Happy Half-Birthday J!

Today my oldest is 7 and a HALF! Isn't that amazing? I mean really... seven and a HALF is just so grown up! Happy half-birthday, sweetie!

(W's half-birthday passed last week without much fanfare... he is now two and a half, though he believes he is four and will be six on his next "birthday party")

Happy Groundhog Day!

Yes, I know this was awhile ago. And yes, I know today is Valentine's Day :) But this past week we finally had our Little Owl School Groundhog Day Party (and I'll probably have a Valentine's update next week or something... hey, that's just how I roll).

The night before Groundhog Day we read a few books about groundhogs (I put a list of books at the bottom of this post). Then on the morning of Groundhog Day, we tried to remember to say "groundhog" first thing to bring us good luck. We read a few more books, and made sure to check Punxsatawney Phil's predictions.

This week, we had a Groundhog Day/Six More Weeks of Winter Party. The kids woke up to a table set with our winter dishes, and little winter prizes at their breakfast spots... snowman notebooks, and a penguin project from OTC.

After lunch (soup, because that's a warming food for winter), we used white crayons on black paper to make snowy pictures. We decorated the pictures with snowman stickers.

This is K's:

And this is J's:

W was too busy playing to color!

We played shadow tag (one of us was the shadow, and chased the others). Then we did shadow silohuettes! This one was really fun (and much trickier than I remembered)! All the kids took a turn...

First J:

then K:

then W, who would only look up at the ceiling:

and then K traced my shadow for me!!

We hope everyone had a great Groundhog Day, and that y'all are staying warm with these six more weeks of wintery weather (especially our friends and family on the East Coast!).

And as a last thought, here is J's favorite Groundhog related commercial (if you didn't see this during the superbowl, you totally have to watch).

Here is a great list of Groundhog books for kids to check out! We found all of these at the local library:

Great Groundhogs!
Gregory's Shadow
Gretchen Groundhog, It's Your Day!
Go To Sleep Groundhog!
Groundhog at Evergreen Road

Happy Birthday to J!

Today, my sweet J turns 7!!! 7!!!! I can hardly believe it! My first little baby, he's growing up too quick. And he's not even here with me... he's having a birthday sleepover with his Grandma tonight... sniff. I am too sappy and sentimental for words tonight... 7 just seems like such a big milestone.

Here is my newborn sweetie... the baby who made me into a Momma

Look at those cheeks

I LOVE this photo

Here is his first birthday

And here he is celebrating at his party... just look at how grown up and handsome he seems

Happy Birthday J! I love you so much!!!

Love,

OWL MOMMA

Happy Birthday to W!

The Little Little Owl turned TWO today! It hardly seems like two years ago that he came into our lives... my third baby, my first homebirth, the little guy who was always meant to be a part of our family long before we even knew we needed him.

Here he is just a few hours old

And the first moments with his new siblings!

And now he's such a big guy!

(this is his Tia with him, not me... I am incredibly camera shy, lol)

Happy Happy Birthday W! I love you!

Love,

OWL MOMMA

A Crazy Couple of Days

Wow! I feel like we have been super busy lately. Here are the (more or less) highlights of what has been going on around the Owl Nest. Warning... it's long.

Owl Poppa has been a bit under the weather, and his work schedule has been a bit weird (he works three days a week, 12 hour days, which is weird all by itself, but the schedule has been weirder lately). His work schedule always throws a monkey wrench into our homeschool schedule. It's been hard getting lessons completed in a reasonable amount of time on days when he is home, especially when he is home and sick. But, his schedule is also one of the reasons we homeschool, so it is what it is.

(Completely and totally as an aside, I just LOVE that expression... it is what it is. It seems appropos to everything lately. It truly sums up the new level of acceptance I am feeling about things in my life. Okay, random thought over... carry on)

The kids have all taken turns feeling run down as well. I tried complaining to Owl Poppa about the lack of "routine" around here with all these sick days. His response... the same thing is happening in the public schools, too. He's always so rational! :)

