Weekend Update

Dear Weather: Get with the program! Tomorrow will be the first of May, and I'd like to be done for a few months with my feet feeling like icicles. Thank you.

Last Friday afternoon, I volunteered as a "book club" leader in the kindergarten class. That involves reading a storybook to a small group (thankfully, my small group was less rambunctious this time than previously; and this includes my kid) and then doing some activities based on the book. We read Dear Bear, about a little girl who is scared of the bear living in the closet under the stairs. Our activities included making bear puppets with paper lunch sacks, cutting and assembling (with glue sticks) sandwiches from coloring pages, and then having a brief tea party with a toy tea set and some pretend tea.

The weekend was cool and rainy. We spent time indoors, watching the Chimpanzee movie at our local movie theater and visiting the play area at the mall. Sunday was a special celebration of music at church, with musical participation from all the choirs -- from the littlest ones, including the three- to five-year-olds choir that Nora sings with -- on up to the adult choir, as well as the bell choir. (There were also some people sitting in the choir loft with trumpets, but they never appeared to play them. I haven't figured that out.) The music was wonderful and joyful, as befitting the Easter season, with the little kids giving a very enthusiastic singing of "We Are the Church" (which I also frequently hear practiced at home).

After church and dinner on Sunday, we headed over to St. Paul for the Minnesota Horse Expo. Unfortunately, I didn't realize until I had time to flip through the program on our way home that Kate Chenery Tweedy, daughter of Secretariat owner Penny Chenery, had been there. (Our family owns the movie Secretariat and has seen it many, many times --- particularly the smallest, most horse-obsessed member of our family.) We did, however, see and pet lots and lots of horses, and Nora took one of the free pony rides. She informed us that Chester was a nice pony. She was also impressed with the horses that had won prizes -- and the pony with the pink nail polish on her hooves. And we watched for a while as some members of a group that does gymnastics while standing on a horse's back demonstrated some of their techniques and talked about their training.

We also finished up reading The Unicorn Princess (Fetlocks Hall) by Babette Cole, a chapter book that was one of our library finds a couple of weeks ago. I don't think we knew what we were getting into: it's the first in a series that's essentially Harry Potter with unicorns instead of wizards. Between the British-isms, the horse terminology, and the words the author made up, I don't think either of us knew what was going on half the time. I console myself with the thought that it's increasing her vocabulary.

Week in Review: Lazy Sunday, Writing Skills (Sept. 16-22, 2011)

This past weekend saw some cozy, lazy, quiet time after Sunday church and dinner -- much needed after what seems like a long summer of go-go-go. We spent part of Sunday afternoon with our games set (a box with several boards, cards, playing pieces, etc. all in one) and played a round of dominoes -- matching the numbers on the tiles -- and tried to play mancala. (Unfortunately, the "all-in-one"-ness of this set means it's not great for mancala -- the holes on the side of one of the playing boards are way too small for all the pebbles that need to fit in there to actually do so.) We also opened the deck of cards that came with this set and, after I got out my grandparents' copy of Hoyle (an edition probably from the 1940s) to refresh my memory, taught Nora how to play the card game "War."

She and I had spent Friday evening at the Unbirthday Party I coordinated for my women's service group, where we met other members and kids at a local pizza restaurant and packed bags with donations of birthday party supplies for the local food shelf. Packing over 50 bags (and loading them into two cars -- mine and the co-chair's), supervising rambunctious kids while simultaneously teaching them about charity, and then delivering the bags the next day was a tiring but satisfying part of the weekend.

This week, we also had a Parent Information Night at school, which proved very valuable in providing a lot of general information, curriculum overview, and an opportunity to meet other parents. The kids, meanwhile, identified their learning goals for kindergarten. According to Nora, one of her classmates wants to "learn how to be a paleontologist," while another wants to "learn how to ride a motorcyle." She identified her own goal as "learn how to read."

Her after-school activities this week included creating a version of hopscotch with blankets spread out indoors for "stepping stones." She also offered commentary, after reading a bedtime story of Jesus's healing of the 10 lepers from the Spark Story Bible, regarding one of the lepers in the illustration: "that guy looks like a potato."

What's the Weather: The week was cool and gray, with occasional rain. We needed to retrieve from the car a jacket with a pocket for hands that got cold on the metal monkey bars at a park. (After monkey bar mastery this summer, we've been trying them out at a variety of different parks.)


From the Kitchen: Some of the blueberries that came home with us from a family Michigan vacation this summer came out of the freezer this week got turned into Blueberry Muffins; the Beef and Cabbage on the menu plan went over better than I had expected (possibly because it was served with blueberry muffins...); and a bag of carrots that needed to get used up from the fridge were shredded in the food processor and turned into Carrot Cake, which proved to be a hit. (And if soome of us had it for breakfast for a few days -- well, carrot cake has veggies in it, right?)

Lifelong Learning: Nora seems to have been assigning herself homework; she spent much of the week working on early reading and (math skills with a sticker book she received for her birthday. (My Pretty Pink Sticker and Doodling Purse book) She's also been  practicing writing letters and numbers, and appears to have demonstrated her grasp of the value of writing by creating a sign filled with printed letters (not actual words) that she taped onto the door of her room and interpreted as stating,  "No Coming in My Room. Just Knock." She's also been helping with dishes, and with making blueberry muffins -- and, coincidentally, our card and board games work on number skills.

Something Seasonal: The fall decoration I won last week and the apple placemats are on the table, and that's pretty much it.

Feelin' Frugal:
Freebies received: 
Cerra Act, Think, Reflect kit
Nivea Touch of Cashmere body wash
Scholastic Parent and Child magazine

Whatcha Readin’?: Born To Rule by Julia P. Gelardi








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Week in Review: 2nd Week in September

My original plan was to post the first weekly wrap-up of the fall on the Friday after Labor Day -- but that week's schedule got thrown out of whack due to family circumstances. (DH's aunt passed away and he needed to go out of state for the funeral. She was 97.) So, second week of school, here we are. I'd like to find a somewhat structured meme to participate in for this, kind of like the Homeschool Mother's Journal at thehomeschoolchick.com -- except our family isn't called to homeschool at this time. (I love reading Annie Kate's weekly wrapups at anniekateshomeschoolreviews.com/ and Abbi's slices of life at proverbs31living.blogspot.com)  I might also try to categorize these things based on my own goals -- my "wannabes" in the blog header. I guess I'm saying this thing may evolve. :)

So, even though this was the second week of school, last week was a short school/work week due to the Labor Day holiday. Which means that we've had a lot of information meetings/orientations/kickoffs in the past week, for dance classes, Girl Scouts, Sunday school (complete with church picnic, petting zoo and bouncy house), church book group, women's service group -- I think that's it. In regard to my things, it's good to see friends again after being somewhat disconnected from friends for the summer, but this week has been just too busy.

