Crazy Girls

Whew! The girls had a sleepover last night (which is why I did not blog) and their friend M stayed till 4pm today. We had a park day with the Lifelearners yesterday. It was a nice, sunny and brisk day and we had five families join us. The girls plotted to have M come home with us, her mom to pick her up later that evening. That was cool with me. They had a great time playing all afternoon, we ordered pizza, they turned on the disco ball and danced in their underpants to Madonna, and generally had a ball. Then came the question, can she sleep over? Ok, if your mom is ok. She was and even brought over a bunch of stuff for M, like her blanket and her special stuffed cat. They planned to stay up all night, but I had them quiet down and listen to the sleepytime stories the girls listen to every night and they were all out by 11:30. And then up much earlier than I thought they would be this morning! Oh well. We had pancakes for breakfast and they got down to some serious playing. I managed to clean up the dress up clothes and the guest room, a.k.a the dumping ground. We baked some sugar cookies this afternoon and then M's mom came and got her. Both girls are positively worn out! E keeps whining about how she wants to see M. And A is just in a fog. A good time was had by all. And all good things must come to an end. Like this blog entry. ;-b

A Tale of Two Days

I skipped blogging last night and now I don't remember enough about yesterday to warrant it's own entry. This blogging every day thing has been a challenge. I want to write something interesting and memorable about each day, but I don't always have the energy to do that at the end of a day. And I don't always remember the good stuff if I wait for the next morning. So I end up recording what happened in the most rudimentary way which ends up sounding kind of boring and repetitious, especially if the kids are on a kick of, say, chess or playing with playdough. Ok, enough whining on my part. Now on to what happened the last two days.

Sunday was pretty slow, which is probably why there is not much to remember, but a few things stand out. C wanted to burn some paperwork, so he made a fire in the backyard firepit. We all had a nice time standing/sitting around the fire poking it and chatting. It was not even dark yet, but it was pretty darn cold, so the fire was quite useful. One other thing I wanted to mention was something that happened at bedtime. I was laying with the girls and they were trying to fall asleep when A asked me, out of the blue, "what does mediocre mean?" I told her it meant not very good or average and asked where she got that word from. She said, "I heard it on Spongebob. Plankton told Squidward he was a mediocre clarinet player". Gotta love them expanding their vocabulary from cartoons! Who would ever teach their almost seven year old the word mediocre? Well, mine knows it now and so does her sister. Go figure. Once again, life does a much better job of teaching my kids than I could ever hope to.

Today was looking to be a slow one until I remembered that I had library books due. I had one that could not be renewed, so we got our acts in gear and headed off to the library. They had the whole place decked out for Christmas, with about twenty trees decorated for a fundraiser/contest. The girls had a lot of fun going around to see all the different decorations. The trees were really quite spectacularly done. We got a few books, Christmas stories, and left to do some shopping. A is in need of some clothes that fit her and I had a few items to pick up, so we headed to Target. I give that store way too much of our money! Anyway, we were hungry so we got some soft pretzels and an Icee and ate our snack before we shopped. The girls fixated on some glass musical snowglobes, so we looked them all over until we found one we could all agree to. It has a carousel horse in it and I can't identify the song it plays, but it is pretty. We got A some jeans and PJs and shoes. E whined a bit over a pair of red glittered shoes, like Dorothy's, but I was not up for buying her more shoes. The kid is a mini Imelda Marcos! Anyway, I got her to let it go by offering to glue glitter to an old pair of shoes. So, when we got home, that is what I did! I had some pretty strong craft glue that I hope does the trick. And if not, oh well, cuz they were practically free and gave her great joy. We will see tomorrow how well the glue hold the glitter on.

C got home from work late tonight so the bedtime routine was thrown off. We were sitting at my computer playing with this awesome virtual snowflake maker I got from my friend when he got home at 9pm. The girls were so excited to show him all the cool stuff we got today and the snowflakes they were making. Try it out, it makes beautiful snowflakes and there are over 9 million of them in the gallery, no two alike!

Plans

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we have shifted into Christmas mode over here, kicked off by a trip to Jo-Ann's to get a few things on my list including two little trees with lights to flank my front door. A few of the boxes came down from the high shelves in the garage and were opened to see what we could find. Our advent calendar was dragged out by the girls and they had fun re-acquainting themselves with it.

I whipped up some Santa hats for the girls to wear while I took their picture for an idea I had. I sent the picture to this website that turns your pictures into real postage stamps. I plan to use them on our Holiday letters. A would not cooperate and smile, but I managed to get a decent picture anyway. It will be so small on the stamp, I really shouldn't have worried about it and tried so hard to get her to smile. She was not happy with the pictures afterwards, but not unhappy enough to want to do more pictures.

While I went through some Christmas decorations and stuff in my office, the girls played on my computer at this really cute website, uptoten.com. They have lots of fun games and stuff. E printed out a sheet of Christmas ornaments to color and cut out, which she did. They got into the bag of crafts that I had left over from last years' holiday party with the Life Learners, and made themselves each a charm bracelet. Well, E made hers a necklace and wore it for the picture.

