Once Upon a Galaxy Far, Far Ago

I found Ian and Sage laughing helplessly at the kitchen table a few weeks ago. They had a composition notebook in front of them, and had undertaken to alternately contribute four words each to a saga. The story has a rocky start, as you can see them stuck in a four-word rut at cross-purposes with each other, but then it evolves in surprising ways. I can't help but think my kids are amazingly cool, spending their time on stuff like this epic collaboration. Enjoy.

"An army of Ianians planned an attack on the evil Sagacians. With their wimpy fruit weapons, the Sagacians couldn't fight! They upgraded to blasters! Their blasters all jammed. The Ianians were disorganized. However, they had nukes. The nukes destroyed them. They were reincarnated as very weak, stupid daisies. The Sagacians all died. Then, they lived again! The Ianians became dragons. The Sagacians became golems. They were water golems. They became stone golems. Both sides made peace.

But a new threat arrived from Minecraft: it was an army of zombie pigmen, which were planning to take over. They allied with evil creatures from Magic the Gathering. But the Ianians could resist fire, acid, and could work magic. The Sagacians could travel between dimensions. So together, they were an unstoppable force that eliminated each and every obstacle.

Suddenly, the seltzer water became stale, so according to a mystic porpoise, they must rise up in rebellion against the evil empire of fire-breathing chinchillas in flying armchairs. They must ally themselves with living beanbags, because the beanbags could spew armor and weapons. This would greatly improve their chances against the evil army of chinchillas. (Chinchillas can cancel magic.) 

Unfortunately, the chinchillas allied with rocks. This made the zombie pigmen and several ducks bound to them turn against the allied Sagacians and Ianians. They gained the ability to cancel magic too. The chinchillas cackled evilly. Then, a brilliant Ianian developed a new weapon! It destroyed the rocks! Now they could concentrate their efforts on the evil, cackling, maniacal chinchillas. With their armor and weapons supplied by the beanbags, the alliance defeated the chinchillas! Peace was established and they were heroes. The End."

[I split it into paragraphs and corrected one misspelling, but otherwise it's unedited. I only wish you could see the different handwritings in the original!]

Sage's Corner: Turning Seven

My birthday party was on the 15th, one day before my real birthday.  I invited Cathy, Kaitlyn, Marie, Sara, Madeline, Ashlee, Jack, Sam and Ella.  First we decorated foam pumpkins.  The theme of my party was "the Olympics," so we had lots of contests like jello-eating, pinata, Twister, chinese jumprope, dancing, chinese whispers, and sock-stealing.
This is me and my friends decorating foam pumpkins with "pom-pons" (that's what they were called on the package).  And we decorated them with little shape stickers.  We wrote our names with letter stickers on the back.  We could have two, there were so many, but I didn't have time to have two. 
Here is me eating jello in the jello-eating contest.  You couldn't use your hands.  The jello was raspberry.  I won first place in the jello-eating contest.  I ate fast.  We had to wear towels so it wouldn't get on our clothes.
The pinata was purple and blue stripes.  It was shaped like a balloon 'cause it was made out of a balloon.  It was homemade.  I hit it first.
When it was pinata time, Curio was outside.  She climbed up our tree with the pinata.  When Dad made it go up and down, Curio tried to catch it.
In this picture we were playing Twister.  We couldn't sit down.  It was sweaty and hard.

I got a little package of string and beads to make bracelets and necklaces.  Some were shaped like sweet things, like bubble gum, ice cream, just a candy, and a cupcake.  I also got Clue Jr. and a Tinkerbell water paint set.  I got a card to go to the mall and build a Build-a-Bear--it was from Cathy--and a Webkinz platypus.  I named her Patty.  That's all the presents I want to mention.

I'm done. 

Sage's Corner: Six

This is a picture of my birthday. I am happy because it's my birthday. Birthdays are so fun, 'cause you get cake and presents. Our family does ice cream, too.

I got a present that was a cat, and I named her Sophie. She was the very best present I got, because she was beautiful and she was so fluffy. I don't know any other reasons why. I was having a very fun birthday. My other present was a bear! I named him Tom. It was weird--he didn't have a tail! And my very last present was a tea set from Grandma, and it had a tablecloth, too. It was glass. It's hard to keep it away from Lucy, so I tried to keep it safe.It feels great when you're six, 'cause you're another number older, and I had cupcakes at my school, and that's all I want to talk about today. This was Sage talking about her birthday.

Sage's Corner: Pictures of Me and My Family and Friends

Hi. This is my crown. I made it at my friend Emily's house. It was her birthday party. I used a crown almost like a game at Emily's house.


This is a picture of me and Ian. We're at a place called Brandywine Creek State Park. I have fun there, and not-fun there, because sometimes my legs get tired of walking, and it's fun because you get to watch birds if you're really quiet, and once when we went there we saw tadpoles.


This is a picture of me and Ian and Dad and Lucy at the beach. We have fun there, but Mom says we're not supposed to go swimming there. Mom says we're just having fun there but not swimming. The water was cold, so we couldn't go in it, but we could play in the sand.


This is a picture of me and Lucy playing outside. We're playing near our apple tree. We have an apple tree. It's fun playing near it. The grass is always cold there because the leaves are blocking the sun. And sometimes it's so cold we pretend we're swimming in the pool. Lucy loves playing with the tree.


This is a picture of me helping Mom knead some bread. I like doing it. Whenever the kids help do it, it makes it taste better. I help Mom bake other things, too. And I help Dad bake things, too, because Dad bakes things but doesn't bake things that often.


This is a picture of me and Ian and Lucy and our friends that live in Virginia. We visited them. There's a big boy and his name is Eli. And there's a little girl, and her name is Miranda. It took long to go on the trip, and we listened to some fun things that took long. And we only listened to two, but there was one more that we didn't listen to. I'll tell you the ones that we listened to: It was The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Mouse and the Motorcycle. And the one that we didn't listen to was Holes.

That's all I'm going to say, until I put a new picture on "Sage's Corner." That's what we call this place.

Sage's Corner: Some of My Things

I'm showing you these pictures just because they're the only things I could find. In this picture it shows my necklace and I made it all by myself. It took a very long time. It is my "apple-picking necklace" because it has a lot of apple-picking colors.

I look like I'm upside down, but I'm really lying on the bed.

This is my case with some things that I don't want Lucy to get inside it. It used to be a mint case that holded mints but then the mints were all gone and Dad said I could have it.
Ian lost his skeleton, so we decided we could share this orange one. I got those rocks for Christmas. It's a whole rock collection but they're getting lost.

This is my valentine. I got it from Grandpa Clawson on Valentine's Day and he loves me and I love him.
It's a valentine with pictures of the Incredibles. I like it so much. We have the movie The Incredibles and I got lots of other valentines, too. Goodbye.