We are sad to report that our second mouse has gone on to mouse heaven. 
Rue was a sweet, fantastic pet, but she had been in bad health for quite some time. We’ll have a small funeral for her this evening and bury her next to her buddy, Katniss.
Sorry for the fuzzy picture…it’s hard to get a mouse to pose.
Nothing! Okay, so not really nothing, but not much that’s school related. Grace will be visiting Grandma in Alabama for a week, and I’ll be home taking care of projects that have been on standby for a while.
Never fear! The blog won’t be completely dead for the week. I’ll post some pictures from the past couple of weeks in the later part of the week. Grace and I also have a week-long guest spot at The Budget Maven! We’ll be talking about a giveaway for Nerd in the Brain, homeschooling on the cheap, and Grace’s opinions about education on a tight budget.
We hope you all have a wonderful week! We’ll be back to full-speed-ahead next week. 
Grace has been working hard on her descriptive writing. Her most recent assignment was to write about an outing or experience with family or friends. She chose to write about purchasing and painting our birdhouses last week. 
Here’s what she had to say…in all of its descriptive, detailed glory.
Gravel crunched underfoot. I pushed the heavy glass door aside as the smell of cinnamon and cheap air freshener filled my nose. Emily and I walked through the craft store, trying to spot the birdhouses. We came to a halt in a narrow aisle with woodworking supplies on either side. Emily scanned the houses, ruling out the expensive or ugly ones.
“Which ones do you want?” she asked, nodding toward the birdhouses.
“Ummm, how about these two?” I suggested, picking up two rough wooden houses. One was rounded, and the other had windows and a fake door. Emily nodded.
“Alrighty, one more,” she said. She knelt down and plucked up a house with two holes for the birds to sit in. I smiled. We walked over to the paint, picking only a few shades of blue, yellow, brown, and white with two packs of brushes. We were quick to get them home.
As soon as we opened the door, the soft sound of clicking claws echoed throughout the house. Frank circled our legs like a shark, his shredded raccoon toy in his mouth and his tail wagging like crazy. Emily draped a huge black trash bag over the table, laying out all the houses and paint. As she lay the paper plates out, I sat down and pulled up a house. Emily sat down across from me. We each picked our paint and squeezed out the colors we wanted.
I dipped my sponge brush into the thick puddle of brown paint, getting way more than I needed. Not sure what to do, I pressed the side of the brush against the plate until some of the paint seeped out. I leaned in closer, the paint fumes filling my head. I applied a sloppy layer of paint onto the roof, trying to make as few mistakes as possible. In no time, the entire house was covered in brown and white. I looked up. Emily had both of her birdhouses finished and had left the table. I laughed. Maybe I hadn’t finished that fast after all.
-Grace<3
And a fabulous week was had by all!
We had a fantastic week last week! Here’s the evidence:
Grace has been hard at work creating a new game! She spent a lot of time designing cards, writing out rules, test-playing, and revising…and we have a final product: Crazy Colors! It’s a fun and simple game of luck, logic, and strategy. Not that I’m biased or anything, but I think she’s done a fantastic job with her first game. So awesome that we’ve decided to add it to the Nerd in the Brain store. We’re starting with an introductory price of $1.00, but after a week the price will go up to $2.00, so snag your copy now if you’re so inclined. (Yep, any money made on the game will go to Grace…and Grace’s college fund.) The game is a downloadable printable. Translation: some assembly required. 
The stack of cards after a winning move.
Playing a round of Crazy Colors with Daddy (and Frank).
The lovely, clever unschoolers over at Trailer Park Unschoolers have had a brilliant idea! They’ve created a Documentary Challenge. The rules are pretty simple. Watch a documentary and get your learn on (they have several listed on their site that are available on Netflix). All you have to do after that is share your newly learned information with someone who didn’t watch the documentary with you…you know, to spread the knowledge. Oh, and if you leave a comment on Documentary Challenge page, you’ll be entered to win a yet-to-be-announced-but-probably-original-art-from-Corde prize. How cool is that???
Well, today, Grace and I accepted the challenge. We watched Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead during Grace’s free activity. After we were finished watching, Grace told her Daddy all about it. She did a great job sharing information about health and nutrition and including lots of details about the people in the documentary. I don’t want to spoil the fun for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, but I will tell you that you will certainly want to eat your fruits and veggies after watching this one.
Grace and I think the Documentary Challenge is a fabulous idea, and we hope you’ll visit Trailer Park Unschoolers to participate.
Getting in some guitar practice before leaving the house.
We did a lot of fun stuff last week even though we didn’t leave the house much.
Katniss is the dear, sweet white one in the left corner.
One of Grace’s sweet little mice, Katniss, passed away yesterday. If you’ve been reading our blog for a long time, you may remember when we got Katniss and Rue. They were supposed to be part of a science experiment (non-harmful to the mice, of course), but the experiment, for several reasons, never came to be. Instead, Katniss and Rue have been wonderful pets for Grace and the family.
We are all very sorry to see Katniss go. She had a full, happy mouse life with lots of veggie treats to snack on, organic cotton yarn and paper towels for nesting, wheels to run in, and toilet paper tubes to run through and chew.
We will have a small burial for her later today, but I wanted to share happy Katniss pictures with you. She will be missed.
Today was Second Christmas at our house. (Grace alternates between her two houses for Christmas day. This year, she was at her mom’s on the official day, so we celebrated again today.) For all of the other Second Christmas celebrators (for whatever the reason), we wish you a Merry Second Christmas! Ours was fantastic, and we hope yours was, too.
Preparing the snacks.
Treats for Santa, Santa Mouse, and the reindeer.
Everyone ate their snacks…yay!
Santa Mouse left a gift in the tree.
Grace detests Justin Bieber, so I thought it would be fun to torment her by planting him right in the top of her stocking.
Sleepyhead finally gets out of bed!
Not so excited about the Bieber puzzle. Strange, that.
Loving her new journal!
Very happy to get that iTunes gift card!
Frank just can’t believe how awesome Second Christmas is.
Puttin’ the Biebs together.
Each day, Frank asks us for a dollar so he can go buy a cheeseburger. (Don’t question the dog asking us for money. ) As a Second Christmas present, we gave him a dollar and a ride to the drive through. Yep, he got his cheeseburger…plain, no bun.