My plan for the month of December is to do something Christmas-y each day of the month until the big day. I got a ovenbake clay kit for making ornaments today and that would be one day's event. Other things include the ice skating party we are invited to, going to see the Nutcracker ballet, baking cookies, decorating some part of the house, reading Christmas books, and making ornaments to send to family. I hope I can keep it up! I figure it will spread out the joy and ease my load as well.

30 Days till Christmas

And my shopping is done! That's a record for sure. Ok, so I have a bunch of baking and picture taking and decorating and letter writing left to do, but the gifts are done and boy does that feel nice. Our day today was very quiet after our fun filled packed day yesterday. The girls spent a lot of time playing with Daddy. A and I did play Connect Four a few times and she beat me at least once. One of the tadpoles died and the girls put on latex gloves and poked and explored him for a bit. They want to let him dry out, so he is laying on a paper plate. The other one seems to be doing ok, we'll see if he makes it through his transformation. I hit the grocery store and was sure to pick up some chocolate for the "elves" to place in the advent calendar each day. I am prepared to deal with A asking about Santa this year. I will read her the Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus letter and hope that it satisfies. I want to keep all the magic, no matter the "reality" of Santa's existence. Can you tell I have Christmas on the brain?

Mamma Mia, what a Thanksgiving!

Such a good day. We had a very nice family Thanksgiving, watching the parade in the morning and eating the feast around two o'clock. Everything went very smoothly since we had gotten so much prepped yesterday. We worked on our own family garland of things we are thankful for while the turkey finished cooking. Some of what E was thankful for: her sister, that Christmas is coming, her Smoochie Pup, pretty roses in the backyard, her cat, and her friends. Some of the things A was thankful for: animals and nature, great food from Mama, our tent, her cat, her Build a Bears, and helping Mama make the food for Thanksgiving. After we ate our meal, I was thinking of our friends who had not made it to eat with us. C gave them a call and they had just then gotten home from the hospital with the baby and were starving. We said we are bringing Thanksgiving to you, so we packed up the food and drove it over to them. We stayed just long enough to ooh and ahh over the new baby, hear a quick story of the birth, and wish them well. We left them to eat and rest and headed home to get ready for the show. A had a mini breakdown over what to wear. E and I were dressing up a bit, but she wanted to wear jeans. Granted she had a string of pearls to go with the jeans! They were in the laundry and I was being silly about just pulling them out for her to wear, since I had a notion in my head that she would care if she was not as fancy as the rest of us. When she started to cry and say, "I just want to wear jeans", I immediately went to the laundry basket and got them for her. What was I thinking?!? Anyway, we moved on and left for the show. It was fabulous! The girls really enjoyed it, even if most of the plot went over their heads. At the end, they shine the lights out into the audience and crank up the music, in hopes that you might get up and dance! Well, E was sitting in my lap up until that point, but she wanted to dance in the aisle. I was on the end, so I said go ahead. While she was dancing around in the aisle, the cast could see her since the lights were out on us and we were very close to the front. I was too busy watching E boogie, but C said some of the cast dancing up on stage were noticing E and pointing her out to each other! She is such a superstar! On the way home, A announced that her head was so full of the show and that it was the best show she ever saw. Needless to say we had a good day.

We're very, very busy

So much to do for tomorrow got done today. The girls helped with the food preparation for quite a while this morning, but got tired of it and went to play independently. I forged ahead, trying to get as much done in advance as I could. We may or may not have guests for our feast tomorrow. Friends just had their first baby yesterday and we had invited them to a no stress/no work/no pressure meal with us, but I told them to wait and see how they felt and we would be happy to have them over, or even bring by some food. We are planning to eat a late lunch meal because we are the lucky recipients of four tickets to the Mamma Mia musical here in town. C's boss won them and since they were for Thanksgiving night and he was going to be out of town, he offered them to us. At first we thought it was only two tickets, but it turned out he had four, so they whole family can go! I'm excited! We looked at the seating chart online for the theater and it looks like we have good seats in the $100 a ticket section. Can't beat seeing a great musical, that would have cost us over $400, for FREE. Yippee!

The girls are upstairs watching Iron Will with Daddy. It is a story about a boy who runs a dogsled race across Alaska or somewhere and I am missing it so that I can write this and get the dishes done to start with a clean slate in the morning.

Thanksgiving Party

We had a Thanksgiving party with the Life Learners today. It originally was to be focused on crafts and activities, but food crept into the plans, too, so we had a mini Thanksgiving potluck feast. There were seven families joining us at our friends house. The kids did a craft were they made a turkey out of various cookies and candies that was very cute, not to mention yummy. The girls saved theirs to bring home to show Daddy, then they shared them with him. I had brought some construction paper leaves for everyone to write what they were thankful for on and hang them on a garland, but we did not do that one. Well, E had me write her stuff on two leaves and we brought them home to make our own family garland for Thursday. She was not having the greatest time because her friend was playing with the whole group of kids and she wanted her to play with just her. I tried to tell her that was not a reasonable expectation for a group event, but she did not want to hear that. I took her out to where the kids were playing until she had integrated into their game of animals and she was happy to stay and play. The moms were having very interesting and exciting conversations and the kids were playing together so well, it was a great day.

