Growing crystals

Last week we tried and completely failed to grow sugar crystals. I don't think I had the water saturated enough. This week we moved on to salt.


We decided to try table salt, rock salt and Epsom salt. The Epsom salt dissolved the most easily. The rock salt was rather difficult to dissolve.


We made shapes with pipe cleaners and hung them in the jars. We labeled our jars and will wait a few weeks to see what happens.


So far the Epsom salt jar is growing crystals but the other two aren't doing as well. The water will be more and more concentrated as the water evaporates, so we'll see what happens.

Genevieve is 8... kind of

Her real birthday isn't till Monday, but we're leaving for Texas this weekend and she'd rather celebrate it before the trip than after. Of course. These are her birthday cookies. She wanted them rather than cake. Probably because of what Faith and I did on Elijah's birthday...

Yes, I managed to stick 8 candles into a single cookie. I made two different kind. On bottom are peanut butter cookies. On top are sugar cookies with yellow frosting and sprinkles. Guess which kind she didn't like? Yeah, the yucky frosting cookies. Why do kids think they will like gross things?

That is a giant collection of beads. I'll be stepping on them for years. She got fun gifts this year. A set of magic tricks. A juggling set with balls and scarfs and hoops. Nerf guns.

Jeremy and I got her a camera. Imogen is jealous. Her camera takes video with no sound and Genevieve's has sound. I liked Imogen's silent films though, complete with paper she writes informative comments on. It's so fun and creative.

Basketweave project

First we painted paper with tempera paint. I had a specific idea for this project and knew as soon as the paint started going on the paper that it wouldn't work. The colors we chose were too bright and garish. Some of them seemed to vibrate against each other. Nope, wouldn't work for my previous idea, but I hated to waste the paper they had worked so hard on painting. So I cut it into strips.


I had them start weaving the strips of paper together.


This is easier if you start at the middle and work your way out.


We glued the whole thing down on poster board when it was finished and trimmed the edges. It was a simple project that only took us a couple days to do (one day to paint, another to weave) but they had a lot of fun with it. When I first presented them with a stack of cut up paper they were doubtful but once they started overlapping the strips, it started looking interesting and they loved it.

Elijah's Birthday

We had Elijah's third birthday at my house. Little kid birthdays are pretty much the same thing. They always get overexcited, which causes them to be overtired. Elijah wasn't sure about all the attention. He opened one gift and decided it was the coolest gift ever. So he's got a room full of adults staring at him waiting for the rest of the gifts to be opened. We had to trick him into putting the first gift down and we hid it for the rest of the day. We're so mean.


He got a sword which he decided was also pretty cool. His uncles thought it was cool too, and ended up playing with it more than the birthday boy.


What's better than a two tiered birthday cake? A four tiered birthday cake. This was one of those things that pops into your head... "Hey, I happen to have an extra cake mix and frosting on hand." And then as soon as the cake was made we were wondering what in the world world we were thinking. Seven adults and three children attended this party. And no, it didn't get eaten. Not even close.

Pictures Imogen took

It turns out, giving your kid a camera is a fascinating thing. Imogen got one for her birthday.


It's not an amazing camera by any means. She takes mostly blurry shots of the dog. Or Elijah.


But it's amazing to see life from her perspective. From the back seat of the van, on our way to Genevieve's ballet class.


She took a picture of her shadow. She was bored, waiting for ballet to be over.


Again, in the van.


Faith, tired from working, crashes between shifts.


Lots of pictures of her sister.

My 2009

(click image to view larger)

Holiday weekend

We had totally perfect weather this weekend. Imogen and Genevieve got to spend time with Jeremy's cousins, Rachel, Laura and Sarah.

It wouldn't be a real holiday without cooking mishaps

The first batch of pumpkin bread (pictured here) had no baking powder. The second batch had baking powder. Problem: the recipe calls for baking soda. Each batch makes nine miniloafs of bread. That's eighteen pumpkin flavored bricks I have laying around. Seventeen, actually, because Elijah ate one. Slowly.


The pumpkin pie, however, turned out very well, which is nice. I've never made pumpkin pie before and I felt that ruining the pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving is like burning the stuffing or something. Very not cool.

Fall is here!

It's been gorgeous days, but also that awkward in-between stage when you wake up in the morning and are cold so you put on too much clothes and find yourself roasting in the afternoon. Imogen and Genevieve each have school sweaters, jackets, gloves, hats, shoes, and tights of varying thickness for customizable warmth. This makes everything harder because there's that much more to keep track of. Genevieve naturally stores things in her bed. Imogen doesn't "store" anything so much as leave it anywhere she feels like it. In the past two weeks she has left a hoodie, a sweater (brand new) and her most prize possession, a stuffed leopard, on the playground at school. You can guess that she and I were upset about different items.

A two year old in the house

Elijah is a regular visitor these days. I think it's cool that my kids get to have a cousin around. I hardly knew any of mine. Even though he's much younger, they enjoy having him around. He takes naps in Genevieve's bed on occasion, and Genevieve has this strange habit (which is getting out of hand if you ask me) of storing copious amounts of stuff in her bed. It began with stuffed animals. And as the collection grew, more of her bed was taken up with them. Then it was a couple books. Far be it from me to discourage my children from reading before bed time. But then, there are some nights you don't want to read. You would much rather draw. Let's add a notebook and a few pencils. And a box of crayons (just a small one). And some markers. Just in case. Of course, I don't immediately notice when she's added something, because it's tucked out of the way, under blankets and stuffed animals. So when I tuck Elijah into the rapidly shrinking sleeping area of the bed, I don't see anything amiss. Not until after his nap is over when he was covered in marker scribbles.

Halloween

We went trick or treating for Halloween. We obviously didn't have any particular costume theme we were going for here.

The aftermath. It went quickly.

Out with the old...

We saw an old man selling a shih tzu puppy by the side of the road. As we ooh'ed and ahh'ed, Imogen said, "Can we buy it mommy?"

"No, of course not," I said.

"Why not? Monster is so troublesome."

"Oh, so we just get rid of Monster and buy a new puppy?" I said, laughing.

"Sure. We could sell Monster for $100."

"No one's going to pay for that dog," I said.

"Well, maybe you should grow his hair out like a real shih tzu and someone will," she said.

Like a real shih tzu?? What's that supposed to mean? I don't think my kids have noticed that Monster has outgrown his chew-on-everything stage. Puppies are much more annoying than grown dogs. Even though Monster has taken to pantry raiding and dumpster diving. I came home one day to find a bag of brown sugar chewed open and sitting on my couch. What kind of dog steals baking goods? Not to mention the candy bars (in their wrappers) that he has been vomiting (again, on my couch). Still, I asked Imogen who was going to fund this dog exchange and she didn't really have an answer for that one.

Imogen

Our back yard is a jungle.

Genevieve

Much fun with paint

I had these tiny canvases on hand so I pulled them out along with a bunch of paint that I didn't use, as well as paint that I did use. It's funny the different value we placed on different colors. The kids were very impressed with the silver and gold paints that I bought and thought I would use but never do. I, on the other hand, use replace my white most often, and I think I was the only one to use it.

The Fourth of July

Yesterday, we invaded Mary's house for a cook out again. This is a fairly new tradition where we sometimes forget to invite everyone, completely fail to coordinate who will bring what, so that we show up uninvited with enough hot dogs for 20 people and no ketchup or mustard.


We argue about how well done a marshmallow should be.


There are various schools of thought on this one...


Wet wipes are necessary.




We encourage our children's pyromaniac tenancies.

And have fun with sparklers.


Which can be kinda cool.