Jonathan's birthday is Saturday and he wants to go to the Baltimore Aquarium. In keeping with his chosen theme, he picked out a book about great white sharks today at Costco. It's a pretty cool book. As you open each page, a system of the shark's 3-D body is exposed and the page is all about that particular system (like the dermal system, the skeletal system, the nervous system, etc.) He's been devouring it all day.

He also wants to play pin the tail on the donkey on his big day, so this week, during Nicholas' naps, we'll be making a donkey and a bunch of tails.

He wants strawberry cake, just like last year, but I've given up on trying to make one from scratch. Mine haven't turned out well with any of the many recipes I've used. I think I'm going to get an angel food cake, slice it into layers, cover it in strawberries and whipped cream, and layer it over and over again. It will be very pretty, and I think he'll like it.

Hmmm, what else? Oh, he wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner, and after that we're supposed to open presents and eat cake and ice cream. He has everything all planned out. Now I just have to make it happen.

He made a list last month of all the Bionicles he wants, so we got him some of those. I picked up some new jeans for him, as his are fading fast. I picked up a Jimmy Neutron book for him since he's been running around squealing about Brain Blasts for the last several months. I got Benjamen and Nicholas Blue's Clues and Maisy videos, respectively. I have some tree blocks but I can't decide whether I want to give them to Jonathan or if I should save them for Benjamen's or Nicholas' birthdays which are coming at the beginning of May and the end of June, respectively. We also have a Radio Flyer wheel barrow that we've had in reserve for years, now. I think it's time to bring it out for someone's birthday, now that we're going to have our own house and yard.

I dunno. I think it will all come together somehow. I'm just going to have to do a little hustling to make it all happen the way he's planned it. I think it's going to be a long day.

In the mean time, it's going to be a pretty unstructured week with all of the house stuff, the birthdays (mine's Friday), and the general craziness of packing. I have no plans whatsoever with regard to homeschooling. Rightly enough, when I make no plans for learning, we inevitably experience a spurt of interesting and meaningful lessons.