Just like in the other memories posts, this is Future Ticia 2023 combining and organizing posts to make a better blog.
We’ve got family in town
So, I expect to see lots of cousins playing. Like this display of teamwork to throw the giant rock in the stream.
Uncles chasing their niece and nephews.
Cheesey grins
Tired kids
So, if you don’t see me around her much, you’ll know why. Oh, that and I’m flying up to Denver for a funeral.
Hop over to Life With Moore Babies
I’m over there today with some easy tips on Nature Study.
Soaking wet kids are optional. (Future Ticia 2023 is leaving this because She still has a blog and I don’t want her to lose her backlink, and the picture is so gosh darn cute, I miss my little kids).
Making fairy houses
A few months ago we went to Zilker Park and looked at their fairy houses exhibit.
They were gorgeous, and we loved every minute of examining them. The detail and thought put into them is amazing.
What I loved even more? The kids immediately went home and started putting together their own fairy houses.
They gathered twigs, mud, so much mud, grass, acorn caps and set to work.
While their houses don’t have the skill and finesse of the ones at Zilker, I treasure them so much more.
They have my kids personality. Their interests in them. They made a princess, trees, dogs, ladders. All sorts of great homes.
It was great to see them playing like this.
Do your kids ever take ideas and run with it? I think mine spent a good week making stuff for their fairy houses.
Birthday kidnapping: Mission Spoil Your Wife
There are times I would defy anyone else to say they have a better husband. While I was out of town visiting my brother, Jeff got together with my best friends here in town and planned my birthday surprise. It started with my getting a text from Tara “What size dress do you wear? I’m looking at bridesmaid dresses.”
On my actual birthday I went out with Jeff and the kiddos. They had very carefully bought and wrapped my present. Complete with about 20 cards they’d stamped. I’d pull each one out, Jeff would take a picture, and the kids would explain what each one was. “Mommy, this one is the people at your wedding.” {stamps of monsters, what is he saying?}
Of course, this is the mess they left from the wrapping, which they had to go in and clean up later that day. Everything always seems to end up wrapped in Christmas paper, probably because that one roll has a dog that looks like ours.
Well, the Saturday after my birthday Jeff said, “I have errands to run, and I was thinking we could stop and get lunch somewhere, but first let’s go by Barnes and Noble.” Stop by the bookstore, yes please.
I had happily collected a stack of X-Men and Batman graphic novels when my friend Amanda comes in, says “I have something to show you,” and pulls me out to her car (I did not have my camera at the time, so this is obviously a much later picture).
I felt rather like the girl from Terminator, having the guy appear saying, “Come with me if you want to live.”
Then we went and got massages together and just happily chattered for an hour or two. As we came out Tara was there.
“Put this on,” and she gave me a new fancy dress. Then I was whisked off to Ulta for make-up. We spent an hour or so there, and they made me all fancy. Then Tami joined us.
I didn’t have my camera, or know to take pictures with my phone, so no pictures of Tami or getting my hair done. Tara has all of those photos, so this is Princess, Tara, and I at dinner that night.
Then we headed back to the house where I was beset by wandering monsters. Where after putting on jewelry I was swept off to dinner with all of my friends (minus Tami who had to attend her niece’s birthday party).
Where many photos were taken, because how often is everyone all dressed so fancy?
There was soooooo much food, and it was a lot of fun to have almost all of my friends together and we just talked and had so much fun. It’s pretty much the perfect birthday celebration.
All in all, I would have to say Jeff’s “Operation Spoil Ticia on her birthday” mission was an overwhelming success.
And that is the story of my birthday celebration. It can’t get much better than that.
Balloon bomb!
I found this in my draft folder, and had to dig it out. It cracked me up when it happened, and it still cracks me up now.
Last summer the church office my Mom works at was “balloon bombed,” that’s the best description I can give for it. A bunch of teens got together and filled the youth pastor’s office and the intern’s office all the way with balloons. When they opened the door the rest of the church office was filled to overflowing.
I got a desperate email from my Mom asking me to come pick up balloons and take them away. So, I headed up there with two giant trash bags to do my share with the monstrous balloon bomb.
The boys were off somewhere, so Princess thought this was a great opportunity to bury herself in balloons. There were several times I only knew she was in there because of the happy squeals.
So sometime, I’m planning on blowing up insanely large numbers of balloons and surprising the kids. I think it’ll make their day.
