Visit to Santa

Feast of St. Nicholas

December 6th is the day we remember a great Saint, Nicholas. The kids put their shoes out the night before and they found candy, coins and a letter from St. Nicholas. Here are some pictures of the feast day from previous years: 2007 12.6.10

First Piano Recital

Isabella has been taking piano lessons for a year now and this December she had her first piano recital. She did so great playing her two songs "faraway" and "Aura Lee" The picture was taken after her recital with her teacher Ms. Valerie. 12.5.10

Time to decorate for Christmas

Warm cinnamon rolls, cold milk, Christmas music and the fresh smell of evergreen in the air. Nothing more special than putting up ornaments on the tree to make the Christmas season feel real. 2007 12.4.10

Stringing Popcorn for the tree

The kids love the tradition of making popcorn strings for the tree. It makes a horrible mess of my floor but their smiles make it worth while. Here is a picture from last year's popcorn strings:2009. 12.4.10

Just hanging out with the Super Friends

Dominic can spend many hours playing with his Super Heroes. This Thanksgiving he got the special treat of getting all of his dad's old Super Friends action heroes--which his parents found when cleaning out some old boxes. I found Dominic laying on the floor with all the Super Friends stuck in the couch cushions, playing some kind of game. Maybe they are all pretending to be Spiderman? I thought it was funny but he seemed to think this was completely normal fun for a super hero fanatic. 12.3.10

Cobweb Christmas: the legend of tinsel

Every year we do a unit study for Advent called the Christmas Mosaic. The kids have a blast getting to reread the same Christmas favorites and do different crafts every year. There are several stories about the legend of Christmas tinsel and how spiders decorate the trees with sparkly webs. We start Advent off every year by making yummy chocolate spiders and reading all the books about their role in making Christmas special. Here are some pictures from the past years: 2009, 2008 --so crazy to see how the kids have grown over the past few years. 12.3.10

Happy Thanksgiving Day 2010

Every year we head to Springfield IL to celebrate Thanksgiving with Michael's family. The Thanksgiving meal is always such a labor of love. Here are some pictures of the family feast. 11.25.10

Turkey Heads

Just in time for Thanksgiving...the arrival of the "turkey heads" bearing pumpkins. The kids had a blast making these turkeys at the library story time. 11.22.10

Thanksgiving crafts

Here is the beautiful turkey that Dominic made in his art class at Co-op. He was very proud of his creation. 11.2010

An explosive 5th Birthday Party

Dominic had a hard time deciding what kind of birthday cake to have this year. He really likes Superman and he really likes Iron Man. So I said what if we did a volcano cake and had Superman and Iron Man flying around the volcano? This was a huge hit since he has been very fascinated with volcanoes for awhile now. I mean what boy doesn't like molten lava and fire? So here is the end result. If you look closely you can see War Machine (Iron Man's side kick) at the bottom of the volcano. You too could make this cake: 3 cake mixes, over a pound of chocolate, heavy cream, lots of time and of course fire and molten lava. The end result "the coolest birthday cake EVER!" according to my son. Totally worth it. 11.14.10

Fall Photo Shoot

I get the kids pictures taken at Target twice a year--Even though I could take them myself using our new digital SLR. This year I finally made it a priority and did it. Here are a few of the shots. I hope to get some more uploaded soon.
I had a lot of fun....I am thinking I will make sure to take them a bit more frequently. Outdoor photos are sooo much better than indoor ones and a lot more fun to take! 11.10.10

Happy Fall Everyone

Thought this was the perfect fall photo for the blog. We took it at the pumpkin patch a few weeks ago. 10.10.10

Making a Nomad hut

Part of our study on Mesopotamia was regarding the building of different kinds of houses depending on the culture and their livelihoods, especially the nomads. The assignment for this week's history lesson was to create a place for a pet or stuffed animal to live using things you could find in your back yard. I think that the hand towel was a little bit of a stretch but the rest of it was great. They lined the inside of their hut with dry grass so that Stella would have a comfy place to sleep. 9.10

Does it get any sweeter than this?

