After a long, hard day, I was awarded this moment:
Too much tomato pasta and I dropped off blogland. Actually, tryptophan-induced gluttony has gotten the best of me as of late, but that's another post. :)
One event my girls and I have not missed the last five years is the the nation's largest 5K for women. The first year was in 2007, with 4-year-old Amanda and a 7-month-old Abigail, and Amanda walked with me while I toted Abigail in a Bjorn. Read about our first foray here:
A package arrived in the mail unexpectedly, and the contents spilled out to high-pitched squeals of delight... decibels only my girls can emit:
Hello Kitty goodies for Amanda!
And Pillow Pets for each of the girls? Wow!
Alyssa was too busy drooling on her favorite toy-of-the-moment to participate in the next photo, but she loves her hippo too:
Thanks to my Amanda's penpal, also named Amanda, for the love you sent us. Let your mom know that she rocks. :) Love you guys.
The fun thing about this whole penpal relationship is that the penpal's mom and I have been friends since 6th/7th grade, and we recently "found" each other again through my dear, dear friend Julianne. Both Amandas are half-Korean too. Eek, I can't wait to have the penpals meet!
Penpal Amanda, you have a letter coming soon -
We finally have a pretty good homeschooling schedule at the Lee household! Hurray! It only took, what, six months? {grin} Much of it had to do with the fact that homeschooling intersected with two major life events: the birth of Alyssa and the death of Ron's father. But some of it was due to the lack of a dedicated schooling area in the house. We've since fixed that issue. I'll share pics of that soon.
Here's a video that Amanda and her dear friend Emma made on water conservation. Call me biased, but I think they're so cute in it. {Make sure to play it on the highest resolution your internet connection can take, since it's a high-def video}
***
Pray for the Japanese....
Every year at our church, the Sunday School kids perform a Christmas dance and bring the house down. Here's a clip of the joyous shakin' my girls and some of the crew did at a Christmas party - they're both standing in the front. Be sure to notice 1:39, where Abigail disappears... so classic Abby! She falls and shuts down, heh heh heh.
Merry Christmas, my dear family and friends.
Dear Amanda,
7 years ago, you and I were born - you, with the soft cry and puffy eyes... and me, a nervous wreck of a new mother. I felt like I waited my whole life for us to emerge, instantly in love.
One ginger step in front of another, I am finally shaking off the green cobwebs of morning sickness and reentering L I F E. Of course it's not quite over yet, but it's finally relegated to the late evening. {hurray!} Little Peanut seems to be doing well; we should be discovering whether boy or girl next month.
It's a good thing we are expecting Little Peanut, because it is so hard to resist the urge to snatch all the cute little wee ones that surround me in public places. Just one little sniff of the baby cranium? Please?
One of our church friends recently had a precious little girl, so I mustered up all my energy to entertain my creative side to make a little gift, that creative side that had all but shriveled up during my incarceration that was Morning Sickness. :)
Here it is, the sweet little diaper cake:
Detail shots:
This project was a joint venture with both my daughters, as they helped me roll up the diapers, helped with the photos, and "supervised". Amanda especially feels proud of her contribution. She said to no one in particular, "You can't even buy this in the store." Yep, I think she's caught the bug.
We'll be delivering the diaper cake some time this week - I hope they like it!
Oh yes, our annual gingerbread house making hoedown happens the day after Thanksgiving in the Lee household. This year we purchased two kits - one for each child - to preserve world peace, and also to allow creative license. Can you tell which reason was more pressing?
Once Mom and Dad relaxed about the potential messes and stopped fussing with paper towels and wet wipes, you could actually hear a pin drop for over an hour. An HOUR!
Abigail did surprisingly well with all the candy - only five pieces went in her mouth, and the decapitated gingerbread boy was fixed with icing:
Love how she tucks her legs under herself.
Amanda went to town on this, as she is now the third-year veteran gingerbread house maker:
Is that an anatomically correct gingerbread boy, or his collar? Hmm.
Keepin' it real - behold, the kitchen:
All in all, a fun tradition for the kids!
