Waiting for Apple Blossoms

Pearl has been studying Africa lately, and last night she sculpted a salt-dough map of the continent. Tonight she painted it to show the different vegetation zones.  I benefit from so many ideas on the internet, like this one!

 

Sapphire is looking forward to her play date tomorrow with Miss D, an adult friend from church. I have found this relationship to be a real blessing for me.  While I fail to keep Sapphire still in her seat at church, sitting with her pew buddies, she seems able to make it through the whole service without a problem.  It is also nice for a middle child to get such special attention, I think. Here she is at her friend's house earlier this week. They made a fairy garden with live plants, which now graces our kitchen table.

When she got in the car with Miss D. on Sunday for a brief lunch visit, she looked at me dramatically and assured me that "I'll still love you mommy."

Over the weekend they enjoyed a nice meal and one last Easter egg hunt with the grandparents.  Not an egg was left behind!

Sapphire enjoyed tracing her letters and numbers in a cornmeal tray today. She is just figuring out how to hold her pencil, so this is less frustrating.  She's never liked to color with crayons, so it is neat (if a little painful) to see her practicing these new skills.

This weekend my husband will be traveling, and I plan to go to the annual homeschooling curriculum fair. I love picking up bargain workbooks and other idea books, mostly gently used things that other families in the area are ready to pass along. I really can't manage this with three little ones, so they will have a babysitter to entertain Saturday morning while I go book shopping. 

flowering tree at the church

Not a Still Life

We have been outdoors a good bit lately, and here you can see how  my daffodils have been multiplying.  They make a really pretty show in the front bed now.

Yesterday we had our co-op.  One of Pearl's classes is art, and here is a creation from last time we met. 

Because the art teacher was out with a sick child, I taught that class yesterday. We worked on the idea of landscape, still life, and portrait.  Those eight little girls whipped through paper like crazy.  It was all we could do to keep their water refreshed and paper in front of them.

Here is the still life.  She might look longingly at those apples, because she won't bit them.  I've noticed that she has been gnawing her food from the side, and it turns out she is trying to  keep her last front tooth from popping out.  We've already had tears when she noticed the wiggle. 

Last night, while their daddy made a rushed visit to the hospital (to see someone else, not for himself), the girls and I had an impromptu picnic.  We ordered Chinese food for them and sushi for me, and found a very grassy spot beside the creek at York College. We had to experiment with the limited dishes we had available in the car, so here is Ruby eating lo mein from a cup. I think it works better than a plate! While we ate we watched the willow trees wave.  

 "Can I go in the creek?"

After staring longingly at the creek, the girls came along for a celebratory Sweet Frog treat.  Pearl had read her first five chapter books, and this was the reward.  The line at Sweet Frog was amazing. I think I was at the end of a 40 person line, but it moved quickly.  The poppers are the girls' favorite topping. Pearl insisted I take her photo as she popped one. 



Also, we recently watched "The Wizard of Oz" with the two big girls. Note: the talking trees are *not* as scary as I remember them.  Jasper did say that the look on Sapphire's face when the tree slapped Dorothy was one of shock.  The witch is terrifying, but if you watch it all huddled together on a couch, you can get through it.  Pearl says she thought it would be scarier than it was.

April Flowers

I think we can put our hats and heavy coats in the attic now, but here's a last look at a cute gift from Grammy.

We had the chance to celebrate Easter all over again with some friends and their grandchildren. The girls enjoyed taking part in a huge egg hunt. 

We've tried to maximize the warm weather that hit this week. Pearl created a reading nook on the front porch to catch the morning sun, and Sapphire presented herself in her swim suit and demanded pool time. I explained that the baby pool would be staying in the barn for another month at least.

Here we are at the top of the hill above our house. We like to go there and eat ice cream, but I need to stock up on that.  We just took some jellybeans and enjoyed the beautiful light.

Pearl has also developed her own code recently, which Grammy cracked right away.

