Home Alone

Ella's School Day

After we made "How to Ride a Bike," and "Exploring 'Round the Netherlands," both of which starred Abe, we decided that is was definitely time for Ella to have her own video. Enjoy!

How to Ride A Bike

A Scrapbook on Lying on My Floor

My flag on my wall has pins on it from all the places in Europe I've traveled. My scrapbook on my floor has tickets from our travels in Europe, (including The London Tube tickets, and the Paris Metro tickets,) and it has postcards from places that didn't have pins.

Let's Open this Scrapbook, shall we?

This is the introductory page, and on the Tour de Eiffel ticket I drew, you can barely see that in pencil is written  "Travel Memoirs"

This page is special. At the top it says, "This First Long Month:May." Notice the boarding pass for the plane ride that took me out of America for the first time, the eiffel tower ticket, and Rembrandt's Night Watch postcard, which we saw at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

That's all the I can show you for now, partly because I'm still working on it, and partly because...
...well, wholly because I'm still working on it.

(For more "flag on my wall" posts, and "Scrapbook on my floor posts, go to "www.miasusanflagonmywall.blogspot.com" or just click on the "Flag Hanging on My Wall" tab.

We are SO Homeschooled

Most girls around my age revere Taylor Swift and most girls my age are madly in love with One Direction, Justin Bieber, or one of the other random popular males. My family also has our share of favorite celebrities. They just are...

...different.

These are our favorite Celebrities.

1. Colm Wilkinson! There are no words to describe how much we respect this guy. He CREATED the role of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, and played the bishop in the newest Les Miserables movie.

2. Dwane Thomas! Our newest Latin teacher, who created the program Visual Latin, is our hero. This morning, my mom said that she received an email from him.

I said, "What? Not THE Dwane Thomas!

Sadie said, "No way!"

and Ella just gasped.

The email turned out to just be a newsletter sent out to every other person who's ever bought Visual Latin. 

3. Phillip Quast! The whole family admits and will give you a 20-minute lecture on how great a Javert (A main character in Les Miserables) Phillip Quast is. However, Sadie will give you a much longer lecture because although we all love him, she loves him the best. His song, "Stars" is probably the most viewed song we own.

Have you taken a look at our heroes? Hmm, what was your reaction? I totally agree with my mom, and as she said, "We are SO home schooled!"

Brunettes

Here, in this distant European land, we all yearn for a sweet American treat. However, our brownie mixes have my now run out, and some necessary supplies for brownies we don't have. I mourned this loss for about a week before deciding that something needed to be done.

I then looked up a blondie recipe, as an alternate option and we've been enjoying the results of the subsequent find ever since. But we don't call them "blondies." Our brown sugar is very dark, and so our "blondes" are almost as dark as brownies. We call them "brunettes," a name which Sadie thought of for them.

Yum.

BLONDIES RECIPE

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INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup of butter, melted
• 1 cup of tightly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup of all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup of butterscotch chips (chopped walnuts and chocolate chips are equally tasty)

METHOD

1 Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter and flour an 8X8 pan. Whisk together the melted butter and sugar in a bowl.

2 Add the egg and vanilla extract and whisk.

3 Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, mix it all together. Add the butterscotch chips or other mix-ins.

4 Pour into the pan and spread evenly. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool. Cut into squares and serve.

A Flag Hanging On My Wall

On a certain wall, in a certain bedroom of a certain girl living one of  the tiniest countries in the world, hangs a flag. This flag isn't very big, but it is very special, because on it are pins from my travels in Europe.

It is my flag.

Last night, another pin was added onto my flag.

I'd already 10 pins hanging on it,

From a castle in Germany

From a Beer Garden in Munich

From Antwerp, Belgium

From the Netherlands

From a Museum in the Netherlands,

From Brussels, Belgium

From Westminster Abbey in London

From Hampton Court, (King Henry VIII's house in London)

From London,

From Haarlem, Netherlands,

And, added last night, Paris.

