More on the Chocolate Cake Farm

So far it appears that Southern Kenya is the best location for a chocolate cake farm. Although that is the only response as to location I have received, several people have posted about it.

Dr. Thursday connected it up to Chesterton in an interesting post on his blogg. Gus posts on the process of discovering that it was Kenya on the Map Guys. My mom posts more about it here and Dr. Thursday tops it off with a great poem on the subject.

Update: More on this subject from The Lilting House! Please read this post too, it's really cool.

There really is no such thing as an uninteresting subject.

Baby Chicks

We have been going through old boxes one of which had a ton of old photos in it including the one you see on the side. That was taken at one of our first trips to Old World Wisconsin in 1998 where I became enthralled with the baby chicks they happened to have there at the time. It was really, really cool.

Dinner Dialogue

During dinner Frank was being absolutely hilarious. I will record here very roughly what happened:

My first remark was on the fact that he called his Cranberry Juice, which he had just been asking for, was yucky. That was understandable however when you take into account that this was after he had been told he had to drink his juice before he got shake.

Me: You're silly
Frank: oo silly ( you're silly)
Me: You're cute
Frank: oo tute (you're cute)
Dad: You're brilliant
(Frank is silent)
Me: You're smart
Frank: oo tute
(enormous laughter from everyone)
Mom: Does Ria have a hat?
Frank: Right!
Mom: Does mommy have a hat?
Frank: No!
Mom: Does daddy have a hat?
Frank: No!
Mom: Does Gus have a head?
Frank: No!
(more enormous amounts of laughter from everyone)

Over the course of the rest of dinnertime we got him to say that several other people didn't have heads, and that Charlotte (our dog) doesn't have a brain, with which I quite agree. (:

Note: for more Frank Funnies see Frankly Speaking at Studeo.

There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject....

Even Chocolate Cake can provide a interesting subject as we found out today. Our dessert after dinner was chocolate cake and we started to discuss how difficult it would be to make chocolate cake without buying anything. Our recipe for chocolate cake needs; white sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, eggs, milk, vegetable oil, vanilla and hot water.

Cocoa beans and sugar cane grow in similar climates, wheat can grow in many places. We are not sure where you can get baking powder and baking soda but if anyone else knows please let me know. Salt you can get from the sea, for eggs you need a chicken and for milk a cow is necessary. You need a vegetable and a press for vegetable oil, vanilla beans grow in warm climates just like cocoa beans and sugar cane, and water is likely to be in any place where people live.

Okay so you have the backround, now I have a challenge for you. Find a place, or several places where you could have a farm that produces all of these things. Use books, internet, whatever and have fun. Please comment back and tell me what you found.

I sure hope you don't mind seeing my artwork

Because it seems you have been and are going to see a lot of it on this blog. Anyways here's some more of my drawings.
The bottom one is supposed to be a scene from The Sleeping Beauty where the prince is starting to open the door (I had to find something to draw that had rays of light in it).
The first one is part of a famous picture of Pope John Paul the great when he was younger on one of his kayaking trips with his students. I drew it from a book of the life of JPII that we have, that includes LOTS of pictures.
So any suggestions for future drawings? If you have some please tell me.

New Vocabulary Word

Speaking of black and white, that is what chiaroscuro means.
1. the distribution of light and shade in a picture.
2. Painting. the use of deep variations in and subtle gradations of light and shade, esp. to enhance the delineation of character and for general dramatic effect: Rembrandt is a master of chiaroscuro.
3. a woodcut print in which the colors are produced by the use of different blocks with different colors.
4.a sketch in light and shade.
We learned this term in art class, and then a few days later I realized that it was used to describe a scene in the Man Who Was Thursday.
Have you ever noticed how new words seem to come up in totally random places soon after you learn them?
So anyways our Great Vocabulary project is definitely continuing to grow!