How does a month glide by so fast? Family is doing well, all things considered. We have so many things to share that sometimes it's not a reality to cram them all into one little blog.
Amanda's a happy clam in second grade. One of her closest friends is in the same homeroom, and well, that just makes for a lot of merriment for a second grader. Mom's busily attempting to keep making nutritious, fun, and yummy lunches - a tall order at times. As promised, I'll share photos and ideas some day. ;) Mondays I spend volunteering at Amanda's school, and she seems to like running up to me at random times and wave a chicken wing at me, with a cheerful, "Hi Mommy!" I treasure that expression of love.
Abigail is talking a lot. So much, that it can be classified as too much, heh heh heh. Her ideas have now materialized into a deafening crescendo. At times very joyfully, but other times in a heap of mad all over the floor. She is a passionate child that emotes quite a bit. And if this mom can pick and choose the battles a bit better, I think she would have less going on in the tantrum department. Sigh. She is a happy-go-lucky and intelligent girl; I'm working on bringing these attributes out to the forefront more.
I haven't been able to scrapbook in a long time, but this one really tumbled out of me; therapy in artform:
(click for credits)
Since I've come back from a Bay Area business trip, I have had fun post-processing photos. There are new sessions up on my photo blog if you'd like to see what I've been up to:
(click image to be whisked away to the photo blog!)
Aww, look at the time! Get to bed, young lady! Okay, off I go... more later.
(click image to enlarge - credits here)
This is one thing I'm glad I passed down to my girls. :) If you haven't noticed in the first photo, Abigail has adopted little binoculars as her "camwah".
What a lovely birthday I had! Ron came home from a weeklong business trip just in time to be with us three ladies on my day. I tell you, I don't function at full power without my dear husband around, and neither do the girls. The girls and I made these itty bitty cupcakes that turned out perfectly imperfect... too much batter in the wee cups, and most of them spilled over. But no matter, because the lavender colored frosting we made to top them matched the lavender plant that a sweet friend of mine surprised me with. All morning, my siblings and Mom called to wish me a happy birthday, and a few dear friends that I don't have frequent contact with e-mailed me out of the blue. And, my sister-in-law sent a wonderful card with new photos of my beloved nephew.
T H A N K Y O U ! Each of you that took the time, you really filled me up.
See the pretty lavender? I'm smitten. And I *heart* the new and improved blue walls - but note to self: Self, please don't embark on big projects when your husband is out of town. You and your kids suffer because of them.
Recently, Amanda borrowed this library book about Helen Keller:
She deemed it one of the "best books of the world" and read it at least five times over. I jumped on her enthusiasm and borrowed another book about Helen Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan:
It took us a month to get through, as we read only at bedtime each night. This book really cemented in both our minds the incredible resolve that Helen and Annie showed to overcome whatever obstacles that each dealt with. It gave us the opportunity to talk about how we want to proceed with our own lives. Amanda is busy spelling everything out using the ASL alphabet after reading the books. And she really enjoyed The Miracle Worker, Disney's remake of the story. It makes a big difference when learning can be tackled in multiple ways - through reading, doing, and watching.
Do you have any recommendations on which inspiring biography to tackle next?
And other happiness inducers: Our chrysalises have all revealed their breathtaking butterflies - we are proud of our five painted lady butterfly visitors. {The metamorphosis was amazing to behold}
It's been a day filled with gymnastics, Caillou, post-processing of photos, and a warm summer breeze to cool us off. Later on, we'll be heading off to swim lessons. I love days like this.
Speaking of relaxing, my favorite scent of the moment is lavender. I am thinking of flanking our home with lavender bushes, after a photo session I had this past weekend. Click on the photo to be whisked away for a peek. ;)
Tonight, Amanda leaned over to me and said: "Mommy, I love you so much. So much that I could put my love in a container bigger than the Pacific Ocean." Ah, that Amanda. She's just a handful of sunshine. (Flattery will get you many places, my daughter)
Last summer, Amanda and I had the pleasure of spending a few days with our good friends, Julie and Brooke and their family. Julie is an amazing woman (and an amazing friend) that has homeschooled her children for a number of years - in fact, she gave me the courage to homeschool this year... let's just say that I owe a debt of gratitude to her.