This collection, which was really my mom's idea, has helped me remember all the places I've gone, in a visual way. I don't know how many more pins will go onto my flag on the wall, but I have plenty of space.

(A LOT of space :~)

My Parisian Diary (Day 1)

As soon as I woke up today, I got right to business. For one thing, I had schoolwork to wrap up, and for another, I had to pack for myself as well as make sure that our electronics were charged and that we packed chargers for each one. It was to be a big day.

I have been working for the past few weeks, or ever since we came back on the plane from America, in early January, for a kindle fire. I had the most unpleasant fortune to discover that I had left my kindle on the plane. This was horrible because it was most of my books in the Netherlands. The books weren’t lost forever, and I still had ways of getting to them. For instance, we have one of the first kindles ever made which we call “The Old Faithful Kindle,” but my mom mainly uses that, and I find it sometimes a little hard to use. I needed another kindle, because we had guaranteed that my kindle wasn’t to be gotten back.

So I researched all the kindles that Amazon had to offer. I eventually decided on a kindle fire, and today I had earned about 75% percent of my kindle,(which my parents had kindly bought without me knowing so that I wouldn’t have to wait until the summer to pick it up in America, but could earn it from them) and my mom kindly let me use the kindle for our trip to Paris.

I spent the morning getting everything ready, and working for my kindle. While my mom dropped off the pooch at a kennel, we had a pleasant surprise in the mail. A good friend who Abe admires sent him a package and a note, and so Abe was ecstatic.

Finally, we all got into the car and have been thus driving for almost 4 hours. We were well prepared, and neatly fit the bare minimum necessary for 4 days in our tiny car. We drove on for a couple of hours, stopped at Mcdonald’s for Belgian/American burgers, and kept on driving. And we still are driving. I am in the car, and hope to publish this when there is wi-fi.

As one random fun fact, Abe forgot his coat, as we realized 3 hours into the drive. This is ironic, because this morning, when I was packing my suitcase, I decided to pack my fleece in my bag, although I didn’t really need it. At the time I thought that it was stupid, but now I see that if I hadn’t, Abe would be coatless. God certainly provided in that respect.

As another fun fact, here, McDonald’s is basically the same here. But one difference is that internationally, they make traditional food. Like, for instance, a traditional Dutch food is essentially fried gravy, called a kroket, and so they make McKrokets at McDonold’s, and in France they make McBaguettes. We love it.

It really is getting rather late, so I take my leave.

The Americans Hit Pear-ee

Let's dissect the title: The Americans Hit Pear-ee 

Well, The Americans, probably has something to do with people who come from America.
And, Hit Pear-ee probably means that the people that come out of Americans violently bludgeon the squealing fruit.


Or, it could mean My Oddball Family Arrives At The Beautiful City of Love.

You can choose.

As an entirely different matter from the title, we are going to Paris this week! Actually, we are leaving on Friday, or tomorrow. I've been to Paris once before, we spent a night there, but this time is going to big. Huge, even. Gargantuan.

To match this spacious trip, my mom has deliberately coached us for weeks now in proper etiquette. Parisian children are known for their perfect manners, and to say in a short, tactful way, we can behave like swine. We've been studiously studying, and we've been scholarly scholars for the past few weeks, which give us the possibly apocryphal hope that we might fit in. (click on the definition of "apocryphal" to get my views on the outcome of the hope)

Anyhow, we are ready to hit Pear-ee and, if there is Wi-Fi in the city, I shall endeavor to keep on posting.

Au Revoir!

 

Exploring 'Round the Netherlands Season 1 Episode 1

When we first started working on the series, I was planning on a half hour or so of fascinating entertainment, but, after much consideration and thought, for the sake of the audience's attention span, I reluctantly agreed to a 22 minute episode.

However, due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to half the content which we would be covering, so I toned down my goal to 15 minutes.

But as the week went by, I realized that I might have trouble of making a 10 minute, video, and I realized that I was actually having trouble making a 5 minute video.

And now, here is the grand premier of our TV show which is a 1:30 minute video!