Dust is beautiful

Before I get started on posting last week's pictures, I wanted to tell you about a moment I just had.

We are moving things around in our upstairs and in the process, it was kicking up some dust. Inside one particular window the sun was shinning in just right so that you could see every bit of dust that was flying. Lilly piped up and said "Oooooh! Fireflies!" and went over to swish the dust around.

A few minutes later I was lying on our bed, right next to said window and I decided to watch the "fireflies". It turns out that dust is in fact very beautiful. There were red, blue and green specks and then there were some that seemed to glow for a few minutes until it fell where the light didn't hit it as well. It was beautiful.

So, today, my daughter taught me that dust can be a beautiful thing.

This first picture is the gift that Marti got for losing her 2nd tooth. She lost it on the 13th. She lost her first tooth about 2 weeks before that.



That same day we decided to celebrate Roger's birthday a day early because the girls were going to go to their grandma's that night. This is Lil helping me make Roger's gigantic cookie.



And here is the gigantic cookie.


Here are the girls making cards for Roger.


Here we are singing Happy Birthday to him.


We also spent Wednesday night watching the Lunar eclipse, but we didn't get any pictures of it. I don't have a tripod that would work very well for that. Both girls were really excited about it. I wasn't sure Lilly was going to make it because she usually goes to bed between 8 and 9, but she wanted to stay up to see it. So we watched it go completely into shadow, and then went to bed because at that point she was getting way too tired to stay up and she asked to go to bed.

Been Busy~Feb 21st

Things have been kindda busy around here so I haven't gotten much posting done.

Wanted to share some pictures today of last week, then I hope to post tomorrow from this week.

These pictures are from our homeschool craft day at Katie's house on February 7,2008. We learned about the Chinese New Year, made dragons and lanterns, plus we got to see the new baby, Cho. It was a lot of fun!





On the 9th we bought a coconut, just for fun, for the first time and had fun opening it up. Lilly loved eating the coconut, but none of us were too fond of the coconut milk. We still had fun cracking it open and milking it then trying to figure out how to get the fleshy part out.

Feb 5, 2008

Well, it's only been a couple days, but we had a bit of fun tonight.

Actually, this past week we bought new toothbrushes (the girls were not wanting to brush their teeth, which isn't a huge deal, but I thought new toothbrushes and toothpaste might help) and they wanted to save their old ones. Instead, we took pics of them with their old toothbrushes. We do this with much of their artwork and lego buildings and block buildings as well.



Today Marti was pretending to be a Queen. She insisted we call her Queen Marti and we had fun playing for a bit until we all got too warm upstairs and Lilly said that Marti was being a snotty queen. Her gold "dress" was made from scraps of a bed skirt that was given to us, but was too big for our bed.



After playing Queen, Lilly wanted to put together our US puzzle so we all sat down to do that. The girls would ask which state they had in their hands and I would tell them and let them know that it went "near _________" and name another state. Marti informed me that Tom Sawyer is from Missouri (apparently she learned this from Fairly Odd Parents, which is a show I wasn't sure about at first, but grew to love it and realized that just about every episode was very similar in that Timmy always makes an irresponsible wish and the Godparents can't help him fix it so he has to figure out how to do it by himself) and that the Mississippi River is in Mississippi. They know it is REALLY cold in North Dakota. Lots of potatoes are grown in Idaho. Georgia is famous for it's peaches and Zoey 101 takes place in California, where lots of movies are made and movie stars live. All because there are pictures on almost all the states :)



I did want to share one more thing that the girls used to play on Noggin. They used to play this video and I thought it was adorable so now they play it all the time for me. I love it!
Online Videos by Veoh.com

Oh, wow! It's been a minute.

The girls have been on the computer a lot lately so I haven't got much of a chance to update. Today they are at Grandma's and I am enjoying uninterrupted time at whatever it is I am doing at the moment, but I miss them as well.

Let's see what kind of pics I can find today, although I don't think there will be too many.

I haven't caught most of our learning in pictures this last couple weeks. In fact, some things I KNOW I haven't caught have been pretty good discussions with Marti. I can think of two right off the top of my head.

First, she watched the movie Serenity with her dad a few nights ago. Tuesday it would have been. Now Rog and I are really stuck on this movie and the TV show that went along with it, but never got a fair chance called Firefly so we have been watching it a lot to be honest and she hasn't shown much interest which is fine, but the other night she got bored of playing Furcadia and went to sit with dad.

**********SPOILERS AHEAD**********
The next day she had a doctor's appointment which I took her to and on the way home she wanted to discuss "the Pax" that was talked about in the movie. The Pax was a chemical released into the air on a planet called Miranda because the Alliance (the government) was sure that it would stop the people on the planet from fighting. Well, the Pax did its job a little too well and all the people on the planet stopped fighting, but then they stopped doing everything else too including breathing. Only catch was, about 10% of the population had the opposite reaction and they became overly aggressive to the point of rape and murder. The Alliance was trying to cover up what happened on the planet and the characters of the show were on a mission to make it known.
**********SPOILER OVER**********

Anyway, the discussion that Marti and I had was about anger. She basically thought that the Alliance had a good idea, wanting to try and weed out anger. We talked about how anger was an emotion that we actually NEED to have. We talked about healthy and unhealthy ways to express our anger and we talked about adrenaline. It was a positively lovely conversation, all because we watched a movie.

