What Color Is Your Day?

After reading about establishing early writing habits from this website, I felt inspired to get Kate and Avery their own journals. They love writing in their journals. It's much easier to get them dressed and ready for bed when they have their journals to look forward to. They usually draw pictures, but I try to encourage Kate to write a few words and Avery to write a few letters. It's fun for them, plus it's rewarding for me to see them enjoying something kind of academic.

More Fun With Butcher Paper: Body Tracing!

So that paper I got from the Post Register for cheap, it's continuing to pay me back in countless ways. Inspired by my time as a high school teacher(body biographies), I traced the girls bodies and had them then draw and color their bodies. Later, I hung them up on our sliding doors so we could all marvel at their work and, more importantly, make sure "Dad" got to see them when he came home from work. This was a great activity that kept them occupied for, like, 20 minutes, and they were happy and nice about it too. It could also be used to teach parts of the body or discuss modesty.

Hint: The bodies look a lot less creepy if you draw necks, fingers, and toes.

Quotes I Love from Books I Love

I'm currently reading The Guernsey Liteary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and it's already become one of my favorite books. I began writing down some quotes from the book that I really like, and I would put them on here except that I'm in Utah and the piece of paper I've been writing the quotes on is in Idaho. So I decided to look up one of my favorite passages from a book titled Eat Cake. Don't you just love a book entilted Eat Cake? You don't even have to read it to know that you will like it. The author is Jeanne Ray, and she crafted this fabulous quote in it:

"Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline; that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life. This is a story of how my life was saved by cake, so, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake."

She also wrote a great passage about kissing in Step Ball Change, but I haven't been able to find it on the world wide web so I could post about it tonight. But that's another fun novel by Jeanne Ray, who manages to write about the ordinary and somehow make it so entertaining.

Here's a lovely quote from the classic, The Great Gatsby:
"I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

And another thought-provoking quote from The Awakening:
"The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels."

And this funny one from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

What are some of your favorite quotes/books?

Drawing Your Dinners

Yesterday I stopped by The Post Register's office (our local newspaper) and purchased a THICK ream of paper for $7. Seriously, the paper is going to last forever. And for $7, I think I got a gread deal. Before dinner, when I needed time to get things cooked and ready, I spread the paper over our table, gave the girls crayons and markers, and let them draw their dinners. They got as excited about this as they do when I tell them they can watch a movie. Kate was especially enthusiastic, asking me repeatedly, "What else do we have for dinner, Mom?" And then she went around to the other side of the table and drew toys and animals. Today she asked if they could do it again. It's never been so easy to prepare dinner. I read about this idea online, only now I can't remember which awesome website it was, so I apologize for not being able to cite the source. But to whomever it was, THANK YOU!

Another book by our in-house author

Kate created another story the other day. I'm not posting pictures of it, but it looks a lot like this one, only now she's starting to understand the concept of spacing between words. While I'm not posting photos of this wonderful piece of literary accomplishment, I will copy the text for you to read, except that I'm taking the liberty of correcting misspellings and adding punctuation. And please know that I did not help her with this - it is fully her own creation - and it does NOT reveal anything too accurate about our family life. Not at all.

Title: The Boy Was Writing on the Table.

Once upon a time there was a boy.
A very special boy. He was writing on the table.
"Mom, can I go to bed?" the boy asked.
"Yes," said mom.
"No," said dad.
"Yes," said mom.
"Yes," said dad.

The End.

Playing Dressup

Two Christmases ago, Mac and I got the girls a chest of pretty dress-up clothes - fancy dresses, crowns, necklaces, and dainty gloves. The girls loved it, and they used it all the time . . . for a while. Recently, the girls played dressup again, only this time they got creative. They forgot all about their special chest of princess dresses and accessories, and instead, came up with this:

Yes, those are panties on their heads. At least they're clean panties. I know because when I saw what they'd done, the first thing out of my mouth was to ask where they got the panties from - from their dresser drawer or from the dirty laundry basket? They assured me that they got them from the dresser, and I believed them, so then I grabbed the camera. I hope that I've raised sensible enough girls that they don't go putting dirty underwear on their heads, or anywhere on their bodies for that matter. Don't they look sensible to you?