Are we having fun yet?

Tuesday
C and his sister went flying this morning. He took her over the lake and the dam and just tooled around showing her the sights. She enjoyed it and I know he really enjoyed taking one of his family up for a ride.
Wednesday
It was my turn for a ride in the plane. We got up early and headed out to fly to Flagstaff, to wander around the old town and have lunch. It was a beautiful day and we had such a nice time. The kids stayed home with Aunt K and had fun riding bikes and walking to the park and when we came home, A met us at the door and said, "Oh darn!", as she knew that special brand of fun-without-parents was over. I talked to my family on the phone that evening as two of my brothers were home for a late Christmas celebration. Nice to say "Hi", but very unsatisfying in the way of real connection. We were all wiped out, so we popped in the dvd of The Iron Giant and watched that together. Love it!
Thursday
The girls had their friend M over to play today, while Daddy and Aunt K went downtown to do some touristy stuff. I ended up riding my bike up and down our street so that the kids could ride bikes and scooters in the road, then walking to the park with them. We packed a little picnic and had a nice walk. Then they were crazy playing girls in the house, sliding down the stairs and dropping stuffed dogs over the banisters, being very loud and having a great time, except when someone was bent out of shape about something. I was a so-so mother, hitting two for three on the compassion scale with E, who cried rivers of tears about stuff I could not fix or help her with. She was not accepting reality well, as I like to say.
Friday
I am now sitting here writing this while the rest of my family is hiking at Red Rock. They will be gone for a long time, but it will not be long enough for all the stuff I would like to do with no one else in the house and no one needing me to be a mother or a wife or even a hostess. I am worn thin. Raw. And I think I figured out why, to some extent. I set myself up. I had such a nice lead in to Christmas, that I forgot how tiring it is to be a hostess. I failed to prep myself for the task. Not that I am not enjoying the visit, or the visitor, of course. I just set myself to be "off" too soon, and had to scramble to turn back "on" to get through this week. Sigh....

In moments of weakness I fantasize about what it would be like to just stop. To stop "doing" holidays. To keep it so simple it barely interupts the flow of "normal" life. I would probably let down a few people in my house, but, oh, the peace. I know the answer lies in finding balance and I suspect this coming year that finding balance will be a sort of theme for me. Because right now I am not feeling balanced, not at all. Welcome to Miranda's new blog! Brutal honesty mixed with family events. Yea!

Merry, Merry

What a nice Christmas! No stress of travel or houseguests. Lots of time to just BE with family. I would not have it like this every year, but this was just what the doctor ordered this year. Next year we can jump on a plane and do the whole big family holiday with cousins and grandparents and long lost uncles. And stay sane because we recharged this year.

Ok, highlights. Friday, C took the girls out shopping for my stocking stuffer while I finished cleaning up the house and putting the final touches on wrapping gifts. Saturday, I did some cooking/baking prep for Christmas dinner and breakfast. We also attended C's church for their Christmas service. E slept on my arm through the whole service! C was glad of my nod to his faith. When we got home the kids opened one present. They both picked one from two of my brothers: E got a Playmobil monkey tree that goes with A's zoo and A opened a secret journal with a spy pen and blacklight to see the writing with. They played with those until bedtime and then we read a bunch of Christmas books. They were not tired, but were eager to have morning come. I stayed with them until the cinnamon buns needed to go into the oven and then C took over. Then I stayed up getting the presents all set up for the morning. I was done and headed up to bed at 12:30. C was still in the girls room, he said E had just fallen asleep a little before. At least they slept til 7:30am! A came into our room and said Santa had come, so we all got up to go see what we got. The big Santa gift was a keyboard. C got me a new top of the line bread machine! I also got a roasting pan and some holiday china. Guess I will be cooking up a storm this year. C got a satellite radio, a bunch of airplane stuff from me and some books. The girls got more Ello sets, a planetarium, a bunch of books, a magic hat kit, fleece ponchos, and a bunch of stuff I can't remember. E commented to C later in the day that it was too much and she did not know what to play with! A and I played with the piano, A learned Mary Had a Little Lamb and I learned Fur Elise. I actually played both hands! Maybe in a few months I will be able to play it with the same speed the keyboard says I should. Fun! E just liked plunking away to the music in her head with no concern for playing actual songs! I like pretending I actually have a grand piano in my library, when I hear it from some other part of the house. It sounds that good!

Today we picked Aunt K up from the airport and have been hanging with her all day. The girls put on ballet shows for her on our "stage". We ate homemade pizza and played games this evening. And everyone is worn out and heading towards bed early tonight!

