A Favorite Around Here

We love Stan Freberg. Now, most people of my generation have never heard of him. I certainly hadn't before I met Griff. We have introduced him to our children and they love him as much as we do. We spent several hours in the car yesterday and most of that time was spent laughing at his recordings.

To give you a brief summary, Stan Freberg was a comedian who made satirical recordings starting in the '50s. If you like that kind of thing, you should check him out. Our favorites are:

The United States of America (history of America)
The Very Best of Stan Freberg (Sh-Boom and The Great Pretender are my personal favorites.)

There are a lot of references to pop culture and politics of the era, so it opens up some very interesting conversations. And it is just laugh-out-loud funny.

Enjoy!

Frustration

Looking through my blog drafts, I found this one, and just had to share it. I'm not sure why I never got around to posting it.

A few weeks ago, Robert was having an especially hard time concentrating on his math. He was working in another room in an effort to reduce distractions. All of a sudden, I heard the following.

(loudly) "Argh! Why can't I figure this out?!" (yes, he really says "argh")

a few minutes later

(even more loudly) "4!!"..."TIMES!!"..."5!!"

silence for a bit...

(in a normal tone of voice) "Oh, wait. Never mind."

Yeah, I was pretty sure he knew that one.

Funny, funny kid.

Like chocolate and peanut butter...

Two constants in our home - classical music and Warner Bros. cartoons. If you are at all familiar with both of these, you can see how the two go together so well.

Griff had a concert Sunday and they played Overture to Barber of Seville. We could not get the following out of our minds during the performance. It's pretty bad when you have to resist the urge to break into song during an orchestral performance. :)

Cat Alarm Clock

I found this very funny. We have two very silent cats. One of them, however, has been known to come meow in my ear very loudly in the early hours of the morning if her food bowl is empty. I'm pretty sure she would take it this far if I didn't get up. LOL

HT: Accidental Blogger

A Grand Canyon Cake

The day before we left on our trip was Robert's 11th birthday. We were very busy packing and making last minute preparations, but I didn't want the day to go by unnoticed, so I made a cake.

I kept it simple and made a round 2-layer cake - chocolate with cream cheese frosting. Robert picked out orange frosting for the decorations.

My first mistake was not leveling the layers. The second mistake was putting the least-flat layer on the bottom. However, I realized my mistakes too late and just crossed my fingers that it would turn out okay.

I hadn't even finished frosting it when the cracks began. I quickly finished the decorating and took a picture.


By the time we put candles on it and sang "Happy Birthday", it looked like this.


We laughed and called it his "Grand Canyon cake" in honor of our trip to the Grand Canyon. :)

The appearance of the cake in no way interfered with the birthday festivities or the eating of said cake. It was delicious.

Writing Styles

I was grading papers the other night. Robert and Ruth had the same grammar assignment that day - write 2 sentences, using pronouns as the subject. Both gave me correct answers, but the sentences are quite different.

Robert's sentences:

I am leaving.
They are gone.

Ruth's sentences:

She leapt into the air, her blue eyes shining.
We whispered secrets into each other's ears, giggling.

Do you see why picking a writing program that will work for both of them is very difficult for me? :)

There Are Different Kind of Intelligence

My son is pretty smart. Really. I'm not just a proud mama. Sometimes, though...

Saturday night, on the way out to dinner.

Robert: Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad.

Me: Hey, Robert.

Robert: What?

Then, again, Sunday morning...

Robert: Uh, Mom?

Me: Uh, Robert?

Robert: What?

He's a smart kid. I promise. Really, he is.

Word Problems for the Morbid

We are using Christian Light math this year and really liking it. One interesting thing about their curriculum is that all the word problems for a particular Light Unit (17 lessons, including 2 quizzes and a test) are centered around a theme.

I was grading Ruth's math yesterday and came across the following two word problems. The theme is the ocean.

• A shark is not a good mother. After giving birth, she may eat some of her babies. If 9 mother sharks had 50 babies each, how many baby sharks is that?

Ohh - kayy... But then, even better...

• Those hungry mother sharks gobbled up 27 of the babies before they could escape. How many baby sharks were left?

I'm probably weird, but this just cracks me up. It must appeal to the slightly-macabre sense of humor I have. Where is that ROFL smiley, anyway?

Sweet and Funny Boy

We got home tonight after spending the evening at my in-laws. I noticed we had several messages on the answering machine. The first was a friend returning a call. The second was from my son (he must have borrowed the phone at my in-laws).

"Mom, I just want you to know that I really, really love you."

That brings a smile to a mother's heart.

The last message was also from my son. I'm not sure what exactly he was saying, but it was obvious some creature was attacking him and not allowing him to talk. "Get away!... Ack!... No!"

That also brings a smile to a mother's heart.

Sweet, funny boy.

Funny

Griff went to Carraba's for lunch today with Ruth and his mom. (I was out with Robert) At the end of the meal, they all shared a Dessert Rosa.

The dessert disappeared very quickly. When it was gone, Ruth said, "Wow! Point, click, and go!"