The Best Way to Wake Up

     This morning Josh and I awoke a little earlier than usual (we had gone to bed earlier, too), which meant we had extra time for snuggling up together. Drifting in and out of sleep together like this is my favourite to begin with, and then the cutest little blonde-haired kid with yesterday's now lopsided pigtails came in with her footie pajamas on and started telling us about the dreams she'd had of reindeers and pixie dust. She asked us about our dreams, offering ideas of what she thought we should have been dreaming of. And after all sharing a night's worth of dreams, Josh got out of bed she climbed in beside me and we snuggled some more.
"Mommy? Smell my lips."
*smell lips* .... "They don't really smell like anything..."
"They're fresh!"

Rachel's Readathon!

   Rachel's nursery school is doing a readathon for their fundraiser this year, which is good, because I could use the encouragement to read to Rachel. I read with Laura a lot, but Rachel doesn't have much of an attention span for reading, so this is good motivation for us to try a little harder!
It's called the 2-4-6 Fundraiser because the readathon lasts two weeks, where you read with your child for a total of four hours (24 minutes each day), and you need to get six sponsors to donate a dollar per hour of reading (so four dollars from each sponsor).

I'm going to try not to repeat books with her (though she definitely has her favourites!) and I'll be keeping track of our reading log here:

Monday, October 5th    0:15
This Little Piggy Went Dancing
Crankenstein
Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

Tuesday, October 6th    0:33 (+ 0:12 at school)
Tumble Bumble
Strawberry Shortcake The Berry Bitty Princess Pageant
Pete the Cat Big Easter Advendture
Pete the Cat Valentine's Day is Cool
Pumpkins
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Alligator Pie

Wednesday, October 7th     0:30
The Kissing Hand
We're Going On a Bear Hunt
There Was an Old Lady
Are You There, Bear?
Posy
Hairy Mclary's Rumpus at the Vet
Dora Goes to School
Little White Dog

(When I was putting Rachel to bed, she said her favourite part of the day was reading!)

Thursday, October 8th  (0:12 at school)

Friday, October 9th 0:25
The Very Fairy Princess
The Longest Hair in the World
Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses

Saturday, October 10th 0:24
Boo Hoo Bird
I love You For You
Big Bad Wolf is Good
The Longest Hair in the World

Sunday, October 11th 0:12
The Giant Next Door
Curious George and the Pizza Party

Monday, October 12th

Tuesday, October 13th  0:11 (+ 0:12 at school)
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Wednesday, October 14th 0:23
Pumpkin Light
Kindergarten Count to 100
Fancy Nancy Explorer Extraordinaire

Thursday, October 15th  0:17 (+ 0:12 at school)
The Giving Tree
In A People House
Dora: Tale of the Unicorn King
Alligator Pie

Friday, October 16th    0:16
Alligator Baby
Boo Hoo Bird
Pajama Time
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

Apparently Josh has also read to her over the course of the last two weeks, but he didn't record what he read or for how long. So our grand total is 4:14 and with only a couple of repeats!

School on Sunday

     We have recently started reading the modern Amelia Bedelia novelette series, and the second book is all about Amelia's adventures with dogs. This has sparked an interest in Laura about different breeds of dogs. We were googling images of different dog breeds, and Laura was especially interested in Bloodhounds because they were featured in the book (she may or may not have pretended to be a Bloodhound on our walk to and from the library story/ craft time, complete with pretend peeing on people's lawns!). She is also now lobbying for us to get a Teacup Pomeranian (the 'teddy bear' dogs). I told her I don't like little dogs, but that she can get whatever kind of dog she likes when she moves out. (She has not accepted this as an answer, but I think we have compromised that if she saves up her allowance she can get one.) ;)

doggy's blurry because no flash allowed

     I was telling my mom about Laura's interest in different dog breeds and asking for suggestions on how we could explore it further. She suggested we go to a dog show. We looked up where we could go watch a dog show locally, and found there was an agility competition close by today. So we took the girls to go watch the different dog breeds run the agility course, and some of them even got ribbons, just like the dogs in the book!  There wasn't actually a huge variety of breeds there, and we definitely didn't see any Bloodhounds or Pomeranians, but who knows, maybe we will still get a chance to see them someplace else. Perhaps we should take a trip to the dog park? We also went to the mall and visited the calendar store, which had an entire wall of different dog breed calendars, so we spent a long time discussing and looking at those. Its so fascinating to me how many subject areas you can incorporate into these discussions (genetics re: my mom's mixed breed pup, math re: how long will you have to save your allowance to afford a puppy, economics re: supply and demand pricing, etc.). Mom also lent us her huge encyclopedia of dogs, and suggested making a matching game with pictures of different dog breeds so Laura will be able to learn their names if she wants. I'll probably work on that tonight. We also are planning to visit the pound this week (Amelia Bedelia ends up getting a pound puppy at the end of the book.) Who knows, maybe we will buy her the Teacup Pomeranian.... calendar. For Christmas. ;)

    I just adore being able to have our village educate my children; having my mom be an active participant in Laura's schooling is so great. I can't imagine Laura being in school all day and not having the time or resources to fully dive into her interests as they arise - I love being able to educate her this way. Even (especially?) on a Sunday. 

