Dec. 28, 2008
DO try this at home!
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 Back in the kitchen with something he'd been wanting to make for awhile, Jesse and I found this recipe on allrecipes.com for Baked Potato Skins.       This is a boy who said, "NO WAY!" when he opened one of his Christmas presents to find The BH&G New Junior Cookbook and The Spatulatta Cookbook (with a spatula!). These were FABULOUS by the way! Nice and crunchy. I used turkey bacon instead of regular and did not have the green onions to put on top. We also said maybe we could make pizza ones with pepperoni, mozzarella cheese and a little tomato sauce next time... |
Oct. 28, 2008
A letter to her brother
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Yesterday afternoon Jesse was up in the kids' bedroom, working on a magic trick (he got a kit from the store and was reading the directions and practicing, so I wanted to give him time to do it). Ana wanted to be with him but I told her to give him some time alone. So she drew pictures. Then she wrote this: DeR Jesse (backwards J, which adds to the cuteness of it all) I WiL Mis you AT LaiN CLAs (Latin class, which Jesse takes at our homeschool co-op-- Ana has storytime) But i WiL see you At JiM (backwards J again) CLAs (they are in a gym class together) Love ANA  |
Oct. 25, 2008
Wednesday night I was 13 again....
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I went and saw New Kids on the Block (NKTOB) Wednesday evening. Here's a picture with a couple of the ladies who went too. I'm in the middle, in the blue shirt-- And those are all my shirts; I have 5!)  I went to Milwaukee with 4 friends from church. I have not had this much fun in a very long time. As I said, I relived my early teen years and it was great. The guys are still great performers. Now my kids are getting into the classic songs. My daughter asks to listen to "Step By Step" and my son sings "The right stuff." LOL! |
Oct. 5, 2008
They're "famous" now!
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This weekend we are in Indianapolis for a Renaissance Faire. (see side link for my husband's business!) It was beautiful weather and I'll post my own pictures once we're home. But the kids and my hubby were in FOUR photos featured on this site for the Indy Star newspaper! Yay! Check them out! The last one is especially cute, as it shows the kids on stage at the end of the show (I rarely get pictures of that so it's fun to have this one!). |
Sep. 28, 2008
A new children's museum experience for us
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Friday we went up to Milwaukee for the day because a friend, Katie, emailed me to let me know she'd be at Betty Brinn Children's Museum with the children's theatre group she works with to put on a little show and play some improv games. I've been wanting to check that museum out with the kids, so this was a good excuse. We didn't have anything else planned for the day so we headed up north. The first problem was the GPS in my husband's car didn't know that the exits were a little different! *sigh* Thankfully, it was able to recalculate the route and get us there-- but finding the parking garage was difficult. So, we ended up on the street right across from the museum, and I had to go out and feed the meter every 2 hours. *sigh* The kids LOVED the museum! Lots of new and different exhibits to play and learn....  A giant Harley to play with! The kids loved it!  They also spent most of their time in the TV studio, doing the news! Jesse really got into it, making up stories, first about Michael Phelps and the Olympics, then the weather (he's in the rain, see the TV screen which shows the background-- wonderfully like the real thing with a green screen!).     Ana honed her mechanic skills, replacing a muffler at the car repair shop, changing the tires, looking under the hood.     In the arts section of the museum, the kids tried their hands at conducting an orchestra. A video screen shows an orchestra playing one of three preprogrammed songs, including "Star Wars Medley" by John Williams and "Stars and Stripes Forever." A wand has sensors in it or something so the orchestra follows the child's lead; their speed depends on how fast or slow the wand is moved! I tried it too. It was fun! Jesse got VERY into the "Star Wars Medley" (big surprise, I know! LOL!). Ana wanted a turn as well.  "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to JE productions," Jesse announced as he and Ana put on a play of a leprechaun and a cheetah.  Fun with art! (see them at the foot of the sculpture?)  We only had one really bad experience at the museum, and it wasn't the museum's fault. We put our lunch bags in the coat room, not in a locker because, hey, who's going to steal a lunch bag? We came back for lunch and Ana's Disney Princess lunch bag WITH HER NAME ON IT was gone! Mine and Jesse's were still there. WHAT THE HECK?! We looked around the museum in case some little kid picked it up and just left it somewhere. Couldn't find it. Gave my info to the front desk people and then went outside to do battle with the wasps (I mean, eat lunch). Poor Ana had nothing to eat really, being as picky as she is. I had her yogurt, but she wouldn't eat it without the granola and chocolate chips that were in her lunchbag. So she ate half a bag of Sunchips and then I bought her a bag of Cheese-Its at the gift shop and she at those. We played more, as you can see by the pictures, but I felt so violated. Why would a parent allow her child to take someone else's bag? This is a VERY SMALL museum. Her name was on the bag. There was no mistaking it for your own. Hello?! We were there for Katie's play, which was not what she hoped due to two of her students not making it there in time to perform. Then she played some games with whichever kids would go on the stage. Jesse and Ana did, of course, but there was really only one other boy who did, and not as enthusiastically as my kids (but then again, look at their dad!). As we were getting ready to go out and enjoy dinner of Noodles and Company with Katie, the museum person found me-- they had found the lunchbag! It was in the bathroom (EW!) and FOOD WAS MISSING FROM IT! Since it was her princess bag, I brought it home and wiped it down with Clorox wipes. How bizzare! The granola for her yogurt, a bag of Sunchips, a lemonade flavor packet for water and three granola bars were missing! They left her waterbottle and the chocolate chips. I can't make ANY sense of this, can you? As for homeschool that day, I wrote down a list of subjects they studied: journalism, math (in the bank and grocery store), mechanics/problem solving, physics, drama, music, art, science (nutrition in the body works section), social studies... What fun! |
Sep. 23, 2008
Yay for field trips!
