The Great Chicken Bone Experiment

In order to keep some kind of record that I do, in fact, teach my child occasionally, I present to you "The Great Chicken Bone Experiment".  I promise there will be no pictures of chicken feet, there will however be pictures of chicken bones.  Be forewarned ;)

For science we're studying the skeletal system, so we did an experiment to see what would happen to a bone if you took all the calcium out of it.  First we had to make our observations and hypothesis...

Put the chicken bone in a jar...

And cover it with vinegar.

And of course clean up the mess ;)

Then we waited.  We were supposed to wait 3 days but it ended up being 2 weeks.  We're working on our counting skills next.  Just kidding, we all got the plague and so I decided we'd take a 2 week Thanksgiving break!

While we were waiting, Matthias went and joined his Magic Treehouse Book Club.  He was super excited!

Turned out I got the time wrong (stupid time zones) so he had to watch the recording of it.  Perhaps next we will study the rotation of the earth and how it effects time...

Finally, after two weeks of having a chicken bone sit in a jar in my kitchen, it was time to finish the experiment.  We got the tongs ready...

Pulled out the chicken leg...

And look at that strength!

I'm not sure if he was more grossed out or impressed.  But, at least now we know why calcium is so important!

   

A Day of Firsts

I have lived here for almost 30 years and this year was the first time I have ever gone to the parade and tree lighting downtown.  Crazy, right?  Which of course means that the kids had never gone either, so we bundled them all up and headed downtown.  I quickly remembered why I've never wanted to go!  There are so many people and it took forever to find somewhere to park.  Thankfully we were meeting up with some friends who had gotten there earlier and saved some room for us!  And thankfully they thought ahead and brought some umbrellas!

It's coming!

Matthias trying to get Lydia excited about the parade!

Poor girl tried to tell me something about the parade coming and I blinded her with the flash!

Then it was off to the fireworks.  Of course my poor, deprived children have never seen a fireworks show like this so they were totally into it!

Although, Matthias quickly decided that the fireworks would make good special effects for his fighting and began punching and kicking the bad guys.  Thankfully there was no one directly in front of him!

The fireworks were cool, but there was so much smoke you could only see half of it!

And of course the grand finale!

Thanksgiving

Since we are now in a house, rather than a tiny apartment, we offered to host Thanksgiving this year.  This holiday season we're trying really hard to put Christ back into all our celebrations so we decided that Bible verses about being thankful would be a good start.  So I sent the children to work.

Well, there was some play too ;)

We came up with some fun little cards to put on everyone's plate.  Kelsi came up with the titles, Lydia colored it (well, not mine apparently) and Matthias cut it all out. 

 On the inside they kids each wrote a little note telling the person why they were thankful for them.  Kelsi did great at this, Matthias not so much.  I don't know that he fully understood what we were telling him to do.  He ended up writing some pretty amusing things.  

Speaking of amusing, this is what happens when I try and take pictures of my kids:

I love my goofballs! 

13!

I still find it hard to believe that I'm the mother of a teenager (I'm also the mother of a 2 year old.  That wasn't planned out too well).  For Kelsi's 13th birthday, I wanted to do something special, something that would celebrate her transition out of childhood into becoming a young woman.  I looked all over the internet trying to find ideas, but all I could find were coming of age ceremonies from other cultures and crazy slumber parties where they all talked about periods and feminine hygiene products.  Not quite what I was looking for.  So, I planned a fancy dinner with all her female relatives.  And chocolate.  Lots of chocolate.

Daniel's sister made all the awesome tissue paper flowers and I used the china my grandma passed down to me and the real silverware my other grandma passed down to me!   Sadly the picture isn't that great, but you get the idea!

We had two chocolate fondue fountains, with plenty of goodies to dip!

And a hot chocolate bar with goodies as well.  

And of course the food!

I wanted her gifts to be special, so I came up with a couple of ideas and everyone was nice enough to help out!  The first gift was a scrapbook.

