Symphony, Milkshakes and Trolley Cars!

As part of our Konos studies on sound, we will begin learning about music, the great composers, and the orchestra. I was delighted when some friends of ours who are also working on this unit, invited us along with them to the Meyerson Symphony Center for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's Youth Concert Series, "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra". The program is geared towards school field trips so it was perfect for us. The DSO even sent me a full teacher's guide complete with activities and projects and a full CD of music to go along with the guide.

I tried to get my sweet darling children to pose for a picture inside the Meyerson but the little one just wanted to keep going up and down the stairs.

The building is really beautiful with lots of interesting architectural features.

In the lobby, there are many nice photographs of the individual performers in the orchestra. I asked each child to pick their favorite picture. Rachel chose the conductor.

Nicholas liked the french horn and the bassoon the best.

We had seats in a luge box so there were just 8 seats in our little "room". It was perfect for us and our friends. It felt like our own private concert.

Nicholas was very proud to be at the concert. He had gotten all dressed up and was excited to hear the performance. He really loves music of all kinds.

The performance was incredible. The conductor and the musicians spoke to the children and demonstrated the four different families of musical instruments: percussion, brass, woodwinds, and strings. Then within each family, they demonstrated the different instruments, how they are played, and how they sound compared to other instruments in that family.

After the performance, we enjoyed just walking around the Meyerson and watching the other people milling around.

We decided we were ready for lunch so we headed over to Smashburger on McKinney Ave.

This is one of our family's favorite places to go for a good burger. But they also make a good milkshake too!

Just outside of Smashburger is a stop for the McKinney Avenue trolley. We love riding on the trolley any chance we get. It's free too!

The trolley cars are true vintage cars but they have been updated to provide air conditioning and heat!

What a fun way to step back in time!

Every time we ride, the drivers have been friendly and talkative with us. On this trip, our driver told us a lot of history about the area. Nicholas enjoyed talking with him as we rode along.

We were riding on the car named "Petunia" which was built in 1920 but served for 30 years as the home of a rancher in East Texas!

The trolley cars are powered by an electric cable that runs over head and they are kept on their path by a track on the road.

Wheeee!

Thanks for the ride!

E-Mealz Help Your Daily Meal Planning Dilemmas

I love to cook.

Hubby, stop laughing. I really do love to cook.

As much as I would love to have new and exciting foods prepared for my bunch each and every night, unfortunately I find myself getting into cooking ruts. This is mostly because as much as I love to cook, I dread going through cookbooks to find a recipe, making a shopping list, sorting through tons of coupons to try to save a few bucks and then going to buy the items at the grocery store with two young kids hanging off the side of the cart or trying to race to the end of the grocery aisle. I just don't have time for all of that.

I've been looking for a way to get my meal planning more organized and less time-consuming. So I was delighted when I was asked to review the E-Mealz meal planning site.



E-Mealz is an online subscription meal planning service. What is really neat about it is that it is so easy to customize meals for your family. There are 20 different menu plans based on where or how you like to shop.

You can choose a Regular Meal Plan which serves 5 meals for 1-2 people or you can choose the Family Meal Plan which serves 7 meals for 4-6 people.

Tired of sorting through coupons? Then sign up for a meal plan based on the store where you most frequently buy your groceries and your meal plan will be customized based on that store's weekly sales to help maximize your savings (without having to use coupons!). The current stores that can be included in the meal plan include Kroger, Walmart, Publix, ALDI, and Ralphs. If you shop at several different stores or your store isn't listed, then you can just choose the Any Store menu plan.

You can also choose specialty meal plans to allow for certain nutritional needs such as Gluten-free, Low Carb, Low Fat, Portion Control, and even Vegetarian.

Isn't that cool?

I can go online each week and print out my customized menu for the week. It includes a list of all the ingredients, the directions, a corresponding grocery list for all the ingredients needed including the prices for those ingredients at my particular store. This saves me hours each week! Then I go shopping with my one list customized with sales in my area so I don't even have to bother with coupons anymore.

It's so easy!



The recipes are simple and usually need only basic ingredients. Here are the ingredients for one of my favorite dishes so far.

I turned that into these delicious So-Good Chicken Enchiladas. Even my picky kids ate these up!

Here's another great recipe I made on our first cold day of the year. It's called Slow Cooker Beef Vegetable Soup with Cornbread.

E-Mealz is helping its 150,000 member community save time and money in meal planning preparation which in turn means more time spent as a family around the dinner table. The subscription costs only $1.25 per week or $15 for a 3 month subscription.

E-Mealz has made my meal planning and grocery shopping easier. Now if only I could figure out how to keep the kids quiet and calm while I finish my grocery shopping then I'd be set!

Note: I was given a complimentary three-month subscription to the E-Mealz meal planning service.. I was not compensated for my time and my opinions here are all my own. Please check out what others on the TOS Homeschool Crew have to say about E-Mealz.

Echoes and Acoustics

Konos Unit: Attentiveness
Theme: Sound

We have continued to study sound with a new focus on echoes. We learned the scientific reason behind echoes and because bats use echolocation to find their food and get around we have done a whole study on bats (seemed fitting with Halloween around the corner).

