Thursday, November 27, 2008

From the Vista Academy Times, written by Chana and Mama


On November 6, our little friend Katie Jonis died. She was 7 ½
years old. She had a problem called a cerebral hemorrhage in
her brain. She was living with her parents, Jodi and Jon, and
her brother Jake in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia.

My mother and Katie’s mother have been friends since
elementary school, so I got to meet Katie when she was little.
When they were in the US this summer, we saw each other
twice. Katie was a very nice person who was fun. She liked to
do gymnastics and go rock climbing.

Katie was born in Singapore and lived in Massachusetts for a
few years, too. People all over the world knew Katie, and we
all miss her.

If you would like to sign the online condolence book, please click here
http://www.legacy.com/bostonglobe/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=120053126

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Katie



Katie, you little sweetheart. You will be missed so much.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

She's a Polar Bear!

On Friday, our heat was out (thankfully, fixed before Shabbat). But Batsheva had decided on Thursday that she was going to set her alarm for 6 a.m. and take a shower. And when Batsheva decides something, there's nothing that's going to stand in her way. She could see her breath in the bathroom and she still went ahead with her shower! (the rest of us could barely get out of bed and Ilana refused to even take her pajamas off, so she spent the rest of the day with her nightgown hanging out among the other layers of clothes I put on her!)

As we say, "She's a polar bear, grrr!"

Monday, November 03, 2008

Yo!

Ilana and I are outside on the swing, waiting for PB to return from school. Ilana points to our lawn sign.

Me: "Who are we voting for, Ilana?"

Ilana: "Yobama!"

Sunday, November 02, 2008

This is some dead turf (literally)

Batsheva, Chana and I have been spending our evenings phone banking from home for Obama. We're calling NH voters. This being the end of the election and we being johnny-come-lately volunteers, we're certainly not getting the cream of the crop with our turf.

So far, we've made 91 calls and contacted 10 people. 2 screamed at us for various reasons, 2 were "resident aliens" (I am VERY proud that my girls didn't laugh until *off* the phone!) and the other six had all died from between 2 all the way to 27 years ago! Where did they get this turf?!

Ilana gets political

Me: "The polls are now saying it's very close. What if McCain wins?! I can't take staying in America with another Republican administration."

Sam: "We can always go to Israel."

Me: "Okay. Fine."

Ilana: "We can't go to Israel!!!!!!"

Sam: "Why not?"

Ilana: "Because I haven't finished my toast!"

Ilana chews. And chews. 2 minutes later:

Ilana: "I done! Now we go Israel".

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Carbon-free kids

Read this great article about our friend and cousin, Ruthie! I love these "go get 'em" kids!!!!!!

Chana's political cartoon

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Very sudsy

We're a busy group of people around here! We've gotten a bunch of orders for pink ribbon soaps (20% going to breast cancer research funds), Halloween soaps, and the beginning of our yearly huge order for our friend in NY who gets personalized soaps for every one of her kids' teachers, doctors, coaches, etc. LOOOOVE it!

I've also figured out a way for Ilana to truly help out in the business. When I chunk soap (i.e. take the 20 lb. cube and chop it into small pieces), she takes the pieces and puts them into ziploc bags for me. It is really a big help and she loves doing it!

By gum, I did it!

Now I know what a widget is AND how to get one onto my blog!

Demo - Democratic Political Widget

Friday, October 10, 2008

She's gone, Jim

Betsy, I mean. Our poor, dear car. The thingamajiggy that is broken is so deep inside the engine (or something) that our mechanic doesn't deal with it, and the guy he recommended says it will cost $500 to even look at it.

Next up, between Shabbos and Yom Tov, buying a car. EEEEK!

Thursday, September 18, 2008

The Contest Is On!

Following-up to my post about Yaldah magazine winning $10,000 by being a "Someday Stories" contest finalist:

The contest just started and you can see all the stories and watch videos of the contestants talking about their dreams. It's a really neat contest, and the finalists are wonderful! Check them out here: http://memelabs.com/somedaystories/ and don't forget to vote!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Brushing Ilana's Teeth

That's been a fairly big struggle since she's gotten teeth. We sing songs, play games, act silly. Mostly, though, I do all those things while I put her in a headlock and go to work....Recently, she's started letting me floss her teeth, which, according to some, is more important than brushing anyway, so we'll hope for the dental best.