Catching Up

Here is a picture of us before the Nutcracker Ballet Wednesday night. Hey! A picture of me for once! And C, too! We went out to dinner at Outback before the show with our friends who attended the ballet with us. It was a very nice night; good food, good ballet, and good company.

C was supposed to be off after Tuesday for the holidays, but he ended up staying home sick on Monday and going in to work Tuesday, Wednesday and today. On Monday, C worked in the backyard with me, even though he was a little under the weather, pruning the plants for the winter. We also started a fire to burn some tree branches we had pruned earlier this year. The girls had fun gathering up the cuttings of sage I had cut off the bushes and throwing them into the fire. It smelled really nice. I told the girls how people use sage to burn in their homes to cleanse the space, energy-wise. It felt like we were doing the same thing in our yard, getting it ready for the winter, and cleaning up.

Tuesday, we spent the day over at our friend's house. I helped the mom paint her livingroom while the girls played. It was a day of good conversation and the girls had fun playing. We saw them again on Wednesday night for the ballet. It was nice to have some playtime planned in with the Lifelearners on break for the holidays. I will be missing everyone by the end of next week. For the girls, it will be a good thing their Aunt is coming to visit, so they can make it through till we start up meeting again.

Today, I started making a yule log ice cream cake for our dessert Christmas night. My mother made one often but I could not remember exactly how she made it, so I improvised. Chocolate genoise cake with hazelnuts, vanilla ice cream filling and a whipped ganache icing should do the trick, even if it was not what she made. Papa, if you are reading this, send me her recipe! I might get the girls to help make mushrooms out of mereinge (I can't spell that and am too lazy to go look it up) to decorate the log with.

The coolest thing just happened! I was sitting here writing this and heard popping sounds from outside. Turns out one of the new casinos is having it's opening tonight and they had fireworks to celebrate. We went outside to see if we could see them and we could! So, we stood in front of the house and watched the fireworks. I don't even want to guess how much they cost; they were the most elaborate display of pyrotechnics I have ever seen. I love this town! Fun!

Week In Review

Monday
We decorated our Christmas tree and got out all the other decorations. A wanted to set up the elves that my mother had made for me, so I set the task to her. I wanted to use the gingerbread houses we made with our group for a little Christmas village, so we laid down some sparkling white cloth for a snowy landscape and set up some little trees and the houses. The girls thought we needed people to inhabit the village and since we did not have any, their littlest pet shop animals moved in. They had ones that have winter hats and scarves and skies, so they fit right in. It is really quite cute.

Tuesday
We went bowling with the Life Learners. Each time A, or E or their friend M was up, they would all three go up to fling the ball down the lane. It was a very, ah, supportive way to bowl. They were very encouraging to each other as well, no matter how many pins got knocked down. I bowled a 134, which is now forever recorded here as my best score ever! We went to McDonalds afterwards to eat and play, since two hours of bowling is not enough time to play. It was quite chaotic and fun, but wrapped up a bit early. It was our last planned Life Learner event for the month, to allow for family and holiday plans.

Wednesday

Today was quiet. I had a grocery delivery expected and that kind of put a hold on things until it arrived and was put away. Then we got out the ovenbake clay and made ornaments for the tree. A made the snowman and E made the penguin. I have started a bit of a tradition where they make an ornament for each year.

Thursday
C was out of town and we were in need of a plan to keep busy so we would not miss him too much. I invited whoever wanted to come from the group to go see the holiday lights at this cool place they set up every year. The money goes to a good cause and it was a wonderful dose of holiday spirit. My friend and her boys joined us and we had a great time. We rode the carousel, the train and had hot chocolate and funnel cakes. It was also very cold, so it really, for me, felt like Christmas time, just without the snow. Enjoy the pics below!

Friday

I had to run an errand and after that we went over to our friends' house to play. The girls played and I chatted with my friend. We ended up staying much later than we had planned, but it was a good time. The girls were all begging for a sleepover, but they were not prepared and C was coming home that night, so I put them off until we could plan something better. Which ended up sooner than I thought.