We've been doing lots more hands on projects and celebrating lots of interesting things lately as well. I posted about Katie's birthday, the first day of fall, and Johnny Appleseed Day. We also celebrated Michaelmas (albeit a few days late). I don't know too much about Michaelmas, really, but remember reading that it is sometime celebrated as a harvest festival and with the story of St. George and the dragon, and that you shouldn't eat blackberries after Michaelmas (because when Michael threw the Devil out of Heaven, he landed in a blackberry bush... the kids think this part of the story is hysterical). So, we mostly did what we did last year. We read the Reluctant Dragon (we all love this one), as well as the story of St. George and the Dragon. We also read Custard the Dragon and Custard the Dragon and the Wicked Knight. The kids put on a mini performance of a dragon slaying. J and W took turns being the dragon and slaying each other. K was the damsel in distress. I wanted to make a blackberry crumble again, but the kids voted on blackberry kefir smoothies :)

We braved a rainstorm Thursday to meet friends at the park. It actually only rained for a few minutes, and then cleared up, though the sky stayed really grey. But the great company made up for the crummy weather.

We spent Friday night sitting for a friend's little girl. This was really fun. We had an indoor picnic in the living room. We set up the picnic mat on the floor, and then all four kids pretended to chase away birds and ants that were after the picnic. I had to be the bird swooping in to steal the pizza. We played tag, and board games, and Barbies, and then watched cartoons. It was awesome.

Owl Poppa celebrated his birthday over the weekend. J made him a card (spelling all the words himself... I was really proud). The kids worked hard the day before to clean up their playroom and library and bedrooms before he got home from work as a birthday surprise for him. And they picked out new tools and a new tool box as his present. They wrapped the present in playsilks and gave it to him in the morning. We took him out for Tex Mex in the afternoon, and then had cake and ice cream. W is now officially obsessed with birthday cake.

This morning, we went to a science lesson on desert adaptations at one of the local parks. The lesson included a walk along the trails with a guide who pointed out lots of the local flora and fauna (man, I have always wanted to be able to use that expression, lol). Because of all the (much needed) rain we've been getting, there were lots and lots of wildflowers out on the trails. The kids got to touch a coyote pelt and skull, a jack rabbit pelt and skull, look at roadrunner and owl feet and skulls, and see rattlesnake skins. We learned about cactus (and the bugs that live on them), about different types of leaves and how plants adapt to the dry weather, about native people cooked the roots of certain plants, and which ones along the trail were used for making sandals. We even got to take a cactus (our "spiky friend") home with us. The kids are so pleased, and it has a place of honor in our library room (up high, because that sucker is really poky). I wish I has pictures but I forgot my camera.

But we barely made it at all because we all over slept and made it out of the house in under 30 minutes (hence the forgetting of the camera). The kids ate the snacks we packed for breakfast, and then we ended up going out to lunch. Everyone loved the field trip, but we've all seemed a bit out of sorts all day.

So, it's back to our schedule as usual tomorrow. And back to meals at home. And finishing up some of the projects we're working on (expect cool pictures in the next few days). We're also preparing for the Owl Family Birthday Bash this weekend... one big party for all of us. So there is lots more craziness ahead. But I guess we wouldn't really have it any other way.

OWL MOMMA

PS It's late. I will come back and add appropriate links in the morning. Maybe.

Our Apple Celebration

September 26 is Johnny Appleseed's birthday! And for the past week the Owl Nest has been in Apple Celebration mode!

On the 26th, we celebrated with books and apple pie... super yummy. I think apple pie is my favorite pie ever. We have been listening to the story of Johnny Appleseed (read by Garrison Keillor) in the car, reading books about apples, and eating lots of fresh apples for snacks. And of course we've been singing the Johnny Appleseed song.

One of our favorite apple books is Apples, Apples, Apples... the little owls can't wait until they can go apple picking... I have had to break it to them that in Central Texas, apple picking is over in July :( We will go to the pumpkin patch at the apple orchard though so that might be close enough for them. Last year at the pumpking patch, they got a tour of the apple sorting facility. Hopefully we'll get to do that again.

Another great book is Apple Cider Making Days... we may try making some (with buying cider at Costco as our backup plan, lol).

We're also reading The Apple-Pip Princess, Cider Apples, Johnny Appleseed, Golden Delicious: A Cinderella Apple Story, and we watched the Disney story of Johnny Appleseed in the American Legends movie.

This year, we also read The Apple Doll. This sweet story includes instructions for making an apple doll of our own, so of course, we are trying it.

