The Birthday Chronicles and Wii Fit

Well, Internet, we had a nice time yesterday, completing the round of birthday celebrations for Mary's 4th. In our house it seems that birthday parties must be spread over a week's time, with school celebrations, dinner at a place where they usher in your new year with a song and a sundae, a party for the friends and a party for the family. So while Mary has been celebrating for over a week now, we finally concluded it all with a day long fiesta yesterday. Phew! Both of the girls had a great time seeing their cousins, Aunts, Grandmas, Grandpas (and Great Grandpas!) and extended family. There were Easy Bake Ovens, fabulous Dr. Seuss books, cute clothes, sparkly cards, Webkinz frogs, kid Cranium games, Princess birthday cake, superman ice cream in fun cupcake liners, Nemo pinatas and loads of food. Oh, yeah, and there was the Wii game time.

After a bit of time we pulled out the Wii. Kids were enchanted. Adults were amazed. It was better than when microwave popcorn first came out and everyone WATCHED it while it was popping! Most of the adults gave it a go, just to see if they could manage around a Mario Kart race track and the 2 year old twins found it enthralling to hold the steering wheels to no apparent affect. But it really was my cousin Darrell who enjoyed the challenges the most. At 13, who wouldn't? He showed off his maneuvering potential for a while, playing against Emma and easily winning. Then he tried the Wii fit. Have you seen the Wii fit games?



Well, Darrell enjoyed a lot of them, including soccer. He did great! It inspired me to get on the Wii Fit board later that night and beat every one of his top scores. It was the first time I had stepped on it even though Hubby has been doing it for 2 weeks now. So, my Wii Fit age is below my real age (yippee!!!) and my BMI falls within the 'normal' category (hurray!) and I can do yoga ans ski jumps and all sorts of fun to be fit things that will help me get rid of some excess baggage while quietly squashing other people's high scores (including Hubby's!). I am finding this latest installation of Wii games to be very satisfying indeed...

After the Party

With no nap and extended celebrations, Mary took her bedtime into her own hands long before everyone left.

The Pond Man Cometh

Soon our rocks, our fish, and our plants will fill this hole (along
with 1,000 gallons of water) and our pond will have been completely
"moved" from our last house. Exciting times!

McDonald's Birthday Party

Birthday girl

Happy 4th Birthday, Mary

At our traditional Red Robin celebration for family birthdays.

Village Picnic Activities

Emma and Mary race thru the inflatable course at our annual family
picnic for the village.

More Chemistry teacher seminar

Demos!

Chemistry Teacher Seminar

Flame test ferris wheel

Nature Walk Sunday

Local trails

Ms. Competitive Update and a Namesake

Recently, I wrote a post about my inherent sense of competitiveness. Amazingly, it generated a lot of discussion between myself and many people. So, recently, when I was talking to one of those people, I mentioned that there was an update on the blog entry - a punch line, if you will. If you have not read the post, I suggest that you do that before reading the rest of this one. Back at the ranch, I worked on Claire de Lune for about a week. Now a week doesn't sound like a long time, knowing what you know about me. But what you don't know is that I found out that Mr. Perfect was not playing the piano that night. IT WAS A PLAYER PIANO. ****HE**** prefers Rhapsody in Blue, which I do not like and will not work on at all! So, after making some progress on the singularly difficult piece I wandered off to other tasks. (It bears mentioning here that I still haven't made it to run 7 miles, although I did get to 5). Mr. Perfect diverted his attention the past weekend applying an epoxy floor to his garage, which I independently decided to do with our garage as soon as possible. I am, however, secure in the knowledge that my garage is bigger than his. Take that!

In other matters, we lack an odd thing. We don't lack for much here - although sometimes I could really use a Twix bar - but we find ourselves coming back to this same discussion again and again [dramatic pause!]:

We need a name for our house.