Not a typical scrapbook full of pictures, this scrapbook is full of nooks and crannies for storing special items and tons of spots for writing.  So I asked everyone to either write some things in it, or bring a note/letter for her to store in it.  The idea is to have a memory book full of words from the women in her family.  She loves it!

The other gift was a Pandora charm bracelet (I use the name "Pandora" loosely here.  Have you seen how much those cost?!).  For this, I asked everyone to get her a charm for it that way she'd have a fun bracelet full of gifts from the women in her family.

I think in all the party was a success, and hopefully one she'll remember for a long time.  

She seemed to have a lot of fun.  I know this because she pretty much talked nonstop which is what she does when she's happy ;)

Happy birthday to my beautiful Kelsi!

The Great Dog Massacre

This was once a most beloved dog pillow. May he rest in peace.
(Lydia did it! Then got mad that I wouldn't let her take her dog pillow to bed with her anymore...)

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men...

I had big plans for election day, big plans.  On Tuesdays Matthias goes to his homeschool co-op class and this week they started a unit study on gratefulness.  Perfect for November, no?  My plan was to spend some time that evening, watching the election coverage, letting Matthias color in a map with red or blue as the votes came in and talk about the election process and how we can be grateful we live in a country where we are able to vote and have freedom of religion and so on.  Good stuff.  Well, none of it happened.  None.  Daniel ended up taking the kids to the library and then out to ice cream and by the time they got home the election was pretty much over (Not that I'm complaining! Plus Daniel brought me home my favorite Salted Caramel Gelato.  Yum.).  But at least they got to have some fun voting with us!

Lydia decided we must be coloring, therefore she should color too.  She got into my purse and found a crayon and a Target receipt and went to town.

Of course Matthias just figured he'd have some fun with the sticker.  Shortly after this he realized that Lydia was at the table playing with his Legos and destroying his castle and the excitement of voting was lost.

In other news, Matthias just lost his first tooth!  He was sitting at the table eating an apple and I looked over and he's staring at his hand like it just sprouted eyes.  I was trying to figure out what he was doing and then I remembered he had a loose tooth!  Oddly, he wasn't all that concerned that his tooth had come out, he was just trying to figure out where the blood had come from!  Poor kid, I hadn't quite prepared him enough!  Although in my defense, it just started getting loose a couple of days ago.  Then again, I probably should have remembered and not let him eat an apple!  I think he might be a little traumatized from it though, when we were in the bathroom cleaning him up, he said, "It's making it hard to see and making my legs not work."  So I had him sit on the couch and we took pictures and sent a video to Dad. 

Sadly, I noticed that his new tooth was already growing in behind the baby tooth that he just lost.  Someday that might result in some dentist bills...lovely. 

Spiderman and the Cat

Well, folks, it's that time again.  Time for me to remember I have a blog and stop spamming your facebook feed with pictures of my children.  All five of you.  I'm nice like that.  Although I did notice that I've only posted twice this entire year.  Twice.  Both of them were in May.

Anyway, I figured I'd share with all of you some pictures of my adorable kinds on Halloween.  We went all out on costumes this year.  Matthias dug through his dress up clothes and we got Lydia a winter hat that had cat ears on it.  Oh, and I cut a sleeve off a black shirt that was too small for Matthias and pinned it on Lydia for a tail.  Like is said, we went all out.

Isn't Matthias totally cool?

This would be them "thwipping".  Not familiar with thwipping?  "Thwip" is the sound that Spiderman makes when he shoots his webs.  Therefore, the action of shooting webs is called "thwipping".

Throwing a tennis ball into a toilet seat.  Why?  I have no idea, but candy was the result so it must be done.

Look!  There's two of them!  Weird...

I think he may need to work a bit on his shooting form.

At the end of the night, Lydia decided she'd like to be Spiderman as well.   

And finally, I leave you with these of the kiddos from past Halloweens.  Why?  Because I can!

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

I cannot for the life of me remember last Halloween, and I can't find a single picture.  Instead you get this one:

You're welcome.