Yesterday K visited to take photos of our homeschooling day. It was a really interesting experience -- trying to clean the house ahead of time enough so that I was willing to let someone with a *camera* in, but not disturbing any of our usual piles of books or magazines or crafts-in-progress, and then trying to live a "normal" homeschooling day while interacting with an observer. She takes such lovely, interesting photos -- I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Friday we visited the NY Aquarium with my parents. It was a really good visit -- there was a surprising amount to do, even with most of the outdoors exhibits cut back or cancelled for the winter. Sarah's favorite things were the Alien Stingers (jellyfish, anemone, coral) and watching the sea otter try to protect his food from the aggressive seagull who kept swooping in to try to bully his way into the feeding! We also both really enjoyed seeing the seahorses, the pipefish, the electric eel (and reading all about how they use the different amounts of voltage they can put out)... My dad also brought a nice pile of books for Sarah, which she's been enjoying looking through -- some math, some reading, and a few on being a forest ranger or on using the national parks for educational field trips. The trip to the Aquarium was much easier than I'd expected. I think we'll be going again soon.

Saturday we took the train into the city (direct from Rutherford to Penn Station, switching at Secaucus. I wouldn't do that again -- next time I'll happily go back to switching to the PATH at Hoboken, it's a lot less trouble) to go to Barefoot Boogie. It's at a meditation/yoga space, and the first hour is an introduction to a new type of movement. This week it was something called JourneyDance which reminded me a lot of the various ecstatic dance events I've experienced. Then a visiting group shared a Havdalah ritual they'd adapted to work with the meditative dance (Havdalah is the ritual that marks the end of Shabbat, returning to Ordinary Time (although I'm pretty sure that particular phrase is my Catholic background showing)). It was beautiful, and I'm glad we happened to choose to be there this week. Unfortunately, at that point we had to leave, to catch our train home. Next time we'll arrange for a pickup in Hoboken and stay much later!

Sunday we hung out and tidied up, and made some more valentine's decorations and cards. Yesterday we had a lowkey homeschool day, and had a fabulous adventure with our Faery's Tale RPG. Joe narrated (GMed) a pied-piper-like adventure involving dark pixies and rescuing young kids who'd been lured into dark woods. We're all settling into our roles nicely. (That was my one disappointment of the day -- I would have loved to have one of the things Sarah does with Joe caught on film, but both the RPG and their Teddy Bear card game wound up falling too late in the day. I know I could take pictures of these things myself, but I never think to. Maybe this'll be the impetus I need. I finally got around to putting photos online -- now maybe I should starting *taking* more in the first place!)

Sarah and I recently decided to borrow a homeschooling technique from a Waldorfy online friend, and start picking a theme for each month (new moon to new moon). This month she chose two themes -- underwater and fairies. Fairies are pretty much everywhere in our house -- in crafts, games, poems, storybooks... For underwater I picked up a couple books at the Aquarium, and dug out what we already had in our collection, so we can pick something from those every day or two. I chose two themes for myself, too -- physics and the history of science. I'm currently really enjoying Isaac Asimov's _Understanding Physics_ and using my old Halliday and Resnick for the equations.