A Night at the Opera

While studying insects this year, Coop's class wrote an opera. This week, they finally performed it. The plot and lyrics were written entirely by the first-graders. Additionally, they painted the sets and designed their costumes. As far as operas go, this one is my new favorite. Not only is the music catchy, but it was also very short, about 8 minutes--even Allen stayed awake for the entire performance (yes, there are some stories in that comment). Although his teacher called it an opera, Cooper disagreed. He explained to me that in real operas, "Women howl a lot. They are big and lay on things while they sing, and everyone wears old sheets." I will leave it to all of you to decide if it really counts as an opera. I've assembled a highlights video of the performance to give you a flavor of the event--enjoy! (Cooper is a praying mantis.)

Hasselhoffed

Grace, our shoe-loving, dancing, and singing child, now walks around the house incessently singing the alphabet. Her version of the alphabet, however, goes something like this: "A, B, C, Hoff, G." How did the Hoff make it into her alphabet? Hard to know, but he seems to make it into everything else, so why not into Grace's song?

They Are Alive!

Doing a wiggle dance on a chair (while I was saying, "Get down before you fall"), Cooper fell and stubbed his toe, splitting his toenail. He then spent the afternoon limping, hoping, moaning, and layering on bandaids.

As I offered him little consolation, his toes turned elsewhere for support. They apparently found that support in "toe friends." You might not be aware of the concept of toe friends, but apparently toes have their own social networks. Cooper's toe friends include Grace's toes, Weston's toes, Kimball's toes, and, of course, the toes on Cooper's other foot.

These toes can carry on conversations with each other. They also perform acts independently of the toe owner. For example, on many occassions Cooper's toes have kicked his brothers--with no awareness on Cooper's part. His toes have also waged war on my hair, as they've (again completely autonomously)wound into my hair, pulling it and twisting it into knots.

Of course, the concept of free wheeling body parts is not new--e.g., thinking with the stomach. In fact, I think it explains a great deal of people's actions and words. Perhaps Chris Buttars (love Utah politics) is letting his toes speak for him rather than using his brain. And then voters let their hands randomly decide to vote for him, rather than using their brains and getting rid of him.

Well, I better log off since Cooper's feet, Weston's fists, and Grace's teeth are now battling in a self-governing, free-wheeling brawl.

Death, Taxes, and Free Books

When Weston rushed out of preschool Monday, he proudly held up a small Dr. Seuss book and called, "Look, Mom, a free book from the government!"

Today, I picked him up, and again, he arrived bearing another "government" book. I queried his teacher, and she told me the kids would be getting a free book every day this week--thanks big brother.

Free books must be one of the many perks of attending a Title I elementary school. For those of you without kids or with kids in public schools with some level of economic base or even worse with kids in elite private schools (or homogeneous charter schools), you are missing out on a classic education experience. This experience includes such amazing benefits as

- Getting state grants for "take home" fruit and veggies that elementary kids can throw at dogs, fences, and each other on their walk home from school

- Being supplied with extra computers in the computer lab that the gangster-in-training children use to type new and inventive curses until the lab gets shut down as a punishment

- Having rich neighborhoods a few miles away decide to do sub-for-Santa for the poor folk, shipping all of their second hand, Salvation Army rejects(like unwashed used socks)to our neighborhood. Then we have the fun of discarding it for them (since no one must work in our neighborhood anyway) and then buy real presents for needy families

Of course, I am grateful for our free book today, a coloring book with bubbles attached. Weston promptly blew bubbles into Grace's eyes, making her shriek and rip the book--all in all, money well spent.

But to give the mysterious government book donor credit, in these tough economic times, it's the little things that give us hope. Tonight, for example, I plan on working on one of those little things, taxes. Every year no matter how little we earn, we always owe additional taxes to the state. Even the year I got laid off, Allen had just graduated and was job hunting, and we earned the equivalent of a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, we sent off a fat check to the state of Utah. This year, however, I'm feeling pretty good about paying those taxes because I know that even though they will be used to bail out banks, car companies, and other businesses that have been poorly managed and sucked dry by greedy managers, my family will always have those free books.