We learned about acoustic material and how it can be used to control sound. Here is a simple demonstration we did. The kids share a small bathroom. I had Nicholas shout in the bathroom and asked if he heard an echo. He didn't.

Then we removed the rug, towels, shower curtain and he shouted again. This time he heard an echo! All of the fabric served as acoustic material to absorb the sounds and prevent echoes. Cool!

To wrap up on study on echoes, we read the myth about Echo and Narcissus. Echo was a beautiful nymph who often protected the free-loving Zeus by distracting his wife Hera when she came looking for him by engaging her in conversations. When Hera realized what was happening, she punished Echo by taking away her speech. She said that Echo would only be able to repeat the last few words that someone else spoke. Narcissus was a handsome young man who was very vain. Echo fell in love with Narcissus but he rejected her. She was so sad that she ran away to hide in the mountains and caves. She remained there until her body faded away and all that was left was her voice, still doomed to only repeat the last words of those around her.

Zeta Tau Alpha Founder's Day

On Oct. 15, 1898, nine young women founded Zeta Tau Alpha at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) in Farmville, Va. This October, Zetas across the globe will celebrate these women and the founding precepts of Zeta Tau Alpha.

Zeta Tau Alpha Creed
To realize that within our grasp, in Zeta Tau Alpha, lies the opportunity to learn those things which will ever enrich and ennoble our lives; to be true to ourselves and to those within and without our circle; to think in terms of all mankind and our service to the world; to be steadfast, strong, and clean of heart and mind, remembering that since the thought is father to the deed, only that which we would have manifested in our experience should be entertained in thought; to find satisfaction in being, rather than seeming, thus strengthening in us the higher qualities of the spirit; to prepare for service and learn the nobility of serving; thereby earning the right to be served; to seek understanding that we may gain true wisdom; to look for the good in everyone; to see beauty with its enriching influence; to be humble in success and without bitterness in defeat; to have the welfare and harmony of the fraternity at heart, striving ever to make our lives a symphony of high ideals, devotion to the Right, the Good and the True, without a discordant note; remembering always that the foundation precept of Zeta Tau Alpha was Love, "the greatest of all things."

Founders' Day 2011 Proclamation

This past July, over 500 Zeta Tau Alpha members participated in our National Leadership Conference in Indianapolis, where our theme was “Create the Change.”

None of us would have had the opportunity to gather together at NLC or even become members of Zeta Tau Alpha if our nine Founders had not wanted to create change at the Female Normal School in Farmville, Va., in 1898. The campus already had several other sororities and many student organizations and clubs that the young women could join.

“We were not content to be only a club,” Founder Maud Jones Horner said at ZTA’s first Convention in 1904. “Each of us belonged to several already, and they did not satisfy our longing.”

Instead, according to The History of Zeta Tau Alpha, our Founders’ longed for a sisterhood of women who were honest, true, intelligent and scholarly. “We wished to be something stronger and greater,” Maud continued, “to reach far out to have influence wherever we went.”

Our charge to the collegiate leaders who attended NLC was to identify the changes their chapters could make so that they would be stronger and greater and become a positive influence on their campuses.“Create the Change” was not a call to alter our founding principles; to the contrary, it was a charge to return to those principles by changing any practices within our chapters that deviate from them.

Each of us, collegiate and alumnae members alike, has an obligation to challenge cultural trends and popular practices that might steer us off course from our Founders’ intent. Today, I hope every member of Zeta Tau Alpha will pledge to create the change in her chapter, her campus and her community. We must have a commitment to change if we are to make our Fraternity “something stronger and greater” and continue to further the mission, values and purpose that our Founders envisioned.

Given under my hand and seal, I proclaim the fifteenth day of October, in the year of our Lord, two thousand and eleven, as our 113th Founders’ Day.

Keeley McDonald Riddle, National President
Landing, New Jersey—October 2011

Think Pink with Zeta Tau Alpha

LSU's DK of ZTA

History

Zeta Tau Alpha was founded in October 1898 in Farmerville Virginia at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University) when nine extraordinary women formed a friendship that knew no boundaries. These women, only teenagers at the time, wanted to form a bond that would last way beyond their college years. After the formation of two other female Greek organizations on their campus, these nine friends were determined to form an official organization of their own. These nine amazing women became the founding sisters of Zeta Tau Alpha: Maude Jones Horner, Alice Bland Coleman, Ethel Coleman Van Name, Ruby Leigh Orgain, Frances Yancey Smith, Della Louis Hundley, Helen M. Crafford, Alice Grey Welsh, and Mary Jones Batte.

The symbols of Zeta Tau Alpha are the 5-point crown and the strawberry; our flower is the white violet; our colors are turquoise blue and steel gray. Zeta Tau Alpha is known as a fraternity, not as a sorority. The founders intended Zeta Tau Alpha be designated as a “fraternity” to distinguish the organization from the sisterhoods organized in connection with male fraternities, called “sororities”. Zeta Tau Alpha has no “brother” fraternity.

