Last part of kid update post

Friday morning was the Royal Wedding, so we all got up extra early. Well, that’s why I got up extra early. DSCN1973

I don’t know why everyone else did. But I commandeered the TV and switched it over to wedding programming, which I’d been recording for hours earlier. We fast-forwarded through the commercials and less interesting bits. I made muffins (I’d wanted to make scones, but was outvoted by the children who’d be NOT eating them) and several kinds of tea. DSCN1977 We put up decorations and wore fancy/silly hats. DSCN1978 The kids were mesmerized by the hats and fancy dresses.

We managed to just finish watching the ceremony in time to leave for school. We dropped off the big kids, then hit the grocery store for Field Trip supplies (water bottles & lunchables). We met up behind the buses by the school to caravan over to Camp Tyler. G and I got out and were once again given bad information from the office. Fortunately we talked to the bus driver (who we recognized from last years field trips) and found out that we would have been following the wrong bus (which some other people did later), as he was taking the kindergarteners to the zoo. Eventually we followed the right bus and even though that driver went the wrong direction we managed to get there thanks to my map. The kids had a blast at Camp Tyler. DSCN2014

My kids like going because they feel super-extra-smart there, as we follow things at home like the Nutrition Pyramid and Recycling and Composting and Gardening. DSCN2037Nick’s parents and sister’s family have farm animals, too, so the kids do know a lot about everything that happens at “The Farm”. The other kids? Not so much. They’re mostly low-income kids whose parents grew up in the city/town and haven’t ever been out in the country. DSCN2070It’s fun for me seeing them get to explore this other world and it’s beyond comprehension to them that one of their classmates actually lives this way every day. After lunch I gathered up our classes recyclables, which astonished the teacher because she didn’t know our city had a recycling program. DSCN2101G and I spent a little while after we got home just resting, as the day was warm and we were tired. Nick got the big kids and took B out hiking for scouts. I took my two out to Taco Bell for dinner, then gathered up the party supplies, and met Nick and B (who’d dined at Wendy’s) at Fire Mountain Amusements for D’s birthday party.

DSCN2106We’d not invited a whole lot of kids to D’s party because at $20 a kid, it was way too expensive to invite the whole class. Four of the 10 invited showed up (the kids from church all had too far to travel to come – I tried to tell D that before he invited them, but he was insistent on it), 2 brought siblings, plus our three kids brought the number up to 9. We used the 10th wristband to get everyone extra tokens for the arcade at the end before parents showed up. So it was actually good that not everyone showed up. 🙂 We spent the first part of the party in the arcade. The kids loved running around in that dark room, playing whatever they wanted. After that we split up a bit, with the younger kids going to the smaller kart track and the big kids going to the bigger one. I ran around trying to get photos of everyone.DSCN2121 Nick took G on the big track, as G was too small for the smaller track. After that I took G on the bumper boats with the rest of the kids. That was soo much fun! I was drenched by the time I got out.DSCN2159 When that was done, each kid picked their favorite thing and went on it. Some kids did karts, some did more bumper boats, some did more arcade or checked out the other rides there.DSCN2168 Finally it was time for cake and presents. We weren’t given any time in the party room to decorate beforehand, as the party before us went over, but I think the kids weren’t really paying attention to that anyway.DSCN2178 All in all, it was a great party! 🙂

Saturday was a regular Saturday for the most part. Got up, ate breakfast, got ready for church, went to church. I was feeling weird all day, lots of dizziness, tingling, and crazy brain fog, so I spent quite a bit of church out in the foyer trying not to fall over. The kids prepared for the Pentecost Presentation coming up. Nick did his media stuff. Eventually the kids and I went home, ordered a pizza, and watched a crazy French Canadian puppet movie about a dragon that ate all the stars while Nick went to prom with his mom. Yes, I did say “prom” and “with his mom.” His brother was the DJ and Nick went to dance with his mom since his dad doesn’t dance AT ALL and she was one of the sponsors for the prom. Anyway, he came home not too late, telling me that he got to dance with our little nieces at the house, who were hanging out with their Pa, and that most of the kids at prom didn’t dance at all. Also that his brother played the Doctor Who theme song for him. 🙂

