Honk!

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Tessa

Have I mentioned lately that I love our school?! Tonight was the big musical and it was awesome!!! This was the first year that Eve could participate and she ended up with three roles: farm folk (all cast), a military goose, and a froglet. :) Honk! Jr. is a musical version of The Ugly Duckling with a positive anti-bullying message in the end.

Can you find Military Goose Evelyn:

Later she appeared as a sweet froglet, singing a song promising Ugly that some day someone will love him, warts and all!

The grand finale, recognizing that Ugly is a beautiful swan and the farm yard animals realizing that different is just that, different.

These kids have worked so hard for the past few months and every year I am amazed at how well they perform. These kids, who are crazy and silly and naughty and funny and they amaze me when they get up on stage and sing their hearts out. So brave! <3

Busy birthday weekend

Posted on April 2, 2017 by Tessa

We have had a busy birthday weekend celebrating Eve. Double digits. End of a decade here. No more little ones. *Sniff* and sigh and on we go!

Friday Eve was home with a fever. She missed out on birthday at school and getting to be Governor of her class (government unit!), but she did get to watch TV and eat ice cream with daddy, so all was well. Her party was supposed to be Friday night, but we postponed due to her fever and the impending storm. I couldn’t let the day go by without a candle and song though, so a quick improvise and voila – ice cream sundae with a sparkling candle on top!

A candle in a dish of ice cream is what you get when your birthday party is postponed.

At bedtime Eve gave me a little gift by asking if I would read to her. She hasn’t wanted me to read to her at bedtime in ages and I was almost giddy at the invite to snuggle in her bed and read to her. Of course mid way through I remembered the measure-on-the-wall thing and we all got up (me, Eve, dog, cat) and headed to Lex’s room where both boys joined in the fun.

Saturday morning I gave her the gift of staying home alone while I took Lex to karate. When we returned I found her in her room with a mirror and all her hair supplies out. She asked if I would do her hair (yay!) and we had a lovely time talking about jewelry and hair and girly stuff. She had on a beautiful dress, jewelry, and lip gloss.

She let me do her hair! She ASKED me to do her hair!! <3

She’s all ready to party at 11am!

Sadly by 5pm when the party already started she had changed back into regular clothes. At least she kept the beautiful hair-do! :)

Pizza and silly friends!

We did a sleepover again this year, but with fewer friends and even fewer planned activities! I told Eve that she’s old enough to entertain her friends now and we didn’t plan and crafts or projects or anything. Just pizza, ice cream cake, and dancing!

Presents!

Just Dance!

Eve asked me to make an ice cream cake this year. I used the Stoneware bundt pan, three gallons of ice cream, and lots of guesswork. I’m pleased to say it came out really great! I poured hot fudge on the top right at the end, stuck 10 sparkling candles in there and it was perfect!

I’m very proud of my ice cream cake. It was lovely and yummy, and only a little stressful trying to get the candles lit before it melted everywhere!

Three layers of ice cream goodness with mini M+Ms between two layers and crushed cookies between the other two layers.

Only two girls ended up staying over night (because we had changed the date at the last minute), so around 9:30pm, after we watched Moana, half of the party headed home and the other half went to bed… and talked and giggled and carried on until midnight! I only had to go up a few times though and they fell asleep eventually. :)

Today was spent in a sugar/tired haze. Her friends left at 10:30, I had homework to do and school work to do so Eve and I spent a few hours in the library while Lex and Alan spent a few blessed hours in a very quiet house.

Happy Birthday to my baby who is growing up so fast. I look forward to many, many more years of giggly girl sleepovers, braiding hair, and cuddling with stories. <3

I put up all the pictures from the past few days in a Google Album.

10!

Posted on March 31, 2017 by Tessa

Happy birthday to this beautiful girl!

10!

Presents

I’ve had all the feels over the past few days. She is so amazing and independent and sweet and wild and moody and snuggly. I feel blessed every day that I have her in my life.

And these two together. Pure love.

I love everything about these two! I hope they always love each other too!

Sadly Eve will be spending her birthday home on the couch. Her fever is down this morning, but still there a bit and she went to bed last night with 100.7 so I don’t think she should be in school. I think her birthday brownies should though! (they are in the freezer until next week instead!) I stayed home with her yesterday and Alan will be with her today. I imagine lots of snuggles on the couch, TV, and maybe even lunch at Panera if she’s up for it. :)

Studying up on being cool. :)

Eve and Arlo

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Tessa

Eve is home with a fever today. She spent the day on the couch reading, drawing, and snoozing. She’s sick, but not too sick to make ties for the dog. :)

Handsome pup in a bow tie.