Tonight:
Me: "Before we read another story, it's time to brush your teeth"
Ilana (almost 2 1/2): "Don' wan' brush teeth! I don' have teeth!!!!!!"

I've found my favorite snack food

Love at first bite. I just tried Trader Joe's Roasted Gorgonzola Oven Crisp Crackers. WOW. They have a base taste of regular, buttery cracker. And then a delicate POW of stinky cheese. Heaven. Absolute heaven. If these had been around when I was pregnant, we would have had to buy them by the case. Reasonably priced, too, at $1.99/box.

btw, O-U dairy certified. And if they can make gorgonzola crackers w. an O-U certification, would it be asking so much to find some good stinky cheese w. a nice hechsher?!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Ilana and PB play school

PB: "I'm the morah!" (teacher)
Ilana: "I'm the Torah!"

My parents' big trip

My parents are in Israel now! 2 1/2 weeks on a tour around the country. They have never been there. I am so excited for them. The (little) kids and I keep singing "Ye-RU-Sha-la-yim" ("Jerusalem") over and over. So far, they're not overwhelmed, but they've only been there a few days and see Tel Aviv (bleh, in my opinion), Jaffa and Haifa, where they are for Shabbat.

I hope they love Jerusalem as much as my family does.....There is nothing like the Old City....

Ye-RU-Sha-la-yim.....Ye-RU-Sha-la-yim

Shabbat Shalom!

I remembered to bring something to read!

Several of you emailed me expressing your concern over my not bringing anything to read when I went to the dermatologist. So I remembered the next time! I brought the book I'm in the middle of: "Bleak House" by Dickens, and every single member of the staff commented on what an, umm, interesting choice of reading material I chose to bring to surgery :)

btw, it's not all that bleak (at least yet!).

Way to go Yaldah mag!

Oh my goodness! I just read about Leah Larson and Yaldah magazine winning $10,000 (yes, that's the correct number of 0's!)! And they're in the running to win $100,000. I am just so impressed with this young woman's intelligence, business savvy and all-around neato-ness! Go, Leah!

For those of you reading this who only have boys :), Yaldah is a great magazine *for* Jewish girls and *by* Jewish girls. It's in its fourth year of publication and has kept to its publication schedule since its first issue (a major feat for any new mag, nevermind one run by a young teen). The only ad space 4 Sisters Soaps has ever taken out has been in Yaldah. Batsheva and Chana each were elected to the magazine's editorial board, and had a great year helping write and illustrate articles.

What I like best is that it's like American Girl, but with a spiritual angle, and written from a Jewish standpoint. How often do our girls get to feel mainstream? (well, if you live in Williamsburg, or some other Jewish enclave, maybe it's all the time), but for those of us out in the big, wide world, I think it's great for my girls, and all Jewish girls, to read articles written by other kids who daven, do mitzvot and dress in a tznius manner (my fave section is the one where they highlight modest clothes available at major clothing retailers for reasonable prices).

http://www.yaldahmagazine.com/ if you don't already visit there!

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Willoughby, Wallaby Woo....

Now that Chana is just about 11, there are very few linguistic oopsies that occur. But last night, as we were reading "Sense and Sensibility" together, she said, "I really don't like that guy Wallaby".

And I cracked up and said, "Willoughby".

Then we had a rousing chorus of the kids' song "willaby, wallaby, Woo....An elephant sat on you. And willaby, wallaby, we. An elephant sat on me" :)

Wow--two teeth!

My big girl! PB lost her first two teeth and started kindergarten all in the same week!

Ilana and I are having a riot of a time playing "carpool". We drive our little plastic minivan all around the living room picking up Annabelle and Devorah and choosing which animals from the plastic farm are going to be each person in our family (although, honestly, is it better to be the cow, chicken or goat?!).

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Car Talk: the Crunchy Version

I got my driver's license at 17, and my first car at 35. Yep, 35. I was able to do this due to a combination of living in mostly urban environments, taking public transportation, carpooling/car-mooching when possible/necessary, and, when it finally came around (and not a moment too soon), joining a car-sharing service for transportation by the hour (of course, the problem with car sharing is that it leads to "Domino's Syndrome" whereby one drives like a loon b/c it's 59 minutes into one's last reserved hour, and the parking space is still one traffic-light-infested mile away. And it's raining, so one can just imagine the next person waiting for the car getting sopping wet b/c, ehem, "one" didn't get the car back in time.....Theoretically speaking, of course).