We are studying Asia now, which is just about the easiest continent to cover. My husband and I have plenty of stories of our travels there, and Pearl's favorite animal is the tiger.  As part of a culinary exploration, Pearl tried bravely tried sushi when she and I had a day out together last week.  The chewy nori was not a hit with her, sadly.  She didn't seem to notice the raw salmon.

Easter 2013

Ruby had a chance to celebrate her first Easter with us. The girls and I drove to Somerset County on Thursday.  This is the view we had during one snowy walk--it is the barn across the field from my grandmother's house.

There were no kittens in the barn when we arrived, but by the next day newborn kittens mewed in the corner.  Instead of begging to spend hours coddling kittens in the barn, Pearl understood that one does not handle such tiny things.  Ruby once again enjoyed viewing the cows but jumped when she found a barn cat three feet away from her.

On Friday we dyed eggs. Sapphire sped through her allotted eight eggs, popping them into and out of the dye cups like an assembly line before asking for more.  Pearl labored over hers lovingly, and Ruby just about got the hang of it, though she still doesn't have her color words down.

On Saturday the other visiting aunts and uncles rolled in, and we got to see some cousins.  The meal was perfect, and Pearl enjoyed some serious Dutch Blitz afterward.

The editor of my Christmas book wants me to acquiesce that while Christmas seems like the high point of the year, Easter is the liturgical pinnacle.  It seems ironic, when Christmas receives so much more build up and attention. 

I spent time last week explaining Easter to Sapphire, and she finally got the gist of it. Otherwise I don't feel like we did a very good job preparing for Holy Week this year, but Easter Sunday helped.  We worshiped with my Church of God Grandmother. The message was about the stone, and how the women who worried about how to move it aside found it all taken care of when they arrived.






Afterward we had a relaxing leftovers meal and lazy afternoon with family. Uncle Alexandrite worked hard to make up to Ruby, and by the end of the weekend she was falling asleep in this great-uncle's lap.


This is the one holiday I consistently celebrate without my husband.  It seems logical, since his duties keep him busy all weekend (four services in four days), and he is fairly wiped out afterward. But being so far west meant we missed seeing some of our other family over Easter; we pray that the joy and victory of Easter would be with you all throughout the year.

There is promise in Christmas, but there is fulfillment in Easter. 

Getting back into our school routine after Pearl's trip to Boston hasn't been easy (read tears), but we are progressing. Today we had a great time at CHAMP, our co-op, and here Pearl is working with her classmates on filling in continent facts they collected. 

She has baulked at reading her chapter books, but today I told her she could read next to me while I napped (CHAMP takes it out of me!), and that's all she needed to plow through half an American Girl book.  She's so social that reading alone is a misery!

Wolf Sanctuary Field Trip

Our family day last week saw us trekking across Lancaster County to the Wolf Sanctuary of PA in Litizt.  Our home school group had organized a field trip, and about twenty of us showed up for a very chilly tour of a pretty unique place. They have the wolves divided up into different packs according to who gets along.  While we were there we saw a few "friendly" scuffles among the packs, and these still looked scary when you aren't used to them.

The girls especially liked the all-sanctuary howl we heard. One alpha male will start to howl, and then each pack will join in over the course of a minute or two, until all 44 wolves are wailing away.  We all chose our favorite wolf; mine was the peace-loving Geronimo. He is part of the largest pack but avoids all conflict by staying out of the huddles.  Then he steals the others' buried food when they are sleeping.  I don't condone that last part, but at least he doesn't bite anyone.

These wolves are mostly rescues or the pups of rescues.  Our tour guide said they had just lost the grandson of the *Dances with Wolves* wolf to old age recently.  I think the thesis of the tour was "wolves do not make good pets unless you want to seriously annoy your neighbors and endanger your family." Hunters donate their kills to feed the wolves, and these carnivores crunch up the whole deer, bones and all, and just leave the hide and the hooves.

That was a busy day, because we also had to pack for Pearl's journey with her daddy to Boston.  They flew out early Friday morning for a karate event and to visit friends.  I'm told it was nonstop play with the three other little girls up in Massachusetts, complete with a talent show (here is