It's been cold around here lately. Lots of indoor activities and I was back to our interesting booklet of "Thinker's Keys". The exercise we chose this time is called "The Interpretation". You take the description of an unusual situation and then think of some different explanations for the existence of the situation. The example they give is this.

Your neighbour is making large circles in his backyard by pouring sump oil from a can.

And here are some sample explanations you could think up.

1.  He is a disguised alien and is sending cryptic messages to his friends in outer space.

2. He considers himself to be an alternative artist and will soon be rolling around in the grass, attempting to create an environmental masterpiece.

3. He has had a fixation for circles since his childhood, and later will be seen dancing around the circles in the light of the full moon.

As you can see, these are a stretch of the grey matter for children and adults alike. I sat there with the kids while we tried to make up possible explanations for all sorts of wild scenarios. We can invent some of our own when we exhaust those in the book, but for now, we have enough to keep us going for a long time. A few that we tackled are,

Give three possible explanations for:  All the oceans have turned orange.

Give three possible explanations for:  The Prime Minister is standing on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge holding a meat pie in one hand and a boomerang in the other.

We had all sorts of fun with that second one. One of Emma's suggestions was, "He is trying to show that a pie is more yummy than a boomerang."

Logan wrote, "George Bush and Tony Blair came for a sleep-over. While they were playing "Castles, Cowboys & Kangaroos" he was defending his territory and eating dinner at the same time.

As I played along, here's one of my suggestions. "A worldwide publicity campaign has been started in which every world leader must stand in a prominent spot bearing some of their national icons to be photographed. John Howard chose the boomerang because it's light and brought his lunch up to eat with him."

We also came up with, "Huge monsters have invaded Australia and everyone has to run for cover as fast as they can. John Howard has bagged the highest spot in Sydney over water for himself, hoping the monsters can't swim. He's taken the boomerang in case he needs to defend himself and the pie in case he needs to deviate a monster's attention by feeding it."

And "The pressure of being Prime Minister has gone to his head and he's threatening to commit suicide by leaping off. He's going to belt himself over the head with the boomerang if anyone approaches to talk sense into him, and use the meat pie to fling into the person's face."

Apart from being silly with these, we celebrated Andrew's 39th birthday by taking the whole family out to tea at Fasta Pasta, where we enjoyed a nice hot tea and some luscious desserts. Mars Bar cheesecake and Mint Slice mousse that just melted in our mouths. It was a Friday night and we finished off with a drive through the city lights in the warm car. I love doing relaxing, out-of-the-ordinary things every so often.

Last night I borrowed "The Pursuit of Happyness" from Blockbuster and watched it. I love Will Smith's acting and this was certainly a tear-jerker. It made me feel very heavy-hearted for salesmen and homeless people. I think it's the sort of movie that can help us appreciate our own blessings. Of course the ending was satisfactory, although after all their hardships, I would have liked to have seen him and and his little son enjoy a bit more of the good life before the movie ended.

Meanwhile, I'm steadily reading through the pile of books I"ve acquired from both the writer's and homeschooler's conferences, one of my favourite things. So winter has passed quite comfortably so far.