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Today we took a field trip with one of my friends, and Ana's godmother, Christy, to Chicago Botanic Garden. It was a perfect day to go, and great timing too since we've been studying plants as our science topic. Here are the kids and Christy in front of the fountain in the rose garden at the end of our time. The kids were so tired after walking around for a few hours that they fell fast asleep in the car on the way home. Here are some more of our pictures of the day...   The first thing we did was go to the Model Railroad garden. WOW! So beautiful. Here are "Old Faithful" and Seattle's Space Needle.    "Choo Choo!" Then San Francisco downhill road and a Frank Lloyd Wright home....  Look at this Dinosaur Dig in South Dakota's Badlands. Look toward the head of the dino-- it's Indiana Jones (in action figure form!) the archeologist!    Mt. Saint Helens erupted before our eyes. We saw Hollywood and the Statue of Liberty.    Mt. Rushmore (look carefully towards top), Wrigley Field, and Ana takes a photo of another landmark. She took over 100 pictures!   The kids get excited about these giant leaves, Colocasia, far above. They were also excited to see these water lillies. |
Sep. 17, 2008
Lots of pictures of the first half of September....
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This past weekend we were at the St. Louis Pirate Fest, as my husband is a renaissance performer (see his website for a cool fire-eating video). Here are my cutie pies! At the Parrot Rescue tent Jesse held a parrot for the first time. Ana decided that petting was okay, but not holding. "Too scary."  Here are the kids at the end of the day, with their pirate flags they made. We completed the pirate scavenger hunt and they became "official" pirates. Ana found the eye patch along the patch and decided to wear it. This is the kids with their friends (my best friend's kids), representing Jamaica in the homeschool group's Olympics day. Jesse and Ana (and I) made the flag. After the first game or two, the kids all lost interest and instead explored the beautiful grounds we met at (it's at a church on a lake). Here they are on the first night of AWANA, a church program in which they memorize Bible verses. Ana was so excited to start the program. That morning they both put on all red clothes (Ana even put on red socks!), so they could match their uniforms for SPARKS, the group they are a part of. When I was a child, I went through this program too.As a special treat, we took the kids to Chuck E Cheese one afternoon. Here are the boys playing Mario Kart.   Then Ana and her daddy played air hockey together. Ana and I met up at Skee Ball.   Brent actually got a perfect score on SkeeBall and won the bonus tickets! A siren went off and everything. It was soooo cool! |
May. 30, 2008
My Little Chef
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Apr. 24, 2008
Tennessee
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We are home from Tennessee! The first-year faire "Dragon Days" was tiny. We had a good time overall. So we went through Seymour, Indiana, where we stayed overnight (southeast of Indy). It was in the Eastern Time Zone. So we thought for the rest of our trip, we'd be in that time zone. NO! Unbelievably, the time zone zigs and zags so that Cookeville, way south and a little east of where we were, was in the Central Time Zone. Huh? Here
 's a map.... We were a little east of Nashville. Also! Brent felt the earthquake on Friday morning! I did not. It woke him up but not the kids or me. How bizzare!We saw a sign at a place called Mrs. Winners. We thought it said "Chicken Waffles." I finally got a chance to look online at the website and found out that there was a tiny "and" between the words. That is strange enough, though not quite as strange as the first option.Jesse was confused by the southern accent, which he thought "sounds like a farmer's wife." Some beautiful trees called "red buds" captivated my attention. I TOTALLY want one for my yard: Now for our pictures... Here's the view from our room in TN: So pretty, this picture doesn't do it justice.    A weird African goose "Punk Rock" Roosters   Ana loved Kasey, an Irish wolf hound  Human Chess match   On the way home from TN, we stopped in Cave City, KY for Dinosaur World ! They are having a homeschool special this month (lower-priced admission), so it was worth it. Otherwise, it's a little expensive for us. But it is great timing because we are starting a dinosaur study next month! So we took pictures of EVERY dinosaur there (don't worry, I didn't put them all here! LOL!) so we could make our own book and add facts we learn about them. This is the "Photosaurus" an imaginary dinosaur that can be seen from the highway. You can go up to this one and have your picture taken. Brent is the little bitty person at the foot of the dinosaur to show how tall it is. All of the rest of them are behind ropes so kids don't climb on them. But you could still get pretty close to them. Ana with her favorite dino, Triceratops, likely a result of the Land Before Time movies. She likes Cera.     Brent impersonates a Carnotaurus... On the drive there and back, we listened to "Fablehaven " by Brandon Mull. Very good story. I don't like the narrator's voice a ton (I've been spoiled by Jim Dale!) but I got past it because Brent read the book and thought it was great. He is performing at a book signing for the third book in the series next week at Under the Sycamore Tree bookstore in Grayslake.The other book I am listening to, because it is read by Jim Dale, is "Stoneheart " by Charlie Fletcher. It is very strange. I have had trouble following the story. It is the first book in a trilogy. It's tiring to think the author stretched this story out over more than one book. Hopefully I will feel differently further into the book (I'm not quite halfway there). In the meantime, I will listen to it if for nothing else but Jim Dale's amazing talents. |
Mar. 26, 2008
Star Wars Party!
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