What's the Weather: Second full week of September, and we had a frost overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning, and a few days with highs in the 50s or 60s. We'll probably warm up again for a while before true cold weather sets in, and the everbearing strawberry plant we got at a local plant sale this summer has been producing again the past few weeks. We also still have chives and mint outside, so we moved the plants closer together and covered them with the sheet for the guest bedroom. We'll wash it before our regular guest comes again. Probably.

From the Kitchen: The forecast had originally called for the cooler weather last weekend, which didn’t happen, but I kept my menu plan in place and we had the first soup of the season: some yummy ham and bean soup made with some of the leftover ham from last Easter that I’d ground up and put in the freezer.

Lifelong Learning: Nora has been pulling out her dry-erase letter tracing book in the afternoons and weekends, and asking how to spell different words and phrases. She’s practicing her writing. She also got out painting and stamping supplies this week, colored one of the pages in her stained glass flowers coloring book and added accents of glitter glue, and did almost all of the mazes in a little Dover Publications animal mazes book. We did science experiments on identifying acids and bases using goldenrod paper from her science kit, and then “homemade” paper from grape juice and coffee filters. She’s also working on memorizing The Lord’s Prayer.

Around the House-Keeping: Due to this week’s cooler weather, we spent most of the only evening without at least one outside commitment sorting through the box of fall/winter kid clothes. Other than that, I haven’t had time for any “extra” housekeeping beyond the basics. I did get the swimsuits washed up and ready to put away for winter, now that the beaches are closed.

Something Seasonal: Picked up our third-to-last box of produce from our CSA half-share for the year. Harvests are abundant right now, but we know the time is running short. Also saw an old red farm truck go into a driveway carrying a load of knobbly pumpkins. Seems a little early for that.

Feelin' Frugal:

            freebies received:

$1.00 off any milk coupon

won a fall plant decoration at women’s group meeting

Getting Organized: Had a few moments to make returns of things (and get the money back into my accounts or my hands): Target swimsuit bought on summer clearance that I realized would be too small by next year; one of the leotards found at the children’s consignment store that turned out to be too small  (the other two fit), Disney movies that I didn’t order and don’t want

Whatcha Readin’?: Simplify Your Life with Kids, The Cheapskate Next Door, If I Have To Tell You One More Time…           

  

(Almost a Month) in Review-Part Two: The Wedding

We made a trip down to Iowa this past weekend for a family wedding -- the husband's side of the family, but we stayed with my parents, due to the location. I don't know if her genetic farm background is coming through or what, but four-year-old N spent much of the drive down looking out the car windows at the fields and asking "What are they gonna plant in that field?"

Said car ride is not short -- at least three and a half hours, generally closer to four -- so it was nice that we had time after our arrival on Saturday to go visit the Y, which my mother has joined in her retirement, and use her guest passes for swimming in the rec pool. Unlike water-aerobicizing Grandma, we haven't been in the water since last summer, so my beach-lovin' little girl was having a ball. She went down the slide into the pool numerous times -- and there was a soft pad in the landing area, which did not have water above her head, so I didn't have to catch her! (It took me a while to recover from the force of catching an enthusiastic slider at an outdoor pool last summer. And she's grown since then.)

The Y's pool also had some communal toys, like soft pool noodles, floating around. After gathering several of them to support her torso, N was actually able to swim -- after a fashion -- with leg kicks and such. This was her idea, by the way.

Back at Grandma's house, there was time spent observing the animals, like the very fat squirrel who sat out on the branch and ate the corn from her squirrel feeder, the gray rabbit who sat outside the window for a few moments, and the raucous birds building their nest inside the holes of a stump -- the one with the birdhouse on top of it.

Inside, the plastic animals were also popular. As the four-year-old sorted them into "families" (daddy, mommy and baby lions, hippos, etc.),, and talked about the names for various baby animals (kangaroo = joey, etc.) she casually asked, "Grandma, did you know I'm an everything expert?"

Nothing like self-confidence. She has it in spades.

Since we were missing the egg hunt we normally attend in Minnesota on Palm Sunday weekend, Grandma created an indoor egg hunt for N, whilst I was keeping her occupied with bathing (and playing some sort of version of hide and seek that involved hiding small bath toys in "caves" -- also known as leftover plastic drink cups from, I believe, fast food promotions of the 1980s. The hunted eggs were rubber and plastic, but there was some dying of actual hard-boiled eggs (pre-bath). The dye kit my mom purchased included sports-themed stickers, which the four-year-old used to create an egg "for Grandpa," full of football, soccer and basketball stickers, as well as egg wraps that shrunk to fit around the egg if heated with a hair dryer.

Our noontime meal on Saturday was the Methodist church's chicken noodle dinner, at which I was served my chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes by my fourth grade teacher. Kids were free for this fundraiser, an unwise choice when it came to my hearty eater of chicken and noodles and mashed potatoes, green beans, pasta salad and a slab of blueberry cheesecake (she traded in her apple pie and passed up the chocolate brownies when she spotted the blueberries).

After afternoon napping, our late afternoon snack time at Grandma's of strawberry shortcake included conversation about the wedding coming up that evening. Our previous wedding attendance was at a reception only, so I had to explain, in the face of the four-year-old's anticipation that there would be eating and dancing and -- her highlight -- "then somebody brings you cake," that, prior to the eating and dancing part, there would be a "sitting and listening" part.

She had a bit of difficulty with behavior early in the evening (in part because the wedding was scheduled to occur during our family's regular dinner time, and then didn't get started on time), but once things got started, and there was in fact, eating and dancing, and also young cousins to play with, she was going strong until we left at nearly 10 p.m. The wedding ceremony occurred in the same park lodge where the reception was held, so we were all seated at our tables as the wedding party walked down the aisle -- and, in the solemn quietness that came about as the ceremony was beginning, I'm hoping not too many people heard the four-year-old's amazed question, "Are they gonna have a baby?"

The park lodge where the wedding took place had, as part of its decor, a mounted deer head -- right over the minister's head as the ceremony was taking place -- as well as a mounted buffalo head framed by two mounted geese on the opposite wall. One of my coworkers commented when I showed him the photos that "every good wedding needs some taxidermy" - and then shared the photo of the mounted porcupine he and his wife had received as a wedding gift.

