater

Chem Lab (Trinity and Olivia spent ages in here and did nearly all of the experiments)

Look at the above picture of my son. That’s the goofy face he makes when I try to get pictures of him. And do you know why he does this? Here’s a hint:

But haha! I sneaked this one when he wasn’t looking.

9. Take them out to McDonald’s afterwards, but NO HAPPY MEALS (unless you have tons of money). We spent $27 on all twelve of us: two 10pc chicken nugget meals with two sodas and two fries, two large fries, one six piece chicken nuggets, three cheeseburgers, one hamburger, two large sodas, two waters, one filet of fish sandwich meal, on spicy chicken sandwich. It’s called sharing.

My favorite part of the above picture is the three people in the left corner staring at us like we’re insane. I zoomed on the lady with the black hair and she’s looking directly into my lens. Hahaha! Did I mention that people stare like this everywhere we go?

9. And lastly, take lots of pictures (this is the part I usually forget. Thank you, phone camera!). That’s it! Now you are ready to round up all the children in your neighborhood and take them to a museum.

Thank you, Nichol, Skyler, Olivia, and Silas for coming with us. Spending the day with the ten of you kids was a joy, and you’re all getting so grown up! Love you guys.

Auntie Rachel

I love Shakespeare. In high school, our English class took a trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland to watch Taming of the Shrew in the Elizabethan Theater there, and I took an entire term of Shakespeare in college. Ahhhh, linguistic deliciousness.

Now I have a swarm of small swarm of children swirling about, whom I have been tasked with educating. This term’s lessons for the girls included Shakespeare (Georgie is in 7th grade and going to school this year). Hmmm, how to introduce Shakespeare to a ten year old and a nine year old. As soon as Georgie found out what we were doing, he decided he wanted to do it to, so we waited until he got home to do anything.

Our studies have been such a success that the kids all beg to do Shakespeare class and are all excited about going through Hamlet this week and Henry V. So, with no further ado, is how you con your children into enjoying Shakespeare:

1. Love Shakespeare Yourself (or at least fake it really well). This pretty much applies to everything. If you hate it or groan when you have to read/watch/listen to it, you will have a much harder time getting them to like it. If you are enthusiastic and carry on about how fabulous Much Ado About Nothing is and how much they are going to love it, your chances of passing that attitude to them will improve.

2. Read Them a Short Prose Version of the Play You Are Going to Watch Beforehand. I’ve been reading to the girls from Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare by E. Nesbit because I am a cheapskate and that book is online for free at The Baldwin Project. Several of the most popular plays are contained in the book, and each prose version is maybe four or five pages long. Reading the story first lets them track the film (or play) much better since they don’t have to be trying to wade through both the plot and the unfamiliar dialogue all at the same time.

3. Pick the Most Accessible Film Versions That You Can and Watch the Easiest First. We started with the Emma Thompson/Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing. Since we had read the prose version already, the kids understood what was going on, and as the movie progressed I translated the more complicated pieces of the dialogue. They seemed to think it was hilarious! Georgie, who is twelve, particularly thought it was funny and understood much more of what was going on with less explanation in all the movies we’ve watched so far.

After Much Ado, we watched Romeo and Juliet (the 1960’s Franco Zefferelli version) and The Taming of the Shrew (Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor – brilliant!). Next we are planning to watch Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, Marlon Brando’s Julius Caesar, and Orson Welles’s Macbeth (we’ll probably do a brief review of the history of for those last two as well).

Romeo & Juliet and Much Ado both have a little nudity in them. I just told my kids to cover their eyes until I told them not to, which they did. If you’re concerned, preview first.

4. Don’t Go Too Fast. I’ve been shooting for one to two plays a week (usually one). The last few weeks have been insanely busy around here, so we’ve stalled a bit but that’s ok. There is no time limit by which the children must be introduced to Shakespeare.

5. Put on Your Own Production! This really is the very best way to get the kids excited. Let them pick their favorite and look for an abridged version or kids version that retains the Shakespearean dialogue. I must admit, this is probably the most difficult part of the entire endeavor.

When I started looking, I found many children’s versions which completely rewrote Shakespeare’s fantastic dialogue in modern verse or prose. I see no advantage to this. A large part of the beauty of Shakespeare is the beauty with which he wields the English language. Why in the world would I want to trade that away instead of teach the kids to relish it?

Having said that, an abridged version is a necessity. The plays are far too long for small kids, many of the plots complicated, and much of the language uses metaphors and idioms that refer to common items or events in the 16th century but which have no cognate now.

I went with the Shakespeare in a Box version of Taming of the Shrew. This comes with ten copies of an abridged (45 minute) script, character cards for the cast, a director’s booklet, and a few props. It is designed to be read (as opposed to memorized) and done cold with no rehearsal. We decided to keep the reader’s theater aspect and have the adults we were pressing into service do their parts cold, but the children and I practiced their parts and blocked out the whole thing prior so that they could get a firm handle on what all of their lines meant and basic stagecraft items like speaking slowly and clearly and making sure to face the audience.

