Light and Momentary

Shakespeare's Plays: The Ten-Year Plan

I am going to finish Hamlet tonight. I will climb in bed when I finish this post and read the last 300 lines, giving them the attention I could not spare them in 1989 when I was assigned Hamlet in Intro to Western Lit. My eyes have passed over those lines before, but even then I knew they deserved better.

The big downside to the Crazy Shakespeare Project, in which I read 17 mostly obscure Shakespeare plays and all of his poetry between January 1, 2011 and January 7, 2012, was that I started to think maybe Shakespeare was a little...overrated. If Shakespeare had called it quits after Two Gentlemen of Verona and Troilus and Cressida, he would languish in well-deserved obscurity. Coming back to Othello and Hamlet this summer has reminded me of why he is neither obscure nor languishing. So I've been thinking: what's a better way to tackle reading Shakespeare? What's a Crazy Shakespeare Project without the crazy?

I have a ten-year plan for your consideration. It requires the reader to tackle about four plays per year, categorized here as "Something Beautiful," "Something Frothy," "Something Subpar," and "Histories." The classifications are slightly arbitrary, but the person who put clowns in Hamlet is always going to be hard to pigeonhole. There's a table down below if you prefer summary to explanation.

Year One. You start with Lear, because I can attest that Lear is a fabulous way to start a long-term Shakespeare project, and Comedy of Errors, which is Shakespeare's shortest play and one of the most fun. You read Titus Andronicus, because that way you get the very worst play out of the way. (And be consoled: it's a riveting kind of awful. An almost comical kind of awful.) You read Henry IV, Part I, which is marvelous.

Year Two. Caesar and As You Like It are the beautiful and frothy contenders this year. This year's subpar play is Merry Wives of Windsor, since you're reading about Falstaff anyway in Henry IV, Part II.

Year Three. Macbeth! Twelfth Night! The glorious Henry V! And the unfortunate Pericles, but now you have Shakespeare's two worst plays out of the way.

Year Four. For your fourth year it's a four-part history extravaganza. The tetralogy needs to be read in sequence. You don't want to be dragging it out for four years. Read an act a day for three weeks instead: Henry VI, Parts I-III, followed by the stunning Richard III.

Year Five. This year we have particularly memorable women in the beautiful and frothy categories: Antony and Cleopatra and Taming of the Shrew. This year's history play is King John, which does not deserve its obscurity; this year's subpar play is Troilus and Cressida, which (as I may have mentioned once or twice) totally does.

Year Six. Othello! The Tempest! They're so good! Timon of Athens is not, and neither is Richard II, but read them anyway.

Year Seven. Cymbeline is a less familiar choice for this year's beautiful play, but I bet you'll like it anyway. Much Ado About Nothing brings the froth. (Maybe watch the Kenneth Branagh version too.) Two Noble Kinsmen is actually not very subpar. Henry VIII is my least favorite of the history plays, but it's also the last one. Hurray for you!

Year Eight. Only three plays this year: Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, and Love's Labours Lost.

Year Nine. This year there are two beautiful and slightly wacky plays: Romeo & Juliet (I know just what to do, says the friar, make everyone think you're dead and all will be well!) and The Winter's Tale (when in doubt about how to get your characters offstage, send in a bear). This year also brings you Two Gentlemen of Verona and Merchant of Venice. I hesitate to put Merchant of Venice in the frothy category given its anti-semitic elements, so re-categorize if you prefer.

Year Ten! You're almost there! How cool is that? This year is Hamlet, the best of all Shakespeare's plays. This year is also All's Well That Ends Well, a forgettable little comedy with a most appropriate name. And this year is Midsummer Night's Dream. When you get to the end and Puck says "Give me your hands if we be friends," you can applaud not only the Bard's creative powers but also your own tenacity.

Comments and suggestions and tips to make my table formatting less hideous are all welcome. But tonight a swordfight requires my attention.

