This year for Christmas the girls decided to have a party for all their friends up at the resturant. I was thrilled because it spared my house and we were able to give out all their presents to their friends all at one time. The kids were just excited to spend time together.


One of the first things they did while waiting for the rest of the friends to arrive was to have a silly string fight. Even the dads got in on the fun. They were being sillier than the kids. The one part they did not like was having to clean up the silly string afterwards.

This was actually toward the end of the party while the girls were eating. See all the sprite bottles on the table those make the cutest little ornaments. The project that they are working on is a wood craft from Home Depot. It is a bank that has 3 compartments one for spending, one for sharing, and one for savings.

It was a relaxing day spent with friends we have not visited with in a while.

December is here...

and so is the cold weather. I normally don't mind but working the window at the resturant is very cold when the wind starts blowing.

Kathryn had her first stomach bug of the year...thank goodness it only lasted for 24 hours. Why is it if a child is going to get sick they do it in the middle of the night when you are soound asleep. Later that morning she said her stomach was hurting I wasn't sure if it was from throwing up or hunger because nothing else was in her tummy. She tried to eat a little something and I told her to take sips of water so she would not throw up and she would stay hydrated. She learned the hard way if you take gulps you will see it again.
She woke up this morning saying "mommy I only ate 2 bites of soup and some bread yesterday I'm starrrrrrrving" My over dramatic child. She probably is hungry though.
She is missing school today to rest up some more but I think she will survive this one.

Outside decorations

The outside is decorated for Christmas. Now to finish the inside.

gingerbread houses

Kathryn, Grace and Samantha put together these houses and decorated them.

Sam's house

Grace's house

At the Mary Brogan Museum they have a dinosaur exhibit with wonderfully realistic animatronics.

The babies were Kathryn's favorite part of this.

Rex was exciting.

I loved having today to spend with Tom and Kathryn. I saw more smiles out of my husband today than I have in a long time.

Long necks are Kathryn's favorite dinosaurs.

I do my best to make Kathryn's educational experience as diverse as possible. We have been studying Landscapes, Seascapes, and Cityscape in art. For landscapes we used construction paper. When we did Seascapes we painted with water colors. today for cityscape we took a walk around downtown Tallahassee and Kathryn snapped pictures of her choosing. This first one is of the fountain, one of Kathryn's favorite places downtown.

This is the view in the parking garage....

....here is what it looks like from the outside.Here is the capital building of Tallahassee.

This side street looked like it had once been a road that they had made into a walk way. Kathryn played hopscotch going up it.

She thought this hotel would be a cool pic.

We snapped all kinds of different things downtown.

I snapped this one while crossing the street. Thomas fussed at me to get out of the road but it was a one way street and no one was coming...as you can see.

I am not sure which building this is but it looked cool.

On Brunough St there is this outdoor amphi-theatre. I am not sure of anyone uses it anymore but it would be cool of someone would.

After the walk around downtown we went to the Mary Brogan Museum to see the Dinosaur exhibit.

Flag Fieldtrip

While working at the resturant I met Mr Herrod. He is with the local VFW post 3308. I was talking to him about the flag and he said that they do a 40 hour class on the history of, display of and retirement of the flag. I asked him if he could shorten the class for a group of home school kids. He said sure he could get it down to an hour. I set one up for Thursday and one for Sunday. The man is very informative but obviously not used to doing children because sometimes he talked over their heads but gave lots of good information. I learned things I did not know.
This flag was being flown over a local business and they brought it to the VFW for retirement.

Mr Herrod told us that as the flag is being made at the factory the fabric touches the floor all the time while they are making the stripes and then the cannon( blue with stars ) but as soon as the cannon touches the stripes the flag is born and it can no longer touch the ground. In order to retire the flag you must take the cannon off and then it is just fabric and can be burned.
After the flag is burned they gather the ashes and take them to the cemetary. They have a plot there where they bury all the flags that they retire. while it is being buried they play Taps.

When this part was over we went back in and had a tour of the little museum they have of the different armed services.

Papasan chair

Here are the pics I promised of Kathryn sleeping in her Papasan Chair.

Mary Brogan

Last summer as a gift for helping with VBS the director gave me a gift certificate for a year membership to the Mary Brogan Museum. It is a very cool Science and Art Center. Last week we invited our friends Grace and Ms Eva to go with us. We started out on the bottom floor that had a dinosaur exhibit going up. We were only able to peek around the corners because it ws not fully ready for tours.

On the second floor we played with all the science experiments. We are discussing simple machines in science so I made sure we talked about these principals as we walked around. Kathryn's favortite place int he museum is where they have the live fish and other undersea creatures.

The funny thing about this picture was I took it several times trying to show what was going on. As you can see the wheel has red and blue on it. When you spin the wheel it blends to be purple and no matter how many pics I took I could never get a shot of the purple.

This is an example of a pulley. You sit down and lift your own weight. There are three different seats with different numbers of pulley's. Of course the one with the most pulley's is easier to use and it took the girls( and us ) a few minutes to figure that out. Eva and I also took our turns at it. We did not get as high as the kids but we did get our feet off the ground.

After we left the museum we went to Lake Ella park to have a picnic lunch. We fed the duck, fish, pigions, and turtles as well as our own tummies.
This day was a mixture of emotions. Kathryn has been asking to go to the places for awhile but because of everything going on in our lives we have not had the time to do it, But because Danny was in the hospital we could go to the museum and I felt guilty because he was there and we could go. Everyone says it is a normal reaction but that doesn't stop the feelings.

We did enjoy our day with our friends.

The new baby

This is Bella. Doesn't she just look like the cats meow. She thinks she is the best thing since slice bread. Well now she has a little competition for Kathryn's time and she is not a happy camper.

This is Angel, the newest addition to our family. Don't know what possessed me but she just captured my heart the first time I saw her.
If you had ever asked me before what kind of animal I would have as an adult, a cat would have been way down on my list but I am finding out that I like cats. Once you train them what they are and are not allowed to jump onto they mind most of the time.

Angel is still all kitten and likes to play all the time. Kathryn wants to hold her like a baby but all she wants to do is play. We are working on that.

When Angel first came over from next door Kathryn would put her in the stroller and take her for walks because she would not jump out of the stroller. Now she won't have any part of it. We gave her a ball of yarn to play with. This will probably come back to bite me but she was so cute batting it all over the living room.