December 1st is the day that we traditionally begin to celebrate the red & green season of Christmas. Here are a few things we did today:
The kids started opening their Advent calendars. This year, JediBoy has the hard-to-find Lego Castle Advent Calendar, which started with a smirking knight, and BabyGirl has a wooden open-the-door variety with a Hershey kiss in each cubby.
This weekend, I wrapped 24 picture books about Christmas from our collection, and the kids will open one each day. It’s a $2.99 roll of wrapping paper that makes the holiday books seem exciting and new!
This morning, since today is also Jan Brett’s birthday, the holiday book was the fantastic Jan Brett’s Christmas Treasury. We adore this collection of seven great picture books, including The Mitten, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, The Trouble with Trolls, The Christmas Trolls, The Hat, The Twelve Days of Christmas and […]
Original post by piseco
How to keep a toddler occupied at a restaurant, after she’s finished her meal and before dessert arrives: put a napkin on your head.
It’s a hat, a peek-a-boo device, a laugh producer.
You may look a little goofy, but it’s no stranger than singing Jingle Bells, Happy Birthday, the ABC’s and Itsy Bitsy Spider aloud in a crowded restaurant (this technique also works).
Most importantly, putting a napkin on your head makes little girls smile.
Original post by piseco
Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to the past week.
Homeschool ice skating…
Baking with Mom…
Spending time with family friends…
Playing music…
Spinning tops with Daddy (if you get them going fast enough they flip upside down and spin on the stems!)…
Making up games…
Helping Daddy do dishes…
Doing puzzles…
Playing with Daddy…
Playing ON Daddy!
Playing on Mommy…
Going to the library…
And making bad puns!
We also visited family, ate a lot, swam a lot in the hotel pool, read a lot, learned a lot, played a lot, et cetera, et cetera! ;) Hope those in the states had a lovely Thanksgiving!
Original post by Alicia
Seven hours at Heather’s today, and at least six of those hours looked like this:
and like this:
BabyGirl and Jamie just love that baby Jillian oodles. They squeal her name and want to hold her, pet her, feed her, bathe her, change her diaper. Of course I was in the center of most of that, because of course I wanted to be holding, petting, feeding, bathing and changing the beautiful baby too.
JediBoy and Ethan spent hours upon hours playing Spore, which JediBoy hadn’t played before. We heard barely a peep from them (they did surface for lunch eventually and a short Lego break) and they were completely entranced.
Poor Ben bounced back and forth between playing with the girls and the baby and wanting to play Spore with the boys. It’s somehow my fault that I don’t have a child his age! That Heather is always trying […]
Original post by piseco
Remember my temper tantrum last week, when the kids wouldn’t behave at the allergist? I told you I had a little inspiration for a project for BabyGirl, and here it is.
I crocheted six little handbags in different colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Admire the rustic, amateur quality of the bags that proves they’re homemade, won’t you? :) I used the yarns I had on hand, so the yellow rug-yarn bag is big and chunky and the orange sock-yarn is slippery and thin. No two bags are identical in size or stitches, but they’re all pretty close, and the kids think they’re wonderful with their unique qualities. JediBoy has asked for a purse of his own, and I’m halfway through a larger one in green.
Once I had the six bags done, I added rainbow buttons on the outside (we need to buy two […]
Original post by piseco
Our local children’s museum had a library day today: free admission to anyone with a library card, crafts at tables set up in every room, and a reading and book signing by children’s author Matthew McElligott.
Most of the crafts and activities had a general reading theme, including lots of tables to make bookmarks and one featuring Curious George. Since Matt McElligott’s two most popular books are about Backbeard the Pirate, several of the tables had a pirate theme. At the first table, just inside the doors, the kids could make pirate flags by putting fun foam stickers onto pieces of felt. JediBoy chose to make his a pirate ghost flag.
