An Illustrated Life

While we were in California, I was talking to my in-laws about the girls, and I mentioned that although Willow is a natural and avid reader, I was a bit stymied in my efforts to encourage her to write more.

I'd like the girls to be able creative writers, but the mechanical skills that I was attempting to de-emphasize in order to focus on the act of creation were the very skills that Willow, because she reads so well, was focusing on to great detriment. She couldn't get so much as a single sentence down because her writing looked wrong to her--misspelled, imperfect punctuation--but the effort to have every word spelled for her, to even know what capital letters and periods and commas are, not to mention where they should go so that the sentence would look like it was supposed to...could a child even remember what she was writing about with all those distractions?

I'd introduced invented spelling to Willow quite a while ago, but I was having trouble getting her to use it, and I told my in-laws that what I really needed was a way to get Willow excited enough about writing that she'd be willing to try out invented spelling long enough to learn that she liked it, because I thought that she'd like it.

"Journaling," said Grandma Janie. "Willow would like to journal."

And you know what? She does.

During my big Lakeshore Learning shopping spree (I did have a coupon, but still...that may have been January's grocery budget that got consumed there), I bought one journal for each of the girls. Each page of Sydney's journal has a big space for a picture, and a couple of lines underneath it for writing. Each page of Willow's journal as a smaller space for a picture and more lines for writing. The girls began to journal on our trip and we've continued it at home. I keep the journals and some fine-point markers at our living room table, and every evening after the girls have finished dinner and have cleared their places, but while we're all still at the table on account of Matt and I haven't finished gossiping, I pass out the journals and the markers and the girls begin to think about their day.

They write about what they've been reading:

Magic School Bus, by Sydney

 Where they've been that day:

I Walked in the Petrified Forest, by Willow

 Who they've played with:

Grandma Beck, by Sydney

What they've seen:

I Saw the Stars, by Willow

What they wish they'd seen:

This is Gracie Doing a Cartwheel, by Sydney

Their pets--they write a LOT about their pets:

This is Spots and Gracie, by Willow

And their greatest accomplishments:

We Cooked a Turkey, by Sydney

When I first introduced this activity to them, back in that hotel room just south of the Grand Canyon (the subject of Sydney's first-ever journal entry), Willow asked why we were doing this.

I did not tell her that it was to improve her writing skills.

Instead, I said, when you're great grown-up ladies, you'll want to know what your life was like back when you were a little girl. You'll look through this journal then, when you're all grown up, and you'll remember.

You'll be so happy, then, that your mother made you keep a journal. Now get to it!

A Life with Less Spillage and More Color Mixing

When we were in California, at the very start of our impromptu and unruly road trip, I dumped the girlies off with their grandparents for an evening and did myself some California shopping. You might be surprised to know that the Silicon Valley has stores that America's Corn Basket does not. Shocking, no?

Ahem.

On that particular night, I had a coupon, and thus I did a lot of damage at Lakeshore Learning. I bought a couple of fun little stocking stuffers for the girls, but I tried to keep my cart stocked only with homeschool supplies that I thought would be truly useful for us in the coming year--math stuff, reading and writing stuff, no science stuff because the science stuff that I'd had my eye on was REALLY expensive, supplies and materials, etc.

I admit that I splurged a little on the no-spill paint cups, since they weren't exactly on my must-have list, but I have always wanted a set for the girls, and these were a better price than others I'd seen, AND the store was also selling a set of paintbrushes that exactly matched the cups. Soooooo organized!

A recent rainy day was the perfect time to set up our new paint supplies. I have a set of basic colors of tempera paint in gallon containers (one of the reasons that I'd wanted these no-spill paint cups was to save me the hassle of getting out six gallon jugs of paint and pouring them into small containers every time the girls want to paint, especially considering that the dispensers that came with the gallon jugs and are supposed to make paint dispensing a breeze do NOT make dispensing a breeze, and actually make dispensing impossible unless you take off the dispenser), but the no-spill cups allow for more colors, the secondary colors plus brown, so we also got to do a practical color-mixing project in order to get everything all set up nicely:

We've owned the Dick Blick student-grade tempera paint for about a year and a half now, and we're about halfway through each of our gallon jugs. Whenever I need to restock, I am definitely buying a higher-quality tempera, because one of the many little niggling things that bother me about this particular tempera is how unusual its color-mixing is. When the girls mixed together blue and red and stirred it up, they got brown instead of purple. Fortunately, when Willow mixed red and green and a little black in order to make brown-- 

she ended up with purple! Yay, because then I just switched the lids on the two containers so now we have the correct colors, but boo, not the best color-mixing homeschool lesson.

After a lot of mixing and a lot of mess--

--and yes, that's MY messy hand, not even a child's, of course we had to get down on the floor and try out our brand-new art supplies. I threw down loads of newspaper (which didn't do a thing; we still had to scrub the floor afterwards, which was perfectly fine with me, as then we had a clean floor) and got out our super-big Strathmore newsprint pads, and off the girls went to create and create and create.