We have a funny habit of naming things that aren't necessarily in need of names, such as pianos and cars, and, well, houses. Our last house was Crestmore Cottage (take a quick glance at your address bar at the top of the browser - And now you know). The house before that was Elm Hollow (a personal favorite, named after Agatha Christie's 3 act play The Hollow, which we converted into a murder mystery dinner and "killed off" a good portion of our guests playing the parts). ANYHOW, we are undecided over here in our new house, only down the block from Crestmore Cottage, as to what we should name the place. The past names have always included some permutation of the name of the street. For example, Elm Hollow was on Elmhurst St. The street we are currently on is named after a president and I don't like the idea of including the name in our choice. I looked to literature first, as I like to say I did with my daughters' names (one could say they both came from Jane Austen characters), and I immediately went to my favorite book of all times: Jane Eyre. Thornfield Hall was not exactly what I was looking for, especially since the place burns dramatically at the end of the book - although we do have a tower where we could lock a crazy first wife, if only I weren't the first wife. My husband did some research on Napoleon. Why? I wish I could see your face, Internet, while you TRIED to make a connection with a potential reason for this. See, the house is built in second empire style, which is a reference to Napoleon III's reign in France. Moving right along, he came up with the name Fortune (for-tun-EH), which is the name of Josephine's dog that bit Napoleon. For which he proposed Le Maison Fortune, which is a play on words, since it cost us what we consider to be a fortune, but could mean that it is a place of good fortune. I like everything except the Fortune part, because no one would ever realize that it is the French word. And so the debate remains, as we drink some French wine, in a French styled house, considering and debating a French name. And I bet the guy next door doesn't have a name for HIS house.

Zoo treat

Mary digs into a giant ice cream treat.

At the zoo

Emma, me, Mary, Mum at the zoo fountain.

Quaint fun

More time at Greenfield Village

Birthday Party

Patriotic friends, born on the 4th of July.

Watching glass making

The girls were transfixed by this demo at The Village

At Greenfield Village

Art

At the museum, Mary makes her own art. Emma, characteristically, was
mostly interested in the stairs. Mostly, she is intrigued with where
they all lead. Once she gets there, she looks for more stairs.

Peaslee reunion

A passle of Peaslees

Ambition

Swam Wednesday, ran yesterday, now it is time to set up the trainer
and get some biking in!

Thelma & Louise at the Mall

Too cute too pass up.

Keeping up Appearances

As you know, Internet, I am competitive. It is not something that I try to do, it is merely WHAT I do. It is not that I really want to be competitive. I just want to win. So now that we've established the theme for the post, let's get to the meat. We have a new next door neighbor. The husband has been very busy outside, so we see him a lot and spend a good amount of time chatting. Right after the Dexter-Ann Arbor run we chatted and I found out he is a runner too. Faboo! But he runs 5-7 miles a day. I run 2. Then his wife got pretty hanging baskets. I don't have any of those. He has projects and you see him ALWAYS working on them. It was not too bad, Internet, until last week when I saw an Evola truck pull up and deliver a piano. I play piano. I play piano rather frequently. So last night when we were sitting out on the porch, we could hear the husband playing the piano. As he played, I recognized the songs: Hey, I thought, Moonlight Sonata is MY piece! And that Chopin waltz is one I play! Piece after piece it seemed he choose from my music library, increasing the difficulty with each one. Finally, he played a part of Clair de Lune. That amounted to all out war. I never really worked through that piece, as it is intimidating, but it is a beautiful one that I grew up listening to. So, the proverbial gauntlet is out, right there in front of my porch, and The Neighbor does not even know he threw it out. So today, instead of pulling out the worn DeBussy music from which to begin picking, I dragged out my dusty violin. Why? Don't know. Except that I haven't heard him play that instrument yet (I came to find out he plays the banjo with wild abandon), and I feel like I may have a one-up on him. Of course, I can't play the violin very well, never having followed through with lessons past Suzuki Book 2, but it made me feel better to squeak out some old tunes. You should know, Internet, that I have a SCIENCE degree - which I thought gave me a competative edge over him - until I found out he is an engineer. So the marathon running, banjo picking, piano playing engineer next door is about to engage in a race that he doesn't know he is running. It's better that way- I've got the element of surprise! And, by the way, I didn't hear ONE IOTA of Mozart, so he better step up his game a bit.

After Glow

After the recital the little dinos enjoyed their flowers.

The Circus, through Mary's Eyes

After the girl's dance dress rehearsal, we changed them and went to the circus. It was a small affair, outside at a small fairground in Bellville. We had free kid's tickets, but not enough cash to get 2 adults in - who carries cash, anyways? So Jim took the girls in while I waited in the car. After a bit he texted me to say Mary was tired and quite done, so I went to get her and took her home to go to bed. Jim stayed behind so Emma could ride the elephants and soak up some big kid circus fun. Since I did not get to see the circus, I asked Mary about it. Her version was so fun and random, that when I got home I tried to recreate the conversation and typed as fast as I could. I have to mention that Mary repeats portions of her sentences until she feels she has finally made her point. That's what makes talking to Mary so great. So, I sat down at the computer, hands poised, asked her about the circus and she started rambling off the whole thing all over again. It was actually pretty close to the original descriptions, so, for your enjoyment, ladies, gentlemn and children of all ages, I give you Mary's version of the circus, quirky grammar and all:

So, Mary, how was the circus?

