As Piper would put it, “Well, that was a little startling.” We were making a diorama with an igloo and some other items for the Inuit. As usual I put the Sculpy clay into the toaster oven at 275 degrees for 15 minutes to bake. I started smelling something so I thought I ought to go out and see how things were going. Not so well I guess since they were on fire. I threw water on the whole mess and put it out, but the whole house is filled with noxious smoke. I’ve got the house opened up, and we’re turning into popsicles. Still not quite sure what happened. I think I’ll use the oven going forward. Guess we’ll be making a new igloo…

Piper and I did a Draw Write Now! from the Arctic edition this morning. My thought was that we could shrink her down, put removable tape on her and move her down the trail on our Iditarod map. Easy right? Well, the drawing part was relatively straightforward. After that it got kind of ridiculous. First I needed to use my printer/copier to shrink the picture. Let’s just say the buttons do not work the way I would make them work so I needed to find the copier manual. I’m reasonable organized so I only had to shuffle through the file that contains the technology manuals for all of the gadgets in our house. As you can guess, we don’t have many of those. (Said with dripping sarcasm.) So, I finally locate the manual. It’s the “quick-start” version which means it gives you nothing but things you already know like “Specify copy settings and hit OK”. Gee, thanks. There is of course a more detailed manual on the computer written by someone who has never seen my printer. Luckily, there was enough of a hint there that I could fudge it. Success! “Here Piper, you can cut out your little bitty musher.” “Umm, Mom, there’s a problem.” “Problem? What problem?” “She’s going the wrong direction.” Oh, that problem. The printer is obviously not going to fix that problem. Ok, I’ll scan it. Now, where is that USB cord? Rummage, rummage, rummage. Got it. Picture scanned. Iphoto must have a mechanism to mirror image photos. Ahhh, nope. Ring, ring. “Tim, our musher is heading the wrong direction. What software do we have that will flip him around?” “Huh?” “Software, to make something a mirror image.” “Oh, Iphoto should do that.” “Nope.” “Corel?” “I have Corel on my machine?” “Yes.” “OK. I’ll give that a try. Thanks honey.” No problem. Zap. The musher is heading to Nome instead of running away but he’s still to big. Can I shrink it in Corel? Probably. Do I know how to shrink it in Corel? No. Do I want to spend time figuring this out when I have already spent way to much time on this? No. Here we come Microsoft Word. Watch out folks, trained computer professional here. Anyhow, here is Piper’s musher all ready to start the Iditarod tomorrow.

Well, Piper went on a grammar rampage this morning. She finished 16 lessons to complete the book. This would have been around 5 weeks worth of lessons. It is amazing the difference it makes when it is her choice to do something. She is understandably quite proud and pleased with herself. We celebrated with raviolis for lunch and I will probably make cupcakes or something similarly yummy tomorrow.

I have a few thoughts about things we can do now that she’s finished up. Since she often writes thank you notes and such, I think we will start by making her an address book so that I no longer have to write that information on the white board. Other thoughts include possible purchase of a few copies of The Arrow from Bravewriter for some of her favorite books. Maybe Mossflower? Whatever we choose, I think Piper and I are both happy to say “Goodbye grammar book!” :-)

The Jr.Iditarod is shorter then the Iditarod. The Jr.Iditarod is on the 23 of February. The Jr.Iditarod goes from Willow to Yentna. Jessica Klejka won!!!!