a short pause...

...before another busy week.

The past few weeks we've been doing and running a lot, and this week is going to be no different. It's good that M is in a place now (mentally) that he can manage being out and about more... but I'm such a homebody that I really prefer just spending time at home puttering around.

But instead of staying home, we've been busy with classes, field trips, appointments, etc.

One very cool thing we did last week was to take a "Sushiology" class with our homeschool group. The class was very generously offered (for free!) by the Mikuni Restaurant in Denver, and was the perfect mix of being fun enough to keep the kid's attention but interesting enough that the adults also enjoyed it!

Here's Taro, our teacher (also owner of Mikuni and the Master Chef) teaching us about the ingredients needed to make sushi...

and then making some (which we all got to sample when he was done!).

M, and the rest of the kids, even got to go up and make sushi rolls of their own.

Mmmmm..... R loved hers.

M was not so sure, and decided to "bring his home for Dad" (another way of saying there's no way I'm going to eat this!)

 

It was truly an awesome class!

B (dd#2) is on spring break this week, and she and K (dd#3) came down yesterday. M and R like to take their big sisters for walks out in the big pasture... Here's M showing B something (she said later that he gave her the "bone tour" showing her all the places he and R have found evidence of coyote dining)...

... and R and K (with a friend) taking their walk.

They all ended up playing in the dogwood thicket down in the corner of the big pasture (it's a great place to crawl into to make hide-outs, tease your big sisters, etc), so I went down and took a picture.

B and M are in the back, sitting down are K, her friend, and R.

B will stay through St Patrick's Day, and then she'll head back home for the rest of her break.

So....this week is looking like another busy one.  The kids are swimming with the Special Olympics swim team, so they'll have swim practice. We also have a birthday party to go to, and M has an appointment with the cardiologist (his tachycardia scares me sometimes!), R has her CYT class, and we're having some people from our homeschool group over for a "Celebrate Spring" class on Friday. Tomorrow we'll have our big St Patrick's Day dinner (and maybe a little dancing afterwards!).

I can see we're going to have to be creative about getting school done this week...