Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was a beautifully sunny day, if very cold. We decided to go sledding. We hadn't had fresh snow for several days so we could feel the bumps, but we still had a lot of fun. Alyssa made it over the jump once. Everyone else was too chicken to try.

After sledding, we got cleaned up and then went to Emma and Josh's for a great dinner and games.

This slope may look pretty gentle, but it's actually quite steep.

Kate decided to dispense with the sled and go down penguin style.

Gingerbread village

This year, instead of doing one (or several) big gingerbread houses, we decided to do a gingerbread village. I think they were really cute and it was definitely easier to find places to put these than several of the larger houses.

Alex got bored with his really fast, and as Maya stopped by just as we were getting started, she finished decorating his for him. Grandma also got in on the fun. As you can see from the pictures, our decorating styles tended to reflect our personalities.

Kate's gingerbread house reminded me of one of those houses you see at Christmastime with lights strung on every tree and an inflatable Santa in the front garden. She tried to cover every spot. I love her wreath and the little tree in the corner with "lights" on it.

Grandma's house was also very festive, with lights on the tree outside and "Merry Christmas" written on the roof.

Maya's house is supposed to be an inn, but the kids thought the shape was more like an outhouse. I wonder if we are the first people to ever have a gingerbread outhouse.

My house (actually, I think it's a church).

Alyssa's house - simple, but with attention to detail.

The whole village.

A Christmas Carol

I've probably wanted to go to the Hale Center Theater's production of A Christmas Carol for the last ten years and I finally managed to go with the kids about a week before Christmas. We had such a great time. Even though there are some scary parts of the play, you can't help feeling a warm glow at the end and I think we each walked out of there feeling a little more of the spirit of Christmas.

Ebenezer Scrooge

Tiny Tim

We started reading the book about a week before we went, but only got as far as the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Present. I would have liked to finish the whole thing, but with the kids' busy schedules, it was hard to find time when we were all home in the evening to read together. I hope they will still be interested in finishing it now that Christmas is over. We read a little more tonight, but I confess I got drowsy and started slurring my words - a sure sign that we need to continue another time!

This is the copy of the book we are reading - a gift from Barbie several Christmases ago. The illustrations by P.J. Lynch are gorgeous.

I'm glad we were at least able to get started with the book, since it really seemed to help Kate follow the play. She was quite scared of Marley's ghost, but Alex thought the way the ghost's face showed on the door knocker was really cool. He and I are still debating about how we think they were able to do that.

Kate's baptism

Sweet little Kate was baptized on December 5th by her Grandpa Mike. It snowed that morning, and I told Kate the world had dressed in white for her baptism. She shared the day with two other 8-year-olds from our church, and that actually turned out to be a really nice experience. Kate watched them get baptized first and so by the time it was her turn, her cousins were all really excited. When she was getting ready to head into the baptismal font, she could hear lots of little children's voices calling out, "Kate - it's Kate's turn!" She was touched by all of the family and friends who showed up to support her.

So now my baby has been baptised. She also got her Faith in God booklet and has been reading it and thinking about the goals she wants to set. She has such a sweet spirit and we are so blessed to have her in our family.

Kate's 8th birthday

Kate had a Harry Potter party for her 8th birthday. Thanks to everyone who dressed up - it was a lot of fun. Thanks especially to you Corinne for all your help (including taking these pictures).

The sorting ceremony. Kate was in Gryffindor, of course.

Dad will probably kill me for posting this photo, but I thought he made a great Ollivander.
The wand chooses the wizard (but Ollivander knew which wand this little witch wanted).

Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions

Charlie Weasley filling in at Honeydukes for the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans taste testing.

With robes, wands, and sacks of wizard gold, we were ready to go to Hogwarts.

First, giant bug racing in Care of Magical Creatures.




Charlie was filling in for Hagrid.

The next class was Charms. The students learned how to make things fly with the Wingardium Leviosa charm. Alyssa was a great teacher.

If you look carefully in the following picture, you can see the droplets suspended in the air, trailing Joshua's film canister (which was probably up near the ceiling - he was very good at this spell).

