Desert...

They wanted you to know... Italian Ice again. Time to go back to Aldi and get some more...

The Grays of Life

We all feel gray sometimes. What does it feel like to you? Is is blah? Peace? Pain? Trouble? Redemption? Gray is the color of the month for February. What can you make Gray do for you?

Gray is a neutral, balanced color. It is a cool, conservative color that seldom evokes strong emotion although it can be seen as a cloudy or moody color.
Nature of Gray:
The lighter side of black, gray is a cool color seen in storm clouds and some metals.
Culture of Gray:
Like black, gray is used as a color of mourning as well as a color of formality. Along with blue suits, gray suits are part of the uniform of the corporate world. Dark, charcoal gray carries with it some of the strengh and mystery of black. It is a sophisticated color without much of the negative attributes of black. Lighter grays are similar to white. Gray tuxedos are common for men at weddings.
Photos from nationalgeographic.com

What's for Desert

Every day after dinner the kids clammor to find what they can have for desert. Ice cream and pie, ice cream sandwiches, cookies, cake... I try to have something available for them. This week Gaige picked out Ice Cream sandwiches. I picked out some new Italian Ices that Aldi had in their frozen shelves for myself. No milk products, no gluten, etc. It did have food dyes, but other than that it sounded pretty good. There were 6 and each had a different flavor. The first night I had one and the girls all got their Ice Cream sandwiches. They looked on at my with dissatisfaction. Suddenly my Italian Ice looked like pure heaven compared to their Ice Cream Sandwiches. It is always greener on the other side, blah blah, you know. So last night after dinner, Brenda and Bret decided to have Italian Ices instead of their Ice Cream sandwiches. Can nothing be sacred for me? So I will go out and buy some more I suppose. Here are their food coloring tongues after eating my Italian Ices. They asked to capture it in photo.

Pancake Fun

Brenda has been cooking our pancakes lately. All of them Mickey Mouse shaped. I caught her teaching Bret how to do it the other day.

A Day in the Life...

This morning I woke up, took Gaige to school and went home to get dressed. My friend picked me up and we went to the gym. I came home, took a shower, and a Girl Scout and her mom stopped by to tell me they had to move over the last day and no longer live in our town. So when they left, I packed the family up and we went shopping. But first we had to get gas, as we were on empty, with the last $5.00 I had, and head over to the bank to get some money. We ran out of checks. I thought my husband had some and he thought I had some. So I was to order checks too. Forgot. Anywho... my husband needed a couple things, and as luck would have it we don't have swimsuits for Kalahari. I dropped them off at home after shopping, just in time to pick Gaige up from school and deal with his science fair fiasco. When he and I get home from school (I had to get gas again because $5.00 didn't last very long evidentally)my husband wisped me off so he could go buy shoes. He doesn't like to shop alone. And I needed shoes too I realized after looking at my tattered soles. Now we are home, dinner cooking. The girls want to go play with friends, they are fighting with Gaige over the tv. Another day gone. In the famous words of Dr. Seuss... Today is gone, Today was fun, Tomorrow is another one. Hope you are all well.

Girl Scout Leaders and such

Cookies and badges, activities and outings, snacks, dues, registrations, capers. Seems my jobs are never done. I put it all away for a few day. Glad to be done with it for a while.

Girl Scout Day at Miami University

Carol came up with the great idea. The pictures on the cd were all turned into a video and I couldn't separate them with my minimal computer knowledge. Carol said she has a friend who just takes pictures off the monitor when she cannot find another way to get the picture. So that is what I did. Not perfessional quality, but I am satisfied for blogging purposes. :-)

Monday Museum Mingles

We headed to the museum center today to meet up with friends. There was a good crowd of homeschoolers this time. The girls got to connect with a bunch of friends they have not seen in a while. We hung out with a snake, made shaving cream art, and even attended a free Omnimax showing of Animalology. This was Marley's first Omnimax movie. She wanted to know if we could go out to the front and get some popcorn. LOL. Brenda was a little old for the show, Bret and her friends of equal age seemed to love it. Lily was dazzled by the big screen but was not prepared to sit 45 minutes for the whole show.

