In the morning, Alice Nan was out in the
family room in her rocker trying to finish "Prince Caspian," which she had
almost finished. Norm, who had planned to skype in to our
meeting, decided not to because he hadn't finished the book.
I was sitting in the living room in the
recliner, reading through the long Wikipedia summaries of both "Prince
Caspian" and "A Horse and His Boy" because though I had read both books a
few months ago, I couldn't remember anything about either of them.
Alice Nan and I laughed about how silly it
was that we adults were all working so hard to be ready for a book club
meeting led by a 9 year old. But we all did our homework well and by
the time Bri called the meeting to order, we were each able to answer
questions and contribute to the discussion.
It had been a quiet day. I woke up at 5
and made coffee, then settled down with a cup and Wikipedia and promptly
fell back to sleep, waking at 9:15 or so to an empty house. Alice
Nan's car was gone and I figured she and Walt had gone off to Mass.
I watched Meet the Press and studied
my Wikipedia notes more. The girls had softball practice, but we
decided not to watch them and just hung around home until time to go to
Tom's house. Walt and Alice Nan picked up sushi-to-go for lunch and we
gorged ourselves on that.
Around 3, we went to Tom's. Jeri and
Lacie were playing kind of a modern day electronic version of "Clue" and
invited me to join.
Well, "playing" was kind of relative. You
can play with three players if all three players play, but if one of
the players isn't really interested in the game and wants to play
standing on the table in her bare feet, or hanging out under the table with
her feet peeking over the top, or throwing the dice across the table, all
the while protesting that she does so want to play, it makes it
difficult. Jeri, bless her, managed to get Lacie through a couple of games,
but then we gave it up as a bad idea. Bri had also decided that while
she didn't want to play, she wanted to intrude herself on the game by
pounding on the piano or climbing over and under Jeri's legs and making comments about what Lacie was
doing wrong. It just was not the most pleasant experience.
Lacie showed me the books she and Jeri had
made and then had an argument with Bri over how much Bri contributed.
Jeri explained that Bri wrote the story, Jeri drew the pictures and Lacie
colored them in, so Lacie made sure to point out how colorful each page was.
We watched a bit of football, Tom frustrated
because the 49er game was blacked out in this area and so he had to just
watch the scores as they came in on his cell phone.
Eventually Brianna set up the play room for
the meeting and, as it did last time, a miraculous transformation came over
both girls once the meeting started. Bri was mature, prepared, had
great questions, great activities, and a power point presentation she had
made herself as well as a "find a word" puzzle she had made on the computer.
Lacie sat quietly in the hall outside the room and just
waited for about an hour while we were talking about the books. I was
so incredibly impressed. She was lying behind a big bean bag chair and
Walt observed that must have been the "green room."
Before we ended with the puzzle, Bri said she
had a surprise for us and called Lacie in as a special "guest." Lacie
is too young to read and discuss the books, but she is learning to read and
Bri had her read a couple of simple books and she just beamed to be part of
the group.
Then Bri passed out "find a word" sheets with
names of several of the characters hidden in the mass of letters for us to
find, then she collected each of the puzzles and corrected them (we all got
100%)
This was a game Lacie could play too and she
did surprisingly well...even almost beating Alice Nan, who had trouble
finding the last couple of names. But with Jeri helping Lacie and me
helping Alice Nan finally both finished the puzzle and then we moved into
the family room, where we watched the movie of Prince Caspian again,
since Alice Nan and Jeri had missed it when we watched the night before.
While we were watching our movie, Tom and Walt first sat
on the patio, drinking beer and watching football on their outdoor TV (such
a great father-son thing to do)
and then Tom cooked dinner and served us all
on the couch while we continued to watch the movie, occasionally commenting
on something that differed from the plot of the book.
It was just such a fun afternoon and once
again I am totally impressed with Brianna's talent for leading the group in
such an adult fashion.
Now we are tasked with reading "Voyage of the
Dawn Treader" for our next meeting, which will probably take place in Davis
in December.
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