1.  This one was from last night. 

My 9th grader is currently reading All's Quiet On The Western Front  by Remarque for history and literature.   She told me it has some bad words in it, and she was surprised.  We talked about how books about soldiers usually do have some bad words in them.

Then she came to me late last night just giggling and giggling.  "Mom, did you know FART was a word in 1929?"  giggle, giggle.

Then she tells me the book said that one character looked upward with a meditative stare and farted, then said something along the lines of "beans should be heard and not just seen."   She found this hilarious!

Not just the line itself, but that it is in a book from 1929 ... a classic literature book.  So, if you wondered how old the word "fart" is ... it's at least 80 years old.

The exact quote was: 

We have settled ourselves on the sunny side of the hut.  There is a smell of tar, of summer, and of sweaty feet.  Kat sits beside me.  He likes to talk.  Today we have done an hour's saluting drill because Tjaden failed to salute a major smartly enough.  Kat can't get it out of his head.

"You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well," he says.

Kropp stalks up, with his breeches rolled up and his feet bare.  He lays out his washed socks to dry on the grass.  Kat turns his eyes to heaven, lets off a mighty fart, and says meditatively:  "Every little bean must be heard as well as seen."

The book was written in 1929, and set in 1914 ... with the word fart in it.  I thought it was a newer slang word.  So, we looked it up -- and apparently "fart" is one of the oldest English words, with variations in many other Germanic languages.  Supposedly, it wasn't even seen as rude at one point in time.  I was raised that it was rude, and I've tried to teach my kids that it's rude.  They don't listen any better than I did when my Mom wanted me to stop using it.  Interesting.

3.  Virginia Soaps & Scents is a homeschooling family's business.  We're reviewing some of their soaps for the TOS Crew.  Their stamp on the soaps is a large V and two vertically-intertwined S's.  My kids say it looks more like VS than VSS -- so they keep calling it my Victoria's Secret soaps.   

I keep saying "Virginia. Soaps. And. Scents." 

They reply, "No, that's VSAS, this only says VSS."  Goofy girls!

5.  One morning before school this week, my boys were playing Jedi knights with their plastic light sabers.  My 12 yo daughter had the 1 yo boy on her lap on the couch.  She got a light saber and was helping the 1 yo use it.  He just laughed and laughed as he had a sword fight with his 5 yo brother.