Lily's Robe

Lily has been asking for a robe ever since I took her to a friend's baby shower and gave her a robe for her baby. Lily was so upset that she didn't get that robe and has obsessed about a robe ever since. So Big Bret decided we should make her a robe for Christmas. Halfway through the process, a few days before Christmas, my sewing machine broke. It needed adjusted. There just wasn't enough time left. SOOOOO... I got out some trimming and sewed it by hand decorating it accordingly so it didn't look hand sewn. It turned out amazing! And she got her Fancy Nancy bath robe. Then a couple days before Christmas I went upstairs to find a cd. She sneaked up there after me and saw the Fancy Nancy fabric on the table. She was so excited. "Mommmmm!! Fancy Nancy fabric. How did you know I want Fancy Nancy fabric???!!! I love it!" I shuved her butt right back down in a hurry. At least the robe was already wrapped!

And what should arrive under the tree for me, 15 years after my first one, which pootered out on me only days before... but a brand spankin' new, amazingly fabulous sewing machine. And it is a peach!

Christmas Better Late than Never

This year, I took each child shopping for presents. We went out to lunch and spent the day together window shopping for what we want and buying for everyone else. Then on Christmas each person got a chance to put on the Christmas hat and play Santa, passing out his/her presents. The girls enjoyed it so much that they can not wait to do it again this year. Gaige, well you can tell by the look on his face, how much he enjoyed it. (haha. That is actually the gift that Marley got for him.) And there is also Big Bret's tradition of reading the Night Before Christmas to the kids before they fall asleep Christmas Eve. Even Christmas Eve at Jim's house was a great time. I am so thankful for all I have. And I hope next year will come bearing many more gifts.

Facebook

Facebook friends were all posting our younger selves on our photo. We forget we were all that young once... My friends in their 20's 50's, etc. We were all the same age for a week. Oh to be young again for that week. LOL. And to think I will be a gramma soon.

Sledding on the Hills

Here are the girls getting ready for sledding this year. It was extremely cold and I couldn't bring myself to go with them. It seems the older I get, the harder it is to deal with the cold weather. Luckily Bret was willing to put on his warmy hunting gear and sit out there while the girls plummetted down to their death at Vine Street park. They were there way past dark with tons of other kids. I had hot chocolate waiting, with marshmallows of course.

A week later, I got a call from my friend Jennifer, whose daughter Miranda is in Brenda's Girl Scout troop. It turns out she was sledding with Mariah, a girl from Bret's troop, and flipped over funny, fracturing her spine. She was in the hospital for days, at home for over a week, and will be in a brace for the rest of the month at least. We have rescheduled our museum overnight, due to her injury. She was not the only person in the hospital at that time with sledding injuries.

Always sled safely...

Bret's Girl Scouts

We are thinking about Thinking Day, coming up next month. Brenda's troop had ONE meeting to get ready for it. Bret's troop has 3. So we can learn about China, a little bit at a time. When we were done with setting up our poster board, we earned our Movers badge. Four years in Brownies, Bret's sash is filled up. She is adding try-its to her old vest from two years ago, just to have a place to put them. LOL. I suppose it is time for her to bridge...

Girl Scout Engineer Day at Miami University

Where were these kinds of things when I was younger?? They played games on calculators, measured friction and weight, learned to use Word, made paper, measured Alkaline levels of different liquids, learned about how concrete is made, checked out a bunch of different mechanical machines, and much much more. In the end Brenda and Karyn earned 4 science badges.