Small Things

Today, like most days, was made up of small things, little moments that add up to a whole. I focused on getting ready for Thanksgiving by cleaning the house and setting the dining room table. A was very interested in helping with that. While we worked on the table, E was happily clearing out her clutter in the family room. She even cleaned off the coffee table, which usually ends up a dumping ground for odds and ends. I was walking to the craft room with the bucket of crayons and just as I was about to set them on the table, one hand let go of the bucket and crayons spilled all over the floor. I grumbled, "Darnit!" and the girls came running to see what had happened, with concerned cries of "What happened, Mama?" Before I even had a chance to answer, they saw the mess and immediately got down to help me clean it up. I thanked them and off they ran back to what they were doing when I made all the racket and mess. It was such a simple thing, a small thing, but at the same time a huge sign that I must be doing something right!

The tent is still up in the backyard and the girls played out in it quite a bit today. At one point, I heard E calling for me from the tent, so I went out to see what was up. She was laying on the floor of the tent with a pillow under her head and a blanket on her. She wanted me to come in and pretend to camp with her. I was busy with something in the house and it was cold and I did not want to stay outside and told her as much. She started to whine so I squatted down by the door of the tent and poked my head in and made a funny face. I spoke to her in a goofy voice, saying what I don't remember, but it made her laugh. I kept up the game until she declared herself cold and came in the house, willingly letting me off the hook. Again, a small thing for me to do, but what a huge impact on how the day moved forward from that moment on.

After C got home and we had dinner, the girls wanted him to wrestle on the bed, so up they went. I asked him to get them in a bath and to be sure E washed her hair, since I swear it has been a week since she last washed it. I heard them playing and then after a while, I heard E exclaiming she did not want to wash her hair or get a bath or even a shower. I finished up what I was doing and went upstairs and offered to get a bath with E. She jumped at the chance. We had a nice lavender scented bath with the candles lit. A was a bit jealous and refused to go play with Daddy. I really did not want to compromise my chances of gently washing E's hair, so I tried to get C to take care of A. He tried, but she choose to sit on the floor of the bedroom and glare at us in the bathtub! I don't know quite how it happened, but she ended up in the bathroom next to the tub and we all played a silly game of talking fingers, giggling like idiots. And E's hair got washed! After we got out of the water, they wanted to brush my hair and put lotion on me. That was nice! I am proud of how I managed to pull off so many little saves today. Small things to make myself do, but big results. If only every day went so smoothly...

Soothing Sunday

We set up our new tent in the backyard to try it out today. We never did camp out there, but we might go somewhere next weekend. Anyway, the tent is a great step up from the one we have, with two rooms. The girls played out in it for a long time. We happened to have the tv on and on the right channel when the latest Avatar came on so we sat and watched it as a family. I thought it had been recorded on Tivo, but for some reason it did not record, so I was very happy to catch it today. The girls each had a turn on the computer playing Zoo Tycoon and Scooby Do, A on the former and E on the later. I talked to my dad on the phone and while I was on, C and the girls were playing games in the tent. E was having a hard time sharing Daddy, so A left with me to go grocery shopping. I told her we were going to get what we needed for Thanksgiving and she asked if she could help. We had a nice time picking out what we needed. When we got home, after dinner, the girls and I played with my beads, making jewelry for various animals and themselves. Another nice day.

Family Fun

Today was a very nice family oriented day. It started with waffles for breakfast. After breakfast, the girls played with Daddy and I tackled the dishes. I wanted some music, so I put in our dvd of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. We had a lot of fun singing and dancing along to it. A commented on how nice it was that Sandra Dodd and family had gotten it for us last year as a thank you when they stayed with us for a few days. The girls watched while C and I installed dimmers on the kitchen and dining room lights. Then we had a few hours of quiet pursuits. Well, except for C, who watched a college football game. Football in the south is not a quiet pursuit, especially when your Alma Mater is playing! The girls made structures out of marshmallows and toothpicks. I did some work in my office on group business. In the afternoon, we headed out for a trip to the outdoor store to look for a new tent for camping. We had a nice time exploring the store, which has amazing stuffed animals and big tanks of fish that are native to the state. There was a guy casting into the tank with different types of fishing lures and it was fun to watch the fish react to the lures. No hooks, so they just spit out the lure. We found a good big tent and got it. They have a climbing wall in the store and both girls were debating whether to give it a try. They decided next time, but had fun watching a young boy climb the wall. We went out to eat dinner after the store at a new Outback that opened nearby. It was early, so we got right in and had a very nice meal. The girls had fun coloring in the little books they gave them and were just pleasant company all around. We were right by the outlet mall, so we popped in after dinner to do some clothing shopping for A, who is growing out of everything she owns! The girls rode the carousel, too. We went by a place that pierces ears and I had them show A the tool they use to put the earrings in. She is eager to get her ears pierced, but choose not to do it tonight. She said seeing the way it is done made her feel more ready for it. Then we headed home. It was a very nice family day overall.

