American Gothic

Madison's last photography assignment was to recreate a piece of art as best she could using her camera, and as you can see above, the grandparents were happy to come over and help out!

Here's the 2020 version of things, complete with masks.  They were super nice to come over, even dressing up beforehand and bringing their own rake!  Madison stood them out in the driveway for the picture, and yes, if you look close enough you can see a couple of adjustments after-the-fact with the size of our roof and even the matching sky.

Today we had another Zoom meeting, and we seem to be having a lot of these lately.  But this one was just a smaller group of us, as you can see above.  This might be one of my favorite Zoom meeting backdrops - I took the picture myself at Disney a few years ago during the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular.  Of course, I have a leather jacket and brown fedora, both gifts from a Mommy some time ago.

But our meeting was one where we made a pretty big decision:  we're doing Summer Xtreme again after all.  Of course, it's all going to be online, or at least, it'll be something families can watch from home.  We're hoping to make it more interactive, and even have t-shirt iron-ons that parents can make at home.  We'll be planning it out this week, all last-minute, of course.  But it should be nice.  We're calling it Summer Xtreme:  United.  We may use some of our "Tribes in Space" material from before - we'll see.

Today was a big day for Madison, doing a lot of work for school.  She's got all these larger grades this week, and larger projects that she's trying to finish up.  One big one is for ELA, a fairly substantial creative report on "The Outsiders."  With all the work today, she was literally up doing this at 10:20 pm tonight.  No joke.  She was working ahead, she said, to reduce stress.  But she was pulling a college school work schedule there, working so late at night.

Meanwhile, Daddy was filming Indiana Nerdo at the church.  It was a lengthy bit, but we'll edit it down and have it ready for this weekend.  One of the more time-consuming things was having to wait for the files to transfer afterwards, which delayed Daddy getting home earlier.  Madison was still working though, and Mommy was still waiting.  She hasn't "given birth" yet, but we're tossing out some names for when the blessed day arrives.  Mommy and Daddy like the name "Roxanne."  Madison is leaning towards "Patricia."

Tonight, Madison did have a Zoom meeting herself - it was a small group led by Camille.  It's just a girl party, and they're having so much fun with this.  They were playing games and just laughing and talking, and it went on for well over an hour.  Camille is an amazing person for hosting this, connecting all these girls who miss that social interaction so much.  She does an incredible job with the kids!

As mentioned earlier, Madison was up working late, but she did take a few breaks here or there, and there's always time for ice cream.  And tonight we were watching "Big Hero 6" episodes, and still more of "Kickin' It," which might be Madison's favorite sitcom currently.

Tonight we read from "The Brightest Star in the North," once more, following the story of Carina Smyth and her special book.  We actually liked this book a lot, and years later are reading it again, this due to that recent pirate marathon.  This was one of about three books that I found to be nearly better than the movies they were connected to.  The movies related to "Tomorrowland" and "The Nutcracker" had books that were really good too.

Anyway, we were reading that tonight before bed, thinking nautical thoughts and pirate raids.  I wonder if pirates would wear protective masks?