So when I first decided to sign Brenda up for Girl Scout Engineering day at Miami University, I asked Karyn's mother (Karyn is the other homeschooler in our troop) if she was interested in the program. Our troop was supposed to head to our COSI overnight the following weekend so I decided I would prefer not to take the whole troop two weekends in a row, but I wanted Brenda to have this as a school experience. So Carole and I took the hour trip to Miami University. It was a 10-5 day of activities. I wondered how they would keep the girls occupied THAT long, hold their attention. Well they DID. Brenda took so much back from there. The experience of being around all those college students who were putting the program together. I think this is the best program, (homeschool, girl Scouts, or otherwise) that I have taken her to.

Glad to have spent the time on that! Excited that next year Bret will be old enough to do it too.

I forgot my phone so I have no pics. They gave me a cd of pics in the form of video. I haven't figured out how to disect the pictures from there yet. Maybe pictures to follow soon.

Craft Day

A friend of mind suggested that we have a craft day where everyone brings craft material from home to share of things they don't need and make crafts of whatever kinds the kids choose. What a great time. The girls are still telling me how much fun they had! And when can we do that again. We have swings, pools, trampolines, etc for the Littlest Petshops, dolls, angels, pompom animals, etc, etc, ect. After everyone left, I left the tubs of crafts out for the kids to keep working. Glad to make that a day.

Museum Center mingles

Unschoolers unite at a day of museum fun. Not a big crowd of homeschoolers today, but still a good time with friends and famil.

Going on Holiday

The time has come again. Only a month until we head off to Kalahari to the UWWG (Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering). A week filled with great funshops, amazing presenters such as John Taylor Gatto as the keynote speaker, Winter Carnival, Fairy Godparents, Movie Night, Talent show, Ballroom Dance, huge water park all week, and oh so much more. We will see you there!!

Who's Surprised...

H&M and Wal-Mart destroy and trash unsold goods editor
by Joanna Douglas, Shine Staff,

Cynthia Magnus holds up unworn, destroyed clothing she found in the garbage. Photo by Suzanne DeChillo/New York Times
This week the New York Times reported a disheartening story about two of the largest retail chains. You see, instead of taking unsold items to sample sales or donating them to people in need, H&M and Wal-Mart have been throwing them out in giant trash bags. And in the case that someone may stumble on these bags and try to keep or re-sell the items, these companies have gone ahead and slashed up garments, cut off the sleeves of coats, and sliced holes in shoes so they are unwearable.

This unsettling discovery was made by graduate student Cynthia Magnus outside the back entrance of H&M on 35th street in New York City. Just a few doors down, she also found hundreds of Wal-Mart tagged items with holes made in them that were dumped by a contractor. On December 7, she spotted 20 bags of clothing outside of H&M including, "gloves with the fingers cut off, warm socks, cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor, men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy fiber fill was coming out in big white cotton balls.”

The New York Times points out that one-third of the city's population is poor, which makes this behavior not only wasteful and sad, but downright irresponsible. Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Melissa Hill, acted surprised that these items were found, claiming they typically donate all unworn merchandise to charity. When reporters went around the corner from H&M to a collections drop-off for charity organization New York Cares, spokesperson Colleen Farrell said, “We’d be glad to take unworn coats, and companies often send them to us."

After several days of no response from H&M, the company made a statement today, promising to stop destroying the garments at the midtown Manhattan location. They said they will donate the items to charity. H&M spokeswoman Nicole Christie said, "It will not happen again," and that the company would make sure none of the other locations would do so either. Hopefully that's the final word.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/h-m-and-wal-mart-destroy-and-trash-unsold-goods-562909/

Home Depot Kids Workshop

This month again we headed over to Home Depot Kids Workshop. First we had a small sleepover with a couple friends so that everyone would all be ready to head over to the workshop on time. January was wooden calendar day at the Kids Workshop. Myself and the other leader in one of my girl scout troops were so excited about this that we wanted to head up early. I took Brenda, two friends from her troop, Bret, one of her friends from her troop, and Lily. THEY EVEN LET ME MAKE ONE!!! Which I am soo excited about. Because the activity was so cool. Plus the accidentally left markers on one of the tables so all the kids got to work coloring their calendars as well. This program is just such a blessing for us. We are going to set up a make your own badge for woodworking. Because it is just too fun!!! that is why.

