9/20/04 This is really not a bad idea. I just had a bear of a time keeping up with it! I will appreciate the effort later if I keep up with it now. Just a little catch up on the last entry. I never did make ‘Draw a brick,’ but I made a video birthday card for Xay with similar elements that I’d had in mind for brick.

In other words, I had wanted to use the My Twin doll, and have her dancing, etc., and I have her dancing with the whole x teem, and other dolls, etc. in the video. I stopped the animation pretty early in the video and moved on to live action dancing, with Mani dancing in one scene, and then playing, and wearing wigs, etc. Everyone wore a wig at some point, and Yani really did a lot of dancing; I did some, and we even got Curtis dancing in the white fro wig at the end. I didn’t do much to it as far as editing is concerned, but I did write Happy Birthday Xay throughout, and put on some credits.

The music was the team Gray! chant, with Yani and Mani’s names taken out. That music has the same drum beat and instruments as draw a brick; it’s just not as wild and free. The video is funny, a little embarrassing, and I’m disappointed because it looks like I didn’t plan it. (because I didn’t plan it!)

The other video projects we did after that were The tragic tale of a girl and an apple, Yani’s first apple film, which I finally edited and put the music I call Daddy Jazz on it. Daddy Jazz is actually the intro music to Woman’s Trip (Karen’s 1994 play), which I scored. This music has a somber enough, cool vibe to it, and it is perfect for the film. We made the title credit long and slow to make the music fit better elsewhere in the film. It goes over pretty well with people when they see it.

We also collaborated on the third x teem movie, the x teem meets the y team. The (non story-boarded) story involved a car crash. First we tried it in the front hall, with the cars falling down the stairs, and a huge y team of dolls rushing to the rescue. This didn’t work at all, and we pared the Y team down to just the dolls that could stand up unassisted. We moved production outside.

This time, we had a couple dolls riding in the big ride on truck, which would somehow crash, and then the broken Brandy doll would fall out, and we’d really play up her legs being separated from her torso, then have the dolls and stuffed animals rescue her, and, substituting the whole Brandy for the broken Brandy, we’d show her all fixed up. Well, it’s hard to make a film without that storyboard, and it seemed like everything was taking too long, and I shortened the whole rescue scene.

We used the Dora doll as the spokesperson for the Y team, since she stands up the best of all the dolls. To knock the truck over, we had Mani roll the truck, Xay threw the big red ball at it from one direction, and I threw the football from a different direction. Yani taped it. It took a couple of takes, but it worked well, the truck landing on one of the dolls inside, and Brandy’s legs flew just like they were supposed to. Before I could do final editing on the film, my studio mysteriously stopped working, and I couldn’t make new music for the movie. I was disappointed, because I’d come up with a special Y team theme, which went well with the X teem theme. Oh well, maybe next time.

So the film just sat for a while, but then in the fall, I revisited it with a mind to finish it. Thankfully, I had put the whole Yanilala piece into the Logic Audio, and had even bounced it back in March, in anticipation of Xay’s birthday.

Let me back up a second.

For Xay’s birthday in ’03, Curtis had planned to finish writing a video game he’d been working on for Xay to play with his friends. The theme of the party was video games. I put the music into the computer for use in the game. Curtis liked the piece, as did the children, but decided it wasn’t right for the game. He ended up not having enough time to finish the game for the party either. I think that’s when I decided to make the video b’day card.

Anyway, I had the whole Yanilala in the computer, and that is a rich composition. I grabbed the development section and it worked with the x teem meets the y team!

The last video effort we made was a big one. We made a ½ hour tv show, Yanila. We decided on the various segments; this has been in my mind for many years now. Yanila has to have a segment where we act out a fairy tale, fable, whatever. It has to have a segment of the ‘making show,’ and other bits, like field trips, go, Mani!, and this particular episode had a Hi, Rufus! segment, featuring our large German Shepherd puppy, Rufus.

We took the video camera with us on our fall tour of old one-room schoolhouses that we took with the Glases, and, during one of those days, we found ourselves in the amphitheater over at Celery Flats. The children, Yani, Xay, Annalese, and Linnea, started acting out the Three pigs. Joy and Isaac do brief cameos in this production, while Simeon, Mani and Camilo were nearby, but did not participate. I taped it, and put it in Yanila.

The second segment on Yanila is Mani at swim class. I actually taped Mani doing streamline kick at the pool with Mitch, and there was one other boy in her class that day, Amir(?) Mani has since regressed since this advanced swimming, but this summer at Marken Glen, she started making strides toward good swimming again. Anyway, back to Yanila.

The next segment was Hey, Rufus!, which featured Yani and Rufus running around the back yard playing fetch or something. Then we have the segment called the ‘making show,’ which is what Yani and Xay used to pretend to be doing every time they were in the kitchen. They’d say, “Welcome to the making show,” and proceed to do a commentary the whole time they cooked something, or whatever they did in the kitchen. I decided to finally make ‘the making show, ‘and featured Yani making the Tuesday lunch, which was pasta.

I taped her making orzo, and had her explain that it was pasta that looked like rice. I drew up a rough script; kept turning off the camera to tell her what to say, etc., and taped the show. I had a section there where I said, “today is Joy’s half birthday,” so I must have made this segment on Oct. 21, 2003. We also included our latest film in the show. In order to include this, I had to re-edit it, and it has the audio from the filming of it along with the music. I changed the opening credits of it, too, but I think it works well.

