Lydia's Class Photo

Lydia's photo made it home last night.  Yea! 

(And it's only a little bent!)  Ha ha!

Click on it to view it larger.

Rebekah's class photo

Rebekah got her class photo yesterday.  I guess Lydia's is still MIA, so I'll post it when it makes it home (hopefully unharmed) in her backpack.

This class photo has Mrs. Jordan, the substitute that has been filling in for Mrs. Stanley while she's on maternity leave.  (We like Mrs. Jordan as much as we like Mrs. Stanley.  *grin*)

You can click on the photo to see it larger.

Lydia the Poet

Lydia composed a little poem in honor of her mommy and daddy.

I'm posting it here for your literary pleasure.

Progress Reports

The girls received their progress reports last week and they both did really well!

Bekah has three A's and three B's.

Lydia only has a few items that are marked as "needs improvement" and they are all skills that she's just learned this semester. 

She's shown marked improvement in Literacy and we've been working on the Math skills that are highlighted here.

(Click on the images to view them larger.)

I'm so proud of my girls!!

So many stories...

David was mowing the grass.

The girls were playing in the back yard.

Bekah came in to tell me that Lydia was helping the lady next door with something.

I went out to check which neighbor and found her sitting in the rocking chair chatting with Mr. Vance. We chatted for a few minutes and I went back inside to study.

When Lydia came in to grab a water bottle, I told her, "I hope you aren't bothering Mr. Vance."

She said, "Well, I was helping Mrs. Valerie.  And Mr. Vance was just sitting there with nothing to do...and that's so BORING...and I had all these stories in my head, so..."

See? She was doing him a favor. 

You know.  So he wouldn't be BORED and all.

Ellie's birthday

Jessica and Ellie spent the night with us Saturday night.  The girls were on cloud nine!!

Well, Ellie's birthday is on Sunday, so we celebrated with a little cake after dinner!

I asked Ellie what kind of cake she wanted and she said strawberry.

I said, do you want one with flowers, or a smiley face?  Is there something that you like?

Strawberries!

Soooo, strawberry it is!

I bought some strawberry icing and then made little strawberries with the left over fondant we had from Bekah's birthday.  (One for each of the girls)

After singing Happy Birthday, Ellie did her best to blow out those candles.

But they just wouldn't blow out.

So she tried again.

And again.

And finally...was successful!

(And the cake was so good, I have to say!!)

Tooth Fairy Money

Does your Tooth Fairy write on the money she leaves?


Ours does. *grin*

Toothless wonder!

Look what greeted me when I picked up Lydia from school this afternoon!

The Tooth Fairy is going to go broke if she keeps this up!!

****************

9:45 p.m. update:

Lydia just lost her tooth in her bed.

She took it out from under her pillow to admire it and dropped it somewhere in the bed.

She and Bekah searched frantically in the dark before calling for help.

A search along the edge of the bed with a flashlight produced Kleenex, a bone-shaped silly band, an earring, a ring, doll clothes, and several socks. But no tooth.

As Lydia was bursting into tears "because the tooth fairy will NEVER find my tooth now!" I shook out the sheet & found the tooth in the floor.

Mommy saved the day!

In hindsight, I suppose I could've gone into our bedroom and gotten the tooth the tooth fairy "took" a couple of nights ago and done an old switcheroo.

Hmmm.  Maybe a good reason to hold onto those teeth.  Might save a little nighttime girly drama should this happen again. 

Memories

Over the past week, I've dropped my phone a number of times.

When my co-worker commented about it, it reminded me of a funny story with Rebekah.  Funny how that happens.  *grin*

She was about three years old, and was on the phone with my mom.

She dropped the phone and immediately panicked!

She grabbed the phone, and with so much worry in her voice, said,

"Grandma! Are you okay??!!"

It was hilarious!  Too cute!

Rebekah opening her skateboard

Why?

I wake her up.

Get her dressed.

In clean clothes.

Brush her hair

Fix her hair.

And she comes home looking like this.

Remember that part about me fixing her hair?

(This is not how I fixed her hair this morning.)

And about the clean clothes?

(They were glistening white when she left this morning.)

Why do I bother?  Why? Why? Why?

Or maybe a more appropriate question to ask is:

Why do I think it will be okay to ever dress this child in white?

Daddy's not gonna be happy!!!

Lydia just yanked out her tooth!!

And David's at work.

He HATES missing these moments!! 

Sorry, David!!  It was hanging on by just a little bit!!

Did you know?

Did you know that you're not only supposed to clean your computer screen on the outside, but you're supposed to clean it on the inside as well?

For a complementary cleaning of the inside of your computer screen, click here. 

Forgive the bad picture...but it goes with the story. *grin*

Lydia: Mommy! Can I take your picture?