NYC High Schoolers Find Fake Food Labeling with DNA

Why is a High School in the news of my Homeschool Blog? It pertains to the food we eat and is fascinating info. Read on if your stomach will allow you. Do YOU know what you are eating??

...Before you pay big money for caviar, check with two New York City high school students. Brenda Tan and Matt Cost worked with DNA barcoding experts at Rockefeller University and other researchers at the American Museum of Natural History to identify hundreds of food samples, assorted hairs and animal bits in their neighborhood. The Trinity School seniors discovered 95 different species of animal and 11 cases of fraudulent food labeling. Their findings appear in the January issue of the journal BioScience.

The professional researchers provided DNA sequences for the samples the students collected. The kids then checked the sequences against the database at barcodinglife.org

The high schoolers found everything from pigeons and Pomeranians to an invasive latrine fly and what looks to be at least a new subspecies of cockroach. A supposed sheep’s milk cheese was actually from cows. And alleged sturgeon caviar was just cheap Mississippi paddlefish eggs. But there was good news: all eight classmates who provided hair for the study turned out to be human.—Adam Hinterthuer

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=nyc-high-schoolers-find-fake-food-l-09-12-30&sc=WR_20100106

The Gnome Party

It Started out with one stolen Gnome. Josh stole this from Britany's aunt's house as a joke maybe. Then her aunt told Britany he could keep it. When they moved out they left it behind. It was the one thing we didn't throw out. So we put it in the dining room for fun.





Santa brought two more and suddenly we have gnomes hiding all over the house. I think we need one more to start our gnome adventure traveling with us wherever we go. But for now it is just a gnome party. Catch them if you can...

A Day at the Museum

Unschoolers unite at the Museum Center today. There was a good crowd of people, we met some new families, and Bret made a friend. We stayed until it was time to leave and pick Gaige up from school. It was good to get the girls out of the house. I am sure they thought it was good to be out.

Due to popular vote (not mine I might add) National Decorate-Your-Potato-Head Day was cancelled. DYPH Day came to be as a homeschool assignment years ago to start a new tradition. DYPH Day was what Josh came up with. We chose the day before Thanksgiving as a way to spend some family fun together before the day of cooking and complaining "I'm Hungry, is dinner ready yet?" It was a successful holiday for many years and we enjoyed it much. But this year felt different. The one who started the tradition was gone and we were in need of some change anyway. In the end the powers that be decided against starting a new tradition. The final concensus was to make a tradition of no more tradition on that day. I went Christmas shopping and found Yatzee for $5.00. It had been a while since we had a full set of dice for a game of Yatzee so I bought it and asked the family if they would play. We taught the girls and off we went. Little did I know that my husband LOVES Yatzee.

I best enjoy those old good games that we played as kids. Tiddle D Winks, jacks, the original game of Battleship, Monopoly before Debit Cards, jump rope, double dutch, Yo-Yo, hop scotch. Before there was HALO there was Pong, Centipede, Pac Man. Back when we would lie in bed all day listening to what Josh used to refer to as those "Big Black CD's" AKA records, and when we paid extra for tv in color, when someone would stand by the tv holding bunny ears in place for less static while we watched our shows, and one tv in the house meant that my mom's Wheel Of Fortune trumped my 3's Company. Cartoons were early before school or on Saturday morning ONLY. No one questioned the violent Tom and Jerry who regularily chopped eachother up with knives, hit eachother with frying pans, cooked eachother on the stove, etc. or how the Road Runner ALWAYS blew up Wiley Coyote or sent him off cliffs to fall a hundred feet onto dry hard land in the shape of his body only for him to show up again after the break. And really you have no idea how old I was when I realized that there is almost NO talking on Tom and Jerry. Those things were novelties then. Cartoons, running to the corner market for a candy bar, going to the beach with friends. I remember what an outrage it was when the Simpsons first aired. How dare a cartoon (when We KNOW that cartoons are meant for kids) air on prime time and be so crude?? Bart's "Eat My Shorts" was an atrocity. No one texted all day to their friends, you vollied for the one phone in the house with the rest of your siblings and mom. And if you needed your privacy that was fine, you most likely had a phone cord that stretched around the entire house, or at least two or three rooms. Then when you got old enough you might get a phone in your room. Facebook? Myspace? Twitter? Ha. My mom would tell us to drag our butts off the couch and go knock on our friend's door to see if she could play. I don't have to even see my friends if I don't want to anymore. Or hear their voices. I have this weird sense of connection even though I have clearly lost personal touch.

