A short clip of horse riding lesson

Katherine is riding a new horse, Cassie. This is a young horse with a lot of spirit and one who loves to run. Katherine thinks this is great. This is not a very good clip, but one I had to work with.

Dissecting a Cow's Eye

Ok. For all you scientific types out there...here is the ultimate. Dissecting a Cow's eye.

The Houston Science Museum has several, one hour classes on different types of dissection. Katherine and her friend Hunter were in a group of about 25 students. One eye per pair of budding scientists.

The instructor was very good. Knew how to handle kids. She needed a little help with some late-comers and so I jumped up to assist. I ended up putting my (glooved) hand into a five gallon bucket of cow's eyes to retrieve the necessary items. I got the shivers just typing this as I remembered the feel.

They separated the cornea, retina, lens, pupil. retinal nerve and (?) muscels that control the movement of the eye. Pretty spiffy!

Nutcracker Ballet and Band Concert

Katherine and Grace dressed up "to the Nine's" to attend the Houston Ballet performance of the Nutcracker Suite. It was truly outstanding. Costumes were amazing. Scenery and sets were out of this world with actual "snow" falling during one of the scenes. Can you tell that these two girls like to Put on the Ritz?

The other photos were of Katherines Beginning Band Concert. There were some 85 students in the band, many who didn't know which end of the instrument to blow into at the beginning of the Fall. We meet the director (at one of six locations around the north of Houston) once a week to have small band instruction and practice. Katherine practices 25 minutes a day. We had one Combined Band practice before the concert. The Video is of a number that featured the flute section. Skip to My Lou!

Christmas Actors

Our church does a drive-through Life of Christ called Celebrate Christmas. Katherine was an angel this year and Dave a shepherd in the same scene. Dave is in the foreground. Can you see the angles in the back? Katherine was the upper left angel.

Here are their pictures as the cast photo was taken before the evening started.

Fanny Farmer and Fractions

The Amazing Story Of Fannie Farmer

By : Katherine Kelley from the Fundamentals of Math Book

Fannie Farmer was born in Boston on March 23 , 1857. She was paralyzed at the age of 17, preventing her from going to college. She cooked a lot to prevent herself from being bored. She became a really talented cook and 11 years later when her health improved, her parents insisted that she went to the Boston Cooking School. She graduated in 1889 and became the assisting director, then two years later, became the director.

Fannie introduced standardized measurements at the Boston Cooking School . She taught her students to use fractions and mixed numbers. In 1896, the school untroduced those measurements into The Boston Cooking School Cook Book.

Fannie became paralyzed again in 1908, but she still cooked. She had published six cook books by the time she died on January 15, 1915 in Boston.

Hawaiian Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday on the Big Isaland of Hawaii. . We stayed in a condo, nice, but who wants to cook and do laundry on vacation? Ha. The meals were fun, but the highlight of the trip was swimming (soo many different pools and waterfalls) and field trips to the other side of the island that had volcanoes, waterfalls and lush vegetation.

It seemed hard to adjust to the time change. Only 4 hours difference, but we were up way to early in the mornings and dead tired at 9pm. Katherine always insisted that she wasn't tired at all. :-) Many mornings Dave and Katherine were up drinking coffe at 5am. Katherine's had LOTS of sugar and creamer. smile.We saw many new and beautiful birds and plenty of mongooses (mongeese?). Dad, there were soo many different, georgeous plants that I gave up trying to take pictures of them all!