Sunday was…well, what’s becoming a regular thing, where Nick gets up early, grocery shops, and then goes to work. I got up a bit later, fed the kids toaster pastries, and started on the cleaning. We cleaned until Nick got back around lunch time and then I headed out with my Girls Night Out ladies for an afternoon performance of The Diviner at our local junior college. It was so good. This is how close to the stage we were at The Diviner🙂 Came home later to my husband making a special dinner (steak, baked potatoes, caramelized onions, zucchini, all so yummy). Sent the kids to bed and watched the latest Doctor Who. Oh, that show! So mind-twisty! Love it, though. 🙂

And now it’s Monday. It’s cold & rainy & we are keeping the house warm by doing laundry. So much laundry.

Happy President’s Day

We’ve had quite a day here. My eldest son hit a golf ball with a baseball bat and it went straight through the kids bedroom window. The glass company said they’d be here in less than 2 hours, but it took many phone calls and 7 hours for them to get here. Delightful, really. I made a list of good things about all this in my head all day long, to counteract the screaming, hysterical woman in my head. Such fun.
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So anyways, since it was President’s Day and I’m a theme-loving kind of gal, we had a whole day of fun planned.

First we played Animal Crossing. We like taking care of our little town and I think it’s good that this game teaches them to take care of the environment with the recycling center and to pull all the weeds and take care of planting all around and not just in their own little places. It’s fun!

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Then, for second breakfast, we had what I like to call “The Color of Money Muffins” which were green muffins with multicolored sprinkles inside to mimic the dollars that Presidents adorn. They were chocolate orange flavored. Yumm.

The kids played outside, which is when the glass thing happened.
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After cleaning up all the glass and moving around furniture and cleaning up all the toys we found under said furniture, we made George Washington-style hats to wear around the rest of the day and also made cherry trees out of craft paper and yet more of the little red pom-poms leftover from Christmas.
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Another thing we did was a game called “Ask the Kids.” The first question: If you could be president for a day what would you do?
D: make some laws, like going green and saving animal habitats.
B: wanted to save the animals, too, by checking if they were okay. for people, he wanted to have floating chairs for all the elderly people, the kind that don’t have to be pushed by anyone and that float high enough that it would be easy for them to get in and out of cars easily.
G: didn’t want to be president. he wanted to be a robber and steal peoples clothes (?!?!?!) or, even BETTER, to be a Jedi and battle the droids.

The second question: What do you think the President of the USA does all day?
D: He stays in his office and works on paper and passes the laws.
B: WORK! He works all day!
G: I don’t know. Maybe he writes to his friends every day.

The third question: Why do we have a president?
D: So we can stay free from other countries. In the beginning people wanted George Washington to be King, but he said “No, I want to be President.”
B: He’s here so we don’t get robbed or anything. He makes laws to help us.
G: (ran off & had to be dragged back) Because someone needs to do some work.

The kids left for a while after all this to hang out with my parents while the glass man came…or didn’t come, as happened for several hours. I crawled around their room with a light, checking for glass in unexpected places (it was still everywhere, despite vacuuming, because we have Berber carpet in that room), and did laundry, and entertained B when he came back because the Lord of the Rings cartoon was too scary.

We were also going to make cherry tarts today, but since we didn’t make it to the grocery, that has to wait until tomorrow, I guess. For storytime tonight we read some of our President books: “Arthur Meets the President” by Marc Brown, “Stand Tall, Abe Lincoln” by Judith St. George & illustrated by Matt Faulkner, and “Sesame Street: I Want to be President” by Michaela Muntean and illustrated by Tom Brannon. We really recommend the Sesame Street one, as it explained the best what a president actually does. The Abe Lincoln one is really good, too, but we’re not done with it yet, as it’s a very long one. The Arthur one is mainly Arthur-ish, but still good.