Back at the park lodge, the little girls found additional nature entertainment in looking for the plants, animals and tracks whose images were engraved into the flags of the lobby's stone floor, and one of the highlights of the bathroom -- in addition to being decked out with floral displays, including tulips (my favorite) was the posters of animals and/or wildflowers on the back of the stall doors.

They spent much time out in the lobby post-dinner, pre-dancing, although there was some excited rushing in to the main room shouting "cupcakes!" after the bride had told them they would be serving them "soon." ("Soon" did not translate to "immediately.") The cupcakes were in lieu of a wedding cake; unfortunately, I just missed the photo opportunity of one of the little girls -- not mine, this time -- showing off her blue tongue after consumption of the frosting.

When the dancing did begin, it was this contingent of little girls who were some of the most enthusiastic participants -- although, again, they kept rushing in to the room upon hearing the music, only to leave again in slight disappointment as the bride and groom, bride and her father, and brides' parents danced.

Post wedding and family time, we went to church with Grandma on Sunday -- where, upon our arrival, the four-year-old announced "Nobody's Palm-ing Sunday-ing!" (Our home church has a Palm parade that begins outside the church, with signs, donkey, Jesus representative, etc.) There was a donkey and palm branches later in the service, however.

Then, it was brunch and time to head for home.

(Almost a Month) in Review - Part One

Aaagh! It's snowed again today. I am so ready for this to be done with: I completely agree with the comments posted on a local news channel's weather section, in which someone identified Minnesota's seasons as including Winter, Still Winter and Enough Already!

I do, however, feel vindicated that I had not yet got around to packing away winter coats and boots or doing the seasonal wardrobe switch. Truly, my distrust that snow season is over until some time after Easter -- no matter how late Easter occurs -- has proven wise this year.

We have, however, had some quasi-warm days in the past couple of weeks: warm enough, at least, for the four-year-old to engage in bike riding. Before (most of) the deluge of snow from the winter melted, she was fancying herself a tracker on some of those rides: she'd stop the bike to examine animal tracks in the remnants of snow left near the sidewalk, count the toes, and speculate on the animal that had caused the tracks. (Note: my vote is for a dog going for a walk.) She also directly transferred the sand buckets and shovels from use in the front yard -- where they had been building snow castles, pretend ice cream, etc., this winter -- to the sandbox in the backyard, where she has been spending much time. She gathered pinecones from a neighbor's tree that overhangs our fence and drops them into our yard for use in the sandbox as well; for what purpose, I'm not exactly clear -- although I do know that she's been playing "pirate treasure," which involves burying things and then digging to look for them.

Birds have been spotted in our yard, too -- we've seen robins, cardinals and mourning doves -- and we paid a visit to the Minnesota Zoo for their "spring babies" exhibit, which involved petting a baby rabbit and admiring baby chicks, calves, a camel and more animals. We had several conversations that the zoo would likely not be having any baby horses, since - I'm pretty sure -- all of their grownup horses are "daddies," and you need both a mommy and a daddy to have a baby animal.

I've made some minimal progress on spring cleaning. One thing I did accomplish was cleaning out the Tupperware/plastic dishes cupboard, doing such things as identifying which repurposed containers actually had lids, which lids fit what, and containing said lids of the repurposed containers in a Ziploc bag so they don't spill all over the cupboard. I also found the popsicle molds in the back of the cupboard and had to fend off a request from the four-year-old to make popsicles -- for one thing, it is not warm enough yet for popsicles (see note about snow!); for another, I refused to start on this year's batches of popsicles until I had cleaned up the sticky mess in the freezer from where last year's popsicle juice spilled. (She does not know that I also successfully cleaned out the grime from the fridge and its on-top freezer while she and her grandma were watching the movie "Secretariat" -- again. Complete with pretend horse races starring the four-year-old. It's a shocker that the knees get blown out of so many of her pants, I tell you ...)

Grandma's visit to us was in part to do fittings on the new spring dress and skirt she was making for the four-year-old and me, from matching fabric. (Four-year-old N has been wanting to have matching outfits for a while now, and I figured we'd better do this while she still thinks it's cool. I let her pick the fabric -- within reason -- which ended up being a purple background with a spring floral print.) I was also able to delegate her to four-year-old haircut duty, and to send home my yard waste from bushes trimmings with her (the lazy woman's way of getting rid of it before our yard waste season). Grandma also accompanied us to the movie "Hop" that weekend (meh. It was OK.) and to a spring craft show where I purchased some cleaning cloths and some Easter-themed cloth napkins, my mom purchased a couple of metallic garden flowers for outdoor decor and the four-year-old, after energetic play in the indoor playground of the community center, plus rearranging nearly every single one of the (possibly former kindergarten teacher, or at least blessed with patience) vendor's plastic eggs in her display, convinced her grandma to buy her one of these items: a washcloth folded into a bunny shape whose tummy holds a plastic egg which, in turn, contains a tiny ice pack, to be used as a "boo-boo bunny."

We've also remembered this month to get out our Easter books for our seasonal reading basket, and we made a plastic egg garland -- as suggested in Amy's Notebook of March 16 -- for a household decoration. (Plastic eggs saved from previous years' egg hunts, plus the four-year-old's crafts stash of yard sale yarn, provided easy supplies for this.)

Week in Review, Part Two: Biking and Other Spring Exercise

So, spring was on the calendar last week, and it made a brief foray into Minnesota weather patterns as well. (It's back to snowing again now.) In fact, there was enough snowmelt that we went from sledding one weekend

to bike riding the next. (For a couple of days, anyway. And then complaining all day the next day about not being able to ride the bike because it was raining.)

The four-year-old is enjoying some newfound bike freedom this year: she gets to ride on the sidewalk up and down our block all by herself. It is not a short block, so this is some good exercise. She's not allowed to cross any streets on these forays, though -- as she informed our dog-walking neighbor when inviting herself and and her bike along on their walk, to the end of the block.

This is another spring phenomenon in Minnesota: not only does the snow melt and the grass green up (eventually), but neighbors you haven't seen since trick-or-treating suddenly reappear, almost as if they, themselves, are spring shoots of bulbs that have spent the winter buried underground (most likely, in the basement next to the fireplace).

