It's the Little Things

Yesterday, a friend asked me what I did to celebrate my birthday and it got me thinking. I had a very nice day, but since my birthday wasn't on a weekend this year, and the kids and I have been playing so hard all summer that there really wasn't anything I could think of that I was dying to go do, it was really a very lazy day. So what made it so great?

It was having my two little monkeys run in first thing in the morning to give me birthday hugs and kisses.

It was hanging out in our pj's, playing all morning.

It was the friend who offered to watch the kids so I could meet Daddy-o in Uptown for lunch.

It was the lunch--delicious, quiet, uninterrupted conversation with my favorite person.

It was getting a letter that really touched my heart.

It was seeing how excited the kids were to give me the presents they'd picked out or made, and then wrapped all by themselves.

It was getting the Wii Fit Plus, not from one person, but from two! What can I say? My family knows what I want.

It was a couple dozen Happy Birthday emails and posts on Facebook, even though I am a terrible facebooker.

It was getting three different desserts through out the day that covered my span of favorites (cheesecake, chocolate cake, and banana splits with peanut butter cups).

It was phone calls from family who were thinking about me.

It was getting doggy poop bags as packing material (I know, weird thing to be excited about but we are always running out of these since I try to take my cloth bags to the stores.)

It was getting to snuggle up with Daddy-o at the end of the day to stay up way too late watching a couple episodes of Lost (yeah, we're a little late on this one, but now we can plow through 6 seasons in a couple months instead of taking years.)

It really is just the little things that make for a great day. Thanks, everyone!

Quote of the Night

After I blew out my candle, and made my silent wish,

Bugaboo: If you tell us it won't come true? How does that make any sense?

Pirate Invasion

The Shiele Natural History museum had a weekend of pirate fun.

It reminded me a little of Greenfield Village, my favorite thing from our summer in Michigan.

Living history is pretty awesome.

And now I want to learn how to sword fight.

They also taught us about the navigational skills in the 1600's, which were pretty amazing considering the level of technology at the time.

And they had the kitchen fired up, making a meal for the reenactors--probably a little more well balanced than what was usually available on the ship.

We have decided that participating in a weekend reenactment of some kind is going on our life-goal list. It looks like so much fun--dress-up and make believe for adults!

Summer Camp

Bean got to go to a pioneer camp this week at her old preschool (they run a few camp weeks through the summer for 3-6/7 year olds). She made a candle, wood bead necklaces, crushed ice with a hand churn, played with old fashioned wood toys and musical instruments, and learned a few new games. And built forts and swimming pools in the sand box--pretty typical messy, fun school stuff.

Bugaboo, however, was stuck with me for the week. We'd decided that they could really use a little break from each other, and we weren't too excited about paying for two kids, so we told him the family rule is that you get to go to camp when your 4, and instead, he got to go to Mama Camp this week. We played games, went to the dollar movie and Chuck E Cheese, played with clay, went out to lunch, hit up the kid's club party at the mall, met up with friends at the spray ground, and go ice cream from McDonald's as our final activity this week. And other than the fact that I haven't taken any pictures of the "camp" activities, I think we've had a good Mama Camp week. It was enough to make Bean a little jealous and have her asking when her turn for Mama Camp is. Maybe next summer we'll swap who goes to camp. Or maybe I'll find something for each of them the same week and I'll have 5 mornings of peace. . . I can only imagine what that feels like!

A Little Art, Da Vinci Style

Over the last few months, I have seen a few homeschool family's art lessons that I loved. They mix art history with hands-on art activities so the kids can learn various techniques of the masters while becoming familiar with their famous works.

One had recommendations of books to go along with the art lessons (I am loving this series) So we began our study by reading Leonardo and the Flying Boy and then used the activity idea from Discovering Great Artists so we could follow in Da Vinci's footsteps (both kids have told me they want to be famous artists someday who put their artwork in museums--reach for the sky, kids!)And what could be more fun than taking apart a computer? Not just taking the thing apart, but literally destroying it :) I'm not sure that they learned much about how it works, although they did find the fan and thought that was pretty cool. And one of their friends actually knew exactly which part was the mother board (I had to check with his mom because I had no idea). But they sure had a lot of fun pulling it apart. Oh, and we sketched a few of the parts, too. The story we'd read showed some of Da Vinci's sketches and talked about how curious he was about how everything worked.