Saturday and Sunday

A had wanted to go skating again, so I took her Saturday. We met her friend M there and had a nice time skating. She did really great! We will have to keep going, so she can "stay good" as she put it. Afterwards, A went home with M to sleep over. Since, E would never forgive it if A got to sleep over at M's without her, E was brought over by Daddy after they got home from skating. C and I had an evening to ourselves and we were hoping to have a night and morning and maybe even a day to ourselves as well, but it was not meant to be quite so good. The girls got to sleep just fine, but woke up at about 3:30am and cried for Mama, so my friend called us to come get them which was our plan for just such a situation. C and I drove over and picked up our not-quite-so-big girls and brought them home. We were all snuggled in bed together and back to sleep by 5am and the weather was dark and cloudy this morning, so we got to catch up on sleep. A was very sad this morning to realize that she was not at her friend's house to play all day. I felt so bad for her. Maybe next time she and E will be able to do it all night long!

Today was spent hanging out as a family and playing with Daddy. E begged me to make an outfit for her B-a-B Tiger, so I made her this Santa outfit. It turned out pretty good and I had just enough red velvet fabric in the scrap box to make it. She was quite pleased, as you can see above!

That was our week! Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Long Time No Blog

Yeah, yeah, I know. To go from blogging every freakin' day for three months and then to lay off for a week, you must all be in withdrawal! But I am here and fine and all is well with me and mine. I will recap the week's events in a moment but for now I would like to ramble on about the direction of this blog. When I started it I envisioned a daily inspiring account of our wonderful lives, to be used as a way for family, friend's and other unschoolers to learn about us and learn about unschooling. That is not quite how it has turned out. Real life got in the way and human behavior ruled. Forcing myself to write each day drew out of me the bare minimum, with nothing inspiring about it. My head is full of great ideas of things to talk about here, but the chore of recording the day for all posterity has kept those thoughts inside my head. I guess it is like all creative outlets. The more you try to schedule it, the more the inspiration slips between your fingertips. And like learning (the school way). When asked to do a task when you are not interested, you do the least amount of work to meet the bare minimum of standards. I would like to find some balance between keeping you all up to date on our life and blogging only when the inspiration hits, which could be much less often than everyday, for sure. Maybe, letting myself off the hook as to what should be in this blog would give me more freedom to write as I am led. If I feel like expounding on my belly button lint, I would hope that what I wrote about that would be more exciting and valuable than a dry account of the girls' day. The pressure to turn each and every normal day into something new and exciting is excruciating. Life is not like that. OUR life is not like that. Sure, we do alot of fun stuff that the girls can't help learning from. But each day does not hold such easily recorded events. I would bet my life that each day some new knowledge finds a place in my chidldren's internal model of the universe, but to be able to spell that out I would have to be a mind reader. Even on the days we do something that should give them new information and connections, I still can't say for sure what went into their heads. Now, I do know what they know by living with them and talking with them everyday, but that insight is revealed to me in it's own time, not by my test schedule. As it should be. Their minds are not mine to control. I have only the duty to help out when asked and guide when needed. Each moment of each day gives them opportunity to grow into the people they are here to be. I do not know who they are meant to be. Only they know. I cannot proscribe the perfect plan to get each girl what she needs to fulfill her destiny. Only they can. I can only assist as called and offer what is seemly. No more, and no less. To claim otherwise would be arrogance and folly. No, this does not look like the way most people live their lives. Heaven forbid I should live as everyone else, when I am given the opportunity to shine in my own way. And heaven forbid my children should plod along with the masses when I know they are here to Shine. And if heaven won't forbid it, I will!

I'll post later about our week. Now I must go be with my children.

Ice Skating

We had a skating party with C's workmates families today. A had such a great time, she moaned all the way home! She was not ready to quit skating when the session was over. I took the schedule of free skating home so we could plan to go another time. Just she and I, since E did not really get into it today. She tried for a while, but decided skating was not for her right now. We got out tree put up, but the decorating will have to wait til tomorrow and beyond. I am in no hurry this year. And I am also in no mood to write this right now.

I Believe

It's beginning to feel a bit like Christmas around here. We watched The Polar Express tonight as a family. Very sweet. Teared me up at the end, just like the book does. Course, just about anything makes me cry lately. No, I am not expecting. Not yet anyway. Life is just intensely joyful, I guess. Sometimes just intense, too.

ANYWAY. C got to go for a ride in a helicopter this morning, and I had a massage this afternoon. I also mailed all the boxes of Christmas cheer out to family today. Yeah! When I got home, I grabbed a quick bite to eat and we got ready to go back out again to get our Christmas tree. We found a sweet little fraiser fur. We will put it up and decorate it tomorrow. And go ice skating. Yipee!