And, with the reemergence of neighbors, my social butterfly seems to find new friends each year. This year's new playmate is an eight-year-old who lives a few houses down from us (and who has shown amazing patience in playing with my four-year-old). They were out this weekend biking, blowing bubbles and having a party on a blanket in the neighbor's driveway with Barbies and other dolls. And, in one of those transitional season things, also playing with our snowball maker in the remaining piles of snow. (I'm pretty sure the snowball maker at our house is one of the attractions for the eight-year-old.)

Meanwhile, the eight-year-old's mom was cleaning out the winter debris from their car in the driveway (I haven't tackled that spring task yet), and I was trimming back the bushes that line our front sidewalk -- the ones that, if you don't trim them, grow to proportions that take over the sidewalk and engulf small children. At least, I trimmed the ones that had emerged from the snow: there were still piles a foot or two deep on top of some of them, and it is way too hard to pull the branches out from under such piles for trimming.

That was my exercise for the weekend. The four-year-old, in addition to all the bike riding, had soccer practice at church on Saturday morning. This is soccer for pre-K and kindergarten age. Which means things like three of them standing in the goal (regulation size goals, so they really fit in the goal), holding hands -- while the other team's ball sails right past all three of them into the goal for a score. Also, when not directly interacting with the ball, the four-year-old and a friend were entertaining themselves by doing handstands against the gym wall.

At this age, as another of her friends reminded us as they engaged in church hallway pre-choir practice entertainment of lying on their backs on the floor and stretching their feet above their heads so their toes touched the floor, they are "more bendy" than grownups.

Week in Review (Part One): St. Patrick's Day- Sort Of

I think I'm over last week's cold, but it has had lingering effects on the productivity and fatigue scale -- meaning, for example, there is no menu plan in place this week, and I still have not put together a grocery list and/or a plan for grocery shopping. This is a problem because we are running out of things like milk, cooking oil and vinegar. (We have not been making a bunch of salad dressing. The vinegar was depleted due to volcano-making. The four-year-old remains fascinated with "science experiments" that involve pouring things into other things and seeing what happens. I blame her father. :) )

Despite best intentions, nothing really got done for St. Patrick's Day, either -- I was too worn out to prepare green food in advance, we have no St. Patrick's Day books, the four-year-old announced she would not wear green, the rainbow book I tried to get from the library still has not arrived, I have no white cake mix for making rainbow cakes/cupcakes, and the four-year-old was in a contrary mood when we tried making a tissue paper rainbow window display from a sheet protector (as we did last year, and as described in her March 2010 issue of Your Big Backyard magazine). We did do a couple of leprechaun/rainbow/unicorn coloring pages/mazes printables, and, post-St. Patrick's Day, tried making shamrock prints with our heart-shaped cookie cutter and green paint -- but she quickly lost interest in that, and just wanted to paint.

(Hmm, I see when I was looking for the tissue paper rainbow link that there is a Rainbow Cookies recipe - for which we have all the ingredients. We should do this some time.

The four-year-old is a big fan of arts and crafts. She's been making Play-Doh bracelets, with Play-Doh "jewels" on them, this winter, and she has devoted the table in her room (which she refers to as "my desk") to the art jar she got for Christmas. (We have not yet spring cleaned her room, which means that little fuzzy bits of feather are all over as, for some reason, one of the most appealing art jar projects for her has been cutting the feathers into pieces. She's also shown a renewed interest in her large Melissa and Doug coloring book as of late, and enjoyed a toy store craft this weekend of decorating coffee filters that were then tied up with pipe cleaners into butterfly shapes.

Getting back to St. Paddy's Day, I, of course, did wear green (it's my favorite color anyway, so I have a plethora of it in my wardrobe), as well as the green and orange "can't we all just get along" beaded bracelet my sister had made for me. And I attended the annual elections meeting of my women's group that night: it's a volunteer service group that actually had contested elections! For the first time ever! This was amazing, and really cool to see; I helped found this group about eight years ago (eek! that seems so long ago!), and it was like pulling teeth to get people to be on the board. This year, we had 23 people who said they would do so! It was a fun meeting, with the elections, talking about lots of great projects, and going out to socialize with friends afterward -- where our conversation ran the gamut from kindergarten to CSAs, spices suppliers, glasses measurements, "shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings."

Why, yes, we did watch Alice in Wonderland this past weekend. Why do you ask?

I also took advantage of a local kid's consignment shop's "50 percent off everything with green on it" offer. The four-year-old is in the stage where she is outgrowing or wearing out everything, yet it's close enough to the end of the winter clothes-wearing season that I don't want to replace the items with more winter clothes. It seems like every time I turn around, a shirt is too small, another pair of pants has holes in them, or the socks are worn through -- I convinced her that we are not giving her pair of socks from which, I saw when she removed her slipper, her big toe and a great deal of her foot were sticking out, to her younger cousin.

Also, it was probably the St. Patrick's Day conversations in the air that led the four-year-old to summarize her Sunday school lesson on Jesus's healing of the 10 lepers thusly: "They were thankful that Jesus healed them, 'cause they had leprechauns, so they were really sick."

Week in Review: Online Organizing, Kindergarten Open House

I'm doing last week's week in review in the middle of this week in part because, this week, I have managed to acquire a spring cold that is making me not very happy. I was hoping it would get better, but so far, it's just getting worse. Also, I'm not getting much sleep, even though that would probably help with the cold, partly because it's a head cold that's making it difficult to sleep...ah, the irony.

I also haven't been getting much sleep because I finally, finally have managed to (I think almost) complete a project that's been on my "to-do" list for a long time -- organizing lists of all of my online passwords and log-ins so that I can remember all of them and/or know what I've signed up for, as well as unsubscribing to email lists/setting up e-mail filters. My email had been taking me ridiculously long to go through, and I have really needed to get a handle on this for a long time. It seems that, when one plunges into the frugal circles on the web, one ends up signing up for a gigantically huge list of special store programs and such for the deals and coupons. I think this project is mostly complete except for a few straggling issues like the fact that some companies' "switch your email programs" have an up to 10-day delay in making the switch -- which I think is patently ridiculous in this age of instantaenousness. Dear people: I changed my email address (I switched most things to a gmail address with excellent filtering capabilities) because I wanted you to quit sending me all this junk! Stop sending me even more junk the very next day after I changed my email address on your account! It's annoying me and prompting even more unsubscribes.

