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Apr. 13th, 2011 04:11 amI THREW DOWN on some original from scratch peanut butter frosting today. PER.FEC.TION. Chocolate cupcakes to die for. I'm letting a second batch of 24 more cool on the counters for the leftover frosting now - Grant's gonna take some to work tomorrow and the rest will be ours for tea time. We've decided we're making a tent with rope and bed sheets and having tea in it tomorrow afternoon. We haven't had afternoon tea outside in forever.
Aaron and I decided that, during our two hours alone after everyone else in the house was sleeping. Those are the best Aaron times. I taught him how to braid (hemp strands, that he wants to use for homemade nunchucks he's making), and we looked at funny pictures on tumblr together, and then I read him a bunch of poems and stories by Margaret Wise Brown (Mrs Good Night Moon). I also finished this old beaded hemp necklace I started back at Grant Sr's house, while he was braiding, and gave it to him. He loves it and it suits his brown skinned, tank top'd self perfectly.
Grant and I went shopping and got everything for their Easter baskets earlier in the evening. Let's just say we might have gotten a little carried away. For instance, I decided to get a white tshirt for each of the baskets that we're going to tie dye all together after Easter, and we got three different egg dyeing kits (they're like .97 each!), and there may be modeling clay AND candy AND straw cups AND a whole lot of other crap involved, on the "x 5" grand scale. I found a giant hollow chocolate egg that's actually labeled something really grandiose like "The Magical Egg Scepter of Wisdom" and is full of smaller chocolate eggs, that will be the mysterious prize for whoever wins the egg hunt.
Yes, I am throwing myself into them...I woke up in SO MUCH PAIN, today. Abdominal pain. The really alarming kind that means "either this will pass in a couple of minutes or I'm going to the ER today and may be in surgery by tonight". Like tears from the bending required to stand up and get out of bed. It did pass. And I'm just like, alright cool, everything is totally normal, I'm not bothered by this. NOT AT ALL. REALLY.
Rather than be bothered, I worked on this whole "Community" part of Jake's Pre-k schoolwork. I felt like such a bad ass, such a homeschool ninja, because after he wrote out our house #, we went and looked at it on the front porch and he recognized it and thought it was like magic. Then after we came back in and he wrote the street number, we went out to the corner and looked at the street signs and explained which sign is for which street and how they're at all the corners and how that's the one he just wrote, and all the houses on this street have this same street name but they're told apart by the house number. Then we went in and he wrote the town and state, and then I grabbed some mail and I showed him my name and our address as we'd just defined it and he thought it was the freaking bees' knees to understand all that.
My three little kids are usually standing at the edge of the yard waiting every afternoon when the mailman comes by, and he hands the mail directly to them. So they feel highly involved with the whole process. I repeated the whole excercise with Isaac and Elise.
Also - we just started the first chapter of the first Oz book tonight (me and the three youngest). It's the first time I've really felt Elise was paying attention to a chapter book. We're stopping fairly frequently to explain or wonder about something and there are small pictures on most pages, but it's really awesome having her on board and into it. The three of them are all camped out in the tv room tonight to sleep with pillows and blankets, because for some reason sleeping in the tv room IS AWESOME.
This was the second day in a row Aaron did his schoolwork just fine and with no trouble. Beginning multiplication tables and more fractions/graphs. I'm beginning to have a dangerous amount of hope he might keep at it.
Pictures from "Out of Town Relatives Passing Through Day":
Isaac!
Elizabeth! Oh my little niece...
Look at her! We got that chair for her to sit in when she comes over.
Grandma and Elizabeth. That's my mother.
Mother's boyfriend and sister's husband. I snapped this pick and then when Frank looked up I called out "TWINS!" and he scowled at me. Haha.
Elise and Brian (nephew, brother of Elizabeth, both of them are Laura's kids...)
Grandma and a bedgruding Annie trying to play Bejeweled.
I told Brian and Elise to get on the trampoline so I could take pictures of them. They did this.
Hams is putting it lightly.
Laura and Elizabeth. Two of my favorite classy ladies.
Stevie, my 20 year old cousin, and Bob, my 20 year old brother, and Steve, my uncle and Stevie's Dad. Steve and my mom had different fathers and I think they look seriously nothing alike. Maybe that is just me.
