A few months ago, my son, Jonathan (16) breathlessly runs in. "Mom, you've got to see this!" He then proceeds to show me the following movie trailer: Explosions! People in peril! ! MARVEL SUPERHEROES ! ! (Win.Win.WIN!) He knows (because I've told him repeatedly, as I have all four of my kids) that I was a nerdy ...
techno-geek stuff
May the 4th Be With You
In 1977 when I was young and adorable (This is NOT a lie), a film was released that changed my personal perseption of movie making forever. (This is NOT a lie, either.) It was only playing on a few screens and there was no advertising for it. It was completely word of mouth. We had friends who dragged us to this screening. Apparently everyone was ...
V.Reader Techno-book Winner
Thank you all for your wonderful responses. As a serious bibliophile, I was thrilled to see so many of you share my same love for all things print. (Even the techno variety.) As I read through your responses, I remembered so many books that I loved, too. Some of you who are younger reminded me of books I loved to read to my kids when they were ...
Reading in the 21st Century – A Very Cool Giveaway
We are voracious readers in our family. Seriously voracious. As I write this, four out of five of the people living in this house right now have a book in hand. I am personally in love with the Kindle for iPhone app, but that's not important right now. So I was delighted when the makers of the new V.Reader for kids by VTech asked if I would ...
How To Throw a Virtual Birthday Party
My daughter, Amy Kikita, spends a lot of time online. Today is her birthday (27) and I wanted to do something special to celebrate. "No time," she said. "I have a ton of work to catch up on." Fair enough. I guess it's good that she has a work ethic at all.... But I also know that in between uploading and downloading and ...
Where are you now, Gaspar, Melchor, & Baltazar?
Back in the day, (that would be Cuba, 1961. After Castro, but before he canceled Christmas) my family, like most other Cubans (and Puerto Ricans and others of Hispanic descent) celebrated El Dia de Los Tres Reyes Magos on January 6th. The Day of the Three Kings. The evening of January 5th, we kids would get ourselves to bed early and look forward ...
Mac Scarecrow Syndrome or If I Only Had an iBrain
I am a lover of all things Apple. Ever since I first worked on a little Mac Plus back in the 80's, I have been hooked. Right now I work on a Power Mac G5. A big and powerful beast of a tower with an external hard drive that has 1 terabyte of memory. (Okay, so I'm not exactly sure what a terabyte actually is, I just know it's a ...
What uber-geek heaven looks like…
I know I'm a complete uber-geek and techno-junky, but this is the coolest, most fun program EVER. It's called Rollip and you can create your own Faux-Polaroids. How cool is that? Go. Do it. Right now. You know you want to. ;-) ...
For all the world to see
First of all, thanks to all of my blog readers/friends/family for the wonderful anniversary wishes. Eric and I are truly blessed to have you all in our lives. (Our cyber-lives?) I love being able to just write from my heart about whatever is going on in our world. That you guys find it entertaining is just icing on the triple layer cake that is my ...
How to Cha-Cha
You know those uber-dorky people who have a dictionary and an atlas sitting near the dinner table so that they can look stuff up when they start arguing during dinner about ways to pronounce words, or the capital of someplace, or what exactly a rhombus is? We are those people. By the way... In geometry a rhombus or rhomb is a quadrilateral whose ...
Playing catch-up
I have been doing some spring cleaning here at MBFCF (and at home too, but that's not important right now). I've been making some slight changes that I've been meaning to get to for a while now. I made the body of the posts static instead of fluid - so the photos and type don't move around depending on the size of your screen ...
Learning to do advanced geometry
One of the beautiful things about home education is that I get to learn stuff alongside my kids. Seriously, I think back to when I was in high school and learning Algebra and Geometry. Well, "learning" might be a bit of an exaggeration. I showed up. I kind of did what I was told to do. I parroted answers that I had ...
It’s about TIME
Much to my Jonathan's great sadness, I read somewhere that Bill Gates only lets his kids play video games for about forty-five minutes a day. And because even though we homeschool, I don't want my kids to grow up to be total Social Retards, (I know you were thinking it!) we have Gaming Rules. So the rules state that they can spend ...
My hero.
I've mentioned before how we don't choose to have cable and therefore don't get tv channels here where we live. So, my kids don't get to watch tv (I know... poor, losery homeschooled kids... shut up.). They are allowed to watch some movies, especially on our outdoor big screen, and certain approved tv shows. And yes, we ...
YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP!
Since my parents went on vacation, my Dad needed to borrow my laptop. Seeing as how I need a computer and internet to work (and so does he), it made sense for me to stay at their house while they're gone. This way I can work and feed the cats and water and make sure Adam doesn't get into too much trouble. ;-) (yes, it's ...