Better.

What did you see?

Some lions, some tigers, hmm… let me think about the other ones… Horseys, cowboys…. Why do we call them with a cow when the people who go on horses with a ‘cow’, why do people call them with a cow, cowboys, with a cow?

Because they used to ride horses to corral cows. That means to make the cows go where they want the cows to go.

Oh.

Tell me about the lions.

They made them do tricks! And the people who were helping them do tricks put some ladders up. And we saw a girl, she was a princess who was doing tricks and she had sunglasses on and a crown. She was doing a trick with a sword on her head inside her crown with sunglasses. She put it through a part of her crown and she was balancing and she put STEAMING FIRE on it with a pan.

Wow.

The steaming fire was on the pan.

Wowie. What did they do with the lions?

They had things that go judge – that means there is little waggy things that they wave to do tricks and then they gave them high fives - the lions do, real high fives! They were very brave, giving the lions high fives all the time. They were playing musical chairs with them. Not real chairs, just the little ladders. And one was sitting like people! LIKE PEOPLE!!! YES!! Then, what came next was a neat girl and she was hanging upside down then she went up on her neck and she hanged upside down on her foot! She was very brave and it looked very scary because she went high up hanging. It was scary! It was very scary!

Tell me about the doggies.

Um, they pushed a baby Pluto that the mama pluto pushed the baby one in acar. They tried to get them to do tricks, Then they brought horseys in and they got those ones to do tricks. Black and white ones. One was black and white and then the other one was black and white. They were both the same because they were a mama and a daddy who lost their little kid horsey. Some horsey gypsies took the little kid horsey away from their mama and daddy. There was three of them. There was elephants, people riding the elephants that were from a different country. Daddy told about the ones that are from a different country. Did you see the those? They were America ones. They lived in America, that’s the country. Are you typing that? You can spell America? Wow, mama. Great job!

Wasn’t there a little boy making the announcements?

He was a clown! And he was juggling and he was singing songs without sweeping and he keeped wanting people to clap when didn’t want to sweep and he danced. So his dad wanted him to sweep, and he said turn the music off, Then he started dancing again. Then they said, “can’t dance there either”. Then he turned the music off and throwed his stuff like a bad clown. So he was being a bad clown. Then his dad, the circus, he juggled some sticks with steaming fire – real fire! On them! It was real fire! He didn’t burn himself at ALL. He was the bravest Daddy – is that neat? He didn’t burn himself, he was juggling with his hands and he didn’t even still burn. And the girl that was standing upside down on the thing that I just told you about that was the princess, uh, they took the neat balance beam off, that’s all they did. That’s all I know about the circus. Aren’t those pretty neat tricks?

What was your favorite part?

All of the parts. And the man who said, “come here”, he said, “which color is your favorite” and I said ALL of the colors. Did you hear me say that? His name was Charlie, like our dog. The one who was at the dance where the stage is. Yeah. That’s all I know about the circus. That’s why I said yeah.

A new twist

The Princess and the Pea will not wait for bedtime!

Welcome Summer!

As seen through the screen window, our humid 87 degree weather was a
delight for the girls.

Race day!

Runner girls

Dissecting Pigs

It's that time of year again...

Just For Fun

You Are a Comma

You are open minded and extremely optimistic. You enjoy almost all facets of life. You can find the good in almost anything. You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests. You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time. Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to. (But with so many competing interests, you friends do feel like you hardly have time for them.) You excel in: Inspiring people You get along best with: The Question Mark

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Pink Pitcher

New baseball glove for the little lady in pink

Another Event

Yeah, so as a teacher of senoirs I get to go to prom and dress up and so does hubby. For the second week in a row, hubby donned his tux and I got out THE nice dress and headed out. It was a nice affair and all of the kids were well behaved.

At a birthday party

The girls' friend Anna in the pink headband had a party at Chuck E
Cheese's. Emma was not to be out done and wore her Ariel crown.