As for those other two, I yelled "TWINS!" again, because I call it like I see it.
And here is my handsome, sweaty Aaron trying to make a case for why it's perfectly reasonable for me to let him go a block over and ride go-carts with his friends.
Aaron and I decided that, during our two hours alone after everyone else in the house was sleeping. Those are the best Aaron times. I taught him how to braid (hemp strands, that he wants to use for homemade nunchucks he's making), and we looked at funny pictures on tumblr together, and then I read him a bunch of poems and stories by Margaret Wise Brown (Mrs Good Night Moon). I also finished this old beaded hemp necklace I started back at Grant Sr's house, while he was braiding, and gave it to him. He loves it and it suits his brown skinned, tank top'd self perfectly.
Grant and I went shopping and got everything for their Easter baskets earlier in the evening. Let's just say we might have gotten a little carried away. For instance, I decided to get a white tshirt for each of the baskets that we're going to tie dye all together after Easter, and we got three different egg dyeing kits (they're like .97 each!), and there may be modeling clay AND candy AND straw cups AND a whole lot of other crap involved, on the "x 5" grand scale. I found a giant hollow chocolate egg that's actually labeled something really grandiose like "The Magical Egg Scepter of Wisdom" and is full of smaller chocolate eggs, that will be the mysterious prize for whoever wins the egg hunt.
Yes, I am throwing myself into them...I woke up in SO MUCH PAIN, today. Abdominal pain. The really alarming kind that means "either this will pass in a couple of minutes or I'm going to the ER today and may be in surgery by tonight". Like tears from the bending required to stand up and get out of bed. It did pass. And I'm just like, alright cool, everything is totally normal, I'm not bothered by this. NOT AT ALL. REALLY.
Rather than be bothered, I worked on this whole "Community" part of Jake's Pre-k schoolwork. I felt like such a bad ass, such a homeschool ninja, because after he wrote out our house #, we went and looked at it on the front porch and he recognized it and thought it was like magic. Then after we came back in and he wrote the street number, we went out to the corner and looked at the street signs and explained which sign is for which street and how they're at all the corners and how that's the one he just wrote, and all the houses on this street have this same street name but they're told apart by the house number. Then we went in and he wrote the town and state, and then I grabbed some mail and I showed him my name and our address as we'd just defined it and he thought it was the freaking bees' knees to understand all that.
My three little kids are usually standing at the edge of the yard waiting every afternoon when the mailman comes by, and he hands the mail directly to them. So they feel highly involved with the whole process. I repeated the whole excercise with Isaac and Elise.
Also - we just started the first chapter of the first Oz book tonight (me and the three youngest). It's the first time I've really felt Elise was paying attention to a chapter book. We're stopping fairly frequently to explain or wonder about something and there are small pictures on most pages, but it's really awesome having her on board and into it. The three of them are all camped out in the tv room tonight to sleep with pillows and blankets, because for some reason sleeping in the tv room IS AWESOME.
This was the second day in a row Aaron did his schoolwork just fine and with no trouble. Beginning multiplication tables and more fractions/graphs. I'm beginning to have a dangerous amount of hope he might keep at it.
Pictures from "Out of Town Relatives Passing Through Day":
Isaac!
Elizabeth! Oh my little niece...
Look at her! We got that chair for her to sit in when she comes over.
Grandma and Elizabeth. That's my mother.
Mother's boyfriend and sister's husband. I snapped this pick and then when Frank looked up I called out "TWINS!" and he scowled at me. Haha.
Elise and Brian (nephew, brother of Elizabeth, both of them are Laura's kids...)
Grandma and a bedgruding Annie trying to play Bejeweled.
I told Brian and Elise to get on the trampoline so I could take pictures of them. They did this.
Hams is putting it lightly.
Laura and Elizabeth. Two of my favorite classy ladies.
Stevie, my 20 year old cousin, and Bob, my 20 year old brother, and Steve, my uncle and Stevie's Dad. Steve and my mom had different fathers and I think they look seriously nothing alike. Maybe that is just me.
As for those other two, I yelled "TWINS!" again, because I call it like I see it.
And here is my handsome, sweaty Aaron trying to make a case for why it's perfectly reasonable for me to let him go a block over and ride go-carts with his friends.