Gifts All Around

Today was going to be very full and stressful for me until half of what I had to do got cancelled. C called from work and asked me if I really wanted his new coworker to come for dinner tonight, or could it wait til later. If I could have kissed him through the phone I would have! Now all I had left to do was to pack up the boxes of gifts and goodies and get them addressed to take to the post office tomorrow. No cleaning the house for guests. No cooking a fancy meal. No ignoring my kids for a whole other day. Woo hoo! Both girls are dealing with a small cold and I encouraged them both to take it easy today, so they settled in on the couch to watch tv and play from there. After I had my stuff done, I went and snuggled with them. A and I played a game of Go Fish. She was feeling restless and wanting to do something, so she got up to play with her zoo for a while. I went ahead and cooked the new recipe for meatloaf I was going to make for dinner. Turned out pretty good. After dinner while the kids were playing with Daddy and I was paying bills in my office, A came in and said she wanted to make a gift for her Aunt K who is coming to visit after Christmas. She got out all the supplies and had me get her started, but now she is working all on hew own. I won't say what she is making, since her aunt reads here, but I will say it involves sewing. C and I were very impressed with her desire to make a gift and for her skill at the sewing. I love this age! She is becoming more and more fun to do stuff with. When I was a girl, I really got into creating things and I am glad to see A is following in my footsteps. E wanted to make a gift as well, and when she said she wanted to do what A was doing, I encouraged her to do something that she was good at already. She said I could make it for her. I said, no if you want to make a gift for Aunt K, you have to make it yourself, but that I would help like I was helping A. So she decided to do something else and got to work on it right away. I'm so proud of them both.

I Must Be Part Elf

Where did the day go? I have been so wrapped, heh, up in getting the gift boxes ready, time just flew by today. I started wrapping all the individual gifts and assembling the goodies, finished making the goodies, and then it was bedtime. Huh. The girls fended quite well for themselves, playing with the zoo and watching Discovery Kids. I had one gift to finish and I could do this sitting on the couch (not giving anything away at this point- I never know who is reading this). So, I watched this show with A about the Dark Ages. The main character was wondering why it was called the Dark Ages and the other characters, who time travel and explain the answers to aforementioned kid's questions, went back to figure it out. Well, I was not impressed that they skirted around the whole Roman Catholic Church's hold over people's minds for 500 years. Blamed it on the printing press not being invented yet, regardless of the fact that the Eastern lands had plenty of books. So, needless to say, when it was over, I had A pause the tv and I filled her in. She took in the gist of it and I let it go since she did not pounce on me for reams more information. That show irked me for other reasons, one of which was that they used the word smart to describe how much information was inside a person's head, not the person's ability to think. ARRRGGGHHH! Ok, I am done.

I am ready for this Christmas stuff to slacken, so I can enjoy my family more. At least I am getting it all done early, so we can relax as it gets closer to the big day. Next year, remind me to cross more stuff off my list of holiday "have-to's".

Zoo Heaven

A got her birthday gift from my dad today. It was a Playmobil zoo, the BIG one. She had been asking me to give her hints each day that it did not arrive in the mail. Last night, she guessed correctly, but I was not going to give it away. So when the box came today, she was guessing as we opened it. I pulled it out and she was so excited she had been right. She said, "I have to send Poppe a thank you for this!!!" As if, finally, a gift worth thanking someone for. ;-b It took an hour to put it together, but it was played with very intently until just a little while ago.

I baked the sugar cookies I had made the dough for last night and the girls and I sat down to decorate them. E made about three in a row and ate each one as it was done. Then she declared herself done and went off to play. I learned my lesson about not letting them eat the cookies the other day with the candycane cookies. So, I said they could eat these, and of course they did not eat nearly as many as I predicted. A was a bit more helpful with decorating them for the goodies to be given as gifts. She did quite a few, assembly-line style, with me. Then she too went off to play. I swear they stayed and finished decorating the whole batch two years ago. Oh well.

I tried out my new chocolate thermometer making chocolate dipped pretzels tonight. When I followed the rules of tempering to the degree, it worked perfectly. When I fudged it because it was late and E wanted to go to bed, it did not work so well. I got half a batch of shiny hard chocolate and half a batch of not so shiny and hard, but not yet streaked white, chocolate. Oh well, they taste the same! My family will just have to forgive my lack of skill with tempering chocolate.

Gotta go wrap the gifts for family, so we can pack up the boxes and get them off to the post office in the next day or two.