Well I digress... We have played Yatzee a few times together since then. I keep it hidden upstairs so that no one decides they need dice and steals them away. Maybe a new tradition? Maybe not. But just some good old fashioned wholesome fun. How can we keep that?

Home Depot Workshop

This month was an awesome wagon just big enough to carry one or two Webkinz sized animals. We brought a couple friends and it was the replacement activity for Bret's Girl Scout troop this month since we had no one sign up for bowling. Check out the website for next week's activity. We will SOOOO be there!!

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?pn=Kids_Workshops&langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

A Christmas Wish

One of the "problems" I have been trying to deal with lately is the continual fighting with little Marley. She is young, yet she wants to play with all the older kids and their things. But the older girls don't want her to play with their things. And so she sneaks, then she gets yelled at, and on and on it goes. Today I told them we would spend some time playing together something that everyone could play. We had a blast playing with the Webkinz and the carnival that Brenda and Bret had set up, then we played a color game together with the Webkinz. And suddenly everyone is getting along for a little bit longer. I will try it again tomorrow I think.

Christmas Advent

Our kids Advent books that we got from Unity...
Today is "Honesty". Affirmation: Being honest is the right thing to do. I am honest. Activity: Make A Christmas Card. We took cards that I already have bought from the dollar store and turned them into newly decorated cards. Then we went to the Advent Calendar Quilt, put up an ornament on the "tree" and took some candy out of a pocket for the day. The quilt isn't complete. It doesn't have the star sewn on yet, and the presents. But it works for now. And the girls couldn't wait any longer!

Thanksgiving Feast

So we decorated the table. We made name tags for fun. We glued leaves to circle pizza cardboards so that the plates sitting on the cardboard mats looked like they were surrounded by fall fun. We cooked for two or three days. A bird was killed in our name. And in the end we sat down for half an hour gorging ourselves on food, got up, cleaned dishes, and sat down to watch some football, a couple hours later headed to the kitchen for some good ol' fashioned grazing. For the rest of the weekend we ate pie and turkey, dressing, yams galore. And we are all a little fatter to boot, but for what? Later after the meal, we were talking about something to do with being thankful. I said I am thankful for everything. And Bret glanced sarcastically at me with a look suggesting that there are some things that we should not be thankful for. But can we be thankful for the things in our lives we don't like? Don't they produce SOMETHING for us too? Isn't it possible that the things that happened to us growing up that we say we wish didn't happen, helped frame who we are now? Is it possible that just because we don't like the path right now or it isn't comfortable as we would like, doesn't mean that it isn't necessary for a reason we don't see? And maybe, just maybe, we will find out later that it is something to be thankful for? Maybe? Maybe I could do with being thankful for having eaten less food though...

Guess Who's Turned 4...

Marley is officially 4 now as she has blown out her own candle. A sweety, she got puzzles, Polly's, coloring books, and Gaige spent his own money on a Tinker Bell dress for her. Papa Jim came by to celebrate with a Water Fairy dress as well. The girl can't remember how she lived without her dresses. She has always been a fairy, but now she has the dresses to match. Guess whos fingers dug into the cake before it was served??