Walk like an Egyptian

We met with our group today for the Egypt Exploraganza. It was only us and two other families and the kids were more into playing than doing anything else, so very little in the way of exploring Egypt was done. I had brought our mummy from Halloween, because one of the boys wanted to make a sarcophagus. That we did do, making the sarcophagus out of cardboard boxes, but ran out of time to decorate it. We are going to try to do that on Tuesday when we meet again. Other than that we had a very nice time playing and being together. After one of the familes left and it was down to us and the host family, the kids had a fun time playing Harry Potter. We ended up staying until almost 8pm.

A had a hard time dealing with the fact that the Goblet of Fire came out today, but we are waiting until her Birthday to go see it. The excitement was palpable! We did Tivo a "making of" show that was on last night and watched it this morning before we left to meet with the group. It made it hard for me to wait! It looks so good.

Magical

A and I watched two more episodes of Mindfreak today. She handled it much better and we enjoyed freaking out together over some of the stuff he did. She would not watch a part that involved razor blades in his mouth, but when it was through and I told her there was no blood (even though there should have been!!!) and what he had done, she wanted to rewind it and watch. I am eager to get to her birthday, so I can see how she reacts to the magic kit I got her. I know this magic will pale in comparison to what Cris Angel does, but I hope it satisfies her need right now.

We spent the day quietly. Even I did not get too involved in anything. I did get out the new chocolate melter thing I got to test it out for making candies for Christmas gifts. I could not get the chocolate in temper, but it was probably due to the chunk of chocolate having bloomed already. I will have to test it with a good new bar of chocolate, which I do have on hand, but the girls enjoyed being my testers. There was a lot of Neopets happening today. A even went and bought food for her pets while I was in the shower. She did not bargain, merely copying the amount asked, but still! All by herself! She has gotten into playing some of the games to earn neopoints as well. E played with the dollhouse for quite a while, having me help her make a christmas tree for the dolls. This afternoon they wanted to watch the netflix movie we had, Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams. I had read reviews that praised it highly and one that emphatically said it was not a kids movie. We put it in and A, at least, enjoyed it very much. It was slow for her, but she really got the sweet message. I enjoy Robin Williams more when he is not being TOO much, if you know what I mean. Even C, who came home in the middle of the movie, enjoyed it.

R & R

We needed a slow day and we got one. Well, except for the fact that I don't know how to slow down. I got in the mood to deal with the Barbie and Polly Pockets cabinets, so I worked on that. It was not working the way I had hoped it would. Basically the girls are not old enough to keep everything nicely sorted out, so it got piled on the shelves and my nice order was gone in a day. I decided we needed a better system and in the process of creating that, maybe we could get rid of some of it to make room for the new stuff coming for Christmas. Not much culling happened, but I did do a major reorganization of the shelves and we now have room for new toys and stuff. Other than that, we had a nice quiet day. Some computer games were played, some books were read, a game or two was played with the W and W Creatures cards, the dollhouse came down and got some playtime, I was a baby penguin with E for a while this morning, and we decided to camp in our backyard this weekend. Maybe we will even go get a bigger tent first and give it a trial run. Tomorrow will be more of the same if I can help it. Friday will be busy again, so we need the break.

Zoo

Today we went to the zoo with the Lifelearners. The zoo here is a pitiful little one, where it is really painful to see some of the animals in their tiny "habitats". We had been before with the group last year and now that my kids have seen it twice, I think we are done with that place. However, the girls and I did have some good conversations about how a zoo should be, if you're going to have one. Some highlights, despite the sorry nature of the zoo itself: There are all kinds of birds running around free, like peacocks and chickens and pigeons, and they have birdfeed to feed them with. I got the girls a cup of feed and they had fun feeding the birds. One of the peacocks was so bold as to peck some food right out of the cup as E held it out for him. They have a petting area where you can go inside and see some goats up close and personal. The goats were very friendly, and very fat! Probably because you could feed them as well. At one point the girls were off with another mom and I was sitting with some of the moms. E came running for me and said I had to come see. I followed her to a spot where the cages were empty of "zoo" animals, but the place was crowed with chickens, with tiny little puffball chicks. The girls said they saw one of the hens sitting on what they assumed was eggs and when she got up, there were all the baby chicks under her! They spent some time watching a little runt of chick get stomped on by the hens and roosters. They were very concerned about it and we tried to tell them that nature was cruel sometimes.

