Chloe, the Early Years.

I was looking through a huge box of art by the kids. Here are some of my favorites by Chloe.

We did a little music and play at Bethany's house yesterday. Freya had fun and it's always nice to chat with other moms.

I think the boy's room is done. Went to IKEA and found a few little things to add to the wall. The top of the board now has mettle strips that I painted silver. I also found the light and thought it would look good in blue. When I got it home, I noticed that there is a spider on it and the end of the light is in the shape of a web! I didn't even notice it at the store. Score big time as it matches the Spidey theme perfectly.

In case you were wondering why the color scheme, it isn't patriotic but more Spiderific.

Anyway, I hope that this will help get more homework done!

My dad has been doing lots of stuff around the house for me. He has been working to put plywood up in my attic so I can store crap up there.

Then after Freya and I spent entirely too much time cleaning crap out of Jonah's room, he put this peg board up in there for me.

I think it will be great once we get all the little doo-dads up there, filled with crap. He also put these metal strips on the board so magnets can hold papers on it.

The word that Freya learned and used frequently while cleaning Jonah's room today was crap. The phrase of the day is "you betcha" courtesy of Grandpa Steve.

The idea for the pegboard bulletin board came from a few different places. Here is one:

Halloween was filled with a haunted pirate ship that gave adults BEER! A haunted house, an adult party and too much face paint.

We had a fun party for some friends at the house. There was lots of silly things to do, the main attraction was the haunted boat ride.

It got a little out of hand toward the end, but I guess that is what happens when you get too many kiddos in one place.


Thank you Tanya for capturing Chloe as the dead bride. She looks so great, and she acted the part to perfection!

And if you were at the party and wondering what happened after you left, catch the last two pictures. That is what a Karaoke show down looks like in our house. Kids dancing to extremely bad renditions of all songs disco.

Here are a few faces from yesterday. And another of my dad.

My dad is visiting this week. We went to a little Halloween party yesterday. I started face painting and got sucked in as I always do. It is so fun, I love to do it.

Anyway, my dad got in line and requested a giant zit. Hopefully I'll get pictures of the other faces I did, it was fun to see all these made up little kids walking around.

Introducing the Amazing Jonah!



Yes, that last one he is on the ceiling.

Things I have heard in the last 24 hours

"Wow, you're really good at that. Maybe you should do it." My son as I am trying to teach him how to make a marinade.

Me, "What is this?" Jonah, "a trap door." After I was trying to figure out what was drawn in sidewalk chalk on my front porch. Nice.

"you're a golden-butterfly-poop-crack weenie" Out of the lips of my 3 year old to her brother. Seriously where?

"When I become president..." My 7 year old daughter.

We took the girls to a vet clinic the other day. They were especially entranced by the blood under the microscope, the heavy lead X-ray jacket and their special gift from the vet, a dog tooth. Who knew that a pulled dog tooth would get squeals of delight from 7 year old girls?

Music

This was so fun, we had a play date with some other mamas yesterday. It was great fun, singing and talking with the ladies but the best was when the kiddos decided to have a little open mic session. Freya was so getting into it, she was putting her soul out there for everyone to groove to.

Can you see the seriousness in her expression? Her furrowed brow? The emotion that went with the sounds!

And the words, something about a bunny drinking coffee and she would say, "I see you, I see you, I see you" as she was looking at each person.

I wish it were taped because it really didn't get any better than that right there.

No comment needed

Texas Wildlife

There are so many different animals here. We have fire ants, giant beetles, scorpions, so many snakes I can't even count and insects I have never seen before. As often as they say armadillos are common here, I have only seen them dead on the side of the road.

I'm becoming accustomed to seeing unusually large animals and insects. They're not kidding when they say, "everything's bigger in Texas."

Here are a few of the things we have encountered in our backyard and I was able to get a picture of.

If anyone knows what kind of snake that is, let me know. It did bite Suki on the nose. It obviously isn't poisonous because she is fine but it sure sent us into panic mode.

International Children's Day was an enormous success. The parents at school did a wonderful job representing the cultures in various countries. I think my favorite booth was the one from India. They had bindi painting, bangles, wonderful little honey coated doughnut holes (I am sure there is a great name for these) and their clothing is just so colorful and dramatic it is irresistible.

Chloe dressed up in a kimono and insisted in putting chopsticks in her hair. She was adorable even though she acted the part.

Our Wales booth had entirely too many Welsh cakes. There are about 200 left over and I am unsure of what to do with them. I see a visit to the duck pond in our near future.

Update on the Tooth fairy situation



If you remember back here about my son hording his teeth, you know that he has had a plan. He told me he put his teeth under the pillow weeks ago (without saying anything to me). He went on to tell me that he knew I was the tooth fairy because he saw me come and put the money under his pillow the last time he lost a tooth.

We are all sitting in the car together, my 7 year old and 3 year old are listening intently.

He keeps pressing me to "admit it" and "tell the truth." I am increasingly becoming nervous because he was not going to let it drop.

Finally, Chloe yells, "NO! The tooth fairy dresses up like one of our parents so that the kids don't get scared by someone else showing up in their room in the middle of the night!"

Jonah, "no, that's not true, it was Mom."

Chloe, "it is true, I have it in writing. I read it in a book!"

Jonah decided to leave it at that and I didn't even have to say a word. Thank goodness for seven year old girls.

Welsh Cakes

the kids' school is having a festival this Friday. There will be booths from many different countries. We're doing Wales and are making welsh cakes.

Here is the recipe, I have these coming out my ears right now.....

Originally these are fried in a pan but I had to adapt it to fit the oven as I didn't want to fry 400 of these.

3 1/3 cups self-rising flour

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup raisins

1 teaspoon mixed allspice

8 oz butter

2 eggs

milk


Put all dry ingredients from bags into bowl. Cut in butter until it is coarse like breadcrumbs.

Add eggs and mix together. I added about 1/4 cup milk or less by small increments, until it was similar to a pie dough. (this seems to need to be done by hand)

Roll out on a floured surface with floured rolling pin until about 1/4" thick. Cut with approximately 1" diameter cookie cutters. Put on a baking sheet and bake at 350 for 7-8 minutes until slightly brown on the bottom.

Dust with regular granulated sugar straight out of the oven.

Each recipe will make at least 100 1" cookies.

Shadows are cool.

We were looking at all the shadows around us and thought they were exciting. Then Freya noticed that her streamers from her bike made pink shadows. I tried to take a picture of it but it didn't turn out as radiant as the actual shadow.

Also, we went back to the cemetery today because the big kids wanted to see the graves. What I thought was weird was Freya remembered right were "Gussie" was. This was the grave she did a rubbing on last week.