 See the matching paintbrushes? I'm a big fan. I'm also glad that I got a picture of Sydney's beautiful, and accurate, rainbow, because you'll never believe what she did next:

 Night falls, apparently.

Part of the reason for the rainbow's demise, I believe, was an effort to mimic Willow's painting. She painted her entire canvas black, let it dry, then added her space scene:

 A clever composition, don't you think?

Painting kept the girls educated and entertained during that last hour or so before Matt got home, when I'm typically trying to cook dinner while fending off fights and kitchen invasions. Then we all cleaned up the paint, scrubbed the floor spic-and-span, cleaned the table, ate, cleared the table, and finally scrubbed the girls spic-and-span--paint in the hair, sure, but behind the ears?!?

After drying the girls off and combing their hair, Matt got distracted and neglected to finish putting the girls to bed right away. A little while later he grabbed the toothbrushes and went looking for kiddos. Willow was found pretty easily, but Sydney? Hmmm, where did that little Sydney get to?

We found her in the bin of felt scraps, fast asleep. She can brush her teeth in the morning, I suppose.

For This, Let Us be Truly Thankful

For the first time in our entire family's existence, we are:

1. Celebrating Thanksgiving.
2. Celebrating together, just us four.
3. Eating at home.

And thus Thanksgiving this year, like everything else in our lives of late, was a true adventure.

It wasn't as elaborate or as long-term as I'd originally planned, in light of our impromptu cross-country road trip, but the girls and I did make the much-desired thankful tree:

 A much-desired and enthusiastically-produced thankful tree, I should say:

Those no-spill paint cups that the girls are using? I've wanted them since the girls were born, I bought them while we were away on our trip, I LOVE them, and I'm going to tell you about them tomorrow.

Some years we eat Thanksgiving dinner with family, some years we go out to eat, one year we ate one of those Stouffer's family-sized lasagnas and then went to a sci-fi convention, but this year we cooked our own Thanksgiving feast. The menu consisted of:

Made-from-Scratch Yeast Rolls

 Honey Butter

Matt's Amazing Entire Turkey

 Including One Turkey Leg for Each Child

 Miso-Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Potatoes

 And, of Course, Two Kinds of Pie

Pie #1, obviously, was pumpkin, baked with my own fresh pumpkin puree. Pie #2 was, briefly, a pumpkin-brownie pie, until Matt opened the refrigerator door with too much emphasis and Pie #2 took a suicidal nose-dive onto the filthy kitchen floor. The little sous chefs and I were very sad, until Matt surprised us with a very non-traditional pumpkin-chocolate pie combination that was so insanely delicious that I'm going to ask him to make it again for me tomorrow so that we can write down the recipe and eat pumpkin-chocolate pie FOREVER!

I Did Mention the Entire Turkey, Yes?

Matt made the entire turkey, since I do not cook meat. I am dang grateful, however, that Matty and the kids have several weeks' worth of lunch meat in the freezer, and I do believe that tomorrow my suggestion that the carcass (ugh!) be boiled into turkey stock will be followed up upon by those who are willing to perform such kitchenly duties.

It was a happy, happy day. Some memories, such as the translation of Willow's thanksgiving leaf (which reads, by the way, "I am thankful that Gracie is purrsy"--ah, invented spelling!), may eventually fade--

-

--but other memories, happily, will be written into Life's Little Recipe Book to keep forever:

 So it's turkey carcass and pumpkin-chocolate pie tomorrow, but tonight, I think we may order pizza.

The Magic Tree House on Our Timeline (Updated August 2022)

Last night, they listened to this book while they fell asleep!

Note: I updated this post in August 2022 to include in my timeline list all the Magic Tree House books that had been published after November 2010. 

Dishes are in the dishwasher, laundry is in the washing machine, dinner is on the stove, one kid is playing LEGOs while the other kid reads on the couch, and the house that Matt painstakingly straightened while we were gone is trashed, trashed, TRASHED.

We must be home again!

We left a few projects in the lurch for our trip--our bat house, the thankful tree, the Disaster Dioramas of Pompeii and the Titanic, a whole slew of Spanish flashcards--and every now and then, as the kids decompress and I continue my manic run through the holiday craft fair season, we're picking them all back up again.

For instance, we finally finished a project that we've been working on for a while--putting all the Magic Tree House books in their proper spot on our huge basement timeline. Because the kids listen to the Magic Tree House audiobooks over and over again, they've gained quite a bit of historical and geographical knowledge, but it can be tough putting that into a wider context, and wider contexts is what I am all about.