	Beautiful	Frothy	Subpar	History
1	King Lear	Comedy of Errors	Titus Andronicus	Henry IV, Part I
2	Julius Caesar	As You Like It	Merry Wives of Windsor	Henry IV, Part II
3	Macbeth	Twelfth Night	Pericles	Henry V
4				Henry VI, Parts I-III, Richard III
5	Antony & Cleopatra	Taming of the Shrew	Troilus & Cressida	King John
6	Othello	The Tempest	Timon of Athens	Richard II
7	Cymbeline	Much Ado About Nothing	The Two Noble Kinsmen	Henry VIII
8	Measure for Measure	Love's Labours Lost	Coriolanus	all done with histories!
9	Romeo & Juliet, Winter's Tale	Merchant of Venice	Two Gentlemen of Verona
10	Hamlet!	Midsummer Night's Dream!	All's Well That Ends Well!

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Complete Works, Completed

Feeling my age in the freezer aisle

Once there were no baked goods in ice cream, and it was very good. Then someone said, "Let's put wads of cookie dough in ice cream," and lots of people thought it was a good idea.

(It was not a good idea.)

Then came the inundation: cookie pieces in ice cream, brownie bits in ice cream, cake batter in ice cream, pretzels in ice cream. Pretzels! I ask you!

(Pretzels do not belong in ice cream.)

I used to think I was pretty flexible about ice cream flavors. I liked fruit flavors, and coffee variations, and anything chocolate or caramel or liqueur-flavored. And then the ice cream powers-that-be started with the baked goods.

We have a cute little neighborhood ice cream shop that sells delicious ice cream with fun-sounding names for the flavors. But without fail, the new and interesting flavors are teeming with baked goods. I just can't do it -- texturally, conceptually, it doesn't work for me.

Once I read a New Yorker article in which the authors looked at age-related reactions to novel stimuli-- maybe it was new styles, new recreational activities, and new foods. If you didn't have a tattoo by the time you were x age, they concluded, you were never going to get a tattoo. If you didn't start rock-climbing by the time you were y age, you wouldn't be a rock-climber (maybe). And if you didn't try sushi before age 32 or something, you were unlikely to enjoy sushi at age 35 or 40. 

I read this article when I was 27 or 28, approaching their cutoff ages. I remember thinking about foods I had encountered that were completely unfamiliar to me. We just didn't have Ethiopian food in my West Virginia town, but wow is it delicious. The first time I ate Thai food I found the flavor combinations so unfamiliar and exciting that I couldn't get enough. I thought it would be sad to taste something equally different later in life and be unable to appreciate it. 

I never suspected the issue would rear its head at the ice cream shop.

Clearly I am in the minority on this question, because ice cream with baked goods is proliferating. Do you have an opinion on baked goods in your ice cream? And how old are you?

Punting

I spent a fair amount of time today working on a more substantive post than I usually write these days, but my plan to finish up after bedtime was derailed. Stella had an unplanned early evening nap while I was out of the house, with the result that I just got her to sleep. 

I despise early evening naps. 

So: instead of my labored-over post, here are some random tidbits for you.

I have been experimenting with moving Stella's bedtime this summer, because we had a return of the wombat sleep habits. It's too demoralizing even to write about, really. Since I moved her bedtime she hasn't been doing that thing where she's awake between 3 and 5 am, but she's not getting enough rest this way. Which leads her to do things like fall asleep on the loveseat at 5:30pm.

Ugh.

I should make an appointment with her doctor, I think, because this has been going on for too long.

When Elwood came home from seeing Macbeth tonight I asked him about the production. How did they handle the moving wood scene? He described it briefly and then said, in mock surprise, "Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane!" In unison we said, "Who'd'a thunk it?" Neither one of us would have said that ten years ago and now we say it simultaneously, unprompted. Marriage is a funny thing.

This weekend I called my son's boss. He wanted parents of underage staff to get in touch to let him know if they could stay for the post-camp party, but I wanted more information about the party before I consented. The post-camp parties after Girl Scout camp ended were memorably rowdy; I wouldn't send my 16yo to something similar. 

The camp director seemed vaguely amused (not in a rude way) by my concern that he was going to preside over some sort of bacchanal. There'd be no underage drinking, he assured me. 

It's just tricky to know. I always feel socially awkward and overly suspicious when I call a parent whose child has invited one of my boys to sleep over, but I want to know what they're going to be up to in the small hours. I got burned in May when I didn't ask for specifics because I knew the family-- the dad gave his son permission to show an R-rated movie at the sleepover. My son is still having intermittent trouble sleeping. 

A couple of weeks ago one of my teenagers was invited to a coed sleepover. Separate tents in this family's backyard, he assured me. Elwood and I agreed that he could go to the party but would need to come home at a reasonable hour. "You guys," said the boy in question, "there are going to be 4 Eagle Scouts at this party." 