Here are a few pics of the process...

W might have had the most fun, peeling and eating apples

K is planning and J is munching

W was determined to peel his apple

The apples had to soak in lemon juice. We found the bag to be the only way to keep the apples covered without needing many bottles of lemon juice!

And here are the apples before drying out... and one other little cutie face!

The apple doll heads are in the process of drying out now, and it could take several more days for them to finish. I will post pics of the finished product when we get there!

Yay for apples,

OWL MOMMA

First Day of Fall

Yesterday was the first official day of Autumn... so we at Little Owl School decided to celebrate (read: K loves any reason for a "tea party" and J loves candy corn).

After getting morning lessons done, we had our Fall Festival...

We discussed the four seasons and made a list of things we think of when we hear the word Autumn. We talked about ways in which animals prepare for winter, and how people do some of the same kinds of things. We played a matching game with leaves cut out of cardboard. We read a few books. We pretended to be leaves blowing in the wind, and being raked up by momma. We had our Autumn tea party, with apples and candy corn. And everyone was happy!

Happy fall, y'all!
OWL MOMMA

Happy Birthday K!

Today is K's 5th birthday! I can hardly believe it!

Here she is just a few hours old

And here's my little Daddy's Girl, hanging out with Owl Poppa

And now she seems so grown up! Five years old already!

Here she is celebrating with Grandma over the weekend

And here she is today... officially FIVE YEARS OLD!

Happy Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

Love,

OWL MOMMA

Christmas in July!

My mother-in-law (who is super awesome) gave us an early Christmas present... a new camera (to replace the one that W destroyed, lol). So look forward to many more pictures on this blog! As soon as I read the instruction manual, that is :)

Fourth of July

Hope everyone had a great day! We sure did! It's been a super-long fun-filled weekend for us.

Friday night Grandma went with us to take the kids to the circus! This has become an annual tradition now for the kids... going to the circus with Grandma. It's something they love and really look forward to. They've been asking about the circus since we finished with Easter :) And this year, W was able to really be in on the action. The look on his face while watching the show was priceless. Everyone came home tired and happy, covered in cotton candy and clutching new circus souvenirs.

After such a late night, we all slept in a little, and got up to a Happy Birthday America breakfast. I wish my camera wasn't broken, but it is (stamping foot). The table was set with our red outdoor plates on blue construction paper placemats. For a center piece there were two flags in a clear glass vase filled with layers of white and blue crepe paper. There were blue and white crepe paper twirls hung along the top of the red curtains. And a few red, white, and blue balloons... the balloons were the best part! After reading a few patriotic poems, including The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, we sang the Star Spangled Banner and talked about the birth of our nation. Then we all sat down to enjoy blueberry pancakes, bacon, and Red White and Blueberry Muffins... a Fourth of July tradition now! (recipe below)

The rest of the day was spent hanging out, running errands, playing. The kids put on a Fourth of July show in the morning (K did a dance and sang the Johnny Appleseed song "because it's about America" and J made up a song about America and marched around with his new sword), and then spent much of the day racing their scooters in the garage. We read some more Fourth of July stuff, made pinwheels out of starry paper, and just had a fairly lazy and relaxing day!

For supper, we re-set the table with the fun stuff from breakfast and served lots of yumminess... fresh strawberries, cucumber slices, muffins, fresh corn on the cob that the kids peeled themselves, hotdogs, and chips. And for dessert? Watermelon, of course! The kids thought this was the best dinner ever. At their place setting, each of them received a pair of Fourth of July socks, which were a huge hit!

After supper, it was baths and pjs (and new socks), and then we headed out to see fireworks. This was the first year in awhile we've done more than just see whatever the neighbors were doing... the city fireworks ban put a crimp in that plan. So we parked in the mall parking lot and watched the fireworks display from Six Flags! I couldn't believe how many people were doing the same thing. But the people around were all really nice. And the display was spectacular!

And what made it all worthwhile? Besides the look on their faces when they woke up to the decorations, the big sticky watermelon smiles after supper, the cute chubby feet in holiday socks, the big kids oohing and aahing at the first fireworks display they really remember? While we were sitting in the traffic, heading home, K told me, "Momma, I had a really great holiday!"

Hope you did too!

