Merry Christmas!

My father and his twin brother at Macy's, 1954.  Aren't they cute?  My dad tells me that they had to wear the same outfit all the time.  When one of them got dirty, they both had to change. 

Christmas Elves

I cannot believe this.  Elf is upset that Woodjie brought home a Christmas Elf hat from kindergarten.  Only he is the Elf.  Woodjie says, "Now I a Elfie, TOO!  There TWO elves!"  Rose had to jump into the picture and G... well... what a goof. 

Y2K Disaster!

January 1, 2000 will surely bring an apocolypse like you've never seen!  The end of the world will be complete with a clonky computer, big circular floppy disk, a chunky square disk (high-tech!) and floating zeroes and ones.  It's a shakeable mayhem, folks!  Happy New Year!  I sure hope I didn't scare you too much! Feel free to hide your cash money at my house in case the ATMs don't work on the big day.  :)

Better Than Mr. Potato Head!

Buy an orange or small clementine and a couple small containers of "whole cloves."  You'll find them in the spice aisle and ours were 99 cents for a small package.  Pop the cloves stem-in into your orange during craft time.  They're actually easy for little hands to pop in once they're shown how.

And after your craft is done, it makes the kitchen smell lovely.   Here are Woodjie and Rose's creations sitting on my windowsill.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Christmas!

You wonder what Polish Pottery and martial arts have to do with one another until you realize that these are Christmas presents. Yep. G is not going to have anything but a sweatshirt to unwrap on Christmas (don't tell! It really is his only gift!) because he's getting Taekwondo lessons. In an extreme violation of my child's privacy, I have allowed his NAME to be boldly written on the blog in full. Yep. There it is in Korean on his uniform - have fun guessing. The instructor must STAND ON A CHAIR so that G can do his kicks properly... he is just that tall. My present is obviously the pottery. I think it goes well with the stuff in the middle I got at Goodwill... but not too matchy-matchy. Emperor looked at all the stuff from the company online and is sad that I did not get an apple baker. (Look at his blog! He's updated his pictures and clever sayings as well!) I had NO idea that he had apple-baking aspirations, or I would have thrown one into my online cart. He carefully researched how to bake the apples and everything. Dear readers, I hope you are having a lovely Christmas season and that next year brings you much happiness, joy and peace. :)

Christmas Preparations

Getting ready for Christmas at the Mrs. C house. I'm popping a few recent photos on this post. Rose is playing with a puzzle. I've tried to get her involved with making pies, but she tried eating the pie crust mix instead. (It isn't very good, apparently, before it's cooked.) Woodjie is stirring some sugar cookie mix in the other picture, but of course he can't eat the butter and eggs that go into the mix.

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Lemon pudding (which surprisingly doesn't have milk) has become the standby for him when others are having donuts, cookies or ice cream. Although I must say even before he had a diagnosed allergy, Woodjie has HATED ice cream from day one.

A Pokemon Christmas

We've already decorated the tree, and we're using some "Pokemon" themed art made with iron-together beads the boys have been making throughout the year. After Christmas, they will still want to hang these in their room or in the kitchen window.

Easter Pics

Egg-hunting at our church. The older boys helped the smallest children, and Elf and Emperor were able to hunt nicely on their own. I was also glad to see that the prizes weren't so "high stake$" this year, which I think cut out some of the desperate competition amongst older children. Emperor won a prize of a small kite.

Pretty Bonnet.

Isn't it so cute? Woodjie is very jealous of all the attention she gets when she wears it and tries to pull it off her head. Rose likes all the loves and attention she gets in the hat, but it took some training to help her keep it on her head. For her own good. Happy Easter!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

We'll be reading the more traditional form of this book. Thanks, Jungle Mom, for letting me swipe this pic!

Homeschool Anniversary

Recently we celebrated two years of homeschooling! We made a strawberry cake with cherry chips and had sparkling cider to go with it. Note that the homeschoolers in question are in their footie pyjamas. Nothing like fulfilling those stereotypes for all to see on the blogs.

September 11, 2001

Do you have a "September 11, 2001" story to share? Rick Moore of the Holy Coast blog is collecting them. You can pop over to his blog and leave a comment or email him your story.

My story is not very exciting. Little Elf was a toddler and Emperor was my snuggly baby. We took a nap together in the morning. It was so peaceful. September is the month when things start to get cooler and a nap with a sleepy baby is one of the most blessed things in the world.

The phone rang.

D asked me if I've been watching the news. Um, no... What's going on?

He told me a plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City, and that a second plane just hit another tower and the buildings collapsed.

Yawn... huh? OK, this is not possible for the buildings to collapse. And... with two planes, it couldn't be an accident?

Duh! Just... turn on the news, ok?

Um, ok, but D... you are not understanding because you have never been to New York. Those buildings are really big.

It's on the news...

No, see... the buildings, they're REALLY BIG and they can't fall down...

*sigh* Just turn on the news...

I did, and it looked like he was right, though of course I was quite sure that the news people had fallen for an elaborate hoax. Any moment now, some clown with a cell phone camera will break in to the news on air and show us the buildings are JUST FINE. Imagine the nerve of these newspeople, broadcasting all this stuff! You see, it isn't really true because the buildings are really big.

I think it took me about two days to believe the news was real. And what convinced me that it was was a flag flying at half staff. I looked around town. Other flags were at half staff. Looking more, other people had flags everywhere.

So it *is* true. The flag told me so. Looking back, it's strange that I would not believe all the people on tv. I mean, really believe them deep down. I had to look around to see that other people believed it first. Patrick and G believed it, and within weeks I had little drawings everywhere of planes flying into buildings and Islamics being blown up by bombs. I don't think I saved these. I don't think I'd want to.

What are your memories?

Before Jesus Gets Packed Away...

You know, and not to be thought of for a whole 'nother year 'till next Christmas... Check out his sandy-blonde hair! You never knew that all of Jesus' entourage was colour-coordinated before this, either, or that all the hay in his stable was *miraculously* clean. I think this miracle is probably in one of those "lost gospels" or something because every creche I've seen has colour-coordinated and there is NO cow poopy near baby Jesus, ever.