That argument never holds much water with me, because I knew Elwood when he was a teenaged Eagle Scout. He didn't spend the night.

I saw a hilarious drawing on Facebook earlier this summer, in which a 10yo rendered her mom as a one-eyed monster stomping out all the fun. I don't want to be the Fun Crusher in my children's memories of their childhoods. But seriously? Coed sleepovers for high-schoolers? R-rated movies for kids who aren't even in junior high school? 

Doesn't work for me.

Seven Quick Takes: St. Anne Edition

1. Stella took a nap this afternoon and when she woke up we were cleaning the house. "Who's coming over, Mama?" she wanted to know. That is pathetic, for her to assume that cleaning only happens when we're having company, but it's not unjustified.

2. I was more enthusiastic about cleaning and cooking when my kids were younger and I still hoped they would turn into people who offered to mop and loved my butternut squash-apple soup. (Not that I'm bitter or anything.) That was also the period of my life when I was a full-time mom, which has something to do with it. It's not just the at-home/employed thing, though, because I am mostly momming it this summer and I am just not feeling the vacuum love.

3. I might be too old to say "feeling the love." I have been 43 for a week now. Forty-three is the first age I have ever been that sounds old to me.

4. My husband and I also observed our twentieth anniversary this week.

5. ACOG invited Amy Tuteur to speak about homebirth at their annual meeting this fall. This discovery requires a post of its own, but I have to say I am astonished. 

6. Petely asked me to teach him to knit today. He is *so* proud of his efforts. It's the cutest thing.

(6.5. I wish that knitwear designers would  agree that "at the same time" should always be put in boldface type, preferably in some neon color with the blinky tag. I am making a kid's sweater, which I started over once because my increases weren't quite right. Now I have to rip back 600 stitches or so because of an "at the same time" instruction that wasn't bold or neon or blinky or even on the same page as the first part of the pattern. Sigh.)

7. Speaking of cutest things, my niece sent Pete a letter after our trip to my parents' house. The first part of it was ordinary chitchat, but the PS slays me: "I miss you so much. I miss your face. I miss your vois." I was planning to save it forever, because I know exactly what she means about that irresistible face and voice, but it got recycled today (see #1 re: unaccustomed blitz cleaning). So I am writing it down here instead.

More quick takes at Jen's.

PinFP

Yesterday our Family Foundations arrived in the mail and Pinterest was mentioned on the front cover. I thought, "I don't even want to know what that's about." And then my brain couldn't help itself. And also it's NFP Awareness Week, so hey-- let's be aware.

What if you added numbers to the left side of your smocked nightgown so it could double as a temperature chart? I'm still figuring out the details. Do you pin a fuzzy pompon in place every morning? Probably the truly dedicated Pinterester will sew on another mini-button each day. Or maybe she will make a series of little handcrafted cartoon-face ceramic pins, in which that frown turns upside down as the numbers climb. (With a few extra eyes-bugged-out pins in case they fail to un-climb.)

I've never been a sticker person myself, but surely there is a market for more interesting stickers. Keep the colors the same and add faces. Late Phase III: crabby. Early Phase I: crampy. Late Phase I/Early Phase III: blissed out. Phase II: resolved --> resigned --> biting nails --> the merest wisp of steam leaking from the ears.

Or what about recipes for teachers? For the kinesthetic learners in your class, mix Elmer's glue with how much water? Can you test pasteurized egg whites to see if they have the same viscosity as their unpasteurized counterparts, so that hapless grooms-to-be will go home with just the heebie-jeebies and not the heebie-jeebies plus salmonella? Are you looking for something besides that tired old nose vs. lip comparison for teaching the cervix sign? I can hardly wait to see what pink squishy alternatives PInterest comes up with.

(The actual FF article is a piece by Margaret Berns on smiting perfectionism. It's about birthday cakes, not charts, and it is not remotely crazy. But the crazy is kind of fun, isn't it?)

Books for the three-year-old boy in your life

I kept meaning to go back to my original post on this topic and comment with favorite books of my own, but I have been a Whirling Dervish of Productivity lately, crossing off double-digit numbers of longstanding items from my running to-do list. I'd think, "Books!" And then I'd think, "No, life insurance! irksome weirdness in the IRA! back door in need of painting! syllabus in need of drafting!" I am about 80% less whirly this week, so here's a whole post about books for three-year-old boys.

