Pre-party preparations

We're having a neighborhood New Year's Eve party tonight.
Sparkle and Glitter wanted to help. They had to work together to carry a bag of ice, and I think that it fell on Sparkle's foot only once.


Here is the $4 bouquet of flowers that Wander got for me last week. They are my favorite - inexpensive, lots of pretty blooms, and they last quite a while.


Here is Wander and his stash of fireworks. He enjoys lighting up the sky.



Grandma and Grandpa took the girls to the local botanical gardens after lunch while Wander and I tidied up the downstairs of the house. Wander basically gathered up all the stuff from downstairs and piled it up in the upstairs hallway and bedroom. We're not orderly people.


Glitter and Sparkle had fun playing in the water.

Good books

Glitter and Sparkle are cuddled up on the sofa with Wander and some good books. I don't read to the girls as often as I should (in other words I almost never read to them anymore). However, somehow Glitter has picked up a love of books anyway. Sparkle has always loved books and I'm so glad that she can read by herself now.

Christmas Showcase

Two weeks ago the homeschool group that we belong to had it's first Christmas Showcase. Sparkle participated in two parts. She is the one girl in a green dress instead of a red dress. She also has a pink ribbon in her hair because the showcase was right after her ballet class and her hair is still in a bun.

Her first part was reading a Christmas Alphabet Poem with a group. There were four teams. Each team had a "reader" to read the verse for that letter, and one or two "holders" who held up a poster of the appropriate letter. Sparkle was the reader for team three.


Her other part was singing "O Holy Night" and "Silent Night" with her Little Flowers class.

Puzzle with Grandma

Grandma and Grandpa gave Sparkle a puzzle for Christmas. Today, Grandma got Sparkle to sit down with her and do the puzzle during Glitter's nap. It was a 100 piece puzzle of six horses. The box said that it was for ages 5 and up. I sat in the living room listening to Grandma and Sparkle work on the puzzle. Grandma found a clean cookie sheet that the puzzle fit in perfectly. It allowed them to easily keep the completed portion separate from the other pieces and store or transport the puzzle off the table when it was done.

Grandma was amazingly patient with Sparkle. She had a constant patter of gentle suggestions, comments, and encouragement that put Sparkle at ease. Even though it seemed that Sparkle was getting bored at times, whenever Grandma asked if she wanted to put it up for a while, Sparkle still wanted to continue. I wish that I had that patience when working with Sparkle.

Wander goes hiking

Wander went hiking at a local nature preserve today with a new friend. Another old friend was supposed to come along but had babysitting issues.

Wander spent most of his spare time the last several days packing and repacking his bags, trying to decide what to bring and what to leave behind. Last night it was almost impossible to pick my way across the bedroom floor without tripping on some sort of gear. It didn't help that the weather got much colder than expected, so he swapped out sleeping bags and coats. This morning he decided to take his fishing pole, but at the last minute decided to leave it in the car after all. Much of what he chose to leave behind is still in a pile in the bedroom.

Glitter and Sparkle didn't go along, although they wanted to. We were just there to drop the guys off. We'll pick them up tomorrow.

Visiting Cousins

Wander's cousin lives about an hour's drive from our home. We get together with them whenever Wander's parents visit us. The six of us fit nicely in my MomMobile. Wander drives and his dad is in the front passenger seat because they both need the leg room. The middle row has Grandma and Glitter. Then Sparkle and I are in the "way back," because Sparkle's booster seat is easy to move, and I'm still flexible enough to climb into the back.




Wander's cousin has a big house in the middle of nowhere, with lots of room for guests, which is good because, several of his siblings and their families were visiting them from across the country. I think that there were close to 20 people in the house, almost of whom had the same last name. Sparkle and Glitter were the youngest by far - the next cousin is in high school. However, Sparkle still managed to get in the thick of things. Glitter preferred to hang out on the fringes. She would creep up to the crowd of "big kids" until one of them saw her and then she would scream with excitement at getting caught while running back to cling to me until she felt brave enough to repeat the process.



On the drive back late at night we saw well over a dozen deer roaming Wander's cousin's neighborhood. Most of them were in small groups of 2-3, but there was one large group. Deer are smaller than I thought. Then I had to ask Wander to stop pointing out the deer and Christmas lights because Sparkle and Wander were so tired and needed to sleep. They kept sitting up and peering out whenever Wander pointed something out, and then got cranky if the deer bounded away before they caught a glimpse.

Museum

When we heard that BodyWorlds was coming to the local science museum, we thought that Sparkle would be interested. She is fascinated by the human body. The six of us (Wander, Sparkle, Glitter, Grandma, Grandpa, and I) went down to the museum in the morning. We were able to use Grandpa's handicap permit to get a nice parking spot next to the entrance. Sparkle found all the planets on that side of the building (Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter). I forgot to go to the other side to look for the other planets.


The six of us wandered around the main exhibits for a bit. We got to watch the pendulum topple a pin. Even though I sort of understand the explanation of how pendulum doesn't actually rotate - rather it's the rotation of the earth, I still find it hard to comprehend.


Glitter liked the things she could touch and push best. Here she is pushing the button to make ping pong balls bounce around a column like gas molecules. It was far more exciting than the corresponding models of a liquid, which just jiggled around, and a solid, which didn't even have a button to push.