Of course, I have also discovered that some websites/programs do not have the option to unsubscribe/delete your account -- unless you go through some giant hidden hassle that has so far been impossible for me to find. I'm not impressed with that. Once all the stragglers are taken care of, though, my email should be spring cleaned and a lot easier to deal with on a daily time management basis. (And yes, I have deleted a ton of old emails - at least over 900, possibly up to 1,000. And then, yes, there was one or two that I needed but appear to have deleted. Oh, well, such is life.)

This has literally been days' worth of hours of work, and I think it's one of those things that I need to provide myself with a reward for for having accomplished it. I'm thinking a Hershey's bar with almonds.

In other news from last week, we took the four-year-old to the open house for next year's kindergarteners at what will be her school. She was slightly ill (guess from whom I caught this cold?), and hence cranky and shy when we looked around the classrooms, but the "practice" school bus ride was a hit with her -- and with most of the other kids there, I believe. (There was at least one family there we knew, but their four-year-old was not visible as he was hidden behind his mother's legs. Such are the hazards of future kindergarteners - who also have difficulty seeing out the bus window. :) )

We had a very pleasant family Sunday dinner at a new-to-us restaurant DH wanted to try, and took a late Sunday afternoon sledding trip to the park to get in a last hurrah of the season before the snow began to melt as the temperatures rose this week.

Week in Review: Singin' in the Spring?

I did a bit of cleaning this past week -- I suppose one could call it spring cleaning, as I did take most of the winter decorations down, and redid our seasonal table with some more spring-like decor. (The bird dresser scarf is from my grandmother, and some of the artificial tulips -- the silk ones -- in the vase were decor at my bridal shower several years ago.)

Part of the reason for this was that I hosted a "Sing in the Spring" brunch on Sunday. I really enjoy entertaining every so often, and used another of my grandmother's linens -- an card-table-sized tablecloth embroidered with spring flowers -- to cover up some of the scratches on my coffee table, which served as one of the eating surfaces. (It has also seen semi-regular use as a racetrack for toy cars, dumping ground for wooden blocks and puzzles, etc. -- hence, the scratches.) Menu consisted of orange juice and water served in pitchers -- as well as peppermint tea in a spring green teapot, but I don't thin most people noticed that -- fruit served in a cut glass serving dish that I think was a wedding present, microwaved sausages served in one of our wedding china bowls, Almond Cake (recipe from my grandma) served in a Tupperware® cake keeper, and Spinach-Egg Casserole served in the glass casserole dish I baked it in (the one with the lid; to make it easier to store leftovers).

After some time chatting and eating, a former coworker of mine, who left to actually pursue her dream of a career in music, led us in some semi-structured singing and in some singing exercises. (She's now running a "spontaneous singing" business, designed to teach people improvisational skills that can transfer to other areas of their lives -- whether they "can sing" or not.) I don't think anyone really knew what to expect, but we ended up learning a beautiful song in the Zulu language (the lyrics, which she eventually translated for us, translate to "every burden rolls away"), having a hilarious "story" communication around the circle which took place completely in invented language -- emphasizing the importance of nonverbal communication -- and created a samba rhythm with various groups counting different beats and combinations of "1 and 2 and 3 and 4." It was great fun to spend this time with friends, and to spend time singing -- and our singing experience used much more energy than I thought it would!

The four-year-old and the husband were not home for much of this event, but the four-year-old did help prepare the spinach for the egg casserole the previous day by helping me cut it into smaller pieces: I used the kitchen scissors; she used one of her pairs of safety scissors -- which I washed afterward, because she complained that they turned green.

And, despite the new decorations and the spring theme of the brunch event, spring has not yet arrived here -- it snowed again late Sunday afternoon and evening. Which is one reason why it's a good thing that our church is offering a youth soccer program on Saturdays in March: it's the time of year when parents and kids are getting desperate for opportunities to run off some of that pent-up energy. (We've played some Gator Golf in the house, but it's just not the same.) In fact, at last Saturday's first session of the pre-K and kindergarteners' soccer, as soon as the coach said, "Now I want you to run--" all the kids took off immediately running in the church gym. They didn't bother to wait for further instructions. The four-year-old actually did pretty well with the "skill drills" in practice, and played enthusiastically -- at least until she wore herself out.

Earlier iin the week, I also went to a Craft Night with friends, where we worked on various crafting projects in one woman's living room. I have a few cross-stitch things I'd like to get done before Christmas (especially since the original intent was to finish them for last Christmas...), but at least I'm not working on a needlepoint project begun 30 years ago. :)

And, last Wednesday evening, I saw four trumpeter swans flying north in the early evening. Perhaps it's a sign that some spring-like changes are on the way.

Week(s) in Review: February Wrap-Up, Longing for Spring

(So, apparently one of the goals I should set for myself with this blog is "regular posting schedule." Duly noted.)

It's been a couple of weeks since I've written, weeks in which we've celebrated Valentine's Day, experienced One Gigantic Monster Snowstorm, hosted my mom for a visit, and more.

Valentine's Day: I love seasonality and holidays, but unfortunately never got around to fun stuff like making homemade Valentines, etc., this year. We did have a special Valentine's family dinner, consisting of spaghetti with red sauce; garlic breadsticks shaped into X's and O's; the molded strawberry jello salad (red) with a sour cream/strawberry juice layer (pink) that was such a hit at Christmas, only this time done with the heart insert on the Jello mold; and brownies with a heart shape in the middle of the pan created from broken bits of leftover Christmas candy canes. We also exchanged (storebought) cards, small heart-shaped boxes of candy, and gave my daughter Melissa and Doug puzzles featuring princesses and horses.


President's Day: Didn't do much for that, either, except that the four-year-old and I made some coconut-cherry cookies with a recipe from an old Taste of Home magazine. (They're President's Day cookies because of the George Washington connection to cherries, of course.) She's an enthusiastic stirrer/mixer operator/dumper in of ingredients, and I let her get some scissors practice by cutting the maraschino cherries into smaller bits.

She was in a musical mood for a while there, resulting in things like singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" incredibly loudly and with the wrong words (she somehow replaced "mild" with "wild") as well as "Jingle Bells" -- so that I had to explain what  a "one-horse open sleigh" (rather than a "10-horse two-ton sleigh") is. There was also a brief pretend concert with the toy piano and guitar Santa brought her for Christmas 2009.

After her church choir practice, which happened to be the day before her very good friend's fifth birthday (we sang "Happy Birthday" to J, a rather reserved child who doesn't like to be the center of attention -- what was that they say about opposites attracting? -- in the parking lot after choir), we had an interesting conversation on the drive home: "She's gonna be five and I'm only four, and it's Not Fair!" I gave up on the explanations after a while and just agreed with her. "You're right. It's not fair."