Children's Museum

We went to the children's museum with our group today. Six families joined us, two of which had the dads bring the kids instead of the moms, which was a nice change of pace. Not that we did not miss the moms, of course! It was just nice to talk with the dads who are not always as far along the unschooling path as us mothers tend to be. Anyway, the museum always has a traveling exhibit and this time it was houses from around the world. They had examples of houses from Malaysia, Fiji and Mongolia that the kids could walk around in and see how they lived in those places. The Malaysia one had a stream filled with fish next to the house and magnetic poles to "catch" the fish with. They had fun "fishing" as you can see from the catch E made. The one from Mongolia had an example of a saddle used by the people to ride horses. A took it for a ride. They had a spot where you could build a house out of bricks or stones, adding doors and windows and finishing with a roof on top. A, E and their friend M worked on the brick one together. One of their favorite parts of this museum is a stage with working curtains and lights that has a ton of dress up costumes for them to put on shows. They spent a long time there hamming it up for the audience of moms on the bleachers. The museum staff turned on the music to accompany the show and A danced like crazy, jumping on and off the stage. There was a good time had by all.

This evening, I made up a batch of sugar cookie dough that we will be baking and icing tomorrow. A and I got back to reading HP #5, after a break due to my voice being lost since last Friday. She is still up, watching me write this over my shoulder. I am starting the last book of the trilogy tonight, and it is calling me, not to mention A is waiting to snuggle.

Baking Bonanza

Toady began the baking frenzy I enter into every holiday season. I made three types of cookies and one candy. The girls helped a bit, but mostly they just wanted to taste. Well, E wanted to do more than taste. She had a hard time not wanting to eat all of the candycane cookies I made. Anyway, I have several more goodies to do, but they will have to wait til later this week. Other than baking, there was not much to report today. A watched Discovery Kids channel a lot and E played in her own world a lot. Oh, yeah, we did paint some ornaments this morning. We need to do more and will get to that later this week. I requested Christmas music instead of tv this afternoon, and the girls played with their horses until Daddy got home. Then they played with him while I baked and washed dishes. A is still up (10pm), waiting for me to finish this so we can do our snuggle/read in the guest room bed. I told her tonight that she can't keep this up all month because I had top secret stuff to do after children are asleep later on this month. But for now, as long as I have a book to read, she is welcome to snuggle with me and fall asleep while I read.

Relax...NOW

I was sentenced to hard relaxation today. I have been dealing with a minor cold the past few days and today was the first break I could get, so C let me sleep in and then sent me back upstairs when I came down to get my tea and eat breakfast. I did not go right away, but eventually I gathered up some Christmas goodies planning stuff and headed up to lie in bed and rest. The girls played with Daddy and after a while A joined me in bed with her magic kit so that I could show her some more of the tricks. I gave her a few pointers about presentation and she practiced some of the tricks on the bed. My dad called a day late for her birthday (said he had it down wrong on the calendar) and she talked to him and my stepmom for a long time. They both commented on how grown-up she sounded. She will be very excited when his gift gets here as he got her the big Playmobil Zoo. I hope it comes in the mail tomorrow. Both girls got Daddy to watch them dance to the Nutcracker music in their room. I guess they were doing ballroom type dancing, after seeing it done in the Harry Potter movie yesterday. After a while they went downstairs and found ice skating on the tv. We talked about how the winter Olympics are coming up soon. They really enjoyed the skating and were commenting, "that's really hard, cuz I can't even skate!" We are going to a skating party this coming weekend. We'll see how they do. We have not gone since 2003 and A did pretty well that time. E was just so little, she really could not do it, but now she should do ok, since she has roller skated recently. We had Chinese delivered for dinner and watched the ice skating while we ate. Later A and I watched an episode of Mindfreak. In this one he gets run over by a car. Crazy! He also did some slight of hand with coins on a table that was totally impossible! I told A earlier in the day when she gets asked how she does a magic trick her answer should be, "Magic!" I don't know how else Cris Angel does it! A asked to stay up again tonight and right now she is upstairs snuggling with Daddy until I finish this and then she wants to snuggle with me while I read. She might end up moving into the guest room. If she does I will lose my late night reading spot. C will have to put up with my booklight a lot more in our bed. I am reading the Mists of Avalon and it's prequels right now. Awesome! Time for more R&R - rest and reading - for me!

Happy Birthday, my Big Girl!