After a couple hours, we were done with the zoo but not done with each other so we decided to go to a nearby park for a change of scenery. It was a nice park with huge old trees and we had a lovely rest of the afternoon. I was worn out from the long day yesterday, so I was glad when things wrapped up at 3:30, unlike our track record of leave-when-the-sun-sets. I forgot to mention that A had gotten her Weird and Wild Creatures kit in the mail yesterday. She spent a lot of time this evening looking at all the cards and having me read some of them to her. She asked me to play the games that you can play with the trading cards tomorrow, so we plan to do that.

Uh....stuff? Stuff we did today!

While I was still groggy this morning in bed, E got a promise out of me to play Care Bears with her when I woke up. I really did not consider that something I wanted to do upon waking, heck, I am not into any kind of open ended play like that at anytime. I like games and puzzles and reading and.... anything but imagination driven play. But, I promised and she let me have my tea and read my emails and then it was time to play. I surprised myself! I threw myself into it, and with her guidance on "how to play", I actually had fun. I was basically hamming it up for her to make her laugh and it made A want to join in, too. We played for a little while before I needed to get ready for the day. Our plan was to go grocery shopping, then de-clutter the house, then go over to our friend's house and watch Harry Potter #2. C was coming home late so we could stay and play for as long as they let us. We did it all but the cleaning up! The girls had fun playing with M and we moms watched the movie, even if it took us 6 hours to get through a 2 hour movie! But it was a fun time regardless of the constant interruptions. I even helped the oldest daughter who goes to public school with her homework, algebra. I told her, she who has the option to stay home and unschool, that the reason none of us grownups are very good at this math thing is that we never have to use it in real life, at least not how it looks on the paper before us. She said, not unless you are a math teacher. And I said, yeah and then you love math and can't get enough of it. I'm glad my kids won't have to put up with that kind of math unless they want to. It was basically the same problem over and over again, with different numbers. If she had the concept on the first problem, why do 25 of the same thing? Blech! Waste of time. Life is too short. Blah blah blah....
We are going to the zoo tomorrow with the group, so I will wrap this up.

Extended Hiatus

Sorry about that folks! I was wondering when I would ever get back to this blogging thing. Ok, I am going to fill you all in on the past four days, with much detail forgotten, I'm sure.

Thursday November 10th
This was the day our friends came over to watch Harry Potter #1 with us. We cleaned up and got ready for them and the girls all played while the mom and I watched the movie. There were many starts and stops, but we finished it in time for them to go. She enjoyed it and we are going to watch #2, and possibly #3, tomorrow. A got into the bucket of K'Nex I bought years ago on sale and we made a hand drill together with them. That was fun. I wondered when they would be noticed and played with. We had a few words about gears and translation of power from one axis to another. She wanted to do more when we were done, so I am sure they will stay out on the table for a while. I showed the girls the Egyptology book I had ordered. It was beautiful and lots of fun exploring. Our Exploraganza next week is on Egypt, so it came just in time.

Friday, November 11th
Happy Veterans Day! I am a veteran and so are a couple moms in the group, so I made sure to thank them for their service when we met Friday. One of my rare patriotic moments. It was our Music Making Exploraganza, where the kids were free to make musical instruments out of boxes and cans and other random stuff. I brought along our huge homemade rainstick to share, even though most had already seen it at our house. Some hadn't known what it was, so carting it all the way there was worth it! The family who hosted have a firetruck in their back yard and the kids all had a blast playing on that. They also have a trampoline and I had a blast jumping on that! Oh, yeah, the kids had fun, too. I need to get one, but probably not until after Christmas at this point. If anyone reading this (who I am related) to wants to get one for us for Christmas, be sure it is one where the net goes inside the spring area. Much safer. Shameless plug for gifts, sorry! Anyway, the kids did make some little drums with cans and balloons and had fun with that.

Saturday, November 12th
I had asked C to give me some "office time" to get group business and other stuff done this weekend. He got up with the kids and before I even got out of bed, they were off to the park. They had a nice time and I got some of my business done. When they got home, C and I ended up in a heated debate about Christmas plans and that ate up all the rest of my time before I had to leave to get my massage. When I called to say I was heading home afterward, C told me the tadpoles had arrived! I had the bottled water we needed to put them in their tank in the van, so they were waiting on me to get home. We got them settled in and they seemed ok after their shipping adventure. They are cute little buggers and the girls were thrilled to have them here finally. We could not feed them yet, so they were very anxious for the morning to arrive when the first feeding would occur.

Sunday, November 13th
C wanted to get out to get some exercise by hiking at Red Rock. I was not up for it since I had so much stuff left to do, so he and the girls went without me. They were gone most of the day and had a great time hiking and exploring a new trail we had not been to before. He was very impressed with how good a climber E has become. The girls climbed up on some rocks he says he could not even get up on. I got tons done and enjoyed my little break, which extended into the evening even after I got home since C played with the girls all evening. They had a nice time with Daddy this weekend and I appreciated the chance to get caught up. It was good all around. I did miss the girls after so much time without being the "on call" parent, so I made sure to reconnect with them both as we lay down for bed. We made plans for tomorrow and talked a bit. They were pretty wiped out so they fell asleep rather quickly.

