Ancient Egypt Birthday Party: The Countdown Begins

Time to get cracking on this Ancient Egypt party my daughter's been dreaming about. She turns seven on Thursday, and we're having the party that afternoon. So far we've decided on a few activities and games:

• Since there were no forks and spoons in Ancient Egypt, we'll serve finger food of some sort. Probably dates, figs, and grapes, with some chicken nuggets thrown in for the more picky eaters. I'll put out finger dipping bowls for cleaning up afterward, an Egyptian tradition.

• I'll attempt to make a pyramid shaped cake. Fortunately, one of my best friends is a master at birthday cakes. Here's a cake she designed for Elbow's 3 year old Strawberry Shortcake party. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

• We'll pick partners and have the children wrap each other up as a toilet paper mummy.
  
  

• We'll have a relay where the children have to carry a basket on their heads from one end of the yard to the other.

• We'll play "pin the pyramid on Egypt" if I can come up with a map I'm willing to sacrifice to such a game.

• We'll have the children color Egypt themed activity sheets, mainly from our Story of the World history lessons. I'll put the colored sheets on brown contruction paper and use them as placemats at our birthday table.

• We'll have a candy treasure hunt, using papyrus bags (brown paper bags) decorated with our hieroglypics stamps for collecting their goods.

• For party favors, each child will receive a mummy case making kit.

Her Father's Daughter

One of the highlights of Bobo's time at Disney was when a restaurant worker at our resort gave her a "reader of the day" award. I think this nice woman made the award up on the spot; nevertheless, she presented a beaming Bobo with a Mickey-clad certificate of honor. Ribbons, certificates, pins... any form of collectible acknowledgement seems to be the way to my oldest daughter's heart.

She was sitting at the cafe table reading Vidia and the Fairy Crown from the Pixie Hollow series, when the woman -- a former teacher -- asked her if she could really read such a big book. "Read a page for me," she said. Dutifully, Bobo set forth. "How did you learn to read with such emphasis?" The teacher asked.

Prideful mama assumed her child would answer something to the effect of, "From my mom; I'm homeschooled." Oh no, didn't even mention her sweet mother. "My dad was an actor," she said, "he's very theatrical." Sigh.

Ah well, somebody's got to keep me humble.

In Which We Lost the Toddler at Disney. Seriously.

I was a little over zealous in my excitement over our recent trip to Disney World. As mentioned earlier, I was so much more prepared -- or so I thought -- this time around. Let me be the first to tell you: four children six and under at Disney may not be the best idea. Especially in the heat of September. Especially when one of the children is two.

Admittedly, the kids had a great time. As did their Tower of Terror loving, Jack Sparrow wanna-be father. But pushing an unwieldy, double stroller around in 90 degree, ninety-nine percent humidity (with intermittent downpours that did nothing to deter the humidity or heat), while lugging two enormous backpacks all over Florida is not exactly my idea of fun.

Again, really, we all have great memories. And now that I'm back in the much cooler midwest, I'm looking over our pictures fondly. But really, ninety-nine percent humidity? A huge stroller? Two backpacks?

Oh, and the lost child. Granted, Toddzilla was missing for all of about 90 seconds. Maybe even less. But it was the worst moment this mother has ever experienced.

Bobo, Grandma, and Great Aunt were headed - with Toddzilla - to Ariel's Grotto. Dad was at the Tea Cups with Elbow. I was headed to the restrooms to change Crockett's diaper. Apparently, in all the shuffle, Toddzilla changed his mind and stopped following the Grotto crowd. He turned back and started looking for me.

Only he couldn't find me and I had no idea he wasn't with the rest of the family. For once I'm thankful I was unorganized. I realized my husband had the diaper bag on the Tea Cups. I went to tell Grandma I would have to truck it across the park to get the bag. In doing so, we both realized Toddzilla was no where to be found.

After heart-stopping panic like I've never known, I saw several wonderful moms hovering over my screaming child, trying to help him. Praise God! I went blubbering over to the Tea Cups - strangers staring at this crazed, teary mama - to tell my husband the whole horrible ordeal.

The Magic of Disney... maybe not. The loving care of a heavenly Father, definitely.

Brothers and Keepers

On the good days, my boys occupy each other while the girls are doing school. Crockett often naps at this time, but when he doesn't, Toddzilla likes to play with him in the adjoining room.

On the bad days, the baby is tired but not sleeping... Toddzilla is not happy with quiet games alone. I take a deep breath and remember that my children will probably learn more by watching how I respond to the "problems," than what academic pursuits I had planned for the day.

