Costume Party

Grandpa's Treehouse

A Time to Break Down, and a Time to Build Up

On Thursday, the kids spent some time building with Kapla blocks. Logan, as usual, thoroughly enjoyed knocking down the older kids' creations, but he also built with them. My baby is growing up! (We set the picture on the floor so that it would not fall from the wall as roofers installed a new roof that day.)

'Splaining to Do...

Some of the regular visitors to my blog might feel a little bit like Miss Muffet after stopping by on Tuesday. I hope those who were temporarily trapped in my web of deceit trick will not be frightened away!

On Tuesday morning, I was not thinking about the date or April Fool's Day until I came across this hilarious prank attempt by Gmail. James and I laughed about it together, and I decided to try a prank on my blog. Of course, I'm not as experienced in A.F. pranks, or as masterful as my blogger friend, Hillary, who pulled this memorable prank last year...which her sister believed. Tee Hee.

I must admit to some guilty laughter over some of the commenters who were thrown into doubt by my announcement, or who really believed me. The guilty part came in when Nikki told me that she would be praying for me! (Yes, I do need prayer, but for different reasons...)

My favorite comment came from my sister, Loey, who wrote:

"You dog, you stole our thunder last time with Sophie, and here you go again… looks like I’ll have to wait a week or two so our special news can get the attention it deserves."

There's no fooling her, but a relative of mine did email me to ask if Loey was expecting. You're good, Loey! (Loey has much more experience at lying pranks than I do.)

My mom emailed me to say that based on the date, she would wait another day to see whether my condition persisted. My dad admitted that he fell for it. My sister, Jen, tried to sit on the fence in her comment, and...I hope that my sister Jackie will talk to me again.

Today, I'm sick (It's a cold!) and my Aunt Beth told me that I deserve to be sick for my prank. (Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!) Maybe she's right, but it sure was fun!

We Have a Winner!

Twelve year old Brandon, son of Sunshine, won the Crack the Code Contest! Click Here and scroll down a little to see some great drawings that Brandon is entering in an art contest. Thank you for solving the codes, Brandon. We are glad that you enjoyed it, and the Usborne Hotshot Lettering book is on its way to you!

Crack the Code Contest

This week, we read about the first writing of the Sumerians and the Egyptians. The children each read a book about the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. For a fun Friday activity, Evan, Matthew and Sophie colored some paper to resemble papyrus, and using a very simplified hieroglyphics alphabet, they each wrote down a hieroglyphic message to decode. Scroll down, if you like, to look at their writing, and take a crack at decoding their messages! Also included below is a copy of the alphabet that they used. I will send a prize (see below) to the first person to contact me (see sidebar for contact info.) with all of the messages translated into complete English sentences. Please do not post the answers as a comment! Have fun!

Click on the pictures to view larger.

Clue: Hieroglyphics do not have spaces between the words or punctuation. Since there is no letter "C" in hieroglyphics, a "K" is used instead. The kids chose not to be too tricky and wrote from left to right, though hieroglyphics can even be written right to left or in vertical columns!

The Prize:
The winner may pick from one of the following books!

Who's the Dummy?

Saturday evening, we attended a dinner held in honor of our pastor, Bob, and his wife who are leaving our congregation to start a work in Laramie, Wyoming.   On a few different occasions in the past, Bob has entertained the congregation with ventriloquism acts that he performs with a dummy.

Saturday afternoon, our family put together a skit spoofing Pastor Bob's ventriloquism act which James and the kids "performed" at the dinner.  While neither the staging or the taping are well done, some may enjoy seeing the video:

Playing Scramble

Maybe we are an oddity as a homeschooling family in that we did not own a Scrabble game until last week. The kids and I bought the game for James for his birthday. Evan came up with the idea, remembering that his dad had mentioned quite awhile ago that we should get that game sometime.

We enjoyed playing the game tonight. Sophie was initially going to be on the "girls' team" with me, but then decided to keep score. She did a great job of adding up everyone's points as we played. Logan, getting to be quite the big boy, sat with us. He gets steadier with sitting up every day. Matthew had a hand ready behind him, though, because Logan leaned back when smiling at me for this picture:


Click on the picture for a closer view.

He didn't fall over!

Evan was quite happy that he could use a Latin "derivative" in the course of the game:

As we neared the end of the game, a player accidently bumped the board while playing with Logan, knocking all the words askew. It was a good point at which to stop for bedtime.

Recent Birthday Party/ Game Day

The kids were recently invited to a costume/birthday party/ game day attended by 17 kids total. Here they are dressed up and ready to go:

The birthday boy:

Little party girls:

Six warriors:

Playing "Duck, Duck, Goose":

Playing "Set":

The kids also enjoyed whacking a pinata!

One of the moms who attended the party has ideas for two other group activities. She wants to host a tea at her house in December when she will bring out her fine china and teach the kids about manners. (As I have reminded Evan lately, "If you don't mind your manners, someone else will.") She also had the idea of a "Junior Toastmasters" get-together where the kids will recite a verse or poem or read a selection aloud for each other. I volunteered to host that activity on November 30th.

Miscellaneous

Two days ago, Sophie learned how to get her bike started herself. She rode around our cul-de-sac for an hour. It was so cute to see her riding full tilt, legs pumping like pistons, a content smile on her lips. We went for a long walk with the kids riding their bikes yesterday evening before supper. One of the neighbors commented: "She looks too little to be riding a bike."

I let the boys play "War" with playing cards to review addition math facts this week. Evan was getting competitive, exclaiming: "I'm gonna win! I'm gonna win!"

I remarked "Wouldn't it be funny if Matthew won all of the cards?"

As the game progressed, Matthew indeed won hand after hand. In the end, he had won all the cards! What are the odds?!

I told Evan that he had "asked for it", because of his gloating. He too was good-naturedly happy that it had happened that way.

The Barbie Dream House behind us (the house painted to look like a Pepto Bismol bottle) is getting painted gray. Woo Hoooooo!!!!!

We visited the new Broomfield Thrift Store this week and found some gems in the book section: Sense and Sensibility, My Side of the Mountain, The Moffats, Treasures in the Snow, a Sugar Creek Gang book, and a book of 49 kids' experiments with electricity and magnetism.

Odyssey Atlasphere

James and I decided to buy an Oddysey Atlasphere off of eBay. It is a computerized globe with a pen that you can touch on the globe and learn facts about the world. It also has games where you can play with more than one player, competing to find places on the globe. It is a hit with the kids. Matthew even twirls our "regular" globe around during Evan's turn and finds the places that the voice tells Evan to find. It is a hit with the big kids too... James and I had fun playing against each other the other night after the kids were in bed. He he.

The Kids At Play

Yesterday, the kids were pretending that Sophie was Cinderella. Matthew was a rebel in the court, shouting "Overthrow her! Overthrow her!"

Today, when James was gone mowing the church lawn, the boys got out their woodworking "kits" on their own and built thrones (stools) for Sophie. They decorated one of them with stickers and pictures and labeled it "Princess Sophie".