As I’ve mentioned before, Kelly loves reading. Specifically, she loves being read to, which means I get to read a lot of children’s books, often over and over again. So this year, for my birthday, I decided I had to have a big round pink cake. The good cakes in children’s books are always round…
Author: cjbickford
Kelly Loves Postman Pat
Kelly loves reading, but as I realize, when I let her choose her own books, she has her own preferences. Last year, I read her One Fish, Two Fish so often I nearly had it memorized. This year she can’t get enough of the Froggy books, Amelia Bedelia, and Postman Pat. You’ve probably never heard…
If My Life Were a Game of Jeopardy
Shelly tagged me again, this time with “If My Life Were a Game of Jeopardy.” I have to admit I didn’t quite get it, because I rarely watch Jeopardy. And when Peter set up our American Revolution Jeopardy, he came up with all sorts of clever category titles, which is part of the fun of…
The San Jose Grand Prix
The San Jose Grand Prix was so loud I could hear it as an angry buzzing here in my home, five miles away. This is the third year the city of San Jose has hosted this farce, and I hate it. I can’t go near downtown from Thursday on, because the streets are blocked off,…
The Shoreline Kwik-E-Mart
Peter saw the Simpsons movie last week, and he loved it. Just the week before, we’d stumbled upon the 7-11 in Mountain View that’s been transformed into a Kwik-E-Mart as a promotion for the movie. Shiaw-Ling and Loretta have been there a few times since it opened, and brought Simpsons-themed goodies, like Buzz Cola and…
Tian Bo in the News
A few months after my friend Chris moved to Salinas, she called me in a panic. Her husband was still in China, in the interminable wait for spousal visa, and she’d just found out he’d been arrested. As any spouse would be, she was upset. He’d been arrested for practicing Falun Gong: it’s incomprehensible for…
Webcast Fame on the Exploratorium’s Make Saturday
Today we drove up to the Exploratorium for one of their special Make Magazine‘s Saturdays. This Saturday happened to feature a special exhibition where Exploratorium visitors could make magnetic toys, and a Webcast featuring the founder of the Tech Shop talking about the shop’s tools and a gear-driven LED clock he’d made at the shop….
Are You As Smart as a Fifth Grader?
So, Peter got involved with our American Revolution studies and volunteered to set up a game of Jeopardy, with all questions related to American Revolution, as per the excellent text we’d used. Shiaw-Ling was our scorekeeper and the categories Peter set up were ones like “Four Letter Words” (where the answer was a four-letter word…
No Blood for Tea
As part of my summer homeschooling curriculum, I had Neil write a speech. The date was December 1, 1776, one of the darkest periods for American revolutionaries, and as a colonist, he had to make a speech to his fellow colonists to either continue fighting for American independence (the patriot argument), or whether to throw…
Escape from Fisherman’s Wharf
On Sunday, I did two things I had promised myself I would never do: I went to Fisherman’s Wharf in the summer, and I went downtown during a ballgame. The last time we were at Fisherman’s Wharf, Neil wanted to go to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, but he complained so much about…