Quite often, I'm surprised at dinner with how much Toddzilla actually picked up from our morning lessons. We usually try to narrate at least some of the day to Dad over the meal; especially concentrating on Latin prayers. There is nothing quite like hearing a two year old spout "et terra gloria Tua" (his favorite line) during casual dinner conversation. Which - let me tell you - is a much needed respite from the regular not-fit-to-mention-general-bathroom-banter he prefers.

The Joys of Boys

When my first son was born, we literally had no boy-related toys in the house. Ever the girly-girls, my daughters played with princesses and petticoats. My oldest received a match box bobcat as a birthday favor when she was about three. It was thrown in a 'junk bin' in the playroom and forgotten.

Toddzilla was nine months old when he learned to crawl. Wouldn't you know, he could find that little bobcat no matter where it was. If you saw the amount of doo-dads my girls have, you'd understand how truly impressive was this heruclean feat. Needle in a haystack, to say the least. Without fail, that bobcat was the one thing he would gravitate to, over and over again.

If it has wheels, makes noise, or just generally does something, my sons are all over it. Even the little guy senses there's something much cooler about Toddzilla's toys than his sisters'. The girls prefer having toys that they do something with -- like dolls, dress up clothes, and purses. Not so for my little men.

Toddzilla has seen the children with the motorized vehicles at the park. He sits there - wide eyed - unable to believe that something like that actually exists for children. Poor unfortunate soul, he has these mean parents that don't believe a child of 2 (or 8 for that matter) should be able to tool around with no physical exertion. Alas, he got the lowly pedal operated version yesterday as an early birthday present. (We live in an area of the country where it could literally snow any day now. His birthday is in November - the chances are slim to none he'd be using it much then).

Motor or no motor, he's one happy camper!

He actually woke up at 5:30 am today, and groggily called out, "Is my John Deere still here?" Yes, little boy, now go back to sleep...

A Magical Kingdom...

A trip down memory lane...

We took our children to Disney almost two years ago. We felt they were way too young, but my husband's side of the family is crazy about all things Disney and insisted we go (they also paid for it, which basically sealed the deal). We didn't know what to expect; we felt our one, three, and five year olds wouldn't get much out of it.

Boy were we wrong! We truly had an amazing time - full of exclamations from the girls like "this is like a dream come true!" and "I never thought I'd see anything like this!" Just the sort of thing that melts a mother's heart.

We're off to Wonderful World again soon (I did mention my in-laws are obsessed, right?) and this time, we know exactly what we're in for and we can hardly wait. I've been looking at pictures from the last trip to psych me up; my husband doesn't need any help. He's been talking about the Tower of Terror and the Pirates of the Carribbean for weeks!

Goodbye, Butterfly!

One of our sweet friends from church brings us caterpillars every year, and a good supply of milkweed. It's been such fun to see these beautiful creatures change before our very eyes -- from bright and creeping caterpillar to chrysalis to magnificent Monarchs.

How strange it is to look one moment and see a caterpillar and the next the chrysalis. We can't quite figure out how long this process takes, because we only check in with our little pets periodically through the day. It definitely takes less than 12 hours though.


When the Monarch is about ready to spring forth into the glorious light, the chrysalis changes color: from a bright green to an almost black. It's an amazing thing not only to watch the new formed butterfly, but the wonder and awe of children seeing one of God's great creations in action.

We skipped ahead in Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day in order to read the scienfitic explanation of this metamorphosis. We bid the beauty goodbye, hoping she'd make it all the way to Mexico. The girls wanted to tag her, like Fred Urquhart did when he made the migration discovery in the first place. Fearing we'd hurt the poor girl, we decided to let her fly free - and tagless - instead. Goodbye, butterfly!

We Did It!

We finally had a successful afternoon tea! Third times a charm I guess. I think the kicker was that I completely lowered my expectations and did the baking beforehand. There's something about enjoying tea and muffins, minus the mess, that makes it oh so much sweeter.

Bobo has been asking for Dinosaur information recently, so I decided to use that as our theme. Tea is as good a time as any to tackle some of those extra interests that come up and we don't have any other plans to cover in our regular lessons.


After our dino-wrapped muffins we read a few picture books and attempted some Sculpey prehistoric creatures of our own. Everyone wanted to make a T-Rex; no one truly succeeded. Fun anyway!

A Note to My Future Grandchild...

From your future mother...

Bobo made this card today, glued it to some cardboard, and asked me to save it for her children. If you can't read the six year old script, it says: "To my children, love your mother. God loves you because he made you."

I immediately thought, "my job here is done." Latin or Language Arts - who cares - she gets it. And for that, this mama is eternally grateful.

"Good Thing It's Laundry Day!"