Awesome Homeschool Science Fair

My awesome, brilliant, homeschooling friend (from high school!) that now lives in Virginia has done the incredible - she has put on a science fair! This, of course, is near to my heart, as I teach high school quasi-adults about science, I am thrilled to see someone who is instilling the LOVE at an early age. Here are the details - feel compelled to click the links (once I get them in place) and bump around the cyber world she has linked for you - there are pictures at Little Blue School, et al.

The G.U.E.S.S. Homeschool Science Fair took place on May 5th in Norfolk VA , where smart young scientists shared their research and conclusions with their peers, their families, and the judges. Fun was had, friends were made, hypotheses were proven, and prizes were awarded! Thank you to all the sponsors of the G.U.E.S.S. Homeschool Science Fair!If you would like to help thank these generous sponsors by boosting their links on key search words, please steal this post, links and all, and republish it to your blog. When you've done this, email guess@littleblueschool.com and let us know, so that we can add you to our "Science Fair Bloggers" and give you some links and traffic too! You'll get a link on Little Blue School, Homeschooled Twins, and on the homeschool science fair web site.Need the code? Click here to get the .txt file with all the links in place. Just put it into your blog's HTML editing field, and you're ready to go. If you have trouble posting, and you need help, email us.Moore Expressions is a homeschool bookstore in Virginia Beach , VA. They sell used and new homeschooling curriculum, host a support group, and publish a newsletter called the Bayith Educator. They are the premier source for homeschooling books in the Hampton Roads area.Art of Dance Academy is a dance and theater school on the border of Norfolk and Virginia Beach . They offer "Tiny Tots" toddler dance classes, youth classes for ballet, tap, jazz, and hip-hop, and adult classes too. Most importantly, the host the famous summer princess dance camp.Norfolk Karate Academy offers classes in Tang Soo Do (Korean karate) and Gracie Jiu Jitsu (Brazilian grappling and self-defense). With classes for children, teens, and adults, it's a great way for anyone to get in shape and kick things in a socially acceptable way!Nauticus is Norfolk 's maritime museum and home of the USS Wisconsin battleship. The hot new exhibit is Seabots: Pilots of the Deep! Have you seen it? Nauticus is in the process of setting up a Homeschool Advisory Group to talk about homeschool science programs at the museum.Mariner's Museum has amazing programs for homeschoolers learning about maritime science, history, and even pirates! Their next homeschool open house is on May 15th and features a class in pirate lore. Visit Mariner's Museum for historical exhibits and educational programming.Homeschoolingbooks.com offers homeschool curriculum packages to take the guesswork out of selecting materials that compliment each other to create a whole year of learning for your homeschooler. Three collections are available for each level, and individual books are for sale too.Brooks Systems offers standalone software and web applications that check legal compliance in all municipalities in all fifty states, and create truth-in-lending documents for residential lenders. Using Brooks for your automated mortgage compliance, you can be sure your loans are safe.Dr. Bernard Nebel has written two books to help homeschool teachers integrate learning in different areas of the curricula into one living breathing learning experience. His new book, Building the Foundations for Scientific Understanding, is a science curriculum for K-2.Young Chef's Academy is a marvelous kitchen classroom with amazing cooking classes for kids. Go ahead - cover yourself in flour! Most amazing of all: their summer camp offerings are themed around the Olympic Games. Cook for the Gold with Camp Can-I-Cook in Norfolk this summer.Mad Science is Hampton Roads' premier provider of science enrichment classes for children. Summer classes include "Crazy Chemistry" and a space camp developed with NASA! New homeschool science classes are being offered in Norfolk and VA Beach, with more planned for fall.eScienceLabs creates boxes of joy for science loving homeschoolers. In each kit is a complete science experience -- from individual lessons to full years of high school labs. Hands-on science kits are the answer to your laboratory woes. Everything is in there: test tubes, goggles, and fun.Folkmanis Puppets makes the most delightful animal puppets available outside Santa's workshop. Meet their most unusual creations like llamas, Chinese dragons, ostriches, flying squirrels. Unusual materials create realistic textures, and they all move in very realistic ways. Irresistible.Book Exchange is the largest used bookstore in Eastern Virginia . Unlike most musty and confusing used stores, this one is clean, bright, inviting, and has a huge selection of used homeschool books.Thank you for your help in promoting these homeschool-friendly sites. They took a risk on sponsoring us in the first year of our science fair, and we appreciate their support.

