An extra day

Since 2016 is divisible by 4, it is a leap year, which means that February has 29 days, rather than the usual 28. Some people were all excited about the extra day, particularly those who were born on the 29^th of February. I had never paid much attention to it until this year, when I could only see one thing: an additional day of listening to the endless barbs thrown by the various presidential candidates. I am not sure how I will make it until November! It would be alright if it were just tiresome and annoying. Instead, it is growing frightening. I am not sure what scares me more: the idea of a President Donald Trump or the fact that so many people seem to think that is a good idea. So I will continue as I have, listening enough to be aware but not enough to become clinically depressed.

A couple of weeks ago, in an art class Maya has been taking, she painted this.

Barry and I were absolutely enthralled with this, with the way she managed to turn the two-dimensional sheet into a three-dimensional image, and to capture the light of the sun in the distance. We were with Maya at home for a while on Sunday, where her bedroom has become a mini art museum of Maya’s paintings and drawings. It is quite a thrill to watch her develop her creative talent.

On Sunday we took Ella and Maya to something called the Kid’s Mega Challah Bake. A Chassidic sect known as Chabad is sponsoring these events all over the country (maybe beyond?). In a large room there are tables set up. At each table place there is a large bowl holding small containers of ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, yeast, water. One of the organizers provided instructions for each of the children to mix and knead their own dough. During the waiting periods, they led the children in singing songs and telling stories. At the end, each child took home their creation to bake. This was a bit juvenile for Ella, who often bakes delicious challah with her mother, but she had a good time, as did Maya. Here are a couple of pictures we took.

Now I am about to undertake a huge project. Barry’s mother (may she rest in peace) accumulated family pictures over the years. Many of them are in albums but in no particular order, and the ones of our family are pictures we already have. So my goal is to go through, sort them out, and make up a couple of scrapbooks for the family to have. I cannot even imagine how long this might take. It’s all sitting in our extra bedroom downstairs, and the first thing I have to figure out is where to set up to work on it. So far I have ordered a scrapbook with inserts for various size pictures. That should arrive shortly, and then the work will begin.

And finally, this week Will Shortz provided a word challenge for us math geeks:

Next week's challenge: What two 8-letter terms in math are anagrams of each other? One word is from geometry, the other is from calculus. What words are they?

Have a good week.

Love,

Rebecca