Bow tie or neck tie? Hmm….

Silly girl in cat ears.

A lemon of a cat?

Posted on March 28, 2017 by Tessa

We got this sweet new kitty last month. She is little and crazy and so cuddly. We knew that she had some problems, but whatever, she’s cuddly. I took her to the vet last week and the vet confirmed our suspicion that she is a little cross-eyed, apparently common in Siamese cats. She also had a polyp in her hear when she was young (removed before we got her), which explained her drunken sort of movements. I told the vet that Alan and I joked that she was a drunken kitty and the vet said, “yeah, her world probably does feel a little shaky to her.” She also has allergies, to what we don’t know, and bad teeth. Mostly this was not a surprise because most of it was written on the form when we got her. The cross-eyed thing was new to me and the fact that the polyp affected her vestibular system (balance). I’m telling Alan all of this later that night and he replies with, “So, we got a lemon of a cat?” I cracked up! Now every time I look at her I think she’s a little lemon. I just told Lex the story tonight too, explaining what “lemon” meant. We gushed over our sweet little lemon cat. :)

Enrichment

Posted on March 22, 2017 by Tessa

I run an enrichment group at school where twice a week I work with a small group of kids who can afford to miss some class time. The sessions run for 3-6 weeks, depending on the topic, and teachers chose which students to send. For my upcoming enrichment group Eve’s teacher chose Eve to go. I was talking to Eve about it the other day and said I was thinking about doing either electricity or book reviews. She wasn’t thrilled with those options. :) She is pretty set on doing a research project about the topic of your choice and presenting it in the way of your choice (prezi, glogster, poster, Google presentation, etc.)

Tonight while I was laying with her I told her I just didn’t feel prepared for an enrichment group about research. She said, “That’s ok mom, we can do it together this weekend! We’ll start with a rubric.” The conversation went from there. When I left her we agreed to work together this weekend on it. When I went to check on her just now I found this:

Eve’s rubric

I love that girl! We’ve got education in our blood!

A First Robotics demonstration

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Tessa

This weekend we went to check out a demonstration by the local First Robotics Competition (FRC) team, The Grasshoppers. FRC is the next level up from FLL, which we’ve been doing for the past few years. FRC typically starts in 9th grade, but the coaches told me that they have taken a few middle school kids over the years and would be willing to consider my boy next year. It looked pretty awesome!

This is their demo robot. The competition one is sealed up in plastic, ready for the next meet. The kids got a great close up of the workings in this thing and the high school kids and coaches did a fantastic job explaining it all.

This robot can climb a rope!!! They said it’s not finished yet and they still need to put guides on the robot to help it climb more straight, but it’s still pretty impressive!

We also got a tour of the workshop area and a demo of a bunch of machines they use to make the parts for the robots.

Lex got to adjust the something on the big grinder machine. It’s late and I forget the right words. :)

Dark goggles on! Time for the plasma cutter!

The plasma cutter can cut holes and entire pieces out of sheet metal. It makes a dangerously bright light though, so everyone had to wear dark goggles.

The guy is holding the piece of aluminum he cut on the plasma cutter. It needs to be cleaned up, bent (another neat machine they showed us), painted, then attached to the robot.

It was a pretty cool demonstration over all. The team has their next match in a few weeks and we might check it out. I think it would be pretty impressive!

When the team starts up again in the fall Lex will have a chance to join them for a few meetings to see if he feels up for it and if they think he’s old enough. If not, we can try again in 8th or 9th grade. No rush.

Cookie monster

Posted on February 28, 2017 by Tessa

I just went up to check on Eve and found this…

A reminder note propped in front of her clock.

In case you need a better view…

Note to self.

I understand the excitement, but the fact that she wrote herself a reminder note is hysterical! I guess I know what’s for breakfast tomorrow! 😂

A conversation with the boy…

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Tessa

Me: “We are going to Binghamton in May to watch Rosy get her degree.”
Him: “Just one degree?”
Me: ….
Him: “If she got 90 it would be more right.”

We were both LOLing! :)

Jasmine

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Tessa

The cat calmed both children to sleep tonight. They were each having their own issues keeping them up, but when the cat snuggled up with them they went right to sleep. I’m glad we have a cat again 😊😽