Our Four Ring Circus

Jul. 12, 2007

Brendan's Detective Birthday Party

Brendan turned 8 in June and we had a Detective Party to mark the occasion.

The heist: the cake mysteriously disappeared shortly after the party got rolling.

The Party Crashers: well, maybe they just crashed the picture - they never miss an opportunity to be in front of the camera.

The Cake - intended to look like a magnifying glass in case you couldn't tell.

Alyssa's comment upon seeing the cake for the first time was: "Mom, this isn't one of your best cakes. It looks like it came out of a preschool." I took that to mean, "It looks like a 4 year old made it." Alyssa has very high standards as I didn't think it was so bad.

The Crime Scene - John did a good job wrapping the yard in Caution tape.

More visual effects: Alyssa made this chalk drawing of Chase on the driveway.

The evidence: this muddy footprint on the patio...

...a partially eaten slice of cheese on the table, a dirty fingerprint left on the pile of party napkins (carefully made using a black ink pad for clarity) and a bicycle track left in the mud headed toward the back gate.

We investigated the evidence as follows:

We took a picture of the footprint and compared it to all the shoes in the group. It turned out to match the shoe of the birthday boy himself.

We had each party goer bite down on a slice of styrofoam plate and compared upper and lower teeth marks to the cheese left on the table. It turns out 'One Tooth Emily' (who is missing one front tooth) was the culprit.

We took fingerprints using a Crayola Colorwonder ink pad which is invisible on fingers but shows up nicely on the Colorwonder paper. Alyssa's fingerprint was the one on the napkin.

We made up some plaster of Paris and poured it into the bicycle track. Once dry it was a perfect match to Chase's bike tire.

The bandits: the nefarious Sibling Gang

Now we knew 'whodunit' but where did they 'take the cake'?

Well, being young, inexperienced bandits, they left clues.

The first was found lying on the counter written in invisible ink which we revealed using a special pen made for the purpose.

It lead us to our mailbox, where we found a clue hidden in a sea of nonsense letters of various colors. By laying a clear red film card over the nonsense message, we revealed the cryptic message: Bushes 4891 Sherlock Street (address changed to protect the innocent).

We followed the house numbers until we arrived at the address in the clue. There in the bushes, we found a long, narrow cylinder which contained a long, narrow strip of paper full of more nonsense letters. By wrapping the paper around the cylinder, we revealed the next message which took us to yet another mailbox.

When we arrived at the mailbox, we found the final clue but it was printed backwards. Using the mirror found with the clue, we were able to discern our destination: "Back to where you started."

Having now circled the block, we came home to find that the cake had mysteriously reappeared on the table.

The final mystery: what's under all that wrapping paper!

We finished the party at the local park where we played with water balloons, water guns and our new water balloon launcher which claims to send balloons flying up to 200 feet.

A good time was had by all.

(The careful attention to detail in documenting this party was done intentionally as I plan to throw this party again in a few years when Chase is a little older and I know my memory will not serve me well. Thank you for your patience.)

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Feb. 7, 2007

Chase's Big Day

Posted in Under the Big Top

Life has been getting in the way of my blogging again. Saturday we hosted a 5th Birthday Party in the Wild West. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is going to be a long one...

Our Invitations

(Personalized with the name of photo of each invitee)

The Kids

The Cake

The Scene

The Sharpshootin'

Those cans didn't have a chance.

The Presents
(With a little help from Emily)

The Candles

The One Last Stubborn Candle

The Spittin'
(Kudos to the photographer for catching that sunflower seed in mid-air)

The Concentration
(Everyone knows you can swing harder with your tongue out)

We went out with a bang!

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Jan. 15, 2007

A good time was had by all.

Posted in Under the Big Top

We hosted our first slumber party last night for Alyssa's 9th birthday. Everything went swimmingly from the making of our 'Ya-ya' hats to the homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

Our Invitations

Our Cake

The birthday girl awaits her guests

Getting glamorous (Emily had no idea what they were doing
but she wasn't going to miss out on doing it.)

All dolled up...

...and ready to party.

(It isn't that we don't dress Emily, she just won't stay dressed. She routinely takes her clothes off and runs around in only a diaper.)

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Jun. 10, 2006

Laundry: The Next Frontier

Posted in Under the Big Top

Alyssa and Brendan both finished their Math books yesterday which was the last of the school work before we switch gears for the summer.

(The bottom half is empty because Emily won't leave the disks alone)

A year ago, I bought a PEGS board and it has been a fantastic addition to our home as well as our homeschool. At the beginning of last summer, we sat down for a family meeting and brainstormed ways we would utilize our new 'system'. While we could have been more consistent with it, when I compare where we are today with one year ago, we have made tremendous improvements. The kids not only pitch in with the housework but they still enjoy using the board.

This being the first day of summer break, it was time to sit down for our second annual family meeting. All year I've thought to myself, "If only I could hire someone to do the laundry, we might actually be able to get this whole house keeping thing under control." The laundry was definitely our weak link and today the answer came to me - put the kids on it. With everyone a year older now, it was time to rearrange chores anyway and so I gave everyone a laundry duty.

Here's the plan: each morning Brendan will go from room to room with a basket and collect the dirty clothes which will theoretically be in the hampers. While this seems far fetched at the moment, if the hampers weren't always overflowing with clothes, I think people would actually put the dirty clothes in them and we wouldn't have so many items tossed onto the floor. He will bring the basket(s) to the washing machine and leave it there. Chase will take an empty basket and remove the clothes from the dryer depositing them on the couch. Alyssa will fold the clothes and the three of them will put their own things away with Alyssa putting away things in the community property category (towels, etc.). Each day I will wash and dry the clothes so they will be ready to be folded and put away the next day.

Alyssa and Brendan love to collect their green disks to be turned in at the end of the week for allowance. Chase doesn't find money much of a motivator so I am trying Chuck E Cheese tokens with him instead. I have promised a trip to CEC in July if everyone participates in the new plan without a bunch of bellyaching. We will see how it goes.

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My Blog

A few years ago, when our oldest was 4 and her two brothers were both in diapers, my in-laws were a few days into a visit from their home 3000 miles away when my father-in-law noticed that the rug under the dining room table was in serious need of vacuuming. He is not prone to domestic duties (his wife is a great housekeeper) but seeing the need, he decided to try his hand with the Hoover. As soon as 'Grandpa' declared his intention to get out the vacuum, four little feet ran for the toy box to get vacuums of their own. We had one toy vacuum and we improvised a second from a 'popper' push toy. The baby, who was not yet walking, was right in the thick of things on all fours, never one to be left out. Grandpa, trying to maneuver the self-propelled 'Wind-tunnel' around the 10 foot rug while avoiding the table legs and dodging his three little helpers, remarked in exasperation, "I just wanted to clean the rug, I wasn't looking to start a three ring circus." Welcome to my life!

About Me

My name is Tiffany. I am a 39 year old mother of 4. My husband, John, and I planned to homeschool even before we married 17 years ago but it would be several years before our oldest would be ready to start on this journey. We had our children in alphabetical order, quite by accident at first, but once we got started, we figured we had to keep it going. They are Alyssa 10, Brendan 8, Chase 6, and Emily 3. Our 4th baby, D, miscarried at 13 weeks. We have no intention of making it to Z.

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