Red White and Blueberry Muffins
1/2 C butter, softened
3/4 C sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
2 C flour
1/2 t salt
2 t baking powder
1/2 C milk
3/4 C dried cranberries
3/4 C blueberries (we use frozen, but you could use dried)
You could add half a cup of white chocolate chips... we've not tried it yet, but it sounds yummy.

Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in eggs one at a time, beating well. Stir in vanilla. Sift together dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Stir in dry ingredients alternating with the milk. Fold in berries. Fill lined muffin tin cups 2/3 full. Bake in a 350 degree preheated oven for 25-30 minutes.

We used patriotic muffin cups for ours... it was a nice effect.

More On Mother's Day

Hope all of y'all had a great Mother's Day. With the kids at MILs, Owl Poppa and I took W out to lunch on Saturday. The weather was beautiful, the food was good, the company was terrific. The bigger kids brought me home paper flowers they made for me. :)
On Sunday, we woke up late, had a lazy day, went to lunch at my favorite Tex Mex place. Nothing says I love you like chicken burritos!

It's back to our regular school week this week. Today also starts my first week of trying not to leave the house on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Though this week we need to adjust for the fact that K has her final ballet practice on Wednesday.

Busy day ahead... hope everyone had a restful weekend and a happy Mother's Day. Here's looking forward to this week!

My Mother's Day Present

My house is soooo quiet (or at least it was until Owl Poppa turned on the basketball game). My mother-in-law took J and K overnight as a present to me, and W fell asleep at 7:15.

Happy May Day!

Yes, I know May Day was yesterday. We just do things differently here in the Owl Nest. We stretched May Day into a two day fiesta!

Yesterday, we made May Day garlands. We used pipecleaner and strung them with pony beads and flower petals from the craft store. Pipecleaners worked beautifully because they were stiff... it was even easy for W to string his beads. We even made a mini-crown for Bianca (K's doll).

We read a few cute May Day books. The kids love The Morn of May Fest. We also read The Rainbow Tulip, which was especially nice for its hispanic cultural references.

This morning, we made paper-cone May Day Baskets. We spent all morning singing "A Tisket, a Tasket, we made a May Day Basket." We baked some chocolate jam thumbprint cookies (will post the recipe tomorrow... must get to bed), and delivered the baskets to friends and the new neighbors across the street.

Here are the kids (and Bianca) modelling their May Day crowns before going out to deliver the baskets. There are no pictures of the baskets, or the delivery, because my camera stinks!

J had a demo this afternoon, so he is in his capoeira uniform :)

K and Biance... the Princesses of the May

W thought he was cute... we agreed!

Oh, and did you know that in Hawaii, they call May Day... Lei Day. We're planning our luau for the end of the month! :) Happy Spring everyone!

Another Mini Celebration

Today is J's half-birthday... so he is officially six and a HALF!

Easter

We all had a great Easter here in the Owl Nest. The night before, we had a special Family Night, dying eggs, reading books, and watching a movie together. I took lots of great pictures of all of this fun. And found out after the fact that the memory card wasn't in the camera. C'est La Vie.

Easter day dawned rainy and dark. The three little owls hunted eggs in the house... this is the way the Easter Bunny always did it when I was a kid. As a little girl, I woke up to find the eggs already hidden and the egg hunt was the very first event of the morning. I'm glad the Easter Bunny is carrying on the same tradition for my little owls. Easter baskets followed the egg hunt, and the kids oohed and ahhed over the goodies inside... candy, more candy, a few toys, and skip balls!

The kids requested a Big Breakfast (read: pancakes and bacon) so Owl Momma obliged. I did get a great picture of our fancy Easter pancakes!

The eyes and nose are craisins, the mouth is made of a pretzel, and the whiskers are bacon!

We played some Easter games, read some bunny books (who knew we owned so many bunny books), and colored a giant Easter coloring mat that was taped to the floor.

By lunch time, the sun had come out, and the little owls were getting restless from too much candy. J had already given several performances of his skip-ball prowess, while K and I shouted encore and applauded. (His record is 36 skips in a row) There was not much left to do inside and it was really a beautiful day outside. So, while Owl Poppa took a much needed nap on his first day off since we-can't-remember-when, the little owls and I headed to the park to play and fly kites. We were having a great time until the fire ants took a few too many nibbles of J's feet... we left the park amid hysterical crying that calmed down when he found his candy stash in the car :) On the way home, we got to chat about cool things from when I was a little girl, like clam digging in the Chesapeake Bay and crab fishing at the Jersey Shore. The kids love to hear these kind of stories, and I love being able to share them.