We've also been having constant conversations about whether "x food" is "healthy" or not, I think in part prompted by the discussion(s) resulting from having to stop her from opening the children's vitamins meant to be donated to our church's mission trip to Haiti. The gist of these conversations is that "your doctor says you don't need vitamins, because you eat so many healthy foods, but some kids aren't lucky enough to have enough healthy foods to eat."

 The healthy food conversations are also coming in part because I'm doing a winter weight loss/maintain (not gain) program at work, which I'm making sure to talk about in front of the four-year-old in terms of "health," not "weight." (It's being done by teams -- which got weighed as teams on the shipping scale at the beginning of the challenge, and will do so again at the end.)

And speaking of food-related conversations, we also made a grocery store stop the other evening. At one point she asked if we were going home now, and I told her that no, we had to pay first. Her response: "'Cause if you don't pay, God will be mad." This is part of her interpretation of the 10 Commandments.

I don't think it's exactly stealing, but I wouldn't want it repeated -- although a one-off was kind of...intriguing -- when my hairdresser actually paid the four-year-old two dollars when I got my hair cut (finally; it's been since August). The reasoning behind this was that the four-year-old, who was fascinated with the in-wall vacuum, actually completely cleaned up the cutting area of hair, resulting in the hairdresser not having to do any work at all.

Also related to girly "glamour," we spent an evening making bracelets and rings out of Play-Doh. Our other popular manipulative of late has been the Legos, which have been transformed into an ice cream stand, a picnic table, a swimming pool, a parade float .... can you tell that the wishful thinking around here is longing for spring and summer?

Not surprising, really, especially considering that our snowstorm a week ago dumped Nineteen. Inches. of Snow. on top of our already existing piles in the space of time between mid-Sunday morning (yes, we missed church) and Monday evening, when it finally stopped. I think the current total snow tally for this winter is something like 79 inches, and we are up there among the top three snowiest winters in recorded Minnesota history.

I attempted to have a cozy day of soup during our snowed-in period -- but unfortunately managed to break our ceramic pasta/serving bowl as I was pouring soup into it. We salvaged some of the corn chowder, but the bowl -- a wedding present that my husband particularly liked -- was a loss. Plus, I ended up having to pull the stove out from the wall and scrub the sides of it, plus the kitchen floor behind and underneath -- as well as the rest of it while I was down there; might as well -- to deal with the results of the corn chowder avalanche.

This past weekend, we attempted to embrace the snow (sort of) by engaging in some snow painting with food coloring-colored water in some empty dish soap squeeze bottles - and then playing with the soccer ball. Luckily, it's bright pink, so it shows up well in the snow, and the huge berms of snow on either side of the sidewalk deflect it from going out into the street. The snow is too deep to play in the yard.

We also thought of spring during my mom's visit when we accompanied Grandma to a couple of fabric stores to pick out fabric for spring/Easter (and maybe the spring family wedding) dresses and skirts. Which resulted in having the four-year-old try on some dresses from her closet to see what size pattern still fit -- and looking at how long her legs have become, so that some of those dresses now look the style on little girls in the 1950s, way up the thighs barely covering the rear ends. We're adding another tier of flounces to the Easter dress pattern to make it longer -- and one of the dresses from the closet has now become a shirt.

Our weekend excursions also included a trip to Target to hear the reading of Dr. Seuss stories, and a trip to Michael's for the demonstration of the My First Science Kit.

And, one reason my mom was visiting was to babysit while my husband and I got our taxes done, and also went to a movie (The King's Speech: very good, and we saw it before it won the Oscar. By a day. We're so prescient.) and checked out a new Vietnamese restaurant in our town (much improved under the new ownership).

And now...it's March. Isn't this the month spring is supposed to start?

Week in Review: Dentists and the Usual Drill

Last week was dentist week, part 1 for our family -- appointments for me and for the four-year-old. Husband's dentist appointment is coming up in a couple of days. For some reason, I found myself spitting for at least an hour after my appointment ended -- rather curtailed my planned trip to the grocery store after that errand (the howling wind and sub-zero temperatures were not encouraging, either, but I also don't think it's particularly appreciated to be expectorating in the produce aisle). The four-year-old picked out a purple plastic race car as her prize at the pediatric dentist, and spent a lot of time last week constructing ramps for her toy cars and driving them around.

My playtime last week consisted of a game night with women's group friends, playing Apples to Apples, Word on the Street and the card game 99 -- none of which I'd ever played before. It was a fun time, even if I did end up having to play on someone else's honor after I lost too many rounds of 99 -- at least adding up those numbers stretched my brain into some math skills directions after I spend most of my days thinking about words. :)  I made some Buckeye Bars from this Gooseberry Patch recipe as my contribution to the snacks.

Our family watched the Puppy Bowl together this weekend, but not much of the Super Bowl -- we let that be mostly DH's province, while the four-year-old and I (finally) finished up thank-you notes for late Christmas gifts, and got some practice in on doing dishes.

It was actually rather an aquatic weekend for her, as we also did a "what will sink and what will float" experiment at bath time (it's amazing how fast that kid will pick up toys if she's been promised an experiment in the bathtub) and then her Sunday school class made "aquariums" (plastic water bottles full of what I assume is water with blue food coloring in it, with plastic "sea creatures" they picked out to float in it) when they studied the story of Jonah.

We've also continued the ongoing obsession with horses -- this past week, I had to read descriptions of several horse breeds while she worked on putting the stickers on the correctly matching shape in the horse sticker book,  she got for Christmas.

Unintentionally, except for church, we ended up not going out of the house all weekend -- which was probably a mistake, since the weather was in the 20s on Saturday and is supposed to be back to its frigidly cold temperatures this week. Instead, I finally got over the unproductive blahs I seem to have been suffering from all week and got our family paperwork, which I had been "filing" in a plastic accordion file -- a process which was not making stuff any easier to find -- moved into a different filing system. Still need to sort through some things, but now at least things are not all mixed up with each other because it was too hard to file them. Plus, I've been tracking cash spending throughout January, and started a new Quicken file for 2011, moved all of our bank transactions into it, and got everything categorized. (This is supposed to help with a snapshot of the family finances, and could/may eventually lead to a formal budget.)