Me: Sure!

Lydia: Okay.  I need to find a pretty background. 

I don't want Daddy in the picture!

David, sitting at the computer: Hey!  Thanks a lot, Lydia! 

Enjoy

What Lydia's up to today.

Snail hunting!!

Lydia at 3

Mom's keyboard

People think I'm exaggerating when I say my mom literally wears out her keyboards.

I'm not.

Fun in the Fall

Sorry for the crooked scan.

Click on it to view it larger.

Girls School Picture Proofs

The girls got their school picture proofs back this week.

Here's Bekah's.

Now don't say anything about how she's wearing the same thing as she was in her last school pictures.

Nope.  Didn't notice that.  Oops.

Oh well.

Here's Lydia's.

See?  I did okay with ONE of the kids, at least.

Lydia's outfit is totally different!  =P

Video of the water bottle rocket

My camera memory card filled up right before I was finished videoing...so I didn't get the bottle landing, but you can get the idea here.  =)

Rebekah's astronaut birthday party

Saturday we celebrated Bekah's birthday with her friends by

having an astronaut party!

Bekah's been planning it for about six months now.  She's been checking out books and shows about space and has really taken a keen interest in astronauts.

Here she is with her spaceship cake.

I was going to make a moon and an earth cake to go alongside it, but unfortunately I wasn't feeling very well for a couple of days before the party.  I may have worried myself sick over this cake.  So, as it stands, it's the best that I could do...but I think I might not ever work with fondant again...  Or at least not on such an odd shaped cake.  =)

We made the goody bags for each of the kids, filled with Starburst candies, Milky Way bars, glow in the dark stars, Moon Pies, and moon sand (which we made ourselves).

We also made some NASA shirts for the whole fam:

We made name tags for each of the guests with the same NASA logo on them too.  =)

And David got the inspired idea that we should have a trampoline serve as an antigravity chamber.  So we called up Josh & Mary and asked if we could borrow theirs. 

It turned out to be a godsend - as it occupied the children while we were waiting for everyone to arrive.

And we only had one major injury...and that was Lydia's bloody nose...and that was after the party was over.  A big thanks to Lena for helping me to get the bleeding to stop.  It was a good one.

Here's Lydia, showing me some love before the bloody nose.  =)

When it was time to get started, the kids searched for moon rocks that were hidden all around the yard.

We made these too. 

After the kids all found a rock and gathered back on the porch, they got to smash them on the ground and find their prize inside.

Bekah thought it was "inappropriate" (her word) that the aliens from the moon rocks had "butt cracks" (again, her words).  Silly girl.

Anyway, some of the moon rocks had planets (bouncy balls) and a couple even had coins in them...just for fun.

After everyone arrived, we gathered around the spaceship for a group shot.

Let's see if I can name everyone:  From left to right - Connor, Norika, Jasmine, Jack, Jessica, Cassidy, Eleanna (in the rocket window with Rebekah), Molly, Sarah, Noah Pugh, Noah Phillips, Amber, Milena, Lydia, Ella, and Hailey.

And here's one with just Bekah (since you can't really see her in the first one!).

Next up were the water bottle rockets.  I have to give so much credit to my wonderfully mechanical husband for putting this contraption together.  (He's so good about putting up with my crazy ideas!!)

This bottle is full of water, and as David pumps air into it, the pressure builds until...

and the kids get soaked!

The soaking of the kids turned out to be a good thing...because the day turned out to be BEAUTIFUL (and quite warm).  And after being in an antigravity chamber and searching for moon rocks, you get kinda hot.

So it was time to cool off with some Tang - the drink of the astronauts.

And a good helping of some astronaut ice cream.  It's real ice cream that's freeze dried.  It's really interesting and the kids got a kick out of it.

Next up was the alien goo game.  The kids split into teams of Astronauts and Rockets and then raced to see who could fill their team's bucket with alien goo the fastest.

Again, I have to give big-time credit to David on this one too.  I'm not sure how many alien goo recipes we went through until we got this one.  And still David had to mix it up to his elbow right before this game (because it turned into a big rubbery blob if you let it sit for any amount of time).  He's such a trooper!!

After cleaning off the alien goo at the spicket outside (yes OUTSIDE!!), we packed up our moon sand.  Sorry no pics of this.  Our hands were busy!!

And then it was time to sing happy birthday and blow out the candles!!

The kids had cake and rocket pops.

And then Rebekah opened her presents.   She got so many nice things.

Some books, a Barbie,

A charm bracelet

Silly Bandz

a collage kit

a solar system poster and space card game

 Jenga,

a science kit

and her favorite:

A skateboard from the Pughs!

All in all, they had a blast!!  Yea!!