Dominic with Stella & Krypto. 9.10

Camping Fun

The kids have been begging to go camping and we thought this would be a good year to give it a try since the kids were old enough to really enjoy it. But being the practical person that I am, I thought that maybe we should have a trial run in the back yard before we attempted the real deal in a new place. So we unpacked the tent and got all the fixings for a fun camping meal. The weather looked great and we thought we would give it a try. The kids enjoyed setting up their beds in the tent and bringing all their books and flashlights out. We made hobo meals (potatoes, kielbasa, onions, carrots, peppers, all mixed together in a foil pouch then placed in a aluminum pan and set into the fire) and campfire cobbler. All of it was super yummy! Then of course we also toasted marshmellows and told stories before tucking the kids into bed and hoping that they would go to sleep. Apparently Labor day weekend is not the night to camp out in your back yard because there are lots of people staying up really late making lots of noise which makes it hard to go to sleep if you are an adult. I tried my best but sleeping on the ground, no matter how padded is not for me. I slipped out at around 3:30am to retreat to the couch for more comfort. Less than 45 minutes later the whole troop was coming up the stairs due to the thunder that they heard. Everyone was awake and hungry. We all ate a bowl of cereal and then crashed into our bed where we all finally got some good sleep! That is my kind of camping.....the kind where I end up in my own bed! 9.5.10

The morning after: Camping

After a nice peaceful sleep in our own bed we decided to continue to pretend that we were camping and we hauled out all the essentials for breakfast by the tent. The leftover hobo meals were mixed into some eggs to make an awesome omelet to go with the whole wheat pancakes Michael whipped up on the griddle. This might be the best camping situation ever. Who needs a campground? 9.5.10

Cave Painting

In studying about ancient civilizations we started to study about early writings, cuneiform, hieroglyphics and cave paintings. The kids got to have a practice session on cave painting today. Dominic decided to paint a spider with red web. They were only allowed to use relevant colors from ancient times: reds, browns, and blacks. 9.3.10

Happy Birthday Daddy

We celebrated Michael's birthday with pizza, presents and chocolate cherry ice cream cake. Dominic even made him a Superman puzzle when we were at Kaliedescope a few weeks ago. 9.2.10

My little Archeologists

We all are loving our new history program this year called Story of the World. One of the fun projects we got to do was an archeological dig that we created in our sand box. We buried things from our time period and then poured water in the sand to let them "set" after a few days we made a grid over the dig site and commenced digging for artifacts. The kids were careful not to damage any of the artifacts we found. We made a grid-map of everything we found. Even the cats participated in the fun. 9.1.10

Daddy's working late

Since we found out that Michael wouldn't be home for dinner we decided to mix it up a bit and have breakfast for dinner. The kids ordered pizza eggs and pancakes and they were very surprised to see how they came out! Yummy. 9.1.10

Birthday Fun at Cool Crest Golf

Since we were in St. Joseph for the beautiful recital Isabella gave to my Grandparents my parents asked if they could take Michael and I out for our birthdays. The kids were thrilled since they have never been miniature golfing. Dominic seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly. He especially liked when he got to hit his ball into a crocodile mouth or a castle or into some water hazard. It was a perfect day. Thanks to my parents for thinking of it and taking us! 8.28.10

Recital for Great-Grandma & Grandpa

Last year Isabella started piano lessons and this summer she has mastered a few songs. She especially likes one called "Far Away" which is about the immigrants coming overseas. She also started learning many different poems that she knows by heart. The beauty behind the poetry is that my Grandma learned the same ones when she was in grammar school and she still can recite them! I can remember her reciting them to me as a kid, I have even heard her recite them to my own kids. We surprised my grandparents one Sunday and Isabella gave them quite a treat. She played her song for them and she recited 4 of her poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: The Owl & the Pussy Cat, My Shadow, Windy Nights and Foreign Lands. Dominic recited his poem "The Rain." My Grandma looked so happy and proud as she said many of the words right along with the kids. Poetry recitation has become such a lost art, I am glad to see it make a full circle and connect one generation to another even if there are 80 years in between. 8.28.10