the height of excitement

There's nothing like hearing that knock on the door and racing up the hallway to discover, not a face-to-face-friend, but a New Friend all wrapped up in paper and cardboard and a big plastic bag.

Yesterday the first of our recent book purchases arrived. All the way from America.
Which ones would this box hold? Latin books? Knitting books? Farming books?
No, it was the maths books.


J12 and J11 are a good way through their first ever maths text book and they were keen to get a hold of A Human Endeavour after they're done this b*o*r*i*n*g, but useful one (to be honest, I'm impressed at how they are sticking with a book that is just page after page of sums - they are not *overly* enjoying it, but they can see how much quicker they are getting at the basic facts through their almost daily practise and they are ploughing on of their own free will).

We flicked through the new orange book briefly yesterday...there's no way we'll be waiting to finish the current book before starting this one. It's FANTASTIC. We didn't want to put it down, but other things (like dinner preparation) were calling and we had to be grown-up responsible people! Can't wait for the littlies to go for naps this afternoon (hence why I'm betting the blog out of the way now while I munch on grated carrot, lettuce from the garden and a fried egg).

We dipped into Challenge Math as well. I had bought that mistakenly thinking it was a small book and would be a great one to throw in the backpack for our seven months in China and Mongolia......it's not so small, but it's definitely coming with us!

And the last one: Ten Things All Future Mathematicians and Scientists Must Know (But are Rarely Taught). Well who could leave a book like that at Amazon?

We're looking forward to getting to know our new friends this afternoon.