Fall Fair or Bust

     Laura decided last weekend, after starting to learn a new song, that she wanted to sing in the talent show at the fall fair. So we worked hard this week practicing it every day, and I quickly scrounged together a costume for her. And then last night after dinner, she started to lose her voice. She has had a bit of a cough, thanks to the Infamous Back To School Cold, but we put her to bed and hoped she would be better in the morning. She slept an extra 1.5 hours, and seemed all right this morning, so we decided to proceed. (If her voice wasn't well enough to sing, I was just going to pull her from the show and send her to the cheer practice she was going to otherwise miss.) We arrived early to hand in our registration form and give them her music. We got her in costume and had her run through it once more before she went on stage. That was when her voice started cracking again. I was feeling especially anxious, as I always do when she is going to perform (I'm sure I must be more nervous than she is!), and now this. Ugh. So we sat there waiting for her turn, and finally when they called her up, they played the wrong music! She stood there, not really knowing what to do. The MC finally said that didn't sound like the music for Good Ship Lollipop and asked me to go see the sound guy. The sound guy tried to blame me for providing the wrong music. I knew 100% for sure I had given him the correct music, and double checked on the laptop we brought. I gave it back to him and he got it figured out. (No apology.) Meanwhile they had another performer go on, and when she was finished it was Laura's turn again. The correct music played this time, but after about the first verse, her song started to skip and glitch. For the entire rest of the song. (I'm going to blame the rude sound guy for that, too, since the song never ever once skipped for us while we practiced all week.) Her voice did crack a bit on the higher notes, however, she did an absolutely fabulous job of "the show must go on!" and kept right on singing. The whole thing was devastating for me, but she seemed relatively unphased by it. We watched the video with Laura when we got home and she said, "I was a little embarrassed when the sound did that." And that was it. I was definitely more upset about it than she was. We had worked so hard all week for it, only to bust once show time arrived. It was especially disappointing since she was actually pretty good at the song, and circumstances out of our control foiled her performance. Oh well, I guess we'll call it a character building experience. Luckily, when she was practicing earlier in the week (before her voice started to go), Josh had her practice with a microphone so she would be used to keeping her mouth the right distance from it, and we have a recording of it:

     Possibly the worst part of the night was when we tried to leave the talent show (the kids had waited for a long time already, and they really wanted to go to the midway), and the MC told us we should stick around for the judging. We hadn't even eaten dinner yet, and Rachel needs to be in bed by 8:30, so we didn't really want to sit around that hot and stuffy building all evening when we had paid to see the rest of the exhibits. Two hours later, we were literally holding the kids back, when they finally got around to announcing the winners. Laura didn't win anything, and we wasted all that time trying to keep our kids quiet while boring politicians droned on about nothing we cared about.
We quickly went on a couple rides after and bought the kids some cotton candy. Josh and I grabbed a quick bite to eat and we walked through the animal buildings on our way out. The fair was a huge disappointment for me this year.

Dinner W

I can't believe we are nearing the end! If I'm being honest, I'm getting a little lazy trying to incorporate everything I can find starting with the letter, and W has a surprising amount to choose from. We missed several things that could have potentially been used, but we ended up with:

wienerschnitzel garnished with watercress

wild rice

wax beans

whole wheat waffles

whipped cream

watermelon

and, of course, WINE! White wine, even! (The children had water)

2nd Annual Cousins' Weekend

     This weekend was our Second Annual Cousin's Weekend with Josh's Dad's side of the family. The forecast called for rain all weekend, and boy did it deliver! However, we had been complaining about the heat, so I suppose it was due? Last year it was rainy too. Fortunately, there is what they call a super structure on the farm where they can keep equipment and things out of the rain, and those of us that were tenting were able to pitch under there. So at least we could sleep where it was dry.

     Most of us didn't show up until Saturday (two nights in the rain might have been too much), but one of Josh's cousins pointed out, "There aren't many people I would come to hang out with in the rain." Have I mentioned how much love this family? Because I love this family, they are such a bunch of gentlemen in a non-condescending way. I was given a jagerbomb while drinks were being handed out (which contained RedBull), and subsequently stayed up until 3am around the fire with a select few. But, as I mentioned before, I love this family, and even though we are two for two on rainy weekends, it is so worth it.

     The girls always have fun getting to play with their cousin Ellery, and she has cousins from her other side who join us, as they just live down the road. They had fun playing in the top of the garage this year in and among the berry boxes.

On the way home we have made a tradition of stopping at The Big Apple for some pie in the morning. Summer is officially over for us now. Bring on fall!

Dinner V

For V dinner we had a few options, but not a lot. We ended up having:

veal
vegetables
vermicelli
velveeta


vanilla icing
velvet cake

(I considered V8 to drink, but both Josh and Rachel can't do tomato-based things well, intestinally speaking, and I was pretty sure none of us would like it anyway, so I skipped it. I've also started trying to keep to a tighter grocery budget, and didn't want to waste money on it if no one was going to like/ drink it.)