So we moved to the 'burbs and bought a minivan. All in one year. It's amazing my sense of self-worth was able to remain whole. But, truly, I love my minivan. It's a 1997 Chevrolet Venture. However, much as I love "Betsy", she's got over 90,000 miles on her now, and we have to rent a minivan every time we go past our state border. This is mostly due to my parents being concerned about us taking an 11 y/o car on long trips, not any huge defect Betsy has (or, is showing that she has). Since I freely admit that I know just about as much about cars as you might expect from someone who didn't bother to own one until middle-age, I defer to my parents' judgment here.

Sure, Betsy's got some minor issues, who of us doesn't? For Betsy, this list includes:

--a driver's side mirror held on with electrical tape b/c to fix it they will have to order an entirely new arm thingy that holds the mirror. Ka-CHING. Even the mechanic told me to use tape!

--a muffler that, while it doesn't sound loud, shakes the car like the bed at a cheap motel.

--head- and tail-lights that are permanently fogged with water

--a driver's side lock/unlock button that doesn't work at all

--a rear passenger's button that rarely unlocks.

and, my favorite b/c it makes me look like a moron at parking garages and drive-through bank machines:

--a driver's side window that is stuck permanently about 1.5 inches down. In the early part of the summer, the window had been getting balky, and one day, it went down and never went back up. Due to a huge stroke of luck on my part, this happened to be right before a huge thunderstorm hit town. Panicked, I drove to the nearest car place I could think of: Valvoline (have I mentioned I don't know much about cars?). They told me that my oil was fine, they couldn't fix my window, and I had to go to the glass shop a few miles away. That sounded odd to me. I was thinking I needed a mechanic, but I positioned the diaper that was on the window sill to try to stop the rain from pouring in on me, and went off to the glass shop. They told me everyone was gone for the day anyway, but, even if they weren't, I needed a mechanic, not a glass shop, since there wasn't anything wrong with the glass except that it wasn't going up and down! So off I went to my mechanic, clear across town, now with an absorbent "piddle pad" across my very wet arm. They were able to pull out the door mechanicals, and, after a while of jabbing, poking and putting wires together, were able to get the window up. Until a few days later when another driver in my family forgot about the situation as well as the piece of electrical tape on the window control that says "NO!", and pressed the down button. It spasmodically went down a bit, but never went up again. I taped up the inside of the window the day after that, when it started raining again, and I began muttering about "not again. Oh no, not on MY shift!" and used my Scotch Tear-By-Hand tape that I carry in the glove compartment to close up the gap.

So we're waiting on the $300 repair b/c, hey, it might be someone else's problem soon!

But other than those few minor things, it's a great car. We love you, Betsy! Don't conk out just b/c I aired our dirty laundry in public!

Comin up soon: What kind of car to get? What size car do we need? Do they make a hybrid that doesn't cost as much as the remaining payments on my mortgage? And do we really need to clean four years of my kids' junk out of this car before trying to sell it?! That's almost as frightening as looking at car prices.

Monday, September 01, 2008

nose update

I'm doing fine. The surgery was on Friday and went as well as could be expected. Unfortunately, the second biopsy they took the previous week also came back as basal cell, so they needed to remove spots from two places on my nose. However, they only needed to do each spot once before the lab report came back "all clear". The dr. spent quite a lot of time figuring out how best to stitch me up so that I would have the least noticeable scars. So I have 25 stitches in my nose, but, in the long term, that should be helpful :)

The worst of the post-op shenanigans are over now (for the first 48 hours I wasn't allowed to look down or turn my head. Now THAT was annoying to deal with. Until Friday, when the stitches come out, I can't bend or lift anything, which compared with not bending, lifting, or turning my head, seems much easier to cope with!). Thankfully, Sam is working at home this week, so I keep asking him to help me lift stuff (hard to make soap when I can't life the mini-iceberg of soap base that I need to chop up!).

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The Eco-Whatsium?

Today, Chana, PB, Ilana and I had a lovely time visiting the Ecotarium (www.ecotarium.org).

I loved it when PB said, "We're going to the EGO-Tarium"!

