Learning Notes: November II

It took me a week, but I put together my birthday Lego Castle. Cecilia and Felicity helped a bit and the youngest three love playing with the mini figures.

Unfortunately, the second half of November got off to a bit of an unpleasant start. Elizabeth spent all election day throwing up, then was fine for two days, then threw up once that Friday, then was fine for a day, and then threw up again on Sunday. The Monday after election day, Felicity and Cecilia got what she had and got sick, but were fine Tuesday and Wednesday, then threw up most of Thursday.
Thankfully they recovered in time to celebrate Felicity's Birthday. We went to the Country Springs Water Park for a fun-filled birthday outing
(No worries... no one else was in the locker room with us)

and had cupcakes and presents.

I wiped the blue icing off his face.

When you steal Grandpa's hat but get distracted by Mr. Mistoffolees. 

Despite the illness, since it came and went, we did manage to do our lesson in religion on Solomon, read about St. Simeon in More Once Upon A Time Saints, The Ink Garden, Brother Hugo and the Bear, and Across A Dark and Wild Sea, the last three of which all focus on the monks and their amazing illuminated manuscripts. We also watched "The Secret of the Kells." They colored trinitarian shamrocks and made crosses of St. Brigid.

We began our final lesson in Chemistry focusing on heterogenous and homogeneous mixtures. As an experiment, we put raisins in Sprite Zero and watched the CO2 gather on the surface of the raisons after they had sunk to the bottom and then float the raisin to the top until the CO2 bubbles could be released at the surface and then the raisins fell back down to the bottom to do it again.

The Sprite Zero is a heterogenous mixture because we could separate the CO2 from the rest of the beverage.

Teresa fell asleep reading Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

We generally take off all of Thanksgiving break, and I did have it scheduled that way, but I thought we should work a bit on Monday and Tuesday just to catch up a bit from how much we fell behind during our roller coaster GI virus. Cecilia caught up and Felicity caught up and Elizabeth got within 3 math pages of being caught up by Tuesday, after which we celebrated the Feast of St. Cecilia with a edible piano.

Thursday we enjoyed watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade before a wonderful hubby-cooked Thanksgiving dinner.

Friday and Saturday I got the outside lights up and the house ready for Advent. I needed a new advent wreath this year so I went to a local Catholic store and picked up 3 purple 3 day candle holders and 4 inserts and then picked up some evergreen branches and made our own. The pink holder arrived after the pictures because I had to order it online.

When the band joins your family rosary...

What is a rosary band without a jumping half-clothed symbol player?!

Unfortunately, but the First Sunday of Advent, we had two kids sick again. Teresa and Elizabeth came down with a fever. By Monday, Cecilia and Felicity had it and while Teresa seemed improved a bit, Elizabeth's was spiking at 103.8. We managed to get schoolwork done but by the end of the week, Elizabeth was behind in math again. We did read all about the Visigoths and the Vandals and the Huns though in our History text books as well as The White Stag and we read five more pages in Chemistry though we didn't get to any experiments this week. Getting hit with illness after illness makes it harder to keep up.