free spirit

Yesterday we went to a craft class at the local Michael's. They have these demonstrations on how to do certain things and I decided to take The Girl to see them do painted glass ornaments. They did then allow the five little girls to paint an ornament to take home. My Girl did hers slightly differently. Shocking, I know. The rest of the little girls followed the exact directions to make a sweet little Christmas ornament. They decoupaged on sweet little snowflakes and glitter and such. My girl? Well, she decided that she wanted to make an Autumn ornament. So, she painted it red and she then painted green leaves on the ornament. The green leaves happen to also look like chicken feet, but she was quite happy with her creation. Though, I will admit that the other little girl's ornaments looked quite a bit more polished and "finished," I will also admit that My Girl's ornament was all HER.

She is a free spirit. She doesn't typically care if you are not supposed to read books on the bench during soccer. She reads them cause she wants to.




She creates games that get little girls running and all using their imaginations. During her brother's soccer games she would rally the troops and lead treasure hunts using maps drawn on her little sparkly purple etch a sketch. Then all the little girls were asking their moms for etch a sketches for Christmas.

She is often in another world. Sparkling and dancing and moving and doing her own thing.

Her own world is different. The only problem is when it collides with someone else's world. Or someone else's desire to actually play baseball and get people out... rather then pick clover.

Free spirits may not actually make good second base players. Frankly free spirits don't bother much with baseball. Free spirits enjoy other pursuits like finding those sneaky little fairies that hide in the clover.

I hope she does not lose her free spirit. Ever.

one sunday in november

One Sunday in November I took a day's worth of pictures. I didn't plan anything special this day, it just sorta happened. It was a busy day looking back on it, but I have a feeling that everyday would seem busy if I actually took pictures and documented everything we do. I didn't start taking pictures until mid-morning, so I will describe that morning until that point.

I awoke to The Girl playing multiple instruments on my bedroom floor. We are talking drums and tambourines and singing... it was great. Really. We did breakfast, which I think was pancakes and then we settled in to cleaning up the house and living the standard Sunday morning. We attend church on Saturday night so we do not have the typical Sunday morning church routine.

As I was cleaning the kitchen, the kids started pulling out projects and things to do.

The Boy pulled out a kit to make window clings and decided on a turtle. First he needed to outline it all in black and wait a few hours and then color it all in.



On the other end of the table, The Girl started this project. These little guys are like packing peanuts and are actually just like the biodegradable ones that some companies use. They sell these at expensive kid stores for crafts. I got mine for free from someone who was getting rid of their stash. You simply wet them slightly and they stick together. She was making a wall here.



This is the caterpillar that The Boy made.



After a bit the Aquadoodle was pulled out. I love this thing! Art with painless water filled markers! Who ever thought this up deserves a gold medal. We practice spelling words on this too, but that is another post.


Back to the kitchen and a bit later, this is the outline done on the turtle. It is now drying.


In the meantime, I am checking out this magazine. Look at those cookies! Yum! I love the detail of that one with the snowman and the boy and I actually got on ebay and checked out the molds that are used to make cookies like that. I was just so impressed with the look of it.



Yet another item was pulled out of the laundry room. This is another favorite. I found this toy at a yard sale on base at our last station. It is from Germany and that becomes obvious as you look at what this toy does. You get to use a little hammer and real tacks. You see in Germany they can sell fun toys like these because people are not as sue happy there. They know that if a kid swallows a tack that they as a parent are to fault, not the company for making a toy. My kids love this and I think I paid a dollar for it. Great fun!!!



This is the overall look of the table as all of this was going on at virtually the same time. My table nearly always looks like this though.

I tell people we just have the privilege of eating in a classroom.


The finished hammering project. Nice standard little picture there... now we can all collectively sigh at the happy little domestic scene.


Time for music!!! Singing and making up songs about virtually nothing! Can it get any better?


The instruments were put away and they collaborated forces to build a fort to fight the bad Tigers. No kidding.


The cushions are off my sofa again.



They made arrows and spears out of K'nex. They had to fight off the bad guys from their fort. Guess who had the privilege of playing the bad tiger? Yup... that would be me! See what getting half your college education in Drama gets you?!


After some grand battles we stopped for lunch. That consisted of amazing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yum. We had a few other things with that but I can't really remember what right now. Probably some clementine oranges. We love those guys!


After lunch the turtle was finished and it currently resides on the window of The Boy's bedroom.
The colored portions become more clear as they dry and look like a sun catcher type thing. It will stick right on the glass until the sun will slowly over the time of about a year disintegrate the material and you get to scrape it off the glass with a razor.


I checked on the bedrooms and what was going on up there. It looks like the dollhouse people are having a picnic. Notice the composed dad and the family dog. Now, look at the mom's wild and disheveled hair. Should I be fixing my hair more often?! What is she trying to tell me?!