Next up: Degas and the Dancing Girl.

Fear Factor, Family Style

We went to a really fun activity at our church tonight. And these kids impressed everyone with their fearlessness, and willingness to take one for the team. Buggy let us spray him whip cream and then throw Cheetos at him (he was just sad that none landed in his mouth--he LOVES Cheetos.)

Bean smashed Whoopee cushions with her forehead (as well as poured a glass of water over her dad's head, not the point of that challenge,

And probably the best was when this little guy went up against a bunch of teens and adults and downed 3 shots of straight lemon juice in a row without even flinching. We weren't even sure if he understood the concept of drinking them quickly, or if he would be able to stomach more than one, but at the end, he yelled out, "That was good!" That's my sour-loving boy.

We didn't come close to winning, but it was so much fun and the kids stuck with it for all 8 challenges. The mom of the winning team told us that she doesn't want to compete against us when our kids are teens and have the skill to go with their determination.

Corn Gleaning

I was reading the story of Ruth in the Bible with the kids and when I was explaining what "gleaning" meant, I remembered this organization I'd heard about, Society of St. Andrews. They gather food from the farms after they've been harvested and then deliver it to various agencies that distribute the food to the hungry.

They happen to be in the middle of gleaning the corn fields in our area right now, so the kids and I signed up, as well as some of our friends, and headed out to the farm first thing in the morning. Getting the kids up and ready to leave before 7:30 was not a pleasant experience. I told Daddy-o that even if this was as fun as Disneyland, I didn't think we'd be doing it again. But once we got there, we had a good time. I may have to eat my words and try again sometime. We did have to work on our technique. It was a little hard for the kids to twist the ears off at first, but they got it down and we picked a couple big sacks full before they called it quits. Maybe when they are doing cool weather crops we'll last longer--its been in the high 90's again this week which makes it pretty miserable to be outside.

I'd been wanting to find some way to volunteer with the kids, both so I could spend a little time doing something, and to teach them the importance of service, but it can be hard to find things to do with them when they are so young. This was the perfect project and everyone was so kind and friendly, even when we left after 1.5 hours. Like they said, they aren't going to fire us.:)

Happy 4th of July!

Martha Stewart has a 28 page spread of red, white, and blue desserts. I've been eyeing her July desserts for years now and finally decided it was time to try some out. It was hard to choose, but I finally decided on a flag cheesecake (and it was SO good) with berries. And another dessert, thanks to Martha once again. This one is probably the ONLY Martha activity I've ever tried that was truly easy and the kids really could do it on their own (except melting the chocolate, of course.) So, of course we had to have friends over to help us eat them all. We have had pretty small July 4th celebrations for the last few years, so it was nice to share the fun this year.

We had our neighbor's. the C. family. And Bugaboo's new favorite friend, B.

He's always had a thing for older women, but that usually means Beans friends. :) But he's not the only one. All the kids love B and she is so great with them.

And finally, another dessert--but these were for book group Thursday. The Pioneer Woman's sheet cake recipe with her frosting. So good. We've had non-stop sugar eating for a few weeks now. I think it might finally be time to cut back. Except we have some peaches getting ripe on our counter that are just beggin for a pie crust to be wrapped around them.

The New Discovery Place

The renovations on this place are great! I love all the new stuff they have, including a lot of different hands on, science learning areas that I feel like will be perfect for different science "units", if I can only get the kids to stay in one area.

Buggy loved the area where he could build his own insect.And this misty, light and sound area was pretty fun, too. They want to come back every day.

And The Winner Is. . .

Mollie! (Thanks to the random number generator, because I was too lazy to write 11 numbers on scraps of paper and let my kids pick, who happen to both be asleep anyway.) I'll get in touch with you for the specifics!

Actually, the real winner is me, because both of the kids are asleep at 4:15 on a Friday afternoon and have been for almost 2 hours, and thus the incessant whining and fighting and bursting into tears has been silenced. It has been a really busy couple of weeks, compacted by a lot of late nights and early-ish mornings. And we have another late one tonight as we're heading out to see the Charlotte Symphony's patriotic salute and firework show tonight. I'm so glad that we all got to sleep today.