All of my children have loved The 20th-Century Children's Book Treasury with a fierce dedication. I was asking a few of them to flip through it today and nominate some favorites, and their collective list probably includes most of the table of contents. It includes stories from some fantastic characters whose books will continue to delight you (oh, how I love Frances the badger!) and some fantastic authors whose work will make you smile again and again (Peggy Rothmann! Joan Aiken! Helen Oxenbury!). There are stories at a range of levels, from toddler to big kid, so you can use this book for years. Highly recommended.

When my pal Anneleisa had a 9-month-old daughter, she blew my mind one night with a little board book. When the baby turned three pages together, Anneleisa did not say, "Oops, that's too many pages. We should go back and read them in order!" Instead, she read the page her daughter flipped to. When the baby closed the book, Anneleisa said, "All done!" When she opened it back up to the middle, Anneleisa read the middle. My hidebound little brain just about short-circuited. You mean...you don't have to read all the pages all in a row for it to be worthwhile?

I am going to guess that about 98% of the planet is less uptight and rigid than that, but I pass along the tidbit just in case it's useful. We buy a lot of books with interesting pictures and complicated text, and we tend to let the kids do with them what they will. Want to look at the pictures? Go for it. Want to hear a paragraph or two? Can do. Want to read all of St. George and the Dragon for the kazillionth time? ...Sure, that'd be awesome, she said, gathering up the shreds of her enthusiasm. My most recent 3yo boy could not get enough of that book. He was not especially verbal at 3, but he could recite big chunks of the text anyway. Lovely pictures, stirring story told in beautiful language. It's better the first 300 times than the second and third 300 times, but it's always nice to be asked to read aloud.

The Enormous Carrot was a particular favorite of my second three-year-old boy. Ten years later, he says, "Oh, the book of my childhood!" It makes the point that even the smallest contribution can be indispensable. Simple, pleasantly repetitive, engaging. Out of print but available used.

I've posted before about how much we love Marcia Williams. My 4yo pores over these books just like her older brothers did as preschoolers. It's always a little surprising to me how much the kids like them, because the pictures are cartoonish and the humor has a British flavor (no offense whatsoever intended to my handful of British readers! --I mean only that it's harder for American kids to get the jokes). Maybe find one used or at the library and see if they are as popular at your house as they are at mine. The Shakespeare books and the Greek myths get the most love around here.

My father thinks Bill Peet is the King of Children's Literature. He and my mother swear that my younger siblings taught themselves to read via Bill Peet's books. When my oldest son was 2, my father presented him with a huge stack of Bill Peet books. I am less enthusiastic than my parents, but three perennial favorites have been Big Bad Bruce, The Whingdingdilly, and Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent.

My 11yo remembers fondly that I used to read him the original Thomas the Tank Engine stories. I do not remember this book with great fondness (and I am even less fond of the more recent iterations -- as a general rule, I'd say avoid everything ever published in connection with a children's TV show. Every last one of those execrable "in the spirit of Margaret and H.A. Rey" Curious George books should be pulped.) --but my boys ate it up. Ate it up, I tell you. And it grew on me, I have to admit.

If I were going to die tomorrow and I could only read one last book to my children, it would be Clown of God. Unless it was Love You Forever. I've written about both of them before.

When my two oldest boys were 2 and not-quite-5, my friend Shannon gave them a copy of Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. They wore it clean out. I bet I can still find Goldbug on every page, so call me up if you get stuck looking.

Last on my list is Bunny Cakes from Rosemary Wells. I could give you some professional-sounding reasons why I love it (promotes early literacy with those simple and predictable grocery lists! encourages development of theory of mind!) but the truth is that it's a delightful story. I love those lopsided cakes and the sweet, wry ending.

Oh, I could keep going but I'll stop for now!

The taste sensation that's (not) sweeping the nation

Elwood says he kind of likes it when people mispronounce words. He says it's a sure sign of an autodidact. He says, "How else are you going to learn to mispronounce a word unless you picked it up reading a book?" (We will gloss over "relator" and "nucular" in this narrative.)