The kids are playing here having great fun in the tree house and enjoying the picnic.


Ah, now next door in The Boy's room we have the K'nex mess. This mess shows up way too often around here. He loves these things though. They can be so many different things and he does use them to build things with the kit instructions but he also builds tons of different things. Like arrows. Spears. Guns. Such things that are so worthy of a little boy's time.


It was right about then that we went outside and The Boys started doing this.


The girls started doing this. It was time for the garden to get winterized. Mushy pumpkins were getting buried so they could make yummy dirt to plant things in when spring hits us.


The boys continued doing a bit of this...


The girls did a bit of this...


Then it was time to get ready for kid's choir practice. I washed up the kids and got them into appropriate clothing and ran to the commissary because I forgot that it was The Girl's turn to bring in snacks for her class. We picked up some of these guys for the kids. They are safe. No milk, no peanuts, just issues for those with wheat allergies and she has none of that going on in her class. She has developed a dairy allergy, but that is a whole 'nother post. I have found it is just easier to bring in snacks for her myself more often then not. If I don't bring snacks then they end up trying to serve them goldfish, or ritz crackers and she can't have either of those things so then I have to run next door to the store and grab her a different snack.


I stayed to help out some in her class cause there are tons of kids and we got all the juice boxes ready. I pulled up the "wings" so that the kids could grab those and not grab the box and squirt juice everywhere. They still did squirt some juice around. God bless janitors everywhere. They need it.


I took a fuzzy picture of her class on purpose. I do not post pictures of kids on my public blog at all, but I wanted you to get the overall impression of her class. Lots of kids, lots of fun. She is the one in the red dress on the right side of the picture.

The Boy's class was practicing for the musical they did for Christmas. Another fuzzy picture for you to enjoy. He was up there on the left side somewhere. I made this one too fuzzy for me to even tell where he was exactly.

For dinner we had tortilla soup. I made up those little yummy tortilla strips in the skillet too. Yum. I did take a picture of the soup, but the lighting was not working for me, so I will subject you to my fuzzy kid pictures but not to bad lighting pictures. I have my standards.


Yummy ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery. It is a tradition. We do not always go out for ice cream, more often then not we have sorbet here at home, but we always do Sundaes on Sundays. It is something that we picked up on from some of my dearest friends at our last duty station.

The Boy broke the norm and had mint ice cream. He ALWAYS has sorbet so this was something new for him. He ate half of it then he dumped out the ice cream and ate the cone. He just isn't an ice cream lover.

That was our day. I am sure that somethings were left out, like how I fell over once the kids were in bed, but you get the gist of it. I will have to do this again sometime in the future as well. It was fun to see our day from later looking back. It made me realize how much we actually do in a given day and most of our time was spent at home just messing around.

I hope you have an amazing weekend and time with your family as we prepare to celebrate this amazing season!

until they found a little house covered in candy...

There is nothing like Neccos for the roofing of gingerbread houses. I wonder if even the witch in Hansel and Gretel used Necco wafers?

The Boy made this little wreath for the back of the house. I thought it turned out quite well done.

I don't know that I would have been able to resist the sight of the sun shining through gumdrops either. The witch would have had me too!

The Boy working fervently on gluing on as much candy as possible. Can there ever be enough glued on?

Somehow I doubt the witches table was as messy as mine, but she was getting ready to eat kids, not letting kids consume copious amounts of sugar.

The Girl's finished house.

The Boy's finished house.

We did use a basic Wilton house kit. I don't really like to admit that, it is sorta like using a mix to make cookies. The deal is, I have decided that I will use the box because then I will have time to get it done. If I had to make the dough and bake it and cut it just right I am not sure we would have made the houses at all and I am so glad that we did make the houses. I will also add that I knew that Wilton put a pathetic amount of candy in the box and I bought plenty of my own to finish them off. The box didn't contain Neccos for example and I was set on having Neccos.

I did help with the roofs but they did them... and I did give suggestions on a few things, but they created. I did teach them how to make the icicles hang on the side of the roof, but those weren't really all that exciting for the kids to make. That took too much patience for them.

Maybe someday I will take the time to make my very own gingerbread house and will make it beautiful and exactly how I want it. Sometimes it is hard for me to not say a word as they make their own house the way they want their own house to be. Sometimes it is hard, but I am always so grateful when I keep my mouth shut. They come up with amazing things on their own that way. For example, I love the way The Girl put the little candy balls all over the roof. She loved playing with them and dropping them all over the floor and I loved the way they ended up looking.

The Boy created that sweet wreath and lined the edges of his area with those gum drops and I love the way that turned out.