Maude Jones Horner once wrote, “It is the object of this fraternity to cultivate a higher ideal of womanhood and to encourage all those womanly traits existent in our kind, to give a firmer foundation to those friendships founded on college companionship, to promote sympathy in both sorrow and pleasures, to furnish aid and sisterly advice in our school life.”In 1909 Zeta Tau Alpha joined the National Panhellenic Conference and is currently the third largest of 26 groups. In 1954 Zeta Tau Alpha chartered the Zeta Tau Alpha Foundation. On December 5, 1959 Zeta Tau Alpha was chartered at LSU, starting the Delta Kappa Chapter and a strong tradition of sisterhood.

Camping with the Cub Scouts

Our Cub Scout pack had their Fall Family Campout this past weekend. Our tent is really only comfortable for 2 people and with all that has been going on lately we never had time to shop for a bigger tent. So we decided that the boys would campout and the girls would come out for the daily activities but sleep at home. Hopefully we'll have a larger tent by the time the Spring Campout rolls around.

We got out to the campsite late afternoon Friday and took care of the most important thing first - setting up the tent. I was so proud to see Nicholas jump right in and start helping instead of running off to play with his friends.

We had a great camp site right on the lake.

There's our little green/grey tent in the middle. I really like the big tent on the left side of this picture though. I think we need something like that for next time!

After the necessary tent assembly was complete, the kids headed down to the beach area to play and explore.

Rachel loved playing in the sand.

She crawled in a spiral circle in the sand and laughed at the pattern she made. She was having fun but I just kept thinking of all the sand getting in her shoes, clothing, and hair.

The boys were combing the beach for sticks, rocks, and dead stuff like this!

His friends found a giant spine from some kind of unidentified critter!

It was getting dark and Rachel and I headed home. It was rather windy that night so Stuart had a hard time sleeping. It was noisy from the wind hitting the tent and the poles of the tent aren't incredibly strong so at times the tent would sag inward.

Saturday morning, Rachel and I made it out to the campsite just in time to have some breakfast with the boys. Then we all headed out to another area of the campgrounds to do some conservation work, aka trash pickup.

As soon as we arrived, this sweet butterfly landed on the van. Rachel talked to him some before he flew away.

We all listened to the plan to cover multiple camp sites in a line formation to ensure that they were free from trash.

I love watching Stuart in his leadership role as Assistant Cubmaster for the pack. He is a great leader and seems to really enjoy getting more involved with scouting this year!

Everyone got gloves and trash bags.

Even the smallest conservationist!

Our den scoured our assigned campsites. We seemed to keep losing our line formation but in the end I think we got the area pretty clean.

Rachel enjoyed carrying her bag around and playing with her gloves.

But she did actually contribute to some trash collection as well.

But eventually she put her bag down and just started running around exploring.

The boys kept at it a while longer though. Overall the area was rather clean when we got there but we did help with picking up little bottle camps, wrappers, etc.

We headed back to our campsite to enjoy some free time before lunch.

We decided to go fishing with some friends. Rachel offered to help Daddy carry his tackle box.

Stuart showed Nicholas how to put a worm on a hook.

Rachel wasn't sure what to think about all of that.

Nicholas tried to do it himself. He didn't quite pinch the worm. It was more like a stretch until it popped but the overall mission was accomplished.

He did great with threading the worm piece on the hook without poking himself.

Then it was time to get the hook wet and try to catch some fish.

Unfortunately, it was windy and the ground was very mushy. Check out this little friend at the edge of the water who sunk down way past his ankles!

We gave up on fishing for the day and cleaned up for lunch.

After lunch, there were several scout activities and games planned but we had to leave to get Nicholas to his hockey game in Arlington. Here he is all decked out and ready to go. When he was picking out his helmet, he was trying to decide between black and white. The salesperson told him that most kids chose black helmets. So Nicholas quickly decided that he wanted white. I love that he is comfortable being his own person and it certainly makes it easier to find him out on the ice in the sea of black helmets!

He did well at the game despite being tired from all that he had been doing at the camp site since the day before.

We got back to camp and started preparing for the evening festivities around the camp fire.

The moon was pretty but we could see clouds rolling in. There was predictions of a storm coming during the night.

Stuart did some fun singing, dancing and acting silly for the show. The other leaders tried to pull an initiation prank on him. They all pretended to act out a skit and had Stuart kneel down and pretend to be a table. The other three leaders ended up putting their drinks of water down on the "table" and then left the stage area. Stuart was stuck with the three cups of water on his back and they told him he had to get up on his own! Nicholas ran in and saved the day by scooping up two of the cups for him. I think the other leaders were a little miffed because they had all had to get wet when they had to do this. But I was proud of my little guy for rushing in to "save" his Daddy!

Nicholas' den did a little song and skit too.

Rachel and I headed home for bed and the boys stayed at the site a while longer. But they ended up leaving the tent and coming home because of rain and wind. They went back Sunday morning to get the tent, fix breakfast for those that braved the weather or had come back out in the morning.