Chalk math

I have to rest up from the weekend! On Saturday, we went to Conklin's Gully in Naples, NY (at the south end of Canandaigua Lake) and by a slight mistake missed the path that was near where we parked our car; instead we climbed the *actual waterfall* up to the gulch. Good thing we've had no rain this summer, or we wouldn't have been able to do it. As it was, climbing the rocks was very slippery (both Madison and I fell in the creek) and somewhat hazardous, and quite strenuous and nerve-wracking. It started off fine:



Then got a bit harder...


And harder...



But then you found yourself in this magnificent gully where you know few people have been, and which can't be accessed from the actual path, which we didn't know existed until the way back.


It wasn't really dangerous in that if you slipped and fell, you landed about four feet below in the water with some cuts and bumps, rather than actually, say, dying. But the payoff was great, to find yourself in this awesome enclosed area with cliffs all around you. I kept telling the girls, "If you start to fall, CLOSE YOUR MOUTH," especially Madison, who is both more likely to talk on the way down, and has more to lose, in the form of actual adult teeth.

Of course, when I made my own undignified slide down the side of the rock into the water, I ignored my own advice. They promptly informed me that they wouldn't let me forget it. "Hey," I said, "They're your teeth. Do what you think best." (Maybe they can think faster than I on the way down.)

And then, yesterday, I took 2 hours to scrub the kitchen floor. It's a small-stone floor that has a lot of grout. It hides the dirt well in its crevices, but it hides a LOT of dirt well and it's hard to get out. I got fed up with all of our feet getting blacker as time went on. I kept thinking, "I'm meant for better things than to spend this time scrubbing the floor," as I was damning the previous owners. I actually didn't feel the same as I was cleaning out the entire storage room (after all, it's all OUR stuff), put in shelves, and reorganied everything. It looks fantastic, actually. But it took me the whole afternoon. And that's all a very long way of saying that in the storage room, I FOUND THE CHALK. Hence the title of this post.

This morning, we really didn't get going on school until 10:30, and we had to leave by 12:30 to get to gym-and-swim, so we didn't get a lot done. (Don't worry, Laura, we didn't skip WRTR.) I let Madison and Ella do "chalk math" instead of actual rigorous math. Madison taught Ella 6 x 4, 6 x 6, and 6 x 7.