Magic and Mayhem

1.  Played reading match-up

2.  Made ice ornaments for the trees (after picture to come! it’s on my other camera)

3.  Did math pages for ribbon candy!  The kids decided to do extra! 

4.  Made origami newspaper monsters, animals and more

5.  Played lots and lots of Hyper Dash (me too!) (more on that later!)

6.  Made 65 of these puppies PLUS hand decorated the borders of 65 holiday letters when we lost our holiday stationery!

7.   Did this puzzle we got second hand that was marked ALL THERE that had one piece missing, right in the middle

8.  I gave the kids holiday manicures and pedicures of red and white stripes, polka dots and snowflakes.  They’re already chipped so next we’re doing marker manicures. 

9.   Daddy and Alex wrestled over who got to have Jack!  There were many shouts of “Mine! Mine!” and many giggles from small boys.

10.  I gave the kids a giant box of corn starch packing peanuts to sculpt with (they melt on contact and you can press them together to make sculptures).  They were fun but messy!

Three projects that I’d like to try with the kids:

Making thrifted sweater ornaments from ruined wool sweaters…

Making a catalog flower garland (wouldn’t these make lovely bows too?)…

And I’m not up for sewing these darling flower fabric bowls (my sewing machine and I are involved in a long-standing feud) but I’m thinking we could try to do it with something that doesn’t need finishing like felt or fleece (which would definitely need the interfacing).  These would make really neat gifts for aunties and grandmas, don’t you think?!

Anna just came up to me and very dramatically said…

Alex just got hurt and cut his lip, and I knew if I picked him up he’d get blood on me… but sometimes you have to make sacrifices if you want to keep your family happy.

My wise and noble 8 year-old!

She’s using hydrogen peroxide on the blood now to bubble the stain out.   Does that count as science for the day?  ;)  I suppose it would if I googled the reason it works….

Science Extension!

I didn’t find the reason yet, but I found a great science experiment where you use hydrogen peroxide to test stains made by things like tomato sauce, red food coloring and blood (from meat, but we don’t have any in the house so I suppose we’ll have to wait for the next injury! ).  It explains why hydrogen peroxide bubbles when it comes in contact with the blood (the enzyme catalase breaks it down to oxygen and water) and goes into lots more about forensic tests and investigations.

Okay, add one more thing to the to-do list for the day!

We have been losing power all day long and tonight, too. Sometimes it goes off less than a minute after it comes back on. It’s really frustrating!

It’s also bitterly cold (below zero and something like 35 below zero with wind chill) and the wind is scooting right through the house it seems. There’s an advisory against driving and we’re low on groceries, so I’ve been playing pantry roulette for a while and may be for a while longer. I rather like that though!

Daryl found some electric candles that are supposed to make the windows look cheery, and those did a great job keeping us lit when we lost power. He even found a radio station broadcasting Survivor on his weather radio so I could keep up with the finale in the dark!

We spent the night stuffing holiday letters, photos and handmade cards into envelopes for the mail tomorrow. I kept going in the dark and wrote little notes on most of them. How’s that for dedication? G!

Tomorrow is supposed to be more of the same. On the agenda– make cookies, string popcorn for the birds, find a holiday movie to watch, do some reading, finish cards, keep tackling Mount Laundry… oh, and I suppose I should sneak some homeschooling in there too, huh? Hmmm.

Maybe the agenda should involve a hot bath and a stack of magazines instead! Or something in the middle.

From SpaceWeather.com:

BIGGEST FULL MOON OF THE YEAR: Tonight’s full Moon is the biggest of the year, as much as 14% wider and 30% brighter than lesser Moons earlier in 2008. An astronomer would say this is a “perigee Moon” because it occurs at perigee, the side of the Moon’s elliptical orbit closest to Earth. Go outside tonight and soak up some moonlight. There’s plenty of it: full story.

and….

GEMINID METEOR SHOWER: The annual Geminid meteor shower peaks on Dec. 13th and Dec. 14th when Earth passes through a stream of debris from extinct comet 3200 Phaethon. Bright moonlight will reduce the number of visible meteors from the usual 100/hr to only 20/hr or so. That’s still a nice show. For best results, watch the sky starting 10 pm local time on Saturday night (Dec 13th) until dawn on Sunday morning (Dec. 14th). [live updates]

It’s been awfully cold around here but if your back yard is warm enough or you and the kids are tough enough, it could make for a magical night.  To up the kid appeal, you can add hot cocoa to keep warm. 

Just sharing a few pics from our trip!  I already told you about them so I won’t blabber on but here’s some images.

Isn’t the goat stylish?!  And she matched Victoria! 

And the chameleon.  Isn’t he cool?!

And a bit of the parade we watched.  It was fun watching them wrangle Elmo through the traffic lights! 

