Happy Corned Beef Day!

Eva is taking piano lessons from Rebecca's friend Gabby. At church today, Gabby asked Rebecca, "Do you really have thirty pages of homework every night?" Rebecca said, "No, why?" Gabby said, "Because at Eva's piano lesson last week she said the reason she didn't have time to practice is because you guys always have thirty pages of homework to do every night." So I guess that answers the question, "What should we talk about at Family Home Evening tomorrow night?"
This picture didn't turn out very well, but what you're seeing in Exhibit B is an egg that was first soaked in vinegar for two days and then soaked in corn syrup. We're learning about cellular osmosis, and the vinegar breaks down the egg shell and allows water to get into the egg. So the egg expands and gets soft. Then when you put the egg in the corn syrup the water leaves the egg and looks all shrivelly and sad. It's even a little pink now, but I think that's because it's rotting. Why am I telling you all this? Fair warning. If Ben comes up to you, like at a family reunion or something, and he says that he has made a hard boiled egg for you and would you like to try it, just politely decline. If he presses you, I would say something about having recently developed an egg allergy.
Ben won a Major Award at the GEARS symposium! He got the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. It came with this very lovely lamp that he put in our front window. 
Because St. Patrick's Day is this week, I made corned beef and cabbage for dinner. This isn't actually what it looked like (I found this picture on the Internet), but it's pretty close. So while I was doing the dishes after dinner, my stomach sent a little message to my brain that said, "Your humble servant would like to ask Your Majesty if maybe we could have corned beef a little less often than once a year. In fact, I would be most grateful if we never had corned beef ever, ever again," upon which my brain recollected that my spineless stomach (hee hee) sent the exact same grovelling message after dinner on St. Patrick's Day last year. But my poor brain has so much on her mind that she can't be expected to remember to not buy corned beef when it's such a good deal once a year. Maybe I should tell the old brain that we're vegetarians now.

In other news, Ben, Spencer, and I played kickball at Cub Scouts on Wednesday. It was so much fun. I may have imagined this, but I could swear that I saw a glimmer of fear in their eight-year-old eyes when it was my turn to kick.

It's too bad that we don't have a German holiday in the U.S. Every St. Patrick's Day at dinnertime I talk about Mahala Murphy because she's my only Irish ancestor I can think of off the top of my head. She gets all the attention because she's Irish and there's an Irish holiday. 

Next week this time we'll be gearing up for CSAP, every Colorado school child's favorite standardized test. Can't hardly wait!