Also, I decided to edit even further for time and clarity, so I cut out all of Bianca’s part of the plot and just focused on Kate and Petruchio. For some reason, the Shakespeare in a Box fellow cut out the scene on the road where Kate changes from being a Shrew to being a dutiful wife; and since the last scene makes no sense without that one, I added it back in.

We borrowed costumes from our church’s costume closet and utilized half a dozen props we had around the house. Family, pizza, and Shakespeare made for a delightful evening. Here is the video of our production:

It came out so much better than I ever would have imagined! The kids were wondrous, the adults delightful, and the entire evening so much fun. Now Trinity wants to know when we are going to do the next one. Ack!

Have you done Shakespeare with your elementary/middle school students? How it go? What did you do? I’m always looking for good ideas.

Rachel

As the school year winds down, I find myself mentally pondering the highs and lows and trying to figure out improvement strategies for next year. Overall, I’ve been pretty happy with how the year went. We went with Tapestry of Grace for history/Bible/literature/church history/geography. It’s a lovely classical, integrated curriculum that winds all those things around each other as they are in life and so far seems to produce a strong understanding of how history all flows together.

Tapestry actually has such a massive amount of possibilities that the problem is picking and choosing what you want to really focus on and not making yourself (or your children) crazy by wanting them to do everything. The Tapestry people themselves don’t even recommend trying to do everything lest you turn into psycho people.

After probably biting off more than the kids were able to chew (hmm, sounds kind of gross when you say it that way) this year, I’ve decided that for next year we are going to be a lot shorter on the written questions and things. Instead, I am going to supplement the history with Hold That Thought pages. These are excellent notebooking pages on a whole bunch of historical people and events that we will be studying. We’ve been pretty sloppy on writing this year, so I’m planning to gear a bit more in that direction next year and see how it goes.

Hold That Thought has notebooking stuff for many different subjects. Several years ago I bought their My Bible Book and Beginners Bible/Church History notebooks and have printed them off several times for the kids and even for my niece (made a church book for her to do during the sermon). In addition to the Advanced History ones for next year, I am picking up Advanced Church History to go with our studies. We are going through Trial and Triumph (read aloud) and Church in History (Georgie) over the next year or so, and the HTT printables with dovetail perfectly.

If any of you are interested, Hold That Thought is running a word-of-mouth special right now. If you tell two other homeschoolers about HTT or write them up on your homeschooling blog, you will get a free notebooking CD of your choice with your order. So, I am now off to go place my order and get my freebie.

Rachel

Long have I claimed that children are a little loose in the screws, but now I have photographic evidence. You know how most people sleep in their beds with actual blankets covering them? Well, my smaller girls have decided that something so pedestrian really will not do and have come up with alternative sleeping arrangements:

Here’s Faithy

And Kyra

And yes, they have indeed tucked blankets through the slats of the top bunk to form girly little cocoon beds. They actually do somehow sleep in these things… at least until I catch them and return them to people-land. Maybe it’s like a hammock.

And how, you may ask, did they come with this brilliant idea? How the heck should I know! The minds of small children are bizarre, inscrutable places full of curiosity and frivolity. Who knows what goes on in there. Yikes!

Here is Henry’s cuteness for the day. I got him dressed today but didn’t put any shoes on him. Apparently that was not suitable to his footwear needs, so he found something he could put on himself.

Yes, those are Faith’s red patent leather church shoes he’s wearing. Really, this child is too cute for his own good.

See Kyra’s shoes? Henry had those on first. I’m not entirely sure how she got them off of his feet without some sort of cataclysmic event. Like the orange blob? Faith insisted on being in the picture and wearing that. Why? Did you not read the previous paragraph re: children’s minds?? Especially that child!

Personally, I think Henry’s shoes kind of work with the truck. Of course, everyone knows that red patent leather shoes go with everything.

Rachel

P.S. Grandpa and Grandma (and anyone else), here are two more recent photo albums if you want to peruse. Got some halfway decent shots.

Steps for LIfe Walkathon 5/15/10

Stonehenge Road Trip 5/29/10

I finally got a new camera battery a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve been taking tons of pictures. Consequently, I have multiple items I wish to blog about. Luckily for you, I plan spread them out over a few posts; however, today I have something too awesome to wait.

The kids’ baseball games on Friday we played in the pouring rain. Being a giant wimp, I spent the first half of Anika’s game in the van yakking with my buddy Lana, whose kiddos also play. About halfway through though I started to feel guilty about not watching, so I grabbed my camera and off I went. Anika had batted before I got there, so I watched the rest of the inning and her on the field and then they were up again. She was the very last kid to bat, and it was the last bat of the entire game. Here’s what she did:

Clever ducky!

