Raising of The 2005 Christmas Tree

Early this evening, the family piled in the car and headed to our favorite grocery store's parking lot to locate The 2005 Family Christmas Tree. We landed a beauty, and probably the thickest spruce we've ever had for Christmas (three men could barely pull her through the shoot to wrap her in netting for the ride home). This year we are trying something a bit different, and the tree is being displayed in our basement. After a very busy Thanksgiving, Ken and I seemed to both like the idea of being able to purchase a fatter tree, and only having to move all of our stored decorations from storage, 10 paces into the next room. Ken calls it our "Contained Christmas".

The children were chomping at the bit to decorate the tree while Dad worked systematically on stringing the lights. Dad's labored task was a bit too lengthy for their patience (maybe his too) so I took a risk and had the children be in charge of unwrapping all of our ornaments. They did very well with this exciting task, but they were quickly through, and Dad still had half the tree to light.

During my excavation for Christmas supplies, I had discovered a huge stash of childrens books I had stowed away in a plastic bin at least a year ago. This proved to be a treasure to be remembered. The children were glued to some of their long lost favorites until the time to decorate finally arrived.


Jack was an instant crack up with his decorating. Every ornament was placed in the exact same location. Unfortunately, after a good 20 minutes of pleasantries, it wasn't long before the children began hoarding the ornaments and scuffling over whose ornament was whose. Ah...the merry sounds of Christmas.

The tree is almost complete...a few more strings of beads and she'll be our bejeweled cheer for the season.

A Longing for Summer Again?

I'm not sure what triggered the reversion, but the children have suddenly taken up their butterfly studies again. They have been playing The Butterfly Game that we purchased from The North American Butterfly Association for the last three days. And for two days, Jack had the entire Butterfly Fandex (taken apart for better viewing) strewn all over his bedroom. I came in yesterday to find that there was a long trail of butterflies laid out and what appeared to be a pile of discarded butterflies off to the side. When I inquired about the line up, Jack said, those were the butterflies that were beautiful to him.

Unfortunately, the line up was situated right in the pathway between his door and his bed, so the "beautiful" butterflies were starting to look trampled. This evening we took 12 of his beautiful butterfly nominees and placed them on a corkboard, so he could have them displayed for his viewing pleasure in his room. Grace also selected 12 of her favs and we squeezed them between one of those cheap plastic large frames you can purchase for posters. In the midst of the organizing, I caught Grace and Jack laughing that they weren't going to pick the stinky butterfly. When I asked which one was stinky, Grace and Jack immediately identified it as the Common Mormon caterpillar. I couldn't believe they recalled that small tidbit of information, from our Butterfly of the Day moments. These little ones are such giant sponges.

Look Out Mensa...Jack is On The Horizon

Today Jack asked me... "Mom? How many inches do you cost?" This might be a question Mensa would be interested in using on their next IQ test, as I am sure that there is a logical answer.

Turning Dependence Into Independence

Our Holidays were consumed with family in town, and it has left me quite exhausted; I have had very little Will to blog in the last few days. My eyes are quite tired, so hopefully this post will make sense.

Over the course of this week, Ken and I decided that we needed to have the kids withdraw from the many electronic screens in our house: Computer, TV shows, Monkey Ball. The time in front of each of these items per week day was not excessive (each usually limited to an hour or less), however, when added up...it was becoming way too much screen time. The kids had recently seemed to forget how to play without a virtual world in front of them.

So starting this week, the children were given a choice. They could only have one hour of electronic screen time a day, however they did get to pick what they would do in that hour. In just a few days, I am beginning to see their dependence wane. They still look forward to that hour as the biggest highlight of the day, but at least we have a better balance on it.

This has also caused me to rearrange my school schedule with the children, as I myself had a dependence on the computer screen to entertain and educate one child with Jumpstart CDs, while I worked one on one with the other child on school. On an entirely different tangent, my lovely children have been waking up at 6:00 in the morning, and without a morning TV show(s) before breakfast, they now are dealing with another rule of staying in their room until 7:00am. This is all going somewhere...

The children don't have many toys in their room so I promised them yesterday evening that I would supply them each with a small basket of toys to entertain them during that morning hour. On a whim, I told Grace that I would also give her math and copywork on a clipboard, and if she wished to knock it out early, this would allow for more special time in the afternoon together. I honestly thought she might start it, but would soon be distracted by whatever Jack started playing with.

This morning she came to me with the school work completely finished! What a small blessing to our morning that finished work was. Knocking out the worksheet material, then allowed me to better juggle our Ambleside reading, and Jack's work. Jack was also strangely independent. I had given him copywork and some math to work on while I read to Grace (3 sheets), however, he independently decided to do both the front and back of all three pages (6 sheets total). I made sure to reward them both for an excellent school day with that extra special time in the afternoon. We played a butterfly identification board game (by their request) that we hadn't played since our butterfly study in the summer, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. With fingers crossed, I am hoping that this new effort to knock out school work while Mom is still snoozing or showering continues!

I think Grace is enjoying a feeling of independence too. I had already put together Grace's clipboard for tomorrow, but left it on the kitchen table. Without telling me, she set to work on the math sheet leaving only 4 problems left for tomorrow.