News from Clifton

Here’s some of what has been happening around our house and around Clifton.

They finally started tearing down the Civic Center and Bender Optical. Cool!


Calvin made some Wookie Cookies out of the cookbook that he got from Uncle Marc. They are delicious!


We did some experiments to understand how sad the water situation is for the Everglades. You can’t see it in the picture, but Eleanor has a “Lake Okeechobee” nametag and Calvin and I are “people.” When Matt took our picture, we’d been sucking water out of the lake using straws and saying what we’re using it for (e.g, farms, golf courses, swimming pools). At the end we spit back some water to show the reusing of polluted water. Then we dumped what was left in the “Everglades” (muffin tin). All of this was proceeded by a Florida in which there was enough water to fill the “Everglades.” Later, we saw how the Everglades, as a dehydrated or hydrated sponge, soaks up ocean water (or not), changing the Everglades habitat. I’m proud to say that I came up with that last experiment myself!




















We’re doing well as homeschoolers. As predicted though, Matt and I spend a lot of time wondering what we should have the kids do for school next year. I guess I knew it would be hard to figure it out, but I didn’t realize how hard. Better knowing the kids’ academic strengths and weaknesses makes sending them into real school harder. And seeing the Leaves of Learning kids, without the self-consciousness and gender or age segregation of most school kids, is really appealing. But we’re getting really tired of living on one income. What to do? If you stay tuned, we’ll find out together.