Anyway, hope everyone else had a great President’s Day! 🙂

Thoughts in 140 characters

  1. Happy Binary Palindrome Day!! (01-11-10)
  2. Typing up my weekend writing progress. dododo
  3. Have moved all books off of three (1 big, 2 small) kids shelves, moved tall shelf into kids room. Now to put all the books back on shelves.
  4. Umm…someone from Tuscaloosa, AL just sent us a baby picture. Would someone like to claim this cute, cute baby picture? 🙂

     

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Now playing: Kim Richey – Without You
via FoxyTunes

Thoughts in 140 characters

  • Kids, when you have chocolate-mint breath & brown bits in your teeth & you’re saying you’re not eating my candy cane, I KNOW that you were.
  • It figures: I wait patiently all day for the writing assignment, then it’s sent out just as it’s time to pick up kids from school. *sigh*
  • Looking at http://curiouspages.blogspot.com/ about bad kids books. Read most of them as a child. So funny tears are running down my face.

how it all gets done

Originally published at tigersquirrels.net. You can comment here or there.

I’ve had a few people wonder how I get everything done on themed days. So here I am explaining:

I made the list of themed days about a month ago and gave it only the tiniest bit of thought as to what I’d be doing for each day at that point. So it comes down to this: every morning I get up, turn on Thomas the Tank Engine for the early rising midkid, and spend about twenty minutes on the internet looking up stuff for the day* (by “stuff” I mean wikipedia entries, worksheets, craft ideas, science experiments for kids, etc). Then I wander the house to see what supplies we have. By that point the rest of the family is up. I feed people, explain what the theme for the day is, and then we start the fun. We do something crafty and I explain facts to them. Then the kids ask bizarre questions and we go back to the computer to look up that info, along with other “stuff” to go with that if it’s interesting.

At some point no one is interested in the theme any more, so we take a break to play outdoors first, eat lunch, then indoor play/reading/rest. After that they’re usually interested in more theme time, so we do something else theme related, like coloring sheets I’ve printed off the internet or building something with legos. By late afternoon the house is a wreck, so we have races to see who can put away the most whatever-is-out. They race, I wash dishes. When someone wins they get something special, like getting to choose what color plate they eat dinner off of or what kind of dinner beverage.

And what does the baby do while all this is going on? Smashing his hands into play-doh or getting paint on his hands or eating construction paper or toppling all the blocks or taking apart the train tracks as fast as the boys lay them down. He’s busy.

*I’ve gone back on the previous themed days and put up links to websites where I got ideas from.

Summer of themes

Originally published at tigersquirrels.net. You can comment here or there.

Life with a kid who has been in some sort of programming every day of the week is surely different from a kid who only had programming twice or three times a week. Since David’s been in kindergarten, he requires more activities to keep him happy during the time that he’s at home (as experienced during winter & spring breaks). With this in mind, I have concocted a plan: every weekday has a theme…for the rest of the summer.

Examples of those themes:

-Chimborazo Day (a volcano…yes, we’re making one!)

-Create with your heart day (lots and lots of art!)
-Helen Keller day (blindfolds and braille and no talking! j/k)
– Cheer up the lonely day (visiting the elderly!)

-Meteor Day!

etc…

I got most of the themes/holidays off of this website.

Horns=Luck?

Thought for the day: Wearing horns masks even the worst of hideous haircuts.

In other news, my writing group tonight decided that I’d had good enough luck all day that I ought to buy a lottery ticket, which I’ve never done before. So, me and my little horns wandered into a convenience store and asked directions of two very amused African American gentlemen on how to buy a lottery ticket and fill out the form. 🙂 dododo

The good luck I’d had today was mostly about food. For breakfast, I had cinnamon streusel. For lunch, pepperoni pizza. For dinner, a yummy sandwich from The Great Outdoors. For dessert, chocolate chip cookies and chocolate cake.

Mmmm…a very excellent food day (doesn’t quite make up for the almost two weeks of bad food days, but quite happy nonetheless).