Rachel

Happily, today is one of those together days. Georgie got a 96% on his grammar test, and all three of the girls got 100% on their spelling tests. Yay! I teach good. Yeah sure, I suppose they may have had something to do with it.

This is Kyra’s first year of school (she’s five, turns six in July), and I’ve switched curriculum with her. The other kids I taught to read with TATRAS; and while it was okay, it just seemed to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r and the phonics didn’t always translate to the spelling side. Georgie didn’t pick up any reading speed until he was at least eight despite having been through all of TATRAS and several years of school. Trinity read right off the bat but was was an atrocious speller.

This year I switched everyone over to Spell to Write and Read and started Kyra off with it. I also decided to be bold and teach her cursive right from the start instead of printing. Okay, so that’s not bold like jumping from moving aircraft or engaging in hand-to-hand combat with an armed assailant, but it’s educationally bold. For me.

The basic philosophy of SWR is to skip the whole teaching them to read thing (which I loathe doing anyway because it is painfully slow and repetitive and awful) and just teach them to spell. After they hit a certain point, all the stuff that they can spell they will also be able to read and the reading will sort of organically occur.

Kyra and I have been faithfully practicing her 70 phonogram cards all year (which she only forgot two of today and she’ll have completely down by the end of next week), and guess what? It seems to be working. She’s starting to pick words off of things like the Amazon box and wants to read her readers more often. Learning cursive right away hasn’t seemed confusing with reading things in print. Here is today’s spelling test:

Awesome, huh? Go, Kyra! In case you’re trying to figure out the marking system (which I’m sure you all are), the double underlines are silent ‘e’s, and the single underlines are for double letter phonograms.

The other children have all had a marked improvement in both spelling and penmanship except for Georgie whose penmanship remains borderline terrible despite my best efforts, death threats, and blackmail. Hmmm, blackmail. Maybe I should tell him I’ll post his stuff on the blog. He’s almost to the age where parental embarrassment becomes an effective disciplinary tool. Hehe. His spelling isn’t too bad though. I guess in another year or two I should teach him to type.

In other, unrelated news that also falls under the “School” heading, I now know where the Duero River is, which until two weeks ago I had never even heard of. Yay, geography! Oh, I’m supposed to be teaching the kids school? Right. I knew that. Learning all this stuff myself is just a happy byproduct.

Rachel

Good morning, world, I thought to myself as I popped out of bed this morning. It was 8:30 and the whole house was quiet. Even Georgie was still asleep in the top bunk of my bed. I’ll go upstairs and see Mom.

Hmmm, everything was quiet upstairs, too. Maybe I’ll just peek in her bedroom door, I thought. She was in there all alone and smiling at me so I went in to see her. Mmmmm, I love curling up with Mommy.

All week she’s been up super-early and has already had her walk with Daddy and shower before Daddy gets me and the other kids up to go read at 7:00. I hate getting up early. I’m still sleepy and then everyone gets mad at me for crying when I don’t get to sit on Daddy’s lap. Well, I get to sit on Mommy’s lap and that’s almost as nice.

Not today though! Today is Friday and we’re all sleeping in, except for Daddy who isn’t here so must be off at work already. Haha. More Mommy for me. We curled up for half an hour, all lazy-like and then Georgie found me and made me breakfast while Mommy took a shower.

After breakfast the other kids all went downstairs, but not me! I went in to go watch Mommy put on her make-up. Hehe. She wasn’t watching me though. I sneaked into her room and stole some more of her Altoids. Yummy!! I got in trouble yesterday for doing that. Also the day before. Plus the day before that and Monday. But they’re so yummy.

I went back to Mommy before she even got suspicious, but Grandma was in there talking to Mommy. I love Grandma! She picked me and put me on her lap and gave me kisses. Then she told Mommy that I had been in the Altoids again. How did she know? I was sneaky! Mommy glared at me but that was it. Does that mean I can have them?

Grandma put me back down and Mommy started doing her hair. Mommy has lots of hair. I hate it when she picks me up and her hair is on her shoulder right where I want to put my head. I point at it and Mommy moves it for me. I thought maybe I’d go see what was going on in the kitchen. Interesting things are always in there.

Still no brothers or sisters back up from downstairs yet. Darn! I moved a chair over to the counter so I could see what was up there. Hmmm, the coffee cup Mommy brought home yesterday from shopping was sitting right there. Yummy! I love coffee, but Mommy always says I can’t have it. I don’t know why. It tastes great!

Uh oh. Grandma came in looking for me. It’s like she knew I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Oh no! She took me back to Mommy and told her I was drinking her coffee. How does Grandma know everyhing??