ANOTHER meme

My mom tagged me for the ten random facts meme, so here goes:
1. I LOVE reading, especially Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis, Jane Austen and Regina Doman.
2. I've made several names for things that have stuck: our mudroom is now the cloakroom, a certain type of baby clothes is "kick-arounders" and swim suits are "dim duits"(that was when I was really little).
3. I have been doing Irish Dancing for five years now and love it.
4. I love memorizing poetry, I'm currently working on The Ballad of the White Horse and Lepanto both by G.K. Chesterton.
5. I was planning to go to ChesterCon this year, but Chicken Pox sadly prevented me from going.
6. My favorite branch of Science is Geology, particularly Archeology. I have always been interested by fossils, ruins and the like.
7. Although I don't much like math, I do like long division.
8. I just joined "The Dead Language Latin Club" after 4 or 5 years of Latin, and had a ton of fun at the first meeting. Perhaps I will post on it in future.
9. My favorite saints when I was little were St. Dominic of the Rosary and Saint Therese the Little Flower. (I still really like them of course:)
10. I began the "Great Vocabulary Project" by writing down a list of most of the great big words they spell in Akeelah and the Bee. Some of my favorites: prestidigitation, Merovingian, bioluminescent, Scherezadian (I'm not sure of the spelling on that one) logorrhea.
And I will tag: GilbertGirl, mysticalrose_84, Jenny, electroblogster and The Map Guy

My First Triolet...

I have finally written a triolet, I must give credit to Gus for coming up with the great first line. So without further ado, drumroll please...... my first triolet:

Methinks me stinks at poetry
And soon you will think so too
As I continue my bad poem merrily
Methinks me stinks at poetry
You don't have to read this catastrophe
You have much better things to do
Methinks me stinks at poetry
And soon you will think so too.

And there you have it! What do you think?

MORE artwork

I have been drawing quite a bit recently, inspired by my cousins amazing picture. Although mine aren't nearly as good as hers, they were fun to draw. (Amazing what you can do with a mechanical pencil.)
The top one is of Pope John Paul the Great, drawn from the cover of a book.
The next one is the annunciation.
Below that is a picture of a baptism in the catacombs.
And the last is a scene from a book I really like called The Reb and the Redcoats.

So what should I work on??? I know these pictures are far from perfect what should I have done differently?

Knute Rockne All American

We just watched Knute Rockne All American with Ronald Reagan. It was really good. It is about a Norwegian immigrant, Knute Rockne who ends up going to Notre Dame, at the age of 25. He played on the football team and introduces the forward pass (don't ask me how it works) and wins the game against a hard team. After college he becomes Notre Dame's football coach and this movie chronicles his success, and once in a while failures. Near the beggining of his career when he has less then perfect team he is hoping, and praying, for a really good player. A few days later on the field a young man catches a stray football and kicks it higher then anyone on the team can. He is George Gip (played by the young Ronald Reagan) and seems to have very little interest in football. None-the-less Knute persuades him to don a uniform and for the next few years he is the star player for the football team. But he is not vain or proud and spends time at his coach's house rather then getting his picture taken in the newspaper. But I can't spoil the movie for you if you haven't seen it.

After years of coaching this story comes to an abrupt end, but I can't say how, you'll simply have to watch the movie and see for yourself.

My favorite parts were:
-When the "Gipper" is at Knute's house.
-Coming back to Notre Dame after a game with 'the army'.
-The second half of a game that wasn't going so well, especially the part in the locker room.
-The courtroom scene

To find out why they were my favorite parts, take my previous advice and watch this movie.

The Importance of Watching Earnest

Yesterday I saw the old version of "The Importance of Being Earnest." It is absolutely hysterical!

The scene rises on two friends conversing. The elder, whose name appeares to be Ernest is talking about how he wishes to marry Gwendolyne, the other gentlmen, Algernon's, cousin. This conversation leads by means of a ciggarette lighter to the subject of both men's alter egos. "Ernest" is not really Ernest but Jack. In the country he goes by his real name of Jack but if a wish to go to town comes upon him he can simply say that his wild and wicked younger brother, Ernest has gotten into one of his scrapes and he must go to town. And Algernon has a "friend" whose name is slipping my mind, who has very bad health and he is constantly being called to the country to be with him.

