First let's start with the holiday fun. We had our friends, the Axelrods, over for Hannukah and it was just too cute to get a picture of the children in front of the Christmas tree. And here's a video of them dancing to the Dreidel song which you can hear at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY9ImWxjiug
We had a great time cutting down a tree together. We go to a place that is just down the street...literally. I think that this year we picked out a great looking tree. Unfortunately, I had a cold and sinus infection and nasty sore throat all month so the whole holiday thing was on the very slow speed this year.
We decorated the tree in about four or five days, we did make cookies and hmm that was about it. Not much in the way of holiday traditions. I think the kids would tell you that they still had a good Christmas. We probably had one of the best holiday meals ever with a wonderful roast topped with carmelized onions, a few side dishes and some lucious ginger cheesecake for dessert (thanks to our friends the Youngs and the Andersons). Alas, no singing for me this year thanks to the throat. Maybe next year.
We were lucky enough to have Grandma Andrews come for a visit for the Christmas holiday. The kids loved hanging out with her. We gave her all kinds of new experiences including sudoko, kakuro, a huge big puzzle,
some ginger ice cream, her first ever filet mignon, some fantastic Indian food at the same restaurant that Ron and I found our house at, yummy black bean croquettes (google for them at Eating Well), eggnog (Mike, you'll have to come visit me and I'll make you all the noggage you want), and from Brandon - a few episodes of Buffy!
With all those new things it makes it sound like we were busy while she was here. Actually we just hung out a a lot without much in the way of activity. If you asked us what we did, say, on Friday the 2nd, I'd say "we did a puzzle." You might say, "oh and what else" and that'd be about it. A puzzle. Sure, I spent 14 minutes cleaning the bathroom but seriously, that's about all we did all day. Our brains used glucose. Yeah, that's it.
So since the previous post was about four months ago, here's the catch-up since the end of last August. Ready to go back in time to a warmer and less snowy time of year? The first day of school: it was very successful - the kids like their teachers and love taking the bus to school.
Talia is in Ms Anderson's class again (they combine first and second grade classrooms and so they keep the same teachers for two years). Malachi has Ms Novak and he likes her as well. This year, Talia thought a great deal about what she was going to wear on her first day of school. Note the pretty necklace.
Also, as you can see, the kids are all excited to pose for the camera, nearly any time or place. Yeah....I'd say that we're good on the self-confidence. That is, at least on most days...
Here's a fun fact about Malachi: He enjoys sleeping in a box. He started sleeping in this box about two months ago and it has become the "bed" of choice. Ron used to move him to his real bed after he fell asleep, but then we found a cute note on the door that asked Ron to not move him any more...so he doesn't. We can't understand how his body (and neck) can stand it. Last night, for instance, Ron found him curled up inside his box as the box was lying sideways underneath Malachi's little table. He crams all kinds of stuffed animals inside the box before he gets inside it and I suppose that's better than nothing. In this case, you'll see Malachi sleeping in the box inside his closet. We sort of woke him up with the picture...
During the day I found I can track Malachi's outside activities by "reading" his shirt. Brown for the dirt in his own digging hole, red for the berries he uses to make paint, green for the grass and orange for the carrots he eats right out of the garden (when he's not eating kale right out of the garden). Who needs soap?
Don't get me wrong, Talia gets plenty dirty too...but just not quite as voraciously. Here she is *not* getting dirty...
In October Ron and Malachi enjoyed the Father-Son campout (Malachi enjoyed the mud and water, Ron enjoyed the camera). Every year (almost) the campout is held at at the Black's pond (they are a family at church). This year the theme was meat, meat and more meat.
As I heard it, the men and boys all decided that since it was an all-male campout, they didn't intend to eat any vegetables. What's the fun in a campout when the womenfolk make you eat your broccoli? Of course, no one can top Malachi (and Talia) for bouncing with glee when offered some seaweed. I'm not kidding - next time I'll take a video so there's proof. Also in October, the kids enjoyed Halloween.
Malachi was a great batman and Talia was the cutest black panther you ever did see. We went to the church "Trunk or Treat" and then hit about 10 houses before heading home. There was plenty enough candy already! I'm happily at the point in my life where anything made by Nestle or Hershey's doesn't appeal to me in the least. Of course I tried a mini Snickers to just be sure...yup. No appeal. Give me a great Belgian chocolate any day. Seriously. Any day, you could give me a
Belgian chocolate and that would be fine. Any old day at all. It could be a Tuesday...or a Friday...
Alrighty then. Back to the present...er, the past that is. November. We went to Virginia for Thanksgiving and spent Thanksgiving Day living it up in a waterpark. Of course we didn't take any pictures. I mean seriously, nothing. Incredible. We were so completely vacating in a relaxed way that we just hung out without a thought for documenting our complete lack of structure. So here's a video to make it up to you...Talia dancing to Van Halen with a bit of a cough here and there.
And just so you can rest assured that the children do more than rock out, here's Malachi studying the Family Home Evening manual. Isn't he handsome??
Actually, I'm sure what he's doing is teaching us the lesson for family home evening. Maybe soon I'll take a video of him conducting the music. He's great.
We decorated the tree in about four or five days, we did make cookies and hmm that was about it. Not much in the way of holiday traditions. I think the kids would tell you that they still had a good Christmas. We probably had one of the best holiday meals ever with a wonderful roast topped with carmelized onions, a few side dishes and some lucious ginger cheesecake for dessert (thanks to our friends the Youngs and the Andersons). Alas, no singing for me this year thanks to the throat. Maybe next year.