If you look at Morgan's pants, you can see Maya's white film canister on its way up.


Ethan's film canister is flying too, in the upper left of the picture.

Potions class was next. The kids made green slime.

After potions, the kids went to Ancient Runes to decipher a message. Then it was out onto the grounds to act as the whomping willow and beat that Ford Anglia to pieces.

Sorry, Mr. Weasley - I think this one is beyond repair.

A steaming cauldron of root beer - I mean, butter beer...

Kate joined in the singing of Happy Birthday.
Presents!

Halloween

I'm just going to post some pictures as I don't have a lot of time to write about Halloween. Alyssa dressed up as Spock, even though she wasn't trick-or-treating. She had a party at the house with some friends instead. Alex dressed up as Captain Kirk (you can tell Dad got to them, can't you?), and Kate was Hermione Granger.

Messy hair is part of the Hermione costume, right?

Yes, I made her robe, even though I'm really not much of a seamstress. The tie is my old school tie that I wore to kindergarten in England.

Once Halloween was over, it was time to get ready for Kate's party. I think Kate had more fun preparing for the party than she did at the actual event. She and Alyssa made a lot of wands. (Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of Kate making wands.) She also helped me with the wax seals on the invitations. She had several lists written out with names of who she wanted to invite and which house they should be sorted into. She really is a planner.

When we said in the invitations that we would await her friends' owls, we had no idea anyone would actually reply by owl. But Morgan left this very cute owl (with a note pinned to the wing) on our doorstep to let us know she could attend. Kate was thrilled with it.

A rare post about me

I mostly see this blog as a way to let family and friends know about what's going on in my kids' lives - and sometimes those lives get so full that I don't have time to update them here. Our summer was busy, but I think the kids had a nice break from school.

I had to take a fiction writing class, which was awful. I left that class having learned one thing - I can't write. At least, I can't write fiction. All my private hopes about authoring a novel were checked and by the end of the term I felt I had no choice but to resign myself to the fact that my only creative outlet (and source of income) would be teaching.

That still may be true, but a class I am now taking in teaching writing has taught me more about writing in a week and a half than that summer class taught me at all. I'm excited about writing again.

Our first writing experience involved a childhood memory, and I thought I would share it here since it may also be a memory for some of you and since writing is meant to be shared.

Rain Dance

Rain plinked on the roof, falling slowly at first and then with gathering speed.

“It’s raining…” someone whispered, tentatively. And then louder: “It’s raining!”

…

When we moved out to the bush in the mid spring of my third grade year, it was already blisteringly hot. A sun-hardened dirt driveway cut across the brown and bindi-infested lawn to a house that, though shaded by gums, stifled inside. It must have afforded some respite from the heat, though – spiders larger than my father’s outspread hand retreated indoors and sought refuge on the blank white walls.

The land was parched. We arrived in the middle of a drought that had already extended three years, but my British-born Dad was tempted out of reason by a tract of land that was larger than any he’d owned before – tempted more, perhaps, by the challenge inherent in an old-timer’s warning “not to expect anything to grow in that climate.”

Dad bought and planted a hundred trees.

It might not have been so bad if we had been connected to the town water. But back then, the whole area survived on the water collected in corrugated iron rainwater tanks. We had two.

They stood to the right of the house, and the space between the tanks and the brick exterior was about the only cool place around. I claimed the spot with my sisters and we made a “member’s only” club hung with decorations scavenged from Mum’s sewing basket. Brick, concrete and iron shaded us from the sun.

Since water was always scarce, we supplemented our supply by ordering in truckloads from the town. In those early days, it was probably the only source of water we had. The big noisy truck would back up to the tanks and a large black hose, swollen with life, pumped our tanks full again. At twenty dollars a load and with barren skies, it wasn’t cheap. I would watch as my mother handed over the twenty dollar note to the truck driver, anxiety etched on her still young face.