More pics to come, but now I have to go snuggle with my sweetie.   Tomorrow we have a doctor’s appointment and a possible field trip to a volunteer appreciation gig at the Betsy-Tacy society in Mankato so it may be a busy day.  If we go we’ll spend the night with the in-laws and go volunteer at the humane society and probably shop while we’re in civilization….

It’s nice to be home (for a minute)!

We’ve arrived back in Minnesota all in one piece. The drive wasn’t exactly uneventful (I got lost and ended up in the middle of nowhere cursing the Nebraska roads department with some very unsavory language!) but in the end it all worked out and we made it.

It’s not a road trip unless you get lost, the car breaks down, you get detoured halfway round the state or something blows up, right? Or is that just for us?

When we came through the door, Daryl had rigged up sawed off pop bottles with balloon ends to make air guns and had a bath drawn upstairs for me. He informed me that he had a Disney movie for the kids to watch, my shows on tape for the night and he could give me a couple of hours of relaxation. I love that man. And he taught them some science while they all made air guns too. Homeschooling to boot!

The trip was so much fun. I am so glad we have Tiffany and her gang in our lives. If only we had a good teleporter……

Today is our last day here in Nebraska.  We have had such a fun time!  Some of the highlights…

• Reading “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” to a pile of little girls almost peeing their pants from laughing.
• Visiting Petco and getting to hold a super cool chameleon and watch his independently moving eyes, plus meeting many dogs and getting to watch puppies play in the doggie day care.
• Visiting with other cool kids and moms who came by.
• Playing dress-up, puppy tag, wizards, cars and a billion other games together.
• Drinking hot buttered rum and sampling different flavors of Kahlua and cream with Tiffany.  Slurp!
• Making a gingerbread village together, catastrophes and all. 
• Doing a late-night Target run with Tiffany, without a single child!
• Watching the Christmas parade on the roof of the parking garage and from the skyway, drinking hot cocoa and eating chocolate covered pretzels as we did.
• Reading piles of holiday books at bedtime.
• Attending a holiday open house at a beautiful restored farmhouse filled with Christmas cheer and fabulous food (except Jack came home in the wrong red, black and grey coat!).
• Sneaking fancy truffles in the kitchen with Tiffany while the kids snuck gingerbread house candy in the living room.
• Laughing, joking, telling stories, venting and just hanging out with good friends.

Still on the agenda for our last day– finish our read-aloud, make paper garlands, make jingle bell anklets to dance in, record a video performance, make a fire in the fireplace and drink more hot buttered rum!  Snow was predicted for today so I’m a bit anxious about the drive home.  I’m hoping for clear skies, clear roads, happy kids and a well behaved car!  ;)  Wish us luck!

Here’s a fun little evolution game to play.  Pick your 3 species traits and try to help your species survive a million years.  You get two life preservers to pause the game and change some traits, should events like predators or climate changes occur.  It’s cute and fun, and only takes a minute.

So, Tiffany and I were just sitting and talking in the dining room.  The girls were off doing secret book club things and the boys were playing with cars and watching videos.  We’d been to see the Christmas parade, hit Target for some supplies and were enjoying a cup of tea.

Then up drove a mini van and a woman got out carrying what looked like a dog in her arms.

I should have known things are never that normal at Tiffany’s house.

We just got a visit from a very nice lady and her 3 month old fainting goat.  The goat (named Oreo) wore an 18 month toddler’s brown vest, a denim diaper and a hot pink collar with rhinestones.  She was quite a stylish goat.  She also thought she was a dog.

She had a great time trying to head butt Tiffany’s dogs and happily sat around and got loved on for a half hour while we learned all about fainting goats.

What did we learn in homeschool today?  Well….

• Fainting goats are only one step from endangered.  They are classified as threatened.
• They are meat goats, but don’t have much meat on them.
• They remain conscious when they faint, and it only lasts about 10 seconds.
• When they faint, they become stiff as a board.  This also builds their muscles and supposedly makes them tasty!
• They are very smart.  Oreo is nearly fully potty trained.
• Oreo faints at random and she won’t faint at just anything.  The sight of a flute case did the trick yesterday though.
• The head of the International Fainting Goat Society lives nearby.
• They like to be scritched near their horns, which are quite wiggly.
• They can be very attached to their owners and cuddly.
• They love to eat weeds, especially bindweed, and do a great job taking care of lawns and fields to avoid using herbicides.
• They are easy to train with goat cookies!

We also saw her toes and learned how she uses them to climb and where they need to be trimmed.  Oreo is being raised by a young girl for a 4-H project.  It was quite a treat to sit and learn about her.

And now I have to go tell a small boy to make less noise while building couch cushion forts.