Later, she called it the "EGO-Quarium", which was definitely my favorite name for it!

Monday, August 25, 2008

Ilana and Aunt Sunny

A few weeks ago, during our "big summer vacation" (48 hours staying at my cousin's house on Long Island [which is in a very Jewish area and has fab shopping and restaurants, so it really is like a vacation for us), we visited with Sam's Aunt Sunny and Uncle Sydney, who recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary (!).

Aunt Sunny to Ilana: "You're just adorable!"
Ilana stamps her little foot, scowls and says, "I *not* DORA!"

Sam and I had a good laugh, as did Aunt Sunny, once we explained Dora the Explorer :)

Batsheva the Fab Typist!

She just typed 59 WPM with 100% accuracy! Wow. All I can say is that "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" has been well worth the $. Go, Bathseva, go! Type, Batsheva, type!

Sunday, August 03, 2008

The nose knows

The dr. called w. the biopsy results of my nose, and, unfortunately, one of the two places is basal cell cancer (the "good" kind to get, if you have to have anything). He said it seemed "fairly superficial", but that I will need to see a MOHS surgeon. MOHS is what they did the first time I had the skin cancer on my nose--they take small amounts away and keep biopsying the tissue while you wait and do it until the results are clear. I am hoping this will really be a non-major thing, unlike last time where I emerged with a rather large part of my nose missing.....

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Oww. My nose hurts....

I went to my primary care dr. b/c I had a spot on my nose that reminded me waaay too much of the first skin cancer way back when.....She referred me to a derm doctor for an appt. this morning. Good news: he didn't think that any of the freckles/moles on my arms, etc. were necessary of biopsy. Also good, although he wanted to biopsy two sites on my nose (bad), he thought that, if they were anything, it would be basal cell (the kind they can just remove and you're done).

So he took the two biopsies and, although he told me they would be very tiny when they're healed, at the moment I have stiches in and band-aids over, and am not having too happy a day....I have to go back in a week to get the stitches out. No sparring at karate until then.

And here's the real worst part: he was 45 minutes late to see me, after I was 10 minutes early for the appt and.........I didn't have......ANYTHING..........to read. I hadn't thought to bring anything, and his waiting room had nothing but ads and info brochures for Botox and other junk. It was horrible!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

The WORST Park

Blech! Only had time to take Ilana to the park right near PB's camp before going to karate this morning. I hate this park (and I try not to use that word much. As I tell the kids, there's enough hate in the world already....).

There is always a lot of broken glass and beer bottles strewn around. The small, "made for little kids" slide ENDS about three feet off the ground! And the spray fountains, which at most parks stay on for five or so minutes, stay on for about 40 seconds. And then the button to turn them on again is so hard to push that kids can't do it themselves, so it meant I had to hover over Ilana and keep pressing one of the two fountain buttons.

It's been about four years since I've been there (i.e. since I used to go w. PB after dropping off Batsheva at the camp around the corner!) and the return was none too soon!

Onward and upward :)

Thursday, July 10, 2008

No nibbles?!

Sigh. Not even the teensiest of nibbles on the house and it's been on the market since after Pesach. Now I'm thinking that we should leave it on the market longer, and, if we move mid-year, so what?! I'll homeschool Batsheva and probably sign her (and maybe Chana) up for K-12.com so she'll do most of her schoolwork online through them. If we move, no biggie--K12 is covered by NJ so we could homeschool mostly for free.

The flip side of this is that I think we'd all like to know for sure that we will be here or not so that I can put a big non-refundable deposit down for the homeschool coop we got into (which, after being on their waiting list for months I had to turn down b/c I wasn't about to blow $300 if we moved). And PB has outgrown the toddler bed she sleeps in and is like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, with her feet literally sticking out the end. I told her months ago that we would either be moving over the summer and she would get a big bed, or she and Ilana would start to share the guest room (the guest room switching over to PB's teeny nook) and we'd buy her a big bed then. But I can't start moving furniture around and messing with the guest room NOW b/c, oy vey, we might have a house showing.

I really don't know what to do. I had no idea that, when all the experts said that real estate had tanked, it meant MY HOUSE too!

Monday, June 16, 2008

psst....hey you....

wanna buy a house? www.19Vista.com. You'll love it!

We've decided it would be a nice thing to all live in the same state again (Sam has been working in NJ and commuting from M-Th).