Sometimes I feel like we watch too much television (movies really, we don't have TV right now), but then things like this happen and I know that we are living the right life.

The other discussion that we had was just yesterday or the day before. First, a little background about religion. I was raised Christian in a Nazarene church from birth to about 13ish. Then I was in and out of church every once and awhile (think like once or twice a year) until I was about 23 at which point we attended an awesome church 45 minutes from our home every Sunday for about a year. Gas prices got to high so we looked for another church and didn't find a good one. We have been to church only a handful of times since.

Last year, my long time (I am talking 25 1/2 years here and I am only 27 years old) best friend was carrying a son and went into premature labor. She had Isaac at 27 weeks. He lived 18 days. Here is his web page if you would like to see the whole story. His life, and mostly his death was a HUGE turning point in my faith. I questioned whether God existed and if he did how he could put my friend through this. She had been trying for a baby for so long. I questioned EVERYTHING and in a way, I still am going through my journey. At this point, I don't know what I believe, except that God, if there is a God, is okay with my journey. I believe that Leslie in the movie Bridge To Terabithia summed it up well when she said "I seriously do not think God goes around damning people to hell. He's too busy making all of this."

So anyway, on to mine and Marti's conversation. What happened was that I got up out of the chair and as I did I was stretching and saying "Oh, my God" in that sort of tired, didn't really want to get up sort of way. She informed me that I was not supposed to say God's name in vain. I asked her where she learned that (she went to Sunday school 3 1/2 YEARS ago!). She told me that she remembers it from Sunday school (WOW! I'd give anything for that girls memory!) and that she also knows it from the few Christian cartoons that we have including Veggie Tales and Hermie. Because Bridge to Terabithia was so fresh in my mind I asked her if she thought God went around damning everyone who said his name in vain to hell. She said "well, no". It was interesting to talk to her and see her unwavering faith like I used to have.

Okay, I think I have written more this time than I ever have. Wow! On to pictures.

On January 24th the girls and I made the BEST chocolate chocolate chip cookies EVER!



The best part, right?


Then we had to do dishes, their decision, not mine.


Sweet Rewards!




The girls also signed their Valentines which we will take with us to the homeschool Valentine party in a few days.





On January 25th we went to the Museum, which currently has the Magic School Bus Weather Exhibit. My girls both really enjoy getting in front of the news camera and watching themselves on the TV. While I was taking pics of Lil she was saying something about watching "Lilly Watch One" which is a spin-off from the movie Red Riding Hood (I think Joey Fatone does such a good job in this movie!) because their TV station in the movie is "Wolf Watch One". I tried to get her to say it on video, but NOPE!



I wanted to share this next picture because it exemplifies that this blog is as much if not WAY more about what *I* learn from my kids than what they learn from me. On the day in question I was having a VERY grumpy day. Stress had tackled me and pulled me to the ground. I had just laid there for awhile, but in the process of trying to get up and back on my feet I had made myself one of my favorite foods, chicken salad. I had just sat down to eat it when Lil came up and asked for a bite. I didn't really want to share, but I gave her a bite thinking she wouldn't want anymore. She proceeded to make a fool out of me and decided to go get her own spoon so we could share. THEN when it was all gone, she wanted a salad of her own. I managed, in the moment, to step back out of myself and see things from a totally different person's perspective, which is why I asked for this pic to be taken.



These pics are from a day when we had had quite a bit of snow and had to go shovel the driveway. We had also gotten the rake out to help because the snow was very heavy and wet and hard to move (and we only have one shovel). Lil decided she wanted to use the rake too. But in a different way. Rakes make very good spoons.



I wanted to share these pics because they are so similar. Marti is 3 1/2 in her pic, Lilly is 4. I bet that you would never guess she is a little louder, a little "spunkier", would you?





Then a pic of Lilly and Stella pretending to be bunnies. This was Friday.



Then, on Friday night we were lucky enough to get to watch my nephew, Tommy while his mommy went out (she doesn't get to do that too often).





Finally, I wanted to share a picture and a video of Marti.
On Friday night as Lil and I were going to bed (we go much earlier than Marti does) Marti was telling me that she was cold. So I suggested that she cuddle under the blankets on her bed, just until she got warm and then she could get up. I had NO ulterior motives when making that suggestion by the way. None whatsoever. She said that she didn't want to because she then she would fall asleep and she wasn't ready to go to sleep which in itself was a funny statement to me. I told her that if she did fall asleep than she was probably READY for it. She disagreed so we got her a blanket and she went into the library area of our house (the hallway upstairs). When dad got home, he found her asleep in the library. She told me the next morning she had read two books, cuddled up under the warm and passed out.



That's our "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" Girl. Check out her slide show here.