So I sent Matt thumbnails of every Magic Tree House book cover for him to lay out and print, and I made a list of where each relevant book belongs on our timeline. Want to see my list? It's pretty great:

• #1 Dinosaur Before Dark--Cretaceous period
• #2 The Knight at Dawn--Middle Ages
• #3 Mummies in the Morning--2630 BCE to 2250 BCE
• #4 Pirates Past Noon--1690-1730
• #5 Night of the Ninjas--1336-1600
• #7 Sunset of the Sabertooth--Late Pleistocene period
• #8 Midnight on the Moon--2036
• #10 Ghost Town at Sundown--1850-1900
• #13 Vacation under the Volcano--79 CE
• #14 Day of the Dragon King--first century
• #15 Viking Ships at Sunrise--9th century
• #16 Hour of the Olympics--776 BCE-393 CE
• #17 Tonight on the Titanic--1912
• #18 Buffalo before Breakfast--1850-1900
• #21 Civil War on Sunday--1861-1865
• #22 Revolutionary War on Wednesday--12/25/1776
• #23 Twister on Tuesday--1870s
• #24 Earthquake in the Early Morning--1906
• #25 Stage Fright on a Summer Night--1558-1603
• #27 Thanksgiving on Thursday--1621
• #28 High Tide in Hawaii--11th century-1777
• #29 A Big Day for Baseball--1947
• #30 Hurricane Heroes in Texas--1930
• #31 Warriors in Winter--100s CE
• #32 To the Future, Ben Franklin!--1787
• #33 Narwhal on a Sunny Night--975-990
• #34 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #6) Season of the Sandstorms--prior to the 8th century
• #34 Late Lunch with Llamas--15th century
• #35 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #7) Night of the New Magicians--1889
• #35 Camp Time in California--1903
• #36 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #8) Blizzard of the Blue Moon--1938
• #37 Dragon of the Red Dawn--1185-1603
• #38 Monday with a Mad Genius--around 1500
• #39 Dark Day in the Deep Sea--1870s
• #41 Moonlight of the Magic Flute--1760
• #42 A Good Night for Ghosts--1916
• #43 Leprechaun in Late Winter--1860
• Merlin Mission #17 A Crazy Day with Cobras--1500-1600
• Merlin Mission #18 Dogs in the Dead of Night--1600s
• Merlin Mission #19 Abe Lincoln at Last--1861
• Merlin Mission #20 A Perfect Time for Pandas--2008
• Merlin Mission #21 Stallion by Starlight--340 BCE
• Merlin Mission #22 Hurry Up, Houdini!--1915
• Merlin Mission #23 High Time for Heroes--1849-1850
• Merlin Mission #24 Soccer on Sunday--1970
• Merlin Mission #25--Shadow of the Shark--before 1511
• Merlin Mission #26 Balto of the Blue Dawn--1925

Some books aren't included in the list because they don't take place in any particular time--wait with bated breath for our big geography project later on. We're also still reading the latest Magic Tree House, the one about Charles Dickens, and then we'll put that one on the timeline, too.

The little kid helped me cut out all the book cover thumbnails, then the big kid glued them onto the wall as I showed her where each one went. She coated each in an extra layer of glitter glue, just because, and then I went back and wrote in the timeline info:

I had no idea, until we actually started placing them, how many books Mary Pope Osborne had set in the latter half of the nineteenth century or so. If we ever move and thus need to do our timeline over again, remind me to set aside more room here just for her.

For a while the kids listened to this book over and over and over again--I think they found the part with the ghost thrilling:

 

I was going to encourage them to listen to Thanksgiving on Thursday, but I don't seem to have ripped the audio copy from a library CD yet. Fortunately, we own a paperback copy of the book, so perhaps we'll find time to read it out loud together today.

Interspersed with making Pilgrim paper dolls and the thankful tree and the dinner roll dough to freeze for Thursday, that is...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Travel Photojournal: Petrified Forest

At our last major stop of the trip, it's starting to get cold, we're starting to get tired, and oh, look! Is that rain in the distance?

 
 
 
 
 
 
Fortunately, we're still able to end on a high note.

We're taking brief stops to see the sights in Oklahoma City and visit with my folks in Arkansas, but then we're headed home!

Travel Photojournal: Meteor Crater

On the way to the Petrified Forest, we stopped at Meteor Crater:

 
 
 
 
Willow said that the crater wasn't as big as she'd thought it would be. I know that it's not much compared to the Grand Canyon, sure, but goodness! How much bigger do you need a mile-wide meteor crater to be, silly girl?

Next, we drive on to the Petrified Forest.

Travel Photojournal: Lowell Observatory

We walked in the footsteps of astronomers, looked up through the telescope that discovered Pluto, and ran the length of the solar system:

 
Then we bought one pumpkin spice latte and two kiddie hot chocolates and headed back to our cheap motel, where the girls ate cheddar bunnies and journaled about their day:

I thought that this picture was going to turn out to be a drawing of Clyde Tombaugh's Pluto telescope, but nope.

It's our motel room. Again.

Next up, we tromp through the Petrified Forest, taking only pictures, leaving only tromp-marks!