Natalie's Pinwheel

Caleb Turned 11

I kind of missed Caleb's birthday on my blog - we were not on vacation on his birthday (we left the next day), and he wanted to celebrate in North Carolina.  After a couple of different cake ideas were thrown around, we BOUGHT A CAKE!  This is his first birthday cake that I did not make!  He requested we write Happy Birthday Bassmaster :)  He is quite the fisherman!

They got in a little trout fishing while we were in North Carolina.  Although the river was low and not much hope was offered by the locals, he and Rob caught 3 nice sized trout.  We froze them and brought them home to eat.

Today he told me he thought his voice was changing, I smiled, but I think he has a cold! (Which has changed his voice.)  He does not have a very high voice to begin with.

Panda Party Games

Some of the finer details of Annalise's birthday party were decided before any planning was done. One thing she wanted to do was an egg and spoon race. We panda-fied it by making the eggs "baby pandas".

Old sharpie marker and egg shell don't mix!

We played it two ways - no one broke it carrying the spoon, so in the 2nd round they held the spoon in their mouths.

Much messier!

After the game, Irene enjoyed helping with the clean up!

So it sounds a little gruesome, but life for a newborn panda is pretty uncertain.  They are very tiny and their mortality rate is about 40%.  That is about the percentage of eggs that were broken too - at least during the game!  By the time, I wrangled the kids off to the next game, there were no unbroken eggs.

The other games were:

Steal the bamboo (aka Steal the bacon)

Sleeping Pandas (aka make me laugh)

Who has the bamboo (aka the eraser game)

Annalise's Panda Party

Annalise is turning 9 this week and we had a "friend party" last weekend.  She loves pandas and is interested in Asia, so her theme was officially panda, but in reality it was an Asian Fusion!  The fabulous thing about party planning with Annalise is that she has a lot of ideas and we were able to use a lot of them.

For decorations, we took advantage of our exposed trusses and hung homemade paper lanterns and paper umbrellas.  We had some paper umbrellas, but the ones pictured are ones I bought at garage sales - total cost $2 - actually the construction paper for the lanterns was a garage sale find too that I was willing to pay for, but the seller was so eager to be rid of it she insisted I take it for free! 

The puffy balls on a ribbon were Dollar Tree decorations and the wall hangings are mine.  The rose one actually says something in Chinese about birthdays - I was in China on my 24th birthday.

The goodie take-out boxes.

She requested California rolls - we got a big pack of chopsticks too.  I also made chicken nuggets, so some kids ate chicken nuggets with chopsticks!  Also pictured Lychee juice boxes from South Korea and Mandarin Oranges.

Her cake is called "Pandas at the Beach".  She made the pandas out of tootsie rolls (we had an excess of vanilla tootsie rolls from a station event).  The food in the picnic basket is bamboo.  Natalie helped her make some of the details.

We played some games that were tweaked to fit the theme, but I'll post them another time if I can find the time!

N & I

Sometimes Natalie is one of the little girls and sometime she is a big kid.  It's like that for in-the-middle kids.   She is adjusting to Irene sometimes being a little girl and less and less a baby.  Very often I find these two playing happily together. :)

Children's Book Recommendation

I read a chapter book aloud to the kids almost every night.  The book we just finished was one I picked up at the library because I thought the title sounded like it would interest Caleb.  He read a few pages and put it down, but when I read it aloud he couldn't get enough. In fact, no one could - this book was extremely popular with all the kids.

The Kid Who Ran for President is about a 6th grader named Judson Moon, who, through the influence of a friend, begins a campaign for president that grows beyond his wildest imagination.  The story is well told and  peppered with simple wisdom (politicians lie, the good old days weren't all that good, etc.).  It also sneaks in a good deal of knowledge about the American election system.

In short we highly recommend this book and look forward to checking out more of Dan Gutman's writing.

'Round Here

Caleb binge watched hurricane coverage.

Eventually I hope to get back to blogging regularly.  I've been blogging less partly because there is so little time and partly because of the new room construction.  The computer is moved upstairs and in an awkward location where I don't like to sit.  So I'll keep this short.

Well, we had a very light brush from Hurricane Matthew last week.  The expectations leading up to its approach were very inconsistent and naturally they erred on the side of caution because it was a very dangerous storm.  But our part of it consisted of a very little wind (no where near tropical storm strength), a very little rain, and a mostly quiet day with overcast skies.  We were on the western side of the storm - aka the "clean side".

It's interesting how the whole county totally shut down for this storm - and how once it was clear that we were in the clear, they could not reboot.  The storm passed by us on Thursday.  There was no school Thursday or Friday, no mail Thursday, no garbage pick up Thursday or Friday, and all government offices and parks were closed Thursday and Friday.  And today was much windier than either of those days.

Otherwise - the monarch chrysalis we've been watching survived the storm.  I weighted down the butterfly cage with a big rock.  I figured the chrysalis could handle the humidity, but it probably didn't need to blow down the street.

Caleb got some ocean fishing in this weekend.

One of the other fishermen said it was a baby pompano - which grow very large.

 C & A made banana bread together.  They didn't make a big mess, worked together well, and learned the hard way how to tell the difference between tsp and tbsp.

But it looks good :)

 And I've been watching a weed in our front yard and thinking of digging it up, but didn't because I was curious to see what it became.  It bloomed this week - it's blanket flower - and I actually planted it on purpose a LOOOOOOOONG time ago, but thought it didn't take.  More blooms on the way!  Yay!

Big and Little