In another room was a fantastic activity. The library staff had photocopied black and white pictures of Backbeard, and brought along a whole bin full of fabric scraps (from a librarian’s personal quilting stash) so the kids […]
Original post by piseco
Its been a crazy few weeks here at our house. Two weeks ago my Daddy had a stroke. Those days were filled with trips to the hospital twice-3xs a day.
My DH worked from home on most of those days while i was at the hospital so and I left the kids in charge of getting their math, spelling done. One day when I came home the kids were just so excited to tell me that the LOVED spelling! Cat was in one room and the boys in two other rooms, the boy would run to her.. she would give them the word and then they would run back to the room and put it on their paper. They loved it.
We have been pluggin along with our studies and have enjoyed some extra things as well. We currently have a seed experiment we are watching, enjoying more chapters of our historical […]
Original post by ruthie
Just so you know it’s not always a bed of roses around here…
I’ve been in a bit of a funk since my children acted like monkeys at the doctor yesterday. The poor PA was trying to have a decent conversation with me - it was the first time we’d seen her and she was actually being supportive and helpful about JediBoy’s allergies. She was trying to talk through all the symptoms, including the cat allergy that has developed since we had JediBoy tested a couple of years ago. She was patient, kind & thorough, intelligent but not condescending. And she encouraged the kids to open up, smile and talk to her.
Whoops.
The kids opened up! JediBoy insisted on: carrying BabyGirl piggyback, practicing his white belt kata, tickling BabyGirl, crawling under the furniture, and talking loudly to BabyGirl in a sing-song voice. Even after he had […]
Original post by piseco
…We’ve done here lately:
1. Daryl and the kids stopped by the museum at Walnut Grove and talked to the new director of the summer festival about ideas for next year’s festivities.
2. Victoria started making her own earrings.
3. The kids played Kids’ Trivial Pursuit.
4. Alex did lots of art while the big kids and I did Story of the World. (Note: I really want something else for world history next time. Any suggestions?)
5. We have start putting puzzles together at night after Alex is asleep. Another note: Anna tends to model like she’s acting a part. I’m not sure what the faces mean!)
6. Victoria made a lion mask from a pizza insert. Here’s the work in progress.
7. The girls did vocabulary photos.
Here’s haughty.
Here’s morose.
8. I had the big kids run 10 laps each up and down the stairs. Victoria decided to challenge herself and go for 50, and Anna decided to […]
Original post by Alicia
The theme for Muffin Tin Monday this week was Fruits & Veggies, Dips & Spreads. We were lucky enough to be spending the day with our friends, Heather and her kids, and so we shared our muffin tin with them.
We had four fruits (apples, bananas, grapes and clementine slices) with two fruit dips (caramel spread and peanut butter mixed with vanilla yogurt) and four veggies (carrots, broccoli, snap peas and celery) with two veggie dips (ranch dip and guacamole).
BabyGirl liked the apples with caramel the best.
JediBoy loved the celery with peanut butter. Jamie tried a little bit of everything! There was even some left when Ben came home at noon and he got to share in the tin too.
We were also visiting beautiful 3-week-old baby Jillian, but I don’t have any pictures, because taking a picture would have required me to let her go and I couldn’t do […]
Original post by piseco
Uncle M. was bored. He said we should all come over.
We did!
We descended on their formerly quiet, clean & peaceful home and made it our own: loud, messy and rambunctious. The kids played and fought and wrestled and sang and danced and ate. The grown-ups mostly just played and ate. We had two rousing games of Hex Hex mixed with the Hex Hex Next set, and then a play of the CSI: Senses game (reminiscent of Cranium).
It was a wonderful night. JediBoy enjoyed watching movies, pretending to be the character in a video game while we all called out what buttons we were pushing, and helping Uncle J. and me do some charades as part of the CSI game. (He acted out “answering the phone” by himself, then helped us act out “sketching the crime scene” by being in the crime scene, and “putting […]
Original post by piseco
The kids love to paint. Today they are using shiny paint - half glue and half tempera paint on aluminum foil. BabyGirl likes to refill her paintbrush often and glop and sloosh the paint onto the foil. JediBoy experiments with designs.