We were lucky enough to have Grandma Andrews come for a visit for the Christmas holiday. The kids loved hanging out with her. We gave her all kinds of new experiences including sudoko, kakuro, a huge big puzzle, 
some ginger ice cream, her first ever filet mignon, some fantastic Indian food at the same restaurant that Ron and I found our house at, yummy black bean croquettes (google for them at Eating Well), eggnog (Mike, you'll have to come visit me and I'll make you all the noggage you want), and from Brandon - a few episodes of Buffy! 
With all those new things it makes it sound like we were busy while she was here. Actually we just hung out a a lot without much in the way of activity. If you asked us what we did, say, on Friday the 2nd, I'd say "we did a puzzle." You might say, "oh and what else" and that'd be about it. A puzzle. Sure, I spent 14 minutes cleaning the bathroom but seriously, that's about all we did all day. Our brains used glucose. Yeah, that's it.
Talia is in Ms Anderson's class again (they combine first and second grade classrooms and so they keep the same teachers for two years). Malachi has Ms Novak and he likes her as well. This year, Talia thought a great deal about what she was going to wear on her first day of school. Note the pretty necklace.
Also, as you can see, the kids are all excited to pose for the camera, nearly any time or place. Yeah....I'd say that we're good on the self-confidence. That is, at least on most days...
Here's a fun fact about Malachi: He enjoys sleeping in a box. He started sleeping in this box about two months ago and it has become the "bed" of choice. Ron used to move him to his real bed after he fell asleep, but then we found a cute note on the door that asked Ron to not move him any more...so he doesn't. We can't understand how his body (and neck) can stand it. Last night, for instance, Ron found him curled up inside his box as the box was lying sideways underneath Malachi's little table. He crams all kinds of stuffed animals inside the box before he gets inside it and I suppose that's better than nothing. In this case, you'll see Malachi sleeping in the box inside his closet. We sort of woke him up with the picture... 
As I heard it, the men and boys all decided that since it was an all-male campout, they didn't intend to eat any vegetables. What's the fun in a campout when the womenfolk make you eat your broccoli? Of course, no one can top Malachi (and Talia) for bouncing with glee when offered some seaweed. I'm not kidding - next time I'll take a video so there's proof. Also in October, the kids enjoyed Halloween. 
Malachi was a great batman and Talia was the cutest black panther you ever did see. We went to the church "Trunk or Treat" and then hit about 10 houses before heading home. There was plenty enough candy already! I'm happily at the point in my life where anything made by Nestle or Hershey's doesn't appeal to me in the least. Of course I tried a mini Snickers to just be sure...yup. No appeal. Give me a great Belgian chocolate any day. Seriously. Any day, you could give me a 
Belgian chocolate and that would be fine. Any old day at all. It could be a Tuesday...or a Friday...
Actually, I'm sure what he's doing is teaching us the lesson for family home evening. Maybe soon I'll take a video of him conducting the music. He's great.
But wait, there's more! I've been planning for the summer. As in Planning. As in 6 hours of thought and work. I ordered a blank gameboard (treetop.com, under $3 if I remember correctly) and I made a game out of our daily activities so we can all keep track of what we're doing. Each time the kids complete the game course, they get a "Q" Buck, named for Quassy Amusement Park http://www.quassy.com/. When they get 25 Q Bucks, they can go to Quassy. Even better, tickets for Quassy are discounted through our local parks and rec department because of the tough economic times. So tickets are less than $15.
There are two tracks through the game. You can start at the top left or bottom left. You can choose to cross up at block #6 or stay on the bottom half of the board, or, if starting from the top you can go down at #6 or stay on the top half of the board. This way you don't do the same chores every single day. And with the math, reading, writing and music, hopefully I can figure out a way to keep both kids busy at the same time while being able to help them both. Flash cards, math books, mad minute pages, etc...and we'll be visiting the library for lots of books to read. I bought a couple blank books (they look a lot like Dr. Seuss books in terms of size) that the kids will be writing a story in. You can get them with or without lines - I got them with lines. The lines are only on part of the page on the right, and the page on the left is blank for a picture. 
I also got a few blank puzzles -- they were 99 cents! I'm not exactly sure what we'll do for that yet...I do have some backup activities for days where I'm just too busy/tired/skadoodled to do anything - things like building a peacock puzzle that I found at Goodwill, watching a couple videos from the library, etc. But I'm most looking forward to the learning projects we'll be doing. As a scientist at heart (and as a parent of scientific children who think like I do), of course I have all KINDS of ideas for our science time. I listed about 15 kinds of science ("ologies") and we'll be doing activities for each one. Some include travel around the state and some don't. For example, we'll be going to Fort Griswold and learning about the Revolutionary War during the first week of July http://www.revwar.com/ftgriswold/. We'll go on a hike and learn to identify some different leaves. We'll build a barometer, make a magnet and make paper mache dinosaur eggs. We'll take a trip to Dinosaur State Park http://www.dinosaurstatepark.org and we'll go blueberry picking. We'll (of course!!) go to the beach. 
Last year I meant to do a lot of this kind of thing but nothing ever happened. I didn't plan anything. I had an insight this year: If you don't plan it, it won't happen. So I guess that things don't just magically happen without planning. Like, if I don't plan to eat breakfast, I don't eat. Weird, huh. People who don't know me can just imagine some serious tongue-in-cheek here. (Speaking of which, isn't that a strange expression??!). One of the things that I think will be fun is that we'll make a poster map of Connecticut on the first day and then whenever we go somewhere, we'll put something on the map (a picture, postcard, leaf, etc.). And, I truly hope that my energy can be sustained so that this happens for more than one or two weeks!
