Going Orange

 
The karate school and ministry my husband started the year before we were married has reached its 11 year anniversary, and, as usual, we celebrated with a party.

We had another milestone to celebrate--our little yellow belt earned her orange belt.  She was very eager to get to class and wear her new color.






This coming week my husband will travel to New York for a masters' test.

Crafting in the New Year

 

The Christmas break is really over now and we are back to school here. We've begun testing some projects for our upcoming co-op semester, including candle dipping. It did not make nearly the mess I anticipated, but it does take a long time to melt wax.  The two big girls *loved* it. Sapphire ran around holding her little unlit, lumpy candle all evening.












Pearl asked to learn more about the Holy Lands since she is going to join her daddy's tour group in a few months. We're making a unit study out of it, so she is learning the science of the Dead Sea's salinity, the geography of the region, and the history of some of the sites she will see.  We also used this as an excuse to watch Ben Hur.







We have a few other projects knocking around, including this fun Christmas gift. The girls like delivering mail to themselves through the mailbox. 

And this is a gift I made for myself. I've wanted Victorian-style silhouettes of the girls for ages, and I decided it was time to make them before their little girl chubby cheeks had all disappeared. 

For those of you looking for an update on Sapphire's prayer life, I asked her why she felt the need to pray for unpoisoned food. She said she thought maybe some Bad Guys would sneak into the house and poison our food.  I am relieved that she wasn't suspecting me. 

 
 

Sapphire's Four Year Old Gems

I started reading chapter books to Sapphire before bedtime. We've covered the BFG and Because of Winn-Dixie (both were hits with her big sister). After learning that India Opal's mother has left the family, Sapphire looked up at me and sighed before asking dramatically, "Who is my birth mother? I wish I knew about my birth mother." When I explained that it was me, she almost seemed disappointed. "I wanted to be like Ruby," she explained, dejected.  A few days later she asked Pearl who her birth mother was.

We had tried Little House in the Big Woods, but only because I am a horrible judge of Sapphire's character. After a week of her unenthusiastic listening, I switched to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wow, is she ever fired up about all the chocolate.

And how does a four-year-old ward off hunger? In our house we keep our eggs on a special egg shelf in our clearly outdated fridge. We mark hard-boiled ones with an H to avoid unpleasant surprises. Sapphire seems to have missed a step in the process, because I walked into the kitchen to find her holding a raw egg that she had just smacked onto the table.

Because the membrane held and stopped the white and yolk from leaking out, I was able to take in the situation calmly.  "I wanted a H egg," she said quickly, clearly boggled that the egg wasn't hard-boiled. As I took the fragile shell out of her hand, I noticed a freshly written, squiggly capital H on the side. Because we had no "H eggs" ready, she had mistakenly thought writing the letter on the shell would instantly turn a raw one into a hard-boiled snack.

More recently, right around Christmastime, Sapphire's prayers at grace went from a quick: "Thank you for everything" to a more focused, but completely inexplicable: "Please help the food not be poisonous." So far it has worked.

Christmas Celebration 2013

'Mary' and two wise girls

On Christmas Eve, Pearl expressed her great anticipation for the days ahead, and I realized how tough it is for little ones to wait for Christmas. I think I prefer the run up to the big day, since Christmas itself goes by so quickly. While it lasted it was pretty golden.








The Christmas Program nativity play was very cute, as you can imagine.