The Girl said that so far this was her favorite part of the Christmas Season. That made it worth my keeping my mouth shut and made it worth the huge mess that was my kitchen and made it worth the tons of sugar I let them inhale.

simply bear

This story starts actually four years ago with a Momma who was desperately trying to potty train a two year old boy, who was frankly not ready to potty train. You may guess that she had never had a little boy before this one and she was a bit caught up in that whole momma mess where we are judged by what our children do developmentally. This young momma promised this little boy many things if he would just go potty ON the potty. He was doing pretty good with peeing on the potty, it was that other large annoyance he was having problems with. Finally his sweet little momma promised him that she would buy him a Thomas The Tank Engine train if he would do his big job on the potty.

One unforgettable day the little boy did this! The world cheered and the sun shone and the birds twittered, (not so unlike how bloggers twitter now). The young momma instantly decided that they needed to run out immediately and purchase this train, so she quickly strapped in the little two year old boy and the little seven month old girl and she headed for the village limit. THEN she had a thought... what if the small gift store that is actually located in this minuscule town carries Thomas stuff? She pulled her car right into a front parking spot at this small store and saw the Thomas sign in the front window. She strapped the baby girl in her stroller to contain her and she led the little super excited boy into the store full of collectibles and breakable things.

They headed right around the corner to where the Thomas stuff was and the little boy set right to playing with all the trains on the table. The baby girl was getting bored so the silly, young momma picked up a nice little bear that was handy and tossed it into the stroller for the baby girl to play with while the Momma searched for the coveted train.

The train was found! The boy was thrilled but he still continued to play with the trains on the store's train table. The momma turned to check on the quiet baby girl to find her with the tag of the bear in her mouth. The Momma's eyes got big and she carefully took the bear from the little girl's grip. The tag was completely mauled and unfortunately was one of those tags that people actually care about. The small red heart shaped tags that we are all so familiar with.

The young Momma's budget was tight and she wasn't planning on buying a bear and a train, but buy it she must and buy it she did. She planned on putting the bear in the baby's Christmas stocking because the baby would never know the difference and on Christmas morning the baby didn't.


As the years passed the bear was slowly toted around more and more. He was taken out to the yard where he had the pleasure of eating sand.

He was left on the floor to be tumbled about.

He was dressed up as a knight with his friends in the Girl's room.

He was snuggled in bed until he was quite smooshed. (look right down by her feet)

He was loved and loved and he was always called Bear. Simply Bear. Nothing fancy, nothing too haughty... just Bear.

Then the dreaded day came when Bear couldn't be found. He was missing. The Momma's head spun as she tried to think of where Bear could be. She tried thinking back to where Bear could have been taken and left and she couldn't remember where Bear had been last.

The, now five year old, girl and her now seven year old, brother and the, not as young, Momma asked everywhere they frequented if Bear was lurking in the lost and found bin. The Librarians were quite excited when they thought they had found the owner of a bear they had hiding in their bin, but it turned out to be someone else's bear waiting for their own owner. The other bins? They turned up Bearless.

The girl made Missing posters for Bear. She drew his picture on them and drew on his sweet green plaid bow and his sweet fluffy fur and she cried. Tears slid down her face and the Momma looked on worried. Anytime Bear was mentioned the Girl's eyes got large and started to well up with tears.

Finally, after Bear was not turning up by asking around lost and found boxes, the Momma took to the computer and started looking for Bear. Perhaps he was hanging out on that ebay place. Perhaps someone had located a long lost twin brother of bear somewhere else.

This Momma looked and looked and asked questions and searched. Finally one night, with several of the Momma's friends also looking, a sweet helper sent a link with a picture and the Momma's eyes lit up with such joy that she nearly fell out of her desk chair! She studied the face, she studied the body and she studied the price for flying Bear home and she pushed the little Buy It Now button.

Momma is now awaiting the arrival of bear and if it is indeed the one and the only Bear, then this sweet Bear will once again grace a stocking hanging carefully waiting for a little girl to find him and give him those hugs that only a little bear-struck girl can give.

Um... last funny kid post for a bit? I promise?

So, today The Girl was being cranky and whinging about the house and being... well... a touch on the female side! The Boy came in to me and said, "She is being like a Step-Mother!"

I laughed and just looked at him with glee. Can we say Disney saturation?

While I am on the subject, shall I ask why my daughter ALWAYS pretends that she is an orphan? She will show up in my kitchen pretending and say, "Hi, my family is all gone. Can I be part of your family now?"

I think this is somehow related to the Disney thing. I also ALWAYS have to pretend to be the mean lady. You know, like Ariel's Sea Witch, or Cinderella's step mother, or the mean queen in snow white or the evil fairy in Sleeping Beauty. She gets really bothered when I do too good of a job though. I have to tune down my "amazing" acting skills. Once in a while, I get to be Cinderella while she is a little orphan girl that Cinderella ends up adopting, I need to add that she gets very upset when I break character at all. She will stay in character for hours sometimes.

I wonder what Disney is really doing long term to my kids.