Emma's Dolphin Story

A few posts ago I sent in a picture of some Emma art - a lone dolphin jumping above the water. Today, she colored a second dolphin (no tuna for this kid) and wanted to write a story. Emma's writing is more than painfully slow right now, so she dictated. Her mind moves faster than her mouth, so I can understand why she did not want to sit and try to write it all down. This summer I had already planned a book writing project together, so this is a good start and a great indicator that she is right in the spot she needs to be to really get a lot out of such a project. Here's her story so far, according to her dictation:

"Then, another dolphin came up to its friend and said, 'Holly! How are you doing?' Holly said, 'Let's go to my house and play.' Then the other dolphin said, 'Okay.' 'Okay, Sharma! Let's go! Let's go to my house and play princess games on my bed.'"

Emma kept rambling after that, but Daddy was taking dictation and stopped writing about then (I was writing an Advanced Biology test) as Emma poured out the antics of the crazy, princess focused dolphins, Holly and Sharma.

The End

Ruffles

Getting dance pictures taken.

Gala dinner

For the teacher

This was waiting for me on my desk when I got to work this morning.

Tired Little Princess

We had 3 other little girls running around but Mary was done at 7 PM.

Mary art

A Nemo portrait, with the subject himself. This from the 3 1/2 year
old. It's all Nemo, all the time since she turned 2. It must be true
love...

Emma art

A picture of a dolphin

Ballet Costumes

Dino sisters

At ballet class

I'm not sure what they were supposed to be doing....

"Teavana"

A store devoted to tea. Good for the soul...

Going running!

Notice Emma in my Iron Girl hat...

Water Park Play

We took the girls to the Sterling Inn, a hotel that has an indoor water park play area. We met Uncle Jeff and Aunt Lisa (along with Katelyn, Zach, and Zander) up there an the kids all had a blast. Here are a couple of pictures that my professional photographer brother took of the girls - they are FABULOUS! Emma loved the "race slides" as she called them. She was an unstoppable fish-child. Mary liked lolling about in the floating innertubes - she was not falling through - that's how she wanted to ride in them! You cannot see it in this picture, but I was right next to her, swimming along. I have never (voluntarily) been so wet for so long. The things we do for the kids!

Church

Visiting E.B.

Cherry Hill Village Easter festivities. There's a bunny behind those
hats!

Easter games

At the old school, doing the egg walk

Shopping

Target at 7 am

On our way

It's True!

Yes, Internet - we've moved!!! I haven't gone on and on about it, really, but for those of you who have not been tapped in to the daily grind, we built a house (yes, another one). We've actually been working on it for a year and a half now. It is beautiful and unique (but I won't post pictures right now), and we are working on getting settled. Scroll down and you will see some select Christmas decorations we've managed to get up (a mere 10 days before the Elf comes). It has been hard on the girls (well, Emma), who don't take change well, even though we only moved down the alley 4 houses. We managed to rent out our house at the last minute for a year lease with intent to buy after that. Not too bad, and I'm not complaining. So now we own two houses and are landlords. Very odd. Anyway, back to the kids. Emma wrote a letter to Santa yesterday. It wasn't a list - she said she just wants Ariel or Tinkerbell toys and he knows that. No, Internet, she wrote, PAINSTAKINGLY, "Miss my red house, I love it" - with a lopsided red heart. It is pathetic. The poor kid CANNOT get over leaving her Dora bedroom. Funny thing is, right when I got done painting that Dora, she hated it. She was afraid of Dora's magic wand, and, incidentally, didn't like the yellow in her room. That is, until we moved. Now she reminisces about her Dora big-girl room that she misses in her pretty red house. It's tragic, I tell you.

So we are mucking forward. I would recommend NOT moving during the holidays. Between the full time job (a first for this time of year, you should know) and the move, I am woefully behind. I've not made the Christmas cards yet, done the shopping (except for the girls, who we shopped for last weekend), baked any cookies - frosted or pizzelles, ordered any presents, wrapped any presents, well you get the picture. Were it not for the 3 inches of snow and the tree we managed to get up yesterday (did I mention Hubby went out and bought a new, pre lit one to get the job done?), I would not know it is nearly Christmas. And to boot, this week I came down with a bug that had me running to the bathroom during classes. It is really hard to teach that way.

I am sure it will all get done. Well, it might not. I am sitting here typing this instead of doing things that Need to Get Done. And many people may be getting magazine subscriptions this year from us. That is a nice, easy gift. And I may not get Christmas Cookies frosted this year. Well, I guess I can't do everything!

Old favorites!

Ho!

Noel !

Decor for the holiday!

Mission Accomplished

It's starting to look like Christmas!