We'll see what happens. The market has totally tanked here. Boo! (It's supposed to stay nice where we sell and tank where we want to buy!)

May....

Yeah, nothing very much happened in May anyway! Let's just forget that month ever happened.....

Monday, April 07, 2008

I should have taken a picture....

I attained my goal! I donated 10 large trash bags of stuff to the Vietnam Veterans of America. Also, three boxes of books went to the MA homeschooling association's upcoming book sale. My porch looked fabulously full of tzedaka!

And, FINALLY, there is (some) hope for my school room. Tune is soon for "before/after" photos. THOSE I did take!

Ilana is 2!!!!!!

WOW! I can't believe two years has gone by since her birth! She has learned such an amazing amount in two years.

Today she was in her car seat singing parts of "Baby You Can Drive My Car" (the fun parts--"Beep, beep, beep-beep YEAH!"). She worked on "schoolwork" (a Hebrew coloring book that she swiped from PB's stash of stuff). Took a nice 1.5 hour nap (who knows how much longer that will happen for. Better record for posterity)....

Happy Birthday, Ilana. Ad Me'ah V'esrim (until 120) in good health and with much happiness in your life ;)

From Batsheva:
It's been 2 years since Ilana was born and she's been working hard! Working hard at singing, talking, walking, screaming(how can anyone hold their breath for that long?!), "reading" Calvin and Hobbes...But most of all, working hard at being the cutest little Ilana in the world! Happy Birthday!

Friday, April 04, 2008

Making Challah

So Chana has a few things that none of the rest of us eat around here b/c it's just too hard for her. Challah is one of those things. So for Shabbat during most of the year we eat matza. Except now that it is the Hebrew month of Nissan and we are not allowed to eat matza until Pesach begins in a few weeks.

So now, two weeks before Pesach, I had to go out to buy flour and yeast. But not just any flour. I had to get 100% whole wheat so that, although we non-SCD'ers would be eating challah, it wouldn't be "too good".

I've evidently totally forgotten how to cook challah in two years being an SCD family, so the dough came out terribly. It's 4 pm and it's not done yet. I am cranky!

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Ilana wins!

Scene: our schoolroom

Personae: Ilana and me

Dialogue:
Me: "Ilana, do you need to make?"
Ilana: "Yeeeees"

She takes off and runs to the bathroom doing a loping, side-to-side Snoopy-Dance kind of thing. She enters the bathroom with her arms held high, triumphantly yelling, "I win! I win!"

PB's View of Politics

Last month, we were (like everyone else!) talking a lot about political primaries. PB age 5) got into it, too, asking about the primaries in Florida (where we had just come back from) and Massachusetts (where we live).

PB: "Wow. You mean they're running in Florida *and* Massachusetts?"

Me: "Yes, and there are several other states also having primaries on the same day"

PB: "But they're going to RUN from Florida to Massachusetts?!?!?!"

(I evidently did a decent job explaining how far it was from FL to MA!)

Monday, February 18, 2008

Batsheva, the famous writer!

http://tinyurl.com/2o6o7s

I'm so proud of her!

A few weeks ago, when I was emailing lots of Jewish newspapers about Purim soaps, the Jewish Woman website at Chabad came up as their "newspaper". The editor was excited to get a Purim soap sample and asked about us writing a piece for the site. Then she suggested that it would be very interesting if *Batsheva* wrote it from her perspective. Amazing! She didn't even know that we have a budding journalist at home!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Kids Say the Durndest Things

Ilana (20 months old) was in bed w. me yesterday. She put her hand on my face and lovingly asked, "I pick you' nose, mama?". I cracked up as I told her, "thanks, but no thanks".

Tonight, PB and I were reading "Grover Sleeps Over" and I told her about how that book had inspired Batsheva to throw a big fit when she was about 3 y/o. In the book, Grover has "spaghetti and meatballs and salad and milk" for dinner. So she, of course, wanted me to put milk on top of her salad. (With succeeding kids, we read that line as "salad with salad dressing and milk in a glass" :)

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Back from FL

The first thing one notices after a week in Florida: how grossly dirty all the cars are here in Boston!