It's a good thing he likes it, because he hears a lot of it in this house. Some of the mispronunciations get passed down from boy to boy. Our oldest used to say "chaRECTer" for "character," for instance. He has long since figured it out, but now our fourth son says "chaRECTer" and our third says "chaRECTer-- wait, I mean character."

Today at lunch Joe was asking me about alveoli, which he pronounces alveOHlee. I had made pesto to go along with our frozen ravioli, only to discover that only the oldest child in attendance was willing to eat more than a picoliter of it. (And even he, when I handed him a spoonful of summery basil-y garlicky lemony deliciousness, and asked him what it needed, said, "Maybe...less...pesto?") Joe wanted to know if there were any alveOHlee in the pesto.

"No," I assured him. "No lungs in the pesto today." (Or breasts. I suppose you could puree mammary tissue and get alveOHlee in your pesto. Probably some celebrity chef will be all over that one. Or, you know, not.)

"Hey!" he said, his face lighting up. "If you filled ravioli with haggis, you'd have alveoli ravioli!"

In his idiolect, it rhymes, and his enthusiasm for the idea is infectious. Somehow, though, I don't think it will be a popular selection on this side of the pond.

The Running Update

Do you remember how I loved loved loved my running group last summer? I have been going faithfully this summer, but it hasn't been as much fun. In fact, I was feeling pretty gloomy about it when I went to our meeting two weeks ago.

The woman who had been leading our group wasn't in anybody's face about how much faster she was than the rest of us, but...the vibe was pretty clear. The Boston jersey, some stray comments here and there-- I was working hard to maintain the pace, and it was a little demoralizing to see how much of a yawn she found the whole thing.

Then she moved. (I feel bad celebrating someone's departure. It was a happy move for her, if that helps.)

Two weeks ago my favorite favorite leader ran with our group. It made a world of difference, having someone who was encouraging and engaged there to call the shots. At one point she said I should think about being a group leader next summer, and I felt as if I had been crowned. Which is kind of silly, but there you go.

Last week we had two different leaders, who set a painful pace in blistering heat. (Laura Vanderkam said that running four miles in 90-degree weather was as hard as running a marathon when it's 65 degrees. I thought, "Ooohhh, that's why it hurt so much last week!") I was still tired from that run the next morning. But tonight we did 400s at a pace that eased into might-throw-up territory without lingering there for terribly long, and I am still riding the endorphin buzz. I am happier doing speedwork than doing longer runs, and the last half-mile of our 4-mile runs leaves me longing for a couch to lie on and a faun to bring me iced sherbet. (Though you know, after Shasta's time on the couch with iced sherbet, he had a seriously unpleasant run to finish. Maybe I need a new wish.)

This is a really boring post, probably, but I am doing Jen's 7 Days/7 Posts thing and so it will have to stay. I am really pleased at having advanced a level since last summer. I still wish I were faster, and I still pine a little for the camaraderie of my group from last summer. But it's a good thing to do regardless, and it's almost over anyway. Summer is flying, isn't it?

Calling all book-lovers (and book-haters can advise too)

My friend Steve is looking for good books for his 3-year-old son. I thought it might be fun to share ideas.

What are your favorites? What about your least favorites?

Liberté

It's Bastille Day and I am free free FREE -- free of the worry that I will never get caught up on pictures again, free of the niggling guilt about not working on pictures, free from the voice that says, "You know they say youngest children never get picture albums." Also, blessedly, free of the need to put any more *&^%!@ pictures into any more @^!$&^% albums for a while.

Praise the Lord and pass the brownies.

I am trying to make it easier to stay caught up. Today at Michael's I bought the next album. I added a reminder to my Google calendar to upload pictures to Snapfish every two weeks, and another reminder to order prints every six weeks. In this way I can keep shooting the wheels off the juggernaut so it doesn't crush me like a sad vertebrate bug. Right?

Can I get a virtual high-five? This has been on my to-do list for a long time.

Pictures

I have been smiting the picture backlog. When I posted my catch-up plan, I had a physical album in which the most recent pictures dated from March of 2011, and the very beginnings of an electronic album with pictures from March of 2013. I had decided to nibble away at the backlog from both ends because I was so discouraged about the size of it. But in the last three days I have been taking big sloppy chomping bites. Like a great white shark, with double-stick tape. I have all the pictures from 2013 in a Snapfish picture book, and I am up to September of 2011.