Mum employed us to keep track of the water levels. “Go and see how much water we have, Sara,” she would say, and I would trudge barefoot to the tank, press my ear against the cool metal side, and start knocking. When the dull thud changed to a hollow clang, I knew I had found the level. I would count up the concentric rings made by the rippled tank sides and report back to Mum. Three rings…four rings…sometimes seven rings, but it was never very high.

We found ways to conserve the water – turning the tap off while brushing our teeth, catching the water from the washing machine and using it on the garden, saving the bathwater from one child to use for the next and then again for the next. We bathed once a week, despite the dust encouraged by the drought.

And then there were the trees.

Dad was in danger of losing them all to the unrelenting Australian sun, but he was determined not to be beaten. One Saturday morning saw our whole family strung across the garden in assembly-line fashion, buckets in hand, emptying the flimsy above-ground swimming pool one bucket load at a time and watering the trees manually.

It was hard work for an eight-year-old. The sweat made rivulets down the sides of my cheeks and neck, flies plagued my face, and the weight of the buckets pulled at my back and arms and shoulders. When we were finished, there was no swimming pool to retreat to, but dad compensated with a rare trip to the ice cream parlor in town.

Dad was at work in an air-conditioned office in the city the day the drought broke, but I was inside playing with my sisters when the first drops of rain struck the roof. “It’s raining, it’s raining!” we all called to each other and ran outside to witness, to feel the wetness on our faces. The earth had forgotten how to receive water and the hard, heavy rain bounced off the unyielding ground. It splashed up against our bare feet and legs, soaked through our thin t-shirts, and plastered hair unflatteringly to our faces – and we danced.

We laughed and danced around the scrawny lemon tree behind the house and Mum danced with us. A rain dance, not intended to bring rain but to worship it. We felt the rain on our tongues and in our embraces and in our laughter. And all the while we sang, “It’s raining! It’s raining!”

Kate's schedule

I found this "To do" list by Kate's bed this morning. I think she must have written it last night, so this is her plan for today:

1. go to Skcoole
2. do home wrok
3. play with dilany (should be Delaney)
4. eat diner
5. get redy for beed
6. reed notyest gril agen & Cam ("The Naughtiest Girl, Again" - the book I'm reading to her - and "Cam Jansen" - the book she's reading to me)
7. go to bed
8. have a dream about cheryhill & Harry Potter

The last one's my favorite. I think she's excited about going to Cherry Hill this weekend!

Isn't soccer supposed to be a no-contact sport?

Alex called from school on Friday to see if I could pick him up because he had smacked heads with another kid when they were playing soccer at lunchtime. They had both been trying to head the same ball. He sounded as though he was trying really hard not to cry, so I knew it must have hurt, but I didn't expect this:



These pictures were actually taken the next day when the bruising around his eye was worse but the swelling had gone way down. When I first saw him, his face was badly swollen and he had more bruising on his cheekbone.

I'm glad it wasn't Alyssa's face. The week before, she had been knocked to the ground when she took a ball to the face during soccer. I don't think she would have been quite as impressed with the bruises as Alex was. Needless to say, he thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Happy birthday, Aunty Ruth

When I was a child, birthdays always came with presents, cake and a birthday card from Aunty Ruth. I'm sure she has never missed a single one of my birthdays and now that I have children, she also remembers theirs.

Even though we have lived on opposite sides of the globe for most of my life, Ruth has always managed to bridge the distance and offer the support and love of extended family. One of my earliest memories is of Christmas (and Christmas dinner) at her house in England.

I loved the time she and Gordon spent with us in Australia - I seem to remember her spoiling us all with attention. Her more frequent trips to the U.S. and my visit to her in England have let me get to know Ruth as an adult - so hospitable and kind and generous and attentive to everyone else.

Ruth is still involved in our lives, reading all of our blogs (even though we have some very prolific writers in the family), and often being the first one to comment. She is a fantastic aunt.

We wish there were some way for us to repay all of the kindnesses you have shown us over the years. We love you, Ruth. Have a wonderful 70th birthday.

Hugs and kisses from Sara, Alyssa, Alex and Kate