After lunch at the McDonald's, the grandparents babysat Glitter while Wander, Sparkle, and I went to see BodyWorlds. We couldn't take any pictures there.

Although Sparkle liked a few spots of the exhibit, overall, it ended up being a bit long and crowded for her. Many of the displays were too high for her to see, and Wander kept having to lift her up. She did really well not touching anything. She also did really well by not freaking out. At first she had a tough time understanding that all the bodies had been living human beings and then they died, but after I explained it several times, it seemed to sink in. She also got a crash course in the differences between male and female anatomy.

Some of the parts that I found memorable:

• a brain on a rotating column near the entrance
• the smallest bones in the human body - in the ear
• a normal and a deformed spinal column
• a normal knee joint and one with arthritis
• three lungs - normal (white), smokers (shrunken and black), and coal miners (shrunken and black)
• fetuses from four weeks old to 28 weeks old
• examples of orthopedic installations
• normal ovaries and cancerous ones
• a small table with samples that the kids could touch

After exiting BodyWorlds, Sparkle and I looked at a lion chasing a zebra while Wander looked for his parents and Glitter. Turns out that the crowds were too much for them and they were on a bench in the main entrance with a bunch of other grandparents who were also resting while the rest of their families were in the museum.



Then it was time to go home. Sparkle rode on Grandpa's knee on his scooter while Glitter napped in Wander's arms.

Christmas Presents

This morning the girls were very good about waiting until everyone was ready before opening presents. The gifts this year were fewer and smaller than previous years, but Sparkle and Glitter were wonderfully excited and didn't seem to notice.


Wander's parents usually visit for the holidays every winter. They've been here for almost two weeks so far and will probably stay a few weeks more.


Sparkle got a wrist watch, since she now knows how to tell time. However, her wrist is so tiny, it was hard to fit on her wrist. Amusingly enough, she found the blue foam that the watch was on as much fun as the watch itself. The fake fingernails from the grandparents were also a thrill.


Here is Glitter tearing into one of her gifts. It's Moon Sand!


Sparkle and Glitter both got nightgowns. Up to now, they have always had pajamas, but both expressed interest in nightgowns, and Santa obliged.

Christmas Eve Cookies

It was my turn to put the girls to bed and they were upstairs getting undressed before I realized that we had forgotten to set out the cookies for Santa. I had baked a batch of sugar cookies earlier in the morning, just before leaving for church.

So, after baths and pajamas, the girls went back downstairs to set out the treat for Santa. Wander decided that Santa needed a coke tonight, so that was the beverage instead of milk or water this year.



And for good measure, here's a picture of the top of the tree. Although I set up the tree and decked it with lights the weekend of Thanksgiving, it didn't get trimmed with ornaments until a few days ago. Then, the Christmas Angel didn't get placed on top until this very evening. She normally has a halo of white lights, but Wander didn't feel up to setting it up so I guess that we'll do without this year.
Hum. I forgot to take a picture of this year's ornament. It's the gold, diamond shaped, cage thing in the lower right corner of the picture.

Christmas Angels

I set the iPod to the Christmas playlist, which includes all the Christmas songs that I've collected over the years.

Earlier this morning Sparkle and Glitter were pretending to be angels hovering of the baby Jesus in the manger. First they found a crate to use as a manger / crib. The puppies are pretending to be sheep. The blanket is the hay, and they also brought gifts to the baby. Oh, and earlier Sparkle had Glitter pretend to be Mary and Sparkle was the angel speaking to her.



Then they donned their wings and became angels singing to him. They stood on the stools to "hover" in the air.


They placed a castle at the landing on the stairs to represent the Kingdom of Heaven and flew back and forth between heaven and the baby Jesus.

Statue of Liberty

Here is Sparkle pretending to be the Statue of Liberty.

I'm holding up a small Statue of Liberty that Wander picked up for me when he went to visit the statue in New York.

First Tea Time

I decided to try doing a "Teatime" with Sparkle as a way to help her practice her table manners and to introduce her to rich language in the form of poetry.

I got the idea from the BraveWriter web site.

For our first teatime, I got some crumbcake from Walmart and made hot chocolate from scratch. I spread our blue tablecloth over the kitchen table and got out mugs. Sparkle wanted to set the mugs on the table and in her excitement, dropped one on the tile floor.


After I cleaned up the broken shards and calmed Sparkle down, I pressed on. Although it seemed that teatime was doomed, I was determined to make it a success.

Sparkle then spilled her hot chocolate on her dress in two places.



However, my determination won out the day. Sparkle enjoyed the hot chocolate and poetry. She fell in love with a poem by A.A. Milne called "Buckingham Palace" and had me read it through several times.



I'm glad that I decided to try teatime when Glitter was in preschool. Between the broken mug, spilled hot chocolate, and my requirement for "best behavior" I don't think that Glitter would have enjoyed the experience.

However, Sparkle and I have since had two more Tuesday Tea's and she has enjoyed all of them, and even read "Buckingham Palace" on her own at the most recent teatime.

Old Photos

Here are some old photos.

Glitter is writing furiously on her paper on the kitchen floor.
The floor is one of her favorite workplaces.


Sparkle is helping to paint a wall with magnetic paint to make a magnetic bulletin board to show off school work. We put about five layers of paint on the wall to make sure that it would work. We haven't put the top coat on yet, so it still looks like a black abyss.