Next was time for a diaper change and getting dressed. Mommy did it today. Usually Georgie does it. He gets really annoyed when he doesn’t get to do it, but I like it much better when Mommy does it. She’s not so rough. I get to wear my new clothes today. Plus she actually put on my shoes. I loooove shoes!

Grandma came in and we looked at some pictures on her camera. Some were of Brown Bear and me. Some were of my sisters and Georgie. Mommy went to go make herself some breakfast. Smells yummy. When she brought it over to the table, her plate had sausage and biscuits and eggs and gravy. Oooh, I really wanted some. I asked her for a bite, Kyra asked her for a bite, Faithy asked her for a bite, and Anika asked her for a bite. She told us all no and said to shoo. I don’t get it. I thought we were supposed to share.

The big kids were busy doing their Math and Mommy was helping them. Faith was playing a really fun game with some puzzles. I wanted to help, but when I moved the pieces Faith started yelling at me. Then Mommy yelled at me. I went to the school shelf and started looking at the books. Then I thought I’d just check to see what was in the black filing cabinet. Apparently, I’m not supposed to mess with that either.

I thought about going to find some more of Mommy’s Altoids, but when I went to go look they weren’t where I left them and I couldn’t efind them anywhere. So instead I just wandered around her bedroom until I found the phone. It doesn’t look like the other ones at home. It has a cord thing and you can’t walk away with in and put it behind the couch. I tried but it would only go as far as the end of the bed.

After awhile Mommy went downstairs to do something on her computer for a bit. Some of the other kids were upstairs and some were downstairs with her, but I looked through the window by the front door and saw some really interesting people across the street. I thought I’d just go see what they were doing so I headed on out.

I only made it about three steps before Georgie caught me. He’s really big! He was not happy. Then Mommy showed up and she was even more unhappy. Going outside without someone else, it turns out, is a really bad idea. Mommy and I had a little trip down the hall. When she got to her bedroom, she found the phone.

Now we’re back downstairs and I’m sitting right beside her on the couch. It’s kind of nice curling up with her, but I’m starting to get bored. I wonder what’s in the kitchen.

Henry

I must say though, that this has been a productive morning. It is that time of year again when I realize that summer and/or Family Camp are merely weeks away and my children may not or may have nothing whatsoever to wear. Yesterday’s quick perusal of their under-the-bed boxes of clothing-to-grow-into confirmed that at their current clothing levels, several of my children would indeed be wearing naked this summer if some serious shopping were not done.

Huzzah for consignment sale season! Okay, maybe not “huzzah” because that word irritates me. It always looks like it should be a palindrome (which, of course, is the nickname of Sarah Palin’s pet dromedary), but never is which I have decided to take as a personal affront. Anyway, today I got out of bed at the crack of 7am (hey, it’s a Saturday. Seven is a crack for Saturday.) and dragged my sorry self all the way down to the Expo Center with a wad of money and high hopes. Also coffee.

And… mission: success! Here’s what I bought:

Henry:

• 4 pr shorts
• 9 short sleeve shirts (5 tees, 4 church)
• 2 swimsuits and a rashguard
• 2 long sleeve shirts (maybe 3, I forgot already)
• 2 pr long pants
• 1 pr jammies
• 1 hat
• 1 pr brown tennies (soooo cute!)

Faith:

3 pr pants ‘cause she outgrew all her long pants in the last month

3 short sleeve shirts

1 shrug sweater

1 pr church sandals

Kyra:

4 short sleeve shirts

3 pr shorts

1 skirt

1 dress

1 pr brand new water sandals

1 pr brand new church shoes

Anika:

1 pr shorts

1 tank top

1 dress

1 pr pajamas

1 pr water shoes

1 pr church sandals

Trinity:

1 purple dress that she’s going to flip out about

1 swimsuit

1 pr church sandals

2 pr ballet shoes

Georgie:

2 pr shorts

2 pr swim shorts

1 very nice pair of water sandals

So, what does all that make? I have no idea. Kinda curious though. Let’s see: 1 hat, 2 pr ballet shoes, 2 pr pajamas, 4 skirts or dresses, 5 pr pants, 5 swimsuits plus a rashguard, 8 pr shoes, 10 pr shorts, and 19 shirts plus a shrug.

And how much was all that? $235. Henry is completely dressed for the summer and I’m mostly done with most of the others. Yay! The whole shebang in three hours and only a little over half my summer clothing budget. Yay! Wanna see how nerdy I am? Here’s my shopping list I took with me:

Yes, me = giant nerd, I know. But how else will I remember what I’m supposed to be getting for which member of the nerd herd?

Well, it is now 3:30 and I guess I should probably head home since I finished shopping three hours ago. Me and my laptop have been sharing some quality time at Panera. Mmmmm, French onion soup and solitude. What could be better? Actually, going home after consignment shopping is always pretty fun. It’s kind of like being Santa Claus for the day. Ciao!

Rachel