Mish Mash

Lots of various things going on today. I am tired, so I will make it short. E wanted to play with flubber, so we made a few batches. This got me thinking about the bouncing ball we never made on our Potions day, so I whipped one up while the girls played with the flubber. They had fun bouncing it, even if it was not all that bouncy. We checked on our crystals and....success! We now have a good size chunk of blue crystals. E wanted to add it to my rock collection that I have displayed in the dining room, so it was awarded a spot. We played around with the karaoke machine and recording the singing. E had me get down the dollhouse and she played with that for a while. A wanted me to find the frog dissection thing I had found on the internet a few years ago. It was no longer free, but for 75 bucks I could get a whole series of vitual dissections. I actually considered it, but told A that she could get it when she is older, if she wants. She liked the idea of learning about the animals without having to kill and cut one up to do it. E did magic for me that required a lot of eye-closing and ignoring of stuff on my part for it to work, but she was so proud of herself, I went along. I made a batch of stuffing/dressing just because I can't wait for Thanksgiving. A said it looked and smelled disgusting. Heh! More for me! I bought tickets for the Ballet to see the Nutcracker near Christmas. The girls were very excited to learn we got seats right next to their friend M. M and her mom are coming over tomorrow to watch the first Harry Potter movie. Well, the mom and I will be watching, the girls will probably be playing. She has not seen them and couldn't get into the books, so I offered to have then over to watch. Maybe my enthusiasm will rub off on her. That's about it for today.

Wetlands

Today was our Lifelearner jaunt to the wetlands Park. We had five families join us, one of which was semi-new (been around but not come for a long while). A made friends with one of the daughters and that was cool. We all met in the parking lot and headed around on the path together. I had been before, but we had not gone all the way down to the actual wash, so that was very cool to see. Very fast whitewater rushing down a groove in the caliche. It reminded me of home, except that the streambed would have been shale. My girls were not into going down by the water and I had wanted a picture of them there. So, instead, I took a picture of them where they were, doing what they were doing. Sitting on the path having a snack and playing with the toys they brought. Oh well.

After the walk through the park, we were not ready to leave each other, so we made plans to drive down the street to the nearest park and hang out there. After a while at this park E and her friend M started asking if E could go home with her. I agreed, but when the time came for them to go, A was very distraught. After they left, I talked her through it and walked with her till she calmed down. She came back to the group of moms with me and sat with me until she felt ready to go play again. By the time the sun set and we had all made our way to our cars to leave, she was saying how she felt ok about E getting to play with M alone. She and I went out to eat dinner together on the way home and had a very nice time. We hit a store to pick up a few items on the way home, with nary a complaint, even after yesterday's shopping misadventures. E did not get home until 8:30. She had had a great time on her first solo playdate! A and I had been watching our latest netflix dvd, Fraggle Rock, so they both finished that up before heading to bed.

Ho Hum

Today was pretty quiet. We went to the library to return books and came home with twice as many as we dropped off. A wanted books on Pandas and goddesses. E wanted ones on penguins and whatever looked good. I did not have anything on hold, so I came home empty handed. After the library we went to the mall, because I was trying to get my watch battery replaced, and I could check for fall clothes and it was on the way to the grocery store. Two out of three ain't bad. I guess I need to look for a new watch as I was told the kind I have needs a special tool to open. Forget that, I want battery replacement to be an easy thing, not an ordeal. I'm tired of the look anyway. The girls wanted to window shop in some stores, and A ended up with some new clothes. They spent five minutes in the toy store and showed amazing restraint since we were not buying, just looking. I got some jeans and long sleeve tees for cheap. The girls were losing patience with the shopping deal and were not perfect angels in the grocery store, but we managed. At home, A wanted me to read the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, so we did that. Dinner, bath and the first chapter of HP 5 rounded out the night.

Fini!

This morning, A and I had fun exploring the Boggle game I got the other day. She feels it is too hard for her, but she enjoyed shaking up the dice and seeing how many words I could find. I got out her Bob Books (a very easy early reader set) to see if she wanted to read them to me. She did, but not enthusiastically, so I let her lead the way. She was quite proud of how easily she read the first four. We have never really gone past that, so when she looked at the next one, she declared herself done. I guess I got them out, hoping to show her how far she has come with her reading, but I hope I did not discourage her by the fact that she still can't read them all. It must be hard to feel you are doing so well, only to be shown how much further you need to go. I'll have to keep that in mind from now on.

The girls wanted to go to the park again, so while I got ready to go do some shopping, C took them. I am trying to get a good head start on Christmas this year and I am doing great so far. I found some more Ello on clearance at ToysRUs, 8 bucks each, so I got one for each girl (a fairy one for E and a jungle animal one for A). I also found the magic set I saw online at Amazon, so A's birthday is covered as well and I saved shipping costs. I got a bunch more geomag sets for the girls, for stockings probably since I can take them out of the boxes. Maybe I will wrap individual tetrahedrons. Or make a big structure with all the sets combined for them to come down to Christmas morning. Can you tell I am enjoying this?