Three or four paintings in, things start to get silly.
Really silly.
I am finally forced to capture the silly monkeys behind bars.
DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. THEY EAT ENOUGH ALREADY.
Original post by piseco
I live in a house full of bibliophibians.
This week, the local branch of a large publishing company is holding its annual warehouse sale. It turns out that our community is full of bibliophibians.
Yes, I need more practice on adjusting-one’s-camera-settings-in-the-dark. But the photo above shows a small portion of the line of traffic waiting to get in to the warehouse.
Once we got in, we were greeted by piles and piles of empty boxes waiting to be filled, and rows and rows of remaindered, overstocked and returned books piled on pallets.
Books with a cover price of $9.99 or less are $1 after tax. From $10-$14.99, the books are $2, up to $24.99 are $3, and so on. Nearly half the sale is kids’ books - paperbacks, hardbacks and board books, DK readers, DK Eyewitness, Caldecotts and Newberrys and more. We restrained ourselves greatly and only bought two […]
Original post by piseco
Here’s a few pics from the last Homeschool Day at the Petroglyphs. The theme was primitive technology and we stuck to some of the most popular activities to make it easy for us and fun for the kids.
I go back and forth about whether I want to continue to host these. I’ve been doing it for 4 or 5 years now and I get great feedback but it’s so much work and people just don’t show up as much as they need to in order to make it worth my while or let the petroglyphs even break even in costs.
The kids love it and I really do like playing hostess, dreaming up themes and activities and talking to the moms and dads. I even like leading the activities and reading and playing with the kids. I actually think that’s my favorite part.
Anyway, here’s some photos…
Victoria and Alex coloring […]
Original post by Alicia
I stumbled upon these two old pictures of Annalee last night and they make me laugh so much. They were taken literally seconds apart and they still sum up this childl!
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming!
Original post by Alicia
Can I help it if two of the kids’ activities I like to participate in overlapped this week?
Muffin Tin Monday was a themed lunch: exploring your family, your heritage, your ancestry through food.
The Unplug Your Kids challenge word was kitchen.
So we had to have an Unplugged Muffin Tin!
In order to prepare for today’s lunch, JediBoy and I were working even before breakfast. We decided to make homemade Polish egg noodles, or kluski. These were the best part of my Buszi’s homemade chicken noodle soup. One year when I was in college, my mother and I visited my grandmother and I watched her make pie crusts and placek and kluski - and wrote down what she was doing. Before that, I only knew how to help. Now I have my own recipe to follow.
We made the dough before breakfast - two eggs, two cups of flour, […]
Original post by piseco
The big kids were all mysteriously quiet the other night so I went looking in the living room to see what they were up to.
I found them all in a row, quietly sitting on the couch. Anna was reading “True Crimes and How They Were Solved,” Jack was petting the cat and watching whatever Daddy was watching on TV, and Victoria was learning to draw cartoon animals. It was such a sweet sight I had to take a picture!
Original post by Alicia
Last week Grandma let Victoria try on a wedding dress she got for the grandkids to use for dress up. She also modeled the “Godfather” costume she wore on Halloween (there’s a hoop built in for a big belly) and they posed as bride and groom.
Why does this picture break my heart just a tiny bit? Wow, they grow up fast.
Original post by Alicia
JediBoy is not a natural at basketball.
He didn’t know how to dribble a month ago, hasn’t got the hang of shooting the ball high enough that it approaches the basket, and isn’t great at catching passes.
He’s in the 75th percentile for height, at 6, and is playing in a 5- and 6-year-old league, so it’s reasonable to assume that he should be on the taller end of the team. He’s actually the second-shortest player on his team. Those other kids must be playing in the junior NBA - they’re tall and fast and wickedly able.
See, that’s JediBoy on the left. (He’s not really shooting the ball. He has his hands up to try and get the rebound. The picture looks fun, though.) See the back of the other player in blue? He’s the same age as JediBoy and a full head taller. […]
Original post by piseco
…so have you, you, you. You came too, too, too. You’ve been to the zoo, zoo, zoo.