Week in Review: Doubting the Groundhog

They say that official groundhog Punxsatawney Phil did not see his shadow today, and that it will be an early spring. Just based on empirical evidence (i.e., looking around at the weather here and around the nation), I'm dubious. Of course, we were lucky to have a 40-degree temperature rise last week -- it hovered around 20 degrees above zero for a while -- but this week, we've been plunged back into the deep freeze of below-zero temperatures. And we were lucky enough here in Minnesota to miss the mammoth snow and ice storm that hit much of the rest of the country. But we got another three inches or so Monday, to add to the several-feet-tall drifts on either side of our driveway and sidewalk. Know what I'm mostly tired of this winter? The constant need to kick out accumulated snow and crud from the wheel wells of my car. It never gets warm enough for these annoying appendages to melt away on their own.

During our brief warm spell, the four-year-old and I went sledding again -- many more families there this time. We also took a moment at the bottom of the hill (out of the way) to stare out at the snow, the ski trails, the trees bare of leaves and the lake covered with ice and snow, and to offer a prayer of thanks for its beauty.

Upon arriving home, she hauled out the sand buckets and shovels again for more snow play. We've also tried making and painting with snow paint -- a recipe from Let's Explore's January play suggestions , involving flour, salt and water -- which did not come out as sparkly as we'd been led to believe. Perhaps we applied it too thickly to our construction paper. I also tried introducing cutting paper snowflakes -- which did not go well. I think she needs more scissors practice, but I obviously need much more patience to deal with her frustration levels when she's doing a project that would give her that practice.

Weekends have brought visits to the soft play area at our local mall, and to an indoor park with gym and climbing structure, both for "running around" time. And, this past weekend, we took her to her first theatrical play -- a local children's theater's premier of If You Give a Moose a Muffin, based on the book by Laura Numeroff. It's a musical, about an hour long -- and the casting of Max the Moose is what makes the play. (This book series has been very popular with our four-year-old; we currently have If You Give a Cat a Cupcake checked out of the library, and own an anthology with the mouse, moose and pig stories, as well as the Christmas-themed If You Take a Mouse to the Movies.)

We also acquired the movie Secretariat and have so far watched it twice -- and listened to several household horse racing play-by-plays which culminate in an excited "Secretariat wins!"

She seems to be feeling fine after getting everyone up in the middle of Friday night to vomit. (She was fine the day before; she was fine the day after; it seems to be one of those "I am a kid and every so often I am going to throw up in the middle of the night for no reason and get everyone's schedule off track.")

I am hoping that the leftover pound cake I meant to take home after a Bible study meeting -- we're doing some Beth Moore DVDs -- last week is somewhere that I am not going to find it by smell in spring -- since that meeting was on Thursday, I remembered it Sunday, and could not find it in the likely locations.

And, also last week, we registered the kiddo for kindergarten.

Week in Review: Cold, Grocery Shopping

First, let's get the weather out of the way: it has been coo - ooo - ooo -ld here this past week. When I looked at the thermometer outside of our kitchen/dining room on Friday morning, it read 20 degrees below zero.

Of course, that thermometer is in the shade.

On the up side of winter, the days are getting noticeably longer -- the evening sky around 5:00 on Tuesday was a beautifully glowing blue, seemingly moonlight-infused in all areas of the sky. And the full moon itself was absolutely stunning as it glittered in the sky. (I believe the most appropriate name for this full moon of January is "Moon of Strong Cold.")

We had no babysitter on Wednesday (somehow, she didn't feel like dealing with preschoolers on the day of a double root canal. Huh.), so the four-year-old and I were sort-of home together all day -- except that we went to the grocery store in the morning and her church choir in the evening. We also made cookies (peanut butter cookies with Hershey's kisses on top), and played Play-Doh®.

At the grocery store, I replenished supplies of things like frozen pizza and hot tea, and put her in charge of finding six General Mills cereals that had a "10" on the sign -- since they were running a deal where, if you bought six G.M. cereals, it took $10 instantly off your bill at checkout, plus you got coupons for free milk and eggs on future trips. I required that two of the six choices be varieties of Cheerios, and only ended up with Cocoa Puffs as something I wouldn't normally purchase. We also picked up a tad bit of guacamole from the deli, since it was being prepared on a cooking show the four-year-old and her father were watching in the past week, and one of our dinner table conversations was about how avocados are "healthy for your body." She also helped unload the cart at the checkout lane; as she was hoisting full jugs of milk and 64-oz. bottles of juice out of the cart, the elderly couple behind us commented, "Wow, that looks heavy." To which her response was a confident, "Yep. But I'm a strong girl."

I also had a book group meeting (to discuss The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck), and a women's group meeting this week. I used a bit of time before book group to go to Bath and Body Works in the nearby mall and smell the scents of spring.

Week in Review: Retirement Party, Toys, More Snow

So, not starting off too well on the whole keeping up with the "weekly" part of the week in review thing. But, here it is, nonetheless.

Last weekend was my mom's retirement party, after 28 years of being a librarian. This was in my hometown, in a different state, and unfortunately my husband ended up having to work that weekend, so it was just me and the four-year-old who drove down for it. We had a nice weekend with my sister's family -- there was what seemed like a never-ending parade of little girls through my parents' house, to the extent that they had to be counted every time they went through a path way that someone else was about to step into, lest that someone else collide with one of them -- and the party was nice as well. It will be weird, though, to no longer have my mom working at the library.

Some extended family members attended the party as well, and we went out for dinner at a restaurant locally well known for its potato soup. It's a secret recipe, and it's darned good. Despite the oddity that, when we arrived at my parents' house, they actually had no snow on the ground (a bizarre concept to those of us coming from Minnesota), the weather was predicted quite a bit of snowfall for last Monday in that area, so I ended up coming home earlier than planned -- drove home in the evening after the party, with no stops, as the four-year-old and I had our "highly nutritious" puff corn and M&Ms car snacks for supper. She slept a little bit, but not all the way -- and, after all of the recent driving to and from a different state, I have to say that I am so. done. with the VeggieTales "Incredible Singing Christmas Tree" CD ... at least until next Christmas. Yes, it is cute, and Mr. Lundt's acting like one of the American Idol judges is entertaining. The first 40 or so times, that is ....

While we were at my parents' house, my mom did some mending for my sister and me. (She's a talented seamstress -- and yes, we're spoiled in still bringing our mending home to mom.) One of the tasks from my pile was fixing a rent in my daughter's winter coat, which got covered up with a patch with a horse head on it that my mom found somewhere. Since she had also attached insignias to the older cousins' Girl Scout uniforms, my little one has decided that this horse head is her "badge."