When I got home, E wanted to do a magic show for me and a music show. She played the keyboard and sang, then she got "on stage" and did "magic" for me. She is amazing. Not that she can really do this stuff well, but in that she believes she is a superstar, no matter what she undertakes. She will be one for real someday if she wants to be. A wanted to record herself singing on the karaoke machine, so we did that. She kept being interrupted by E saying she could not hear Scooby Do over A's singing, but that did not get onto the recording. It sounds very sweet to me, even if A wants to tape over it.

We watched three episodes of Avatar together as a family, two the girls and I had seen, and one that was new to us all. Then A and I finished reading HP. We are ready for the movie! A wants to get right down to reading book five tomorrow, and who am I to say no?

Oh, I don't know

C was so gracious as to let me sleep in this morning and when I came downstairs, guess what my dear family was doing? They were snuggled on the couch watching Walking with Cavemen! Apparently, it was showing on the Discovery channel. Freaky! So, we watched quite a bit while we made and ate breakfast. It was very well done and think I would enjoy seeing it in it's entirety sometime.

A was having fun on her new scooter and wanted to ride it outside, so C took them up the street to the park. They had a good time playing and riding their scooters there and back. The rest of the day was spent cleaning the house and in the evening C took some paperwork outside to burn in our firepit. The girls roasted some marshmallows on the fire. Ok, we only had the little tiny ones, but hey, it worked for them! A and I were eager to get reading, as we only had a few chapters left to read in our book. I think I read three tonight. I had to get through the climax before I could properly let her go to sleep. We only have one left!

Potions

Today was our Potions Exploraganza with the Lifelearners. We got together a bunch of stuff like cornstarch and baking soda and vinegar and showed the kids some cool ways to mix it up. Above is the demonstration of how to blow up a balloon with baking soda and vinegar. I am assisted by the lovely H. My children were choosing to play today instead of participating, so I don't have any photos of them to share. Not that that is a problem, we don't want to force the kids to do anything they are not interested in, after all. That and they had seen half of what we did today already as it was my kind of fun! The cornstarch and water, otherwise known as ooblick, was messy, but fun. And when we showed them how to separate milk into curds and whey to make glue, they were amazed. A liked the oil and water and food color thing we did and wanted to show Daddy as soon as we got home. I put her off till later this weekend because it was late and we had had a long tiring, but good, day.

At our friend's house, where we were today, the kids watched a dvd they had called Walking with Cavemen. It was really cool and A was very interested in getting it to watch some more. They had it on, but were still playing, so it only got watched in bits and pieces. I'll have to look into that one for her.

Go Fish!

Many more games of Go Fish were played today between me and A. She even managed to beat me a few times. I kept trying to give her pointers so that the playing field would be evened out, but she really took defeat well anyway. You can see that she is becoming determined to learn the game, to learn the intricacies of the strategy, even to learn to shuffle and deal the cards. You'd think all we did was play around here. And you would be right! But play is child's work and how they best learn. Besides I am focusing on helping my children learn how to learn, not random lists of facts or out of context skills, anyway.

This morning, before I had fully woken up, A was begging to play. I was drinking my tea and reading my email and so I asked her to sit with me and I could do both. Meanwhile, E was in the other room, very busy. She was in her own world, playing who knows what, but I could hear a constant stream of chatter and song coming from her. This is when she drags all the toys out and creates chaos right in the main walking path of the house. She is lost in E's world and I can not go there.... Anyway, I came out after the card games were done and saw the mess and tried to ignore it. But when she asked to be taken to Target to buy a toy with her money, I said I would if she cleaned up while I was in the shower. When I came down, the whole room was spotless! She had even gotten out the dustpan and swept up some crumbs and stuff. My baby is not a baby anymore, and I owed her a trip to Target.

We hit the clearance on Halloween stuff and got a bunch of stuff for 25 cents each. I love a bargain! The girls were running towards the toy aisles when I saw that they had scooters on sale. A has outgrown the three wheeled one we got for her a few years back and E has virtually claimed it anyway, so A picked out a Hello Kitty scooter, with only two wheels, for herself. They each got something for themselves and I picked up a Boggle game for the family. I figured A would not be very good yet, but we could try it. We can play the solitaire version, but as a team, and I can help her find and spell words.

When we got home, much scooting was done around the house. A was very proud of the fact that she can ride a two wheeled scooter now. E was very pleased to claim the other one. She even took off the bag, like a handlebar basket on a bike, it had on it, since A's did not come with one. They took turns on the new scooter, but E declared it too hard and happily went back to the old one. They even played with the new toys together a lot this evening.

Harry Potter four is almost done! Just a few more chapters and we will be ready for the movie. A told me tonight that she liked reading a book first and seeing the movie afterward, better than reading a book she had seen the movie for already. This proves she truly is my daughter!