The pair of gentlemen go to visit Algernon's aunt and her daughter Gwendolyne. While the ladies mother is absent Ernest, or perhaps we should call him Jack, somehow manages to propose to Gwendolyne and is warmly accepted by her but coldly refused by her mother who happens upon this love scene. Both Gwendolyne and Jack are deeply saddened by this news, but Gwendolyne recieves from her lover his country address in hopes that she could visit him. Unknown to both of them however is that Jack's clever friend, Algernon, has also managed to get the address. He uses his knowledge to masquerade as Jack's younger brother Ernest, and uses his temporary status to propose to Jack's charming ward, Cecily. All this leads to one of the funniest (if a bit far-fetched) climaxes I have ever seen.

My brief summary excludes almost all of the dialouge which is the funniest part of the movie. So you'll just have to watch it to hear it. And if you like comedy it will most likely be a very enjoyable experience.

Nature Walk

We went on a nature walk, and we brought the digital camera so I took about 60 photos. The photo you see above is one of my favorite shots from today (Unfortunatly it is a little blurry).

P.S. I am planning a post on The Phantom Tollbooth but it may take a little while. But now that I come to think of it maybe I should post that on ChesterTeens, hmmm should I?

Great Post on ACS blog

PLEASE read this, it so interesting. And it mentions the Phantom Tollbooth, which I love and which we had a discussion on about an hour ago, which I will probably be posting on soon. And of course anything on, and partly by Chesterton is very unlikely to be boring.

So anyways take a little time and read that post, it is well worth your time.

More Computer Art

Try this, it's fun!

Hat-tip: Studeo

John Bosco Youth Day, 'Post Lunch'

After lunch we had half an hour of MORE music and games, which was followed by a talk by Susan Conroy. In 1986 she spent the summer in Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa. She told us about life in Calcutta, at night in her room her floor would be covered with huge cockroaches, the walls were lined with lizards, the water was filthy, the meat was filthy, but it was still a wonderful experience. She got to work very closely with Mother Teresa and Mother Teresa's joy was so contagious that everyone working with her was joyful too. She also got to meet Pope John Paul the Great. It happened like this.

JPII visited Calcutta the same year she did, but she missed him by a matter of weeks. Years later, she was in Rome for when the Holy Father made St. Therese, the Little Flower, a Doctor of the Church. She had translated a book on The Little Flower and was hoping to give her autographed copy to the Holy Father. After the ceremony there was a general audience, but it only fit 7000 people, and there were a great many more than 7000 there for the ceremony, so you had to have a ticket, but she didn't have one. So she and a Belgian priest she was traveling with were standing outside, talking and praying this prayer:

Little Flower
Show your power
In this hour.

And while they were praying, someone came up to them and gave them tickets for the General Audience, and not only were they tickets, they were front row tickets. Out of 7000 people only the people in the front row get to go up and meet the Holy Father. So she got to go up and meet him, and kiss his hand. And she was very lucky, she was with a very talkative priest who started talking to the Pope, so she got to stay there, in his presence. And then the priest said to the Pope, I have written a book about the Little Flower and she (Susan Conroy) has translated it. So she showed him the book and he said "I have read this." So they both gave him autographed copies.

This talk was followed by a short talk by a youth minister, a video on the Wisconsin Youth Rally and two teens told us about how much fun it was. Then we had a half-hour break and a short talk by Fr. Stan and another short talk by Martin Doman on prayer. Next we had adoration. It was so cool, we sang the refrain of O Come All Ye Faithful, the same tune with different words, O Salutaris Hostia, Tantum Ergo and Holy God We Praise Thy Name, all without instruments; 2000 people singing songs that were already beautiful. It was the coolest feeling.

Next came Mass, said by Archbishop Dolan. He gives such great sermons. He started by talking about how there are many greatest evils in the world, but basically sin is the greatest evil in the world. And then he reminded us of some saints who died rather than sin, St. Cecilia, St. Agnes, St. Lawrence, St. Maria Goretti and St. Dominic Savio, who wasn't killed for the faith but whose motto was "Death rather than sin."

Before Mass was quite over, Fr. Don thanked everybody involved and after each everyone cheered. When he thanked the speakers, it took about 10 seconds for everyone to stand up to give a standing ovation, when he thanked the Archibishop it took about 5 seconds for everyone to stand up and when he thanked Our Lord Jesus Christ, everyone stood up right away.
And to top off the day after recieving communion from the Archibishop, we got to go and say hi to him after Mass.
It was such an awesome day, and I certainly plan to be there next year.