The first week of Advent
I feel kind of like I’m starting the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
On the first week of Advent the Time Lords gave to me…… (Oh my friend Amanda would be so proud of me for a Doctor Who reference, even if I don’t watch it, it’s one of the few sci-fi series I don’t really watch, more because Jeff has zero interest than anything else).
They gave me so much to do and so little time, and I do not have the ability to time travel, if I did can you imagine how cool history lessons would be? “Okay kids we’re off to see Cleopatra seduce Caesar today!” Bwa ha ha ha…..
But to back up, for Thanksgiving we headed up to Dallas because Tara’s wedding was only a few days later. My brother joined us at Jeff’s parents house. We celebrated Princess’ and Jeff’s birthdays again with a ridiculously chocolatey cake. Then we gave my brother a piece of pie with candles in it because his birthday was on Thanksgiving this year. Princess got a kick out of feeding her cousin food. The boys enjoyed wrestling with Uncle Sean, and were quite amazed to find some ice while we went on a walk with their granddad.
Then came the wedding of awesomeness, and so much to do on Saturday. A 7 hour drive back on Sunday morning, after helping take down the wedding decorations and a night of very little sleep. Too much emotion, and all that.
SCHOOL TYPE STUFF THIS WEEK
Superman is plowing through All About Reading 3 {affiliate link}, and pretty much masters every lesson as soon as he reaches it. He always loves the lessons that have games most, and so this most recent lesson (20?) had him happy as a clam because there was a race car and it was very game like.
Here’s an example of Superman’s reading. His voices as he reads make me so happy. I’m including it more because I’m a proud Mom than for any real other reason.
We are continuing through Saxon Math, but it’s hit that point where it’s a lot of things they don’t know, and they are not used to the spiral approach, so they are getting confused by constantly having something new, and something being dropped before they’ve completely mastered it. I’m still trying to decide if I like Saxon or not.
The rest of our lessons were rather perfunctory. We achieved Science, but it was more of a get through it type of lesson, than enjoyable and the usual hands on stuff. I’m feeling very behind and was just ready to be done with the digestive system. Well that, and it was the part of the digestive system dealing with elimination, GROSS. (This picture is completely unrelated, I just like it of Batman).
Hopefully today (as in after this post goes live), we’ll finish our history for the week.
CHRISTMAS STUFF
I was quite happy to add a Christmas Stuff column to my Illuminations schedule grid. Then I was even more excited when I discovered it is possible to make a column only appear for a set period of time (like say the 4 weeks of Advent, how cool is that?).
I’m hoping to have crafts and stuff to add each week in that column, but this week my additions were rather prosaic, all boring stuff like: get out Christmas decorations, make wrapping paper (okay that’s not boring).
We had a sudden opening in our schedule, so we got our Christmas tree on Tuesday, which made everyone happy as clams as we set about decorating. The kids could barely wait to get the ornaments on and were putting them on as fast as Jeff could get the lights on. It was really quite fun to sit back and watch.
The only problem was their excitement broke a few of the ornaments, so I’ve got a small pile of glass objects to glue back together (a few from other accidents recently).
I saw a great idea that I pinned to my Advent board, that I have now completely taken over. Instead of Elf on the Shelf (which I go between thinking is hilarious or apalled at how much of a mess he makes). Catholic Inspired instead has a find the Wise Men challenge. The Wise Men made it to Bethlehem, but now they are asking around for where the newborn King is. So far they’ve been in the pantry, our refrigerator, in our toy Bethlehem (no picture), and today in the refrigerator.
The kids are LOVING this, and I’m loving that I don’t have to lie if I forget to move them. I can just say, “Oops, I forgot to move them today.” For this week, I also had Mary and Joseph heading towards Bethlehem, so they can play with Bethlehem stable set. The kids told me Mary and Joseph were too easy to find. Well yes, I didn’t try to make them hard to find silly kids.
We started on our Advent activities, completing our first several days. We’ve learned about Creation, Fall of Man, Noah (they loved playing animal Go Fish), and played an Abraham trivia game. We have two to complete today because certain young boys were sick yesterday, so today is Isaac and Jacob, 2 crafts to do.
We made some Christmas cards, which the kids thought were awesome to make and then they went from my original project to……. Crazy minecraft Christmas cards, “See Mommy, it’s a Christmas card because I put a Santa hat on his head!” Riiiiight….
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