Well, they happened to have something called Sculpey lying around, so we started playing with it - glorified Play Doh, I thought initially. NO. This stuff is amazing. We had so much fun (I had more fun than the kids) that I promptly went to the store after we got home and bought a pack.
The other night, we attended a nearly three-hour school meeting that was open to both parents and children. But this meeting was not for children. It's a good thing that I schlepped the Sculpey pack into my purse at the last minute or Amanda would have been so bored. She made twelve little items that we brought home and baked.
This is one of the little flowers she created:
Try this at home with your kids, and take some photos and share them with me! This is a great open-ended creative arts endeavor. Hope you have fun!
Thank you for a wonderful year of homeschooling, Amanda. But who was the student, you or me?
How can such a little person make my heart swell with so much joy....
Musings of a 6-year-old
Amanda: "Mom, I just love the way Abby's diapers smell like baby powder."
Me: "Me too. I'll miss the 'baby' smell once she's potty-trained."
(long pause, followed by a furrowed brow)
Amanda: "Were there diapers in the nineteens?"
Me: "Uh, you mean the 1900's when Mom and Dad were born?"
Amanda: "Yes, the nineteens."
Me: "Yes. There were diapers back in the dark ages."
Amanda: "Wow."
...
Abigail, the 2-year-old instigator
Abigail: "Momma, Manda hit me."
Amanda (with scrunched face): "She's lying! I did NOT!"
Abigail: "Oh sorry, Manda."
Amanda (unscrunches face): "Okay, turkey burger."
Abigail (with scrunched face): "I not tookey boogah! I Abby!"
Amanda (with mocking voice): "Oh sorry, Abby burger."
Abigail (replacing scrunch with smile): "Okay, Manda. Puhfect."
My kids - they are a hoot. They can't stand to be apart from one another, yet they can't stand to be together at times. :) At this moment, they are happily tucked into each other, blissful in dreamland:
Thank goodness it's Friday. And Happy New Year - year of the Ox. My sister Gina was born in the year of the Ox. Moo.
Synopsis, my friends? Life is good. :)
-met up with some new friends at a local Chinese buffet for Lunar New Year
-Amanda's homeschooling is going swimmingly. It's exciting to see my little one grasping the concepts of fractions and geometry so readily. Amanda's latest interest is astronomy, as you will see in this drawing she made:
(do you need a translation? clockwise: Mars, Uranus, Moon, Pluto {she says is now a little dwarfy planet}, Daddy Planet, Abby Planet, Amanda Planet, Neptune, Sun, Mommy Planet, Saturn, and Venus)
-Abigail is now an adoring fan of the shows Caillou and Curious George
-made an astoundingly delicious balsamic vinegar reduction sauce the other day. It made for an even tastier chicken and veggie pasta! Ah, the wonderful internet is my favorite cookbook...
-finishing up post-processing on my first wedding shoot
-sore from yesterday's weight training class - it's aptly called "Chisel". Since I have shelved my goal of running the Race to Robie Creek because of my knees, I'm focusing on strengthening my knees and ankles. And core. And arms. Who am I kidding, everything. I've found a good 11-year-old running partner too. Jeremy, are you reading this?
-Ron set up the new 52" in our family room. TV has not been this fun in a long time! Abigail is able to unpause the Media Center (DVR) already - another nerd is in our midst!
-gearing up to paint the rest of my kitchen
-finishing up some projects for friends
-one of my projects was featured in a publication, The Daily Scrapper. You can snag this freebie there:
-some layouts from the past month or so:
-made a "feelings" notebook for Amanda, so she and I can communicate about things that are on her mind. The rule is that she can write in it whatever she wants when she's feeling a certain sentiment, whether she's angry with me over something or excited/nervous/happy with other things. Then I respond to her. Occasionally, I add entries too:
(created for the hybrid feature in ScrapMatters' January newsletter)
Whew, this is one loooooonnnnnnng post. You deserve a good weekend for plodding through my mind's mumbo jumbo~