You know how people quote that writer who said he hated writing but loved having written? I've seen more than one source for that quote and I'm too lazy to track down the real story at this moment, but the point is: I don't feel that way about writing. I often enjoy writing-- the satisfaction of pulling out a word that says exactly what I mean, the physical act of moving thoughts out of my head and onto screen or paper. I like writing, more often than not. But pictures? I hate dealing with pictures-- hate the whole process. I love having dealt with pictures, but the process causes me much hand-wringing. If it were 30 minutes earlier I would dig up some archived posts about hating pictures, but I was too busy uploading and arranging 30 minutes ago.

When I picked up the most recent batch of pictures from Walgreens I decided to stop and get a bottle of Kahlua. This is a purchase I make approximately every three years, in part because of my husband's scorn for girly drinks, but I've been doing a lot of a task I hate and I had some cream in the fridge (left over from July Fourth red/white/blue shortcakes) and I was going to buy some Kahlua, dang it. The checkout guy asked me for my ID and I said, "Dude, are you carding me? I am 42 years old. I've been legal for so long that my legality is of legal drinking age." He said hastily, "Okay, never mind, I believe you; you look like an honest person." I muttered, "I look like an old person."

And with that cheerful thought I am going to pour myself another Kahlua + cream and work on the December 2012 pictures.

Oh, wait, I forgot the whole point of this post. (Blame the previous installment of Kahlua + cream.) I was going to tell you that my pictures are weird. I almost always forget the camera when we go somewhere and so 99% of the pictures are taken in our house or yard. They usually involve (a) dessert, often with candles, (b) funny use of costumes (modeling a costume as it was meant to be worn will never get you in the family album, but put that skirt on your head and you're golden), (c) kids reading books (I have a zillion (I almost said "a literal zillion" but I haven't drunk that much Kahlua) pictures of Stella poring over Shakespeare, which she loves to do for some mysterious reason and which for some equally mysterious reason I still love to photograph), and (d) people getting ready to go to a location where I will fail to take the camera (school dance, school concert, soccer game, etc.). I told Elwood that this illustrates perfectly my true self: a homebody and a hardcore reader whose tombstone will read "Baking = Love."

Seven Quick Takes: Flowering Volunteer Tomato Edition

1. Please pray for Kate, whose husband died last week. I haven't been spending much time on the internet and was aghast to see her news on Ravelry today.

2. Everything else feels so trivial after that. Maybe we need a moment-of-silence take here.

[silence, filled with prayers and sympathy]

3. I took the four youngest kids down to see my parents and my siblings and my SIL and their cousins. They were all sorry to leave. I made them go to Mammoth Cave on the way back and you would have thought I was chaining them up and making them mine for saltpeter. "Whyyyyy couldn't we stay and play with the cousins?" they wanted to know. One of these days I will learn that things I think will be fun for them are rarely met with shouts of glee.

4. I've been mulling over the fact that I'm always happier when I'm blogging more frequently, and trying to figure out which way the causality runs. Do I blog more during periods when my life is full of happy things I want to post about? Or do I make an effort to squeeze more blogworthy things into my life if I've made a commitment to post frequently? The latter possibility sounds kind of terrible, as if I am living my life for the benefit of my invisible friends on the internet. I suspect there's some truth in it, though. Thoughts?

5. Do you know what I am doing with the rest of July, O invisible friends on the internet? I am catching up on pictures, yes I am. If I do at least a month's worth of pictures every day, I will be caught up by August. So that's what I'm doing. Caught-up-ness or BUST, I tell you.

6. I keep having anxiety dreams about the beginning of the semester. I forgot that classes were starting and I missed the first day. Classes are starting tomorrow and I have no syllabi. I am in front of my class with no idea -- none -- of how I will fill the next 75 minutes. Also on the list for the remainder of July: finish syllabi, firm up readings for the new prep, work on planning the first few weeks of class. Oh, yeah, and smack that manuscript into shape.

7. The princess party went well, if you don't count the vomit in the carpet. Next time the princess dancing will involve less twirling. I was going to post a princess mask tutorial with pictures, but I haven't quite managed it yet. I only used about two-thirds of the planned activities, but I have learned from sad experience that it's better to plan a few more things than you think you'll have time for. Better to have them saying, "Can we just go play now?" than saying, "We're bored!"