Anyway, the weather was nice and I thoroughly enjoyed taking long walks at night. --Batsheva introduced me to playing Dungeons & Dragons (I'm such a nerd, I don't know how I missed that in High School [actually, I do: back then, at least in "my crowd", only the guys played D&D]).
--Chana, my father and I spent over an hour doing a 100 piece puzzle on Shabbat (ages 5 and up. Isn't that embarrassing?!])
--PB loved playing shuffle board and Ilana grooved out in her new bright orange carriage (navy was $20 more, so bright orange it is!)

Getting home was difficult. We left my parents' house at 9:30 a.m. for an 11:20 flight, did pre-boarding, then sat on the plane for a looong time while a "small switch" tried to get fixed ("well, folks, we're just expecting this to take about 15 minutes"). So we "15 minutes'ed" our way until they pulled back to the gate and told us to deplane but hang around, as they were sure it would be fixed soon.

Much later, they canceled the flight and offered us the next one out: at 9 PM! NOOOOOO! I explained that the whole reason I had earned my kids' wrath by choosing an 11 a.m. flight in the first place and having them miss a whole day of vacation was b/c I was still traumatized by taking a 7 pm flight a few years ago. The flight had been very delayed, and we got in after midnight. I had three sleeping kids I had to get off the plane myself and take into the freezing Boston weather. Very unpleasant. And did I mention the huge tantrum PB threw as we were about to board? Like lying on the floor, kicking and screaming. Baaaad time for me.

So they offered the flight after that (i.e. the 11:20 the next day) and my poor father was so stressed from having us visit that, when I called him to say what was going on, he said, "tell them you need a hotel room"! I was laughing so hard (he called back about five minutes later and said he'd come pick us up).

We're back. It was lovely to be away. It's lovely to be home.

Yay, Uberima, Yay!

It's another boy for Uberima and Uberaba! That makes three. I heartily approve of many children of the same gender :)

You should have much nachas from him....

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Ilana's first joke!

Today, Ilana looked into her bowl of cereal, smiled up at me and said, "O's 'timming'!" (swimming).

Comic genius!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Go, Uberimma, go!

B'sha'ah tova. Can't wait to hear good news....

I'm obsessively checking email and your blog to hear what's going on!

We're off!

I know, we're really always "off" around here, but, seriously! We....are...outta...here! I'm taking the girls to FL to visit my parents tomorrow. G-d bless them, I don't know why them invite us time and again because, frankly, with 7 of us in their (lovely and very large but still) 2-bedroom condo, it sure ain't much of a vacation for them.

Now, if only my darling, sweet, fabulous daughters will get along reasonably well and speak politely to each other, me and their grandparents. We....can....do.....this.....

I hope so, at least. I already told them (truthfully) that it was extremely unlikely that we were going back next year, that this sort of trip will require at least two years for me to recharge my batteries for. Since I said that two years ago after a rawther difficult trip to StoryLand ("Hey, look at those kids fist-fighting over there!" "Ah, that's just those Boston girls we saw fighting by the LAST ride"), they know I mean it.

It....will....be....great.......



to.....sleep......without.....socks.......on!

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Homeschoolin' PB



We had a really fun homeschooling day recently! We've been working on Hebrew reading in a new kriya book (she's at the very beginning stages. Like identifying the letters and reading them with patach or kamatz under them).

Science: On her own, she found some big magnets and then started investigating what they stuck to. So together, we made a list with pictures and words of what the magnets stuck to.

She came with Chana and me to karate in the morning and played with Ilana, then went back to the kids' class in the afternoon.

And we made this super giant "Penina Batya". She was wearing a striped dress that day, so it was fun to find some old fabric and use that!

We're using a new Kindergarten curriculum book that I bought for Batsheva but never opened for either her or Chana, and it said to have your child glue gems to letter outlines on paper. This reminded me of why I never used it for the other kids (dumbing down), but I figured she might like it (and the giant PB was from that book too, and I *never* would have done that without outside encouragement of some type). So I outlined "PB" on paper, and even found flat jewels. Gave her a bottle of glue and told her to "go for it" while I cooked dinner. She got bored quickly and left her project half done on the floor. Where Ilana fell into it and got groovy glue dreadlocks in her hair. Oh, well, not everything works out perfectly in homeschooling!

Thursday, January 10, 2008

SCD Birthday Cake Photo


Thought I had lost that photo forever. Boy, was I bummed out. I don't think I have ever been as proud culinarily as after making that cake!