By the time we got home from the park, it was dinner time. I have a thing about holiday dinners... I NEED them. This is one of those not optional things for me... I need the pageantry and formality of big raucous family get-togethers evocative of the happy memories I have of such things when I was young (though in all honesty, we were more Addams Family than Brady Bunch, but the memories are all good ones). The problem is that there is no big raucous family here. And the little family we have here is just not on board with my grandiose visions of holiday togetherness. This is not to say that they don't enjoy it or appreciate it. It's just they are a much more laid back group where holiday gatherings are concerned. Owl Poppa has never understood this holiday hang-up of mine. This has been the source of a few arguments when I am in the midst of a self-induced stress attack trying to prepare a big fancy family shindig that is catering to some deep need I have for "the perfect" family meal. In some ways, this is devastating to me, and in some ways I love him all the more for this and the new perspective it gives me (namely that things don't always have to be MY way). And it could very well just be that Easter isn't that big of a holiday to anyone but me. All of this is a prelude to the fact that we had NO family plans for Easter... no one made any, and I purposefully didn't bring it up in an effort to keep my inner Martha Stewart at bay.

My only plan was to cook a nice dinner for my own little immediate family. And I bagged that plan in favor of dinner at our favorite Tex-Mex establishment.... burritos, yum! And we had jello eggs and more candy for dessert.

NOTE: Do NOT try to make jello eggs with the regular jello recipe. There is a special egg recipe you can find here. Making jello eggs with regular jello will result in a serious leakage of jello all over the inside of your refridgerator, and your Easter Eve will be spent rinsing lime green jello out of the crisper drawer.

By 8 pm, we were all exhausted and coming down off the sugar highs. But what a great day it had been!!!!

Hope everyone out there had a great Easter, too!

Overheard

K and her dolly are in the kitchen right now, giving the following lecture to W:

"You don't know who Jesus is? Jesus is God. When he died he made himself come back to life because he is God. That's Easter. No, she's not God. She's Little Mermaid."

Getting Ready For Easter

The little owls have had an Easter countdown going for the last 1oo days... literally. And for the past two weeks, they have been managing the countdown in their heads. Each morning they wake up and say "only x more days til Easter, Momma". K helped me put up decorations last week. So today, I figured we could do a few crafts. First, we made cascarones.

Here are the kids decorating the hollowed-out eggs

And here are our finished eggs.

Don't they look pretty?! (oh, our dozen is one short because I cracked one trying to rinse it out)

After the cascarones, we decided to make an Easter present for Grandma. So we made handprint lillies. Each of the kids made two, one from each hand. I think they are just beautiful. No pictures though since my camera is acting funny. I think we'll put the paper flowers in a vase and buy Grandma an Easter Lilly too. But shhhhh.... don't tell her.

St. Patricks Day Recap

I didn't get to post yesterday, so I'm hoping all of you had a great St. Paddy's!

What a great day we had!!! The bigger kids and I built leprechaun traps the night before, and read a few St. Patricks Day books. In the morning, the little owls awoke to find notes from the leprechauns who got away from their traps, and consoled themselves with new St. Paddy's Day socks. W did his best to be a leprechaun, running around in green pajamas and stealing the "treasure" out of the traps.

We had shamrock bread for breakfast (I baked three huge rolls so that they connected like a shamrock), green beans with our lunch, Irish Potato candy for our snack, and a special surprise called "leprechaun stew" for dinner.

What is leprechaun stew? The kids asked the same thing. I told THEM that it was a secret recipe left in our kitchen by some leprechaun chefs. I'll tell YOU that is was steamed cauliflower and broccoli, seasoned with salt and pepper and garlic, some milk and butter, and then the whole deal is pureed (like cauliflower mashed potatoes, with broccoli added). Super yummy, and the kids each ate triple helpings. This Owl Momma felt like one tricky little leprechaun!

Mini-Celebration!

Yesterday was K's half-birthday! She is now officially 4 and a HALF.