Games, Genes, and Gizmos

Today was down day galore! We played games, watched movies and just hung out. Ok, I did take most of the haunted house down, but only because A wanted to get stuff out of the library and she needed the cobwebs off the shelves. We browsed, finding a bug sticker book my dad had given them for Christmas, I believe. The girls played with that for a while, but the spiders were freaking A out, so she moved on. She even had me turn off the tv when Steve Erwin was holding a deadly spider later in the day! Anyway, they both played with this geography toy that has different games/quizzes. They like the one where you press the country and it plays some of the music of that land. When the game shuts down, it goes through all the countries, with a voice saying "good bye" in all the languages. Japan says, "saonara" (sp?), of course, but not like we usually hear it (si YO na ra). They say it the way they say it in Japan, si OR na RA, very fast. So, I was saying that over and over, just because I like the way it sounds. A asked me to please stop, I was being annoying! I guess I deserved it. Or maybe she was just sore that I had beat her in Go Fish. She really wanted to play Cadoo some more, but with C at work and neither of them reading well enough, I could only be the card reader with them playing against each other. It really is too far beyond E's abilities, so she could not hold her own and it just frustrated her. We had to put that one aside till daddy can play with us, playing on teams, one kid, one adult. So the cards came out and A and I played Go Fish. She is just now getting good at holding the cards in her hands, and very proud of that, so I see more card games in the future here.

At one point in the day I was trying to answer A's question about a scene she had seen in the Goblet of Fire trailer yesterday. She wanted to know if the beautiful girls in blue were Veelas. I said no, that they were the students from Beauxbatons and that Fleur Delacour' grandmother was a Veela. She said, so she is half Veela. No, she is only one quarter Veela, at most. Then I tried to explain that you could only inherit 25 percent of your genes from any one grandparent. She said that she had no idea what I was talking about. My first desire was to find a better way to explain it, but I realized that that would do very little good, since she did not care enough to absorb it right now. I'll have to keep Mendel and his peas on the back burner a tad longer, I guess.

We got the movie Robots from netflix today, so we had a movie night tonight, snuggling in my bed to watch it. What a cute movie! I really loved the message, "you can shine no matter what you are made of". Sounds like unschooling to me!

Title? We don't need no stinking title!

We had originally planned to fly somewhere with C today, but after last night, I was worn out, and E was not into the idea of flying. She really wanted to see her friend M who had not made it to the party last night and with whom we had made plans to see Corpse Bride. So, I called her mom and set up a 1 o'clock showtime to meet to watch the movie. C did not really want to see the movie, so he went flying by himself. After the movie, which we liked, the girls were eager to play, so we met at BK to have a snack and let the girls all play on the play structure. We stayed for about 2 1/2 hours and us moms had a great time talking, while the girls played. C called and said he was home, so we tried to wrap it up, but the girls all went on strike. They had not had enough time playing! We coaxed them out, promising to find time for another playdate soon. They will see each other Friday, but it seemed too far off for E to handle tonight. I tried to get her to be happy we had played for over two hours, when we had only planned on one, but she is just not able to choose that way of thinking right now. A went through the same thing two years ago, so it must be a phase they all go through. Now she is able to let disappointments roll off her much better than she used to. Nevermind the magic episode the other night!

We had chinese food delivered and played Cadoo as a family for a while tonight before bath, reading and bed. Oh, in the movie previews was a trailer for The Goblet of Fire and I about burst with excitement! I don't know if I can stand the wait, it looks soooo good. Yes, I am a kid still!

Spooktacular

Our Halloween party was fun and I think everyone had a good time. Everyone came dressed in costume, even the parents, and we had a nice potluck dinner together before heading out to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood. A wore her genie outfit from last year and E put on a princess nightgown and slippers and declared herself "princess and the pea". I threw together a gypsy outfit and C wore his orange hunting cap, plaid flannel shirt and combat boots and called himself a hunter. We had witches, a vampire, a bunny, a geisha, the devil, Medusa, a shark, a Ninja, Buzz Lightyear, and others I forget right now. The haunted house got it's finishing touches to great effect. We had the Grim Reaper, spiders and webs, flying bats, and a mummy at his dinner table, digging in to Roast Brain, bones, guts, witches fingers and black blood wine . Spooky music and sound effects played in the background. The Phantom of the Opera was sung to with the karaoke machine. The kids had a great time running from house to house, getting all the goodies. When we got back to the house, they played and sorted and shared the candy. Everyone stayed till about 9 pm and when they left, A and E declared it the best Halloween ever!

The only thing I would change for next year is to not do the haunted house, just use all the parts of it for decorations. At least until the kids get old enough to do it themselves. It was a lot of work for me, which I don't mind, but I did spend a lot of time putting the girls off until after the Halloween party, so I could do it all. I am trying to simplify so I don't have to do that very much. C was a great help, getting the kids out for the day, so I could finish up everything, and biting his tongue instead of discouraging me and my plans.