At least you can imagine you were there!
Today was BabyGirl’s second birthday, and we celebrated by meeting friends at a zoo between our homes - about an hour’s drive for each of us.
We did the entire zoo twice, had lunch, watched all kinds of animals, ran and played and wore ourselves out. We were at the zoo for almost 6 hours. It was a great treat, and the kids loved seeing all the “elimals” (it sounds like a cross between Elmo and animal). Especially the monkeys, the “elimunts” (you can figure that one out!) and the penguins. Oh, the penguins.
JediBoy was the first to figure out, by accident, that if he walked along the glass holding a graham cracker, one particular penguin would follow him, trying to get […]
Original post by piseco
Tiffany has posted a bunch of pictures of our fun time with them last week in Nebraska. Head over to her blog to see them. There’s pics of Anna’s fantastic grasshopper, Halloween, fun in the park, silly faces, two zoos, makeshift rivers and more.
We love going to Tiffany’s!
Original post by Alicia
We had a late start today after staying up to watch and celebrate the election results. I spent the morning singing Si, Se Puede and then Everybody Rejoice (thanks to PisecoSis - this is the one that is now lodged firmly in my brain!). I’m tingly with hope.
Things felt smooth and happy - coincidence, or because of my good mood? Whatever the reason, we found a good balance today between together and alone, noisy and quiet, clean and messy, studious and fluff.
We danced to Laurie Berkner songs on BabyGirl’s new rough-and-tumble cd player. We finished the last lesson of Math U See Beta. We read a pile of books, some aloud, some silently, in a tangle on the floor. We sorted through boxes my Dad brought last weekend, including trying to put together a dozen wooden dinosaur models. We did some worksheets from […]
Original post by piseco
JediBoy could just as easily be called KnightBoy because he continues to be fascinated with knights and castles. Do you remember his bliss in July, when we got to see a reenactor speak at our library? Last night we went out to see the same knight speak again.
William the Defender spoke with the same depth of information and humor as he did the last time we saw him. I won’t repeat it here, but if you’re interested, I tried to cover at least a little of what we learned in my post from July. PisecoDad was seeing him for the first time, and especially liked his dry wit and breadth of knowledge.
JediBoy loved seeing the weapons, and the armor, and trying on the helmets. BabyGirl enjoyed people watching and playing with the boy about her age three seats down. The presentation lasted for two hours, and […]
Original post by piseco
Let’s get this straight: my post this morning was a belated post about Halloween, written two days after the fact about events that happened on time. This post that you’re reading right now, scratching your head and heaving a sigh because I won’t get to the point, this post here is about belated carving, written on time about events that happened two days after the fact. Is that clear? Okay, then, read on.
JediBoy had his pumpkin last week but wanted to carve it on Halloween. When Halloween arrived, he decided he wanted to carve it with Pappy. When Pappy arrived on Halloween, JediBoy decided he’d rather play Legos after all.
When Pappy came back to our house this morning, JediBoy asked if he was ready to carve a pumpkin! Pappy was surprised but game. Pappy cut the top and I helped scoop out the […]
Original post by piseco
With all the excitement of Halloween and BabyGirl’s birthday party, I’m late uploading my Halloween photos. Here are a few glimpses of our Halloween.
The kids were wildly excited all day, from the moment they got up and opened their presents from The Great Pumpkin til they collapsed, exhausted, into bed that night.
They couldn’t wait for the dressing-up part to begin, so they tried out two other sets of costumes. In the morning, they were a vet and his poodle patient:
In the afternoon, they were a farmer and his pumpkin. JediBoy acted out the whole story of the farmer growing his pumpkin, harvesting it, and carving it into a jack o’lantern - several times!
The excitement really kicked in when Pappy and Nita arrived in the afternoon, bringing with them books and candy.
At dinnertime, we made our way over to Leigh’s house to meet up with friends and family […]
Original post by piseco
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