A turned seven today. Seven. SEVEN! Where does the time go? This morning she opened her gifts. First she opened the Playmobil toys from her Grandparents. They got her the pandas and the baby giraffe. She was very excited to get those. Here she is opening her gift from me and C this morning, wearing her shirt from Aunt K. She was not able to really look at the magic kit because we were headed out the door for our day of special plans. Our first stop was the Build-a-Bear workshop in one of the malls downtown. She had saved her own money up to be able to buy a B-a-B on her birthday. E, of course, had to have one as well, and she, well, will owe me for a few weeks! Not quite to the point where she can save ahead like A can. Anyway, A got a koala and E got a white tiger and they had fun doing the whole B-a-B routine. After that we headed to the movie theater to meet their friend M and watch Harry Potter. I wish that I had not read the book so recently before watching the movie. It had too many discrepancies that bugged me. If I had not had the book so fresh in my mind, I would have enjoyed it much more. Not that it was not very well done. The girls liked it a lot, and for A, having read the book was a good thing, since she knew what was coming. After the movie, we went to the Rainforest Cafe for dinner. We kept the dinner venue a secret from A until today and she was very excited to see where we were eating. The girls had fun finding all the animals and eating together. A opened her gifts from M at dinner. One of them was a Littlest Pet Shop hermit crab, which M knew she really wanted. She said to M, very clearly appreciative, "Thank You!" I was proud of her for letting her friend know it was a good gift, especially after watching M wiggle with excitement while she was opening it. We talked about how much fun it is to give gifts to others. After dinner we took a short detour to see the lions. One of them was playing ball with the keepers. She had one ball stuck on her canine tooth and was batting at the other ball thrown to her by the keepers. So much like a housecat! We got up to the glass right by where the lion was and the girls watched for a long time. Then we tookk M home and headed home ourselves. What a day! A was going around proclaiming it the best birthday ever! She thanked us many times while we looked over her magic kit. I had told her that the gift was not something she had asked for, but was something she wanted. She kept saying how she had no idea what it could be, but I was right, she did want it! I read the instructions for the tricks and showed her how to do many of them. When bedtime rolled around she told me she wanted to stay up and play with her new gifts. I got E asleep while A snuggled with C in our room and when I came downstairs, she was waiting for me in my office. I shut down the house and we went upstairs to the guest room, me to read and her to play on the bed. After a while she climbed into the covers beside me and fell asleep. I kissed her good night and left my beautiful big girl asleep in the bed.

Sugar Plum Dreams

We had a sweet time with the group making graham cracker gingerbread houses. Five families joined us for the day. Everyone brought colorful candies to decorate the houses with and I made up a big batch of royal icing to glue it all together with. It was very chaotic, but fun. I think the kids enjoyed the houses and each other very much, and I know us moms were having fun because we couldn't wait for the kids to finish up and go play so we could make our own house. E was going for the minimalist look with hers I guess, as shown here.

As if all that sugar on the table was not enough, we also had A's birthday cake to share with everyone. I had the crowd move out to the back patio to sing and cut the cake, but it was a bit windy. The candle had to be re-lit about four times before A finally blew it out. She was quite pleased with herself over that cake, which she had such a large hand in making. A couple friends brought gifts and later in the evening she opened the box that came from her grandparents. She was very eager to open more presents, but I had to hold her off till tomorrow, lest they all be opened and leave nothing for the actual birthday. She is presently trying to get to sleep, but is too excited. I hope she likes her magic kit from us. I know we will have fun with the rest of the plans for the big day.

This evening was the final episode of the season for Avatar. We had a nice family time watching that together. I'm glad I remembered it was on, becasue the Tivo box was full and it would not have recorded. Wanna guess what it was full of? 56 Spongebob episodes. Needless to say, some were deleted. Seems to go with the theme of excess for the day...

Party Prep

Today was a busy day getting ready to have the Life Learners over tomorrow for a gingerbread house party. And baking A a cake to celebrate with her friends a day early. She helped me bake her cake, make the icing, design the cake, and decorate it. She even wrote some of the words on it with icing. I cleaned the house and set up tables for us to work on tomorrow. That involved clearing the craft table, no small feat. Sometimes I grumble at how much work is involved with getting ready for stuff like this, then I remember that it would not get done if I was not having people over. Ok, it would get done, just not quite as often! My thing is I haven't figured out how to spread it all out so I don't have to do it all in one day. That is one drawback to living in the moment, I guess. E played most of the day with her Polly Pockets, while A watched tv and helped me bake. They both helped clear the family room of toys and were generally good about keeping it clean after I finished with it. We got a movie in the mail today, Elf, and we watched it this afternoon. I had low expectations, but it was pretty cute. It had the girls cracking up, so I guess they approve. I am too tired to remember anything else about the day. I should rest up for the fun day tomorrow.