Since I had already taken last Monday off work -- and since I was pretty tired after all that weekend driving -- I took it as a free day, and took the four-year-old to her first movie theater movie, "Tangled," with the mall gift card I'd received from their email list for my birthday. The movie was a good movie, and she was also impressed with the small things about the theater -- like the line of lights along the exit walls, about which she pronounced, "That is so cool!" We also had a nice conversation following the movie about her question "what does 'selfish' mean?"

We ended the week with "Toy Story 3" for our Friday night family movie, which had me paying attention (even more than usual -- I kind of enjoy toys and this topic) to which toys she plays with the most -- which have the most/longest-lasting play value. Right now, that is ponies and Barbies, plus her Dora the Explorer truck (with horse trailer) and Fisher Price Dance n Twirl Palace. She also had a birthday party for one of her baby dolls this week, when I mentioned that it was the birthday of one of her cousins in Iowa -- but that, no, we couldn't go to her house that day.

"Toy Story 3" also prompted the question, "Am I going to college?" I pointed out that there's a need to get through kindergarten through 12th grade first.

Games played last week included LeapFrog Letter Factory (a no-longer-manufactured game we're borrowing from a relative), a couple of rounds of Gator Golf, checkers, and Richard Scarry's Busytown Eye Found It.

There was also some creativity with a finger loom that was a late Christmas present from my aunt, and, as I was immersed in paperwork -- trying to find receipts and documentation for the remaining monies in 2010 FSA's, for one thing -- she entertained herself nicely with Play-Doh® (out of which she built a "volcano" erupting down the sides of a Play-Doh can), stamping sets and paints. She also dug out all of the books from her book bin and "read" them (she has large portions memorized) to her stuffed animals.

Our library books this week were about familiar characters, in newfangled books (in general, I'm not really a fan of newer authors writing in a kid's series after the author has passed away -- even if they are related): Olivia Acts Out by Jodie Shepherd and Madeline and the Cats of Rome by John Bemelmans Marciano. Plus, Someone Walks By: The Wonders of Winter Wildlife by Polly Carlson-Voiles. That's my favorite of the bunch, and it gets requested for "story!" fairly often - she likes to find the animals amongst all the snow in the pictures, and check out what they're doing.

We finally got around to doing an "animal helping" project by putting together the pinecone and birdseed kit received for Christmas from the teacher relative (she passed it on, since she wasn't going to do it). It's hanging on the tree in our front yard -- but I don't think there have actually been many nibbles on the peanut butter or birdseed yet.

That project occurred during one of the times we were outside shoveling, which also led to a request to dig out the sand buckets and shovels -- and to playing "ice cream shop" in the snow. We have certainly been having enough of the white stuff -- it seems like almost every other day. The four-year-old has a 2011 Dora the Explorer calendar, which came with stickers, including some for tracking the weather. She gets so excited every time she spots it snowing, and runs to put a sticker on the date -- and she's almost out of them already. I think we have some snowflakes as part of other sticker sets around here, and I'm thinking I need to find them.

Week in Review: Happy New Year! Sledding and Epiphany Bonfire

After spending much of a Christmas vacation naptime (the kid's, not mine -- moms don't get to take naps) writing down memories from the past holiday season, I have decided that it would be much easier to do a week in review type entry on my blog, keeping track of things we've done, experiences I want to remember, cute kid sayings, etc.

Because I know that I will definitely want to remember, when she's 18, that a lesson learned at the rehearsal for her Sunday school Christmas program was that I needed to make a "no headstands in church" rule. You just don't think of these things in advance.

This week, I learned that, if you decide to incorporate kid-friendly New Year's celebrating by letting the four-year-old dig out a party hat and a noisemaker from her dress-up supplies and shout "Happy New Year!" on New Year's Eve, you will pay the consequences in having to listen to this at least 25 times over the course of the next couple of days.

Also, even though the temperature is zero degrees Fahrenheit or below (I failed to check the windchill), if you force said four-year-old to dress for outdoor play in long underwear + shirt + sweatshirt + pants + two pairs of socks + snowpants + boots + parka + hat + mittens, you will end up with a sweaty little thing after an hour and a half of sledding at the really cool sledding hill at a nearby park.

It is a really cool hill, though: big enough to be fun, but with a gentle slope and a wide "landing area" that is mostly treeless -- and the park service has thoughtfully wrapped some foam "bumper pads" around the trees that do surround this area. Surprisingly, only one other family was out there sledding with us this weekend, although there were quite a few people on cross-country skis on the park's trails. This prompted the four-year-old to quote from one of our family books that comes out at Christmastime, Olivia Helps with Christmas, "Time to hit the slopes!" (She is also quite fond of quoting the page, "Olivia liked to let loose on the chorus, 'Gl-OOOOOOO-RIA!'" I do not have a quiet child.)

Since it's wintertime, though, we have needed some indoor activities -- we've played a few rounds of UNO this week (we could look at this as working on math skills...or sportsmanship), and have been regularly reading out of her new Mary Engelbreit Fairy Tales book. The pictures are beautiful, and it contains a nice selection of fairy tales to give her a literary/cultural base (plus, I really like fairy tales). It even has one of my favorites in it, "Snow White and Rose Red." Her favorite fairy tale remains "Sleeping Beauty" in all its incarnations, and we've also discussed how yucky it would be to have a frog in your drinking cup, a la "The Frog Prince." She has so far refused to read "Rumplestiltskin," on the grounds that, "It doesn't even have a princess in it!" and "Rapunzel," because of the "mean witch." We also still have a Care Bears Bedtime Stories collection checked out from the church library, which contains a Care Bear introducing each selection, among them another favorite fairy tale around here, "The 12 Dancing Princesses."

Our church had a few Epiphany activities on Wednesday night, including a bonfire outside on the snow which burned people's non-artificial Christmas trees. Several people gathered around to watch the bonfire and sing Christmas carols like "Joy to the World," "Silent Night," "Away in the Manger," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing"... and "Rudolph." I really enjoyed this, and the four-year-old was impressed by the "sparkles" (sparks) we could see going up into the dark night air from the fire.

Epiphany marks the end of the Christmas season in the church year, and things are getting back into a routine in the rest of our lives, too. The Avon bath paints from the four-year-old's stocking are all used up, and she has completed all of the dot-to-dots in the Crayola book from her stocking as well -- within the first day after she received it. (Santa knew she liked dot-to-dots. Santa didn't realize she liked them that much.)