I Made it to the Streets!
J+M+J
Well, I was able to leave the high school parking lot and drive up and down a street without any traffic. I also got to 15 miles an hour, six times my last speed!
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Journal
Biology Dissection
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I’m doing biology this year, and so have been going to a dissection class with Landon and a bunch of other homeschoolers. There are three classes, and the first time we did the classic frog. This week, the second class, we did a cow’s eye and a sheep brain. (I made the pictures really small so you only have to see them if you want to. Click them to see full size.)
The cow’s eye was a little intimidating at first, looking at me right there on the plate, but once we got into it, it was really interesting. We took off the cornea first (protects the eye), and then the iris, (gives the eye it’s color and controls the amount of light entering) and then the lens (focuses light). The cornea was a thin and clear layer covering the entire eye and I was thinking of it as I took out my contacts at night. Next we found the optic nerve, which carries messages from eye to brain.
The white circle in the center of this picture is the optic nerve, which sends images to the brain. It is cushioned by many layers of fat and muscles for protection because if you damage it you can’t see.
The retina, where the colors and details of the picture is detected, was especially interesting. It was shiny and looked like the inside of a mother of pearl shell, which I never expected.
The sheep brain wasn’t quite as interesting as the eye because pretty much the only thing to see is the cerebrum (the front half that controls most voluntary movement) and the cerebellum (the back half that holds memory and small motor skills).
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Eat Your Veggies!
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Broccoli is the babies' current favorite food. They love to pick off the tiny flower heads and eat them individually.
Along with vegetables, the babies are also just starting to switch from the baby weaning pellets to the same food their parents eat. The youngest is only eating formula once a day, and the older two have been refusing it for the last three days.
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Guess What?
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I just passed my drivers exam and now have my learners permit!
My first driving lesson at 11:15 p.m with Dad. I was cruising around the empty high school parking lot at all of 2 1/2 miles per hour. My next goal: to use the gas pedal. : )
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High School Dinner and Dance
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As a freshman, I went to the annual homeschool high school dinner and dance for the first time. Brand new shoes (Mom and I had gone shopping for them that very day), dress, and hair that mom had spent a half hour with the curling iron on (I still haven’t figured out how to not put kinks in my hair) all added to the excitement and special feeling of the dinner.
I really like this dress, which was a surprise find at Kohls!™
Dinner was very interesting, as we ordered off a menu where everything was called by a code name. The theme of the code names were the last names of people attending the party, and each name had a connection to something associated with it. For example, Frederes was an egg, due to the parrot eggs I’m raising. There was no telling what you were going to get, and this was my first of the four courses:
After we finished eating, there was ballroom dancing. This picture is so grainy because I had to mess with it on the computer because the camera flash can’t reach very far across the room.
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Spring in the Garden
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Oh Boy!
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He's a toddler!
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Parrot Tricks
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The oldest baby likes to lay on his back!
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Birdie Update
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All three of the baby sun conures are doing great, and the oldest two are able to fly. They look so different from the time when I pulled them from the nest just over a month ago!
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Little Nine Month Old
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My Babies
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March has arrived, bringing encouragement that the winter will soon end. The temperatures are beginning to rise slightly, with a 40˚day in the forecast, and there is actually a spot along the road in our yard that the snow has receded enough to see (gasp) grass! I heard a few birds chirping this morning, completing the feeling that spring is near.
The atmosphere inside the house is also rather spring-like because I finally have three baby sun conures from my breeders. The oldest was born on February 20, the middle was born sometime around the 23. I actually saw the youngest in the process of hatching on the 26, and I was afraid it had been accidentally cracked before its time. (And I was really, really happy when I saw that it was alive.) I will pull them for hand-feeding on March 10, to get them used to humans. I’m having a terrible time waiting.
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Last Quiz Bowl of the Year
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We took home the 2nd place trophy!
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Pointe Shoes and Paper Airplanes
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Three years have gone by since I started my blog, so I decided it was time for an update. I thought about different ways to change it up, and it turned out that my old blog name fell victim to my redecorating. Though I liked the old one, it was thought up in three minutes when I was eleven years old, and it wasn’t really very descriptive. I began to think of new possibilities. One night, I came home from a ballet pointe class to find the basement littered with paper airplanes (the boys had had a friend over, and there was an intense battle going on in our downstairs.) They were everywhere! That’s when I got the idea for this name. It takes elements from two separate sides of my life; the girly side at the ballet studio and in quiet moments, and the boyish side that I am surrounded with the rest of the day.
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