Chasing trails

Monday morning, the kids were a little slow getting up, but they got out of the house on time. However, I had to chase them down in my flip flops because Lydia had forgotten to put her lunch in her backpack. It was a little chilly walking back to the house.

Rachel rode to school with Abhinav and Flavia, then Nicole picked them up in the afternoon. I guess that went fine.

Nicole introduced a new regimen today, requiring the children to complete their thirty minutes of reading time individually, rather than counting family reading. Colin read for a whole hour in exchange for the chance to spend some of his allowance. He started book thirteen of Wings of Fire. Eric didn't read by himself, but I sat down with him and he read more than a chapter of his birthday book from Rachel before tiring. It seems a bit above his level, but he manages almost all of the words, so I'll stick with it if he wants to. The reading specialists at school gave us four unknown words per page as the limit, and he's well under that.

Rachel made a bookish honey cake dessert that kept us downstairs a little after bedtime, then we proceeded with family reading as well. Taran and company have discovered one of their friends has been turned into a frog!

Today I learned that airplane contrails contribute more to global warming than burning jet fuel. I haven't verified, but the source is pretty reliable. It seems high atmosphere clouds especially hold in heat. This is not, as yet, one of the mitigations covered in The Ministry for the Future, though. It talks more about combating sea level rise by pumping meltwater out from under the ice sheets.