Oatmeal dripping down his chin, shirt, and pajama shorts, Toddzilla deadpanned, "Good thing it's laundry day!" Ah, the joy of a schedule even a two year old can understand. Monday is indeed laundry day (as is Thursday).

It's so easy to be overwhelmed by the routine tasks of running a home. If I've learned anything along the way it's this: a day for everything, not everything in a day. I've tried - unsuccessfully - to lump all the cleaning and laundry into one huge home-care blitz. Not gonna do it. I'm exhausted, everything is half done, and chaos reigns. Simply having a day for laundry, a day for cleaning the bathrooms - you get the point - makes all the difference in our little corner of the world.

The other hard truth I've come to accept is that if you think you're going to get your home care done, you have to be home. Not exactly rocket science, this simple idea still boggles me at times. When my girls were toddlers, we would run from play date to play date with a few organized activities thrown in for good measure. I would often bemoan the fact that the laundry never got put away or the bathrooms still weren't clean. How could it? We were never home!

Swooning.

Stopped by Barnes and Noble to read a few magazines tonight -- part of my newly minted Mom's Night Out. I grabbed all the usual suspects and one I had never seen before called Organize. Oh. My. Goodness! I even like the ads in this magazine. I could spend all evening just browsing websites I've come across in this new found treasure trove of information. How cute is all this and this and this?

Is it Me?

We attempted another tea today. Our last try at this seemingly simple tradition resulted in a house fire. That was way back on Ascension Day; today we tried to honor Mother Teresa.

Getting ideas from Elizabeth, I decided we'd make the Indian sweet bread and read Mother Teresa by Demi. We had a great time making the bread; eating it was not quite as fun. We obviously didn't roll it out enough. We ended up with doughy silver dollar sized 'cakes' smothered in sugar. No one was willing to take more than a bite, except baby. He got his hands on this unusually textured, gooey glob of dough and couldn't let go.

I love the idea of weekly teas and am not quite ready to give up yet. I may have to lower my expectations greatly, bake without the children (for now at least), and just enjoy another time to come together around the table.

We're Done - It's 9:30 AM

My oldest did Math, Latin, Spelling, McGuffey, Copybook, and made a cover for her Zoology notebook. My second daughter did a page in her math book, a page in her copybook, and practiced letters with me.

I looked up at the clock and it was 9:30 AM. I panicked a little, "What in the world will we do all day?" But it turned out great. We took a nice walk to the grocery store for stamps, leaving $41 poorer. (And getting three inquiring minds, "are they all yours?" To which my oldest asked me later, "Who's else would we be?" She wasn't being snide, she sincerely wondered. I do too sometimes).

We did some impromptu crafts which involved glue, glue, and more glue. This included the two year old --needless to say it went from the craft table to the bathtub. We read from the Golden Children's Bible outside and headed in for lunch.

Having decided yesterday that Tuesday afternoons will be for nature study, we headed out with all the fixins' (nature notebooks, crayons, Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day...) We strolled along the Red River until the heat forced us up a huge hill (me pushing the stroller from behind, oldest daughter pulling from in front) in search of the fountain. Feet and faces found their way to the water very quickly.

Off to Bridgeman's for ice cream we went. We did manage to read a little of Flying Creatures while at the park, but not much journaling got done.

A full day despite our early finish!

Birthday Season

One party down, two to go before the fall is through. I'm still recovering from my weekend of stomach flu, birthday bash, 40th anniversary weekend for my parents, and a wedding.

Elbow chose Hello Kitty as her theme so I was able to purchase quite a bit of the stuff from Birthday Express. I'm pretty sure she chose this theme because she saw the lip gloss cell phone favors in the catalog. (Next in line is her older sister, turning seven, who wants an Ancient Egypt event - not quite so simple.)

We made the cake from a regular rectangular cake pan and cut out the shape of Hello Kitty's face and ears. I used black frosting from a canister for her whiskers and eyes. The bow is cut out from an Air Nerds candy. Her yellow nose is a dab of gel food coloring.

Elbow chose two games to go with her theme: Kitty, Kitty Cat -- a made up variation of Duck, Duck, Goose and Kitty in the Corner. She learned the latter from seeing a stage production of Christmas on Plum Creek. Laura, Mary, and Ma Ingalls played it while trying to pass the time when Pa was stuck in the blizzard. All the children picked a tree on our property (we were outside and the corner concept didn't quite fit). One child would stand in the middle of the yard and yell, "Kitty wants a corner. Kitty wants a corner..." several times. When she was ready, she would then yell "Go!" and all the children would have to scramble to find a different tree. The one who didn't get to a tree in time was the next one to be it. This simple game actually occupied the whole gang for a good fifteen minutes!

Despite my not being able to participate fully, we had a great day. Ancient Egypt, here we come...