I edited a 30 minute program together with a lot of nice transitions, fades, and credits, and attempted to mix it to a CD so we could watch it on TV. That’s where it broke down; the audio and the video were so off-synched by the end of the show that it was hard to watch. Also, the segments were very tedious by the time we watched it, what with how many times you watch it while making the show, as well as they weren’t well planned to start with.

Chalk it up to big, hairy bodacious idea? We started production on the second episode in November, with Yani showing how to make Thanksgiving plates for the Making Show, but that tape got kind of ruined in the camera; Curtis offered all his editorial ideas, which inadvertently killed the whole project. I would like to revisit this soon.

Meanwhile, we’ve done a lot of other things, very few of which could be considered academic. We had another baby in June of this year. About a month leading up to the birth, and certainly after the birth were taken up with getting the kids on a consistent chore schedule. They ended up taking over all the chores after Esteban was born; some days they even had to draw up their own chore lists, but I could usually do at least that.

I strained my sciatic nerve during the unassisted birth, and I had a lot of pain in my left leg, and could barely walk in the early days. Yani and Xay really pulled together and did an excellent job in keeping the house in order. We got more help with meals from friends this year than ever before after a baby was born, and we continued hosting a small group from church throughout the whole time.

Before May, when the baby was due, and we basically stopped school ca May 21st, the children were writing a paper a week on various topics. First, we had Yani focusing on Kalamazoo history, and Xay focusing on Michigan History. They did several history papers before we moved onto science topics. We started the papers on math right before taking our baby/summer break. We just started school again last week or so, and now we’re back to math papers.

I assessed the children in math last week, and determined that Xay can skip around in the Saxon Math book (Yani had used for 4th) that I’d had him start during the summer. (We’d tried to do a little school in the summer to provide structure, but then swimming started, or something like that, and we ended up spending much less time in the house). Anyway, Xay was doing very well in the math, and needs help with subtraction, so I tested him last week and he did well enough to skip around.

Yani still needs help with long multiplication and division, so I’ll focus on that. She is solid with fractions now, and can do averages, and swimming math well. We are probably going to get her an algebra text book this year, so I want her solid and ready for it when we get it.

Music: We are still plugging away at Suzuki. I went to the music store and bought Suzuki 2 for them, too. Yani has about 4 pieces to go ‘till she finishes Suzuki 1. I went through the 2nd book today, playing through the pieces, and I found that the last piece in Suzuki 2 is the Bach piece from the Anna Magdalena book I’d started Yani playing last year! Her Mozart is also in there! So I guess I had her in over her head, which I figured as much. I like the way Suzuki eases in the difficult pieces, rather than just throwing the kids in the deep water, hoping they’ll swim. I like that approach.

Xay is a few pieces behind Yani. He is easier to teach emotionally, but physically a little harder. ie., he won’t cry and fall apart at a little correction or confusion, but he won’t bend his fingers, and really struggles with the five-finger pattern.

Mani is working on Jesus Loves Me. It seems to be taking forever, but last week, she actually read the color-coded music! We are playing the same piece on the colored xylo-piano and the real piano. On the xylo-piano, she can follow the piece by looking at the notes on the page if I point to each note individually. Then on the real piano, I break the piece down into three-note units, and she is able to copy these with much concentration. But when I try to get her to play the piece on her own, she just plays the first 4 notes, not really in rhythm. I don’t know when she’ll get it, and she tends to take 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards. It is maddening!

As far as science goes, we haven’t really started this. I am interested in naturalism still, a la Charlotte Mason a few years ago, and we know the names of our trees in our yard, and I have studied which are the best plants to put in the yard, etc. It looks like we are too shady to fool with any flower but impatiens. I’ve had other flowers with varying degrees of success. Yani is becoming an expert in gross things, having read Oh, Yuck!many times over for fun.

Bible: We finished Joshua two weeks ago, and I started off our first school day with a test on it. The children did very well, with 98 and 97 percent passing on their tests. We have just started the book of Judges, and are pausing to dig deeper right away. I wonder when we’ll finish the OT at this rate? Anyway, the children are also supposed to be reading for 15 minutes a day on their own. Xay is finishing up Acts now, and Yani is on a chronological read-through schedule. I think she is still in Genesis?

Reading: right now, they are finishing up some of their summer reading. Xay is reading The House on Pooh Corner. He is still young enough for the cookie program and the Pizza Hut program, which starts next month. Yani is too old for both. I know I must institute a reading contest, but we are running so hard I can’t see straight.
Yani is in: basketball (3x a week), swimming, (4x a week), youth choir (once a week rehearsal, once a month performance), and children’s choir, (2x a month rehearsal, once a month performance), and she has voice lessons 2x a month. She is trying out for a musical tonight(!), which would mean Monday nights until April or May. What are we getting ourselves into? Anyway, basketball will be done by winter, and then maybe we can relax a minute. I want her out of the children’s choir by then, too.

Xay is in swimming, which is getting increasingly hard to get to with all the other activities right now. He’s also in children’s choir, and has a weekly playdate with William.
Mani is in children’s choir, and I’d like her back in swimming, maybe after basketball season is over.

Joy and Esteban are just along for the ride. Wednesdays are our park days. We go with a nice sized group of people, and want to keep it up even after the weather changes, only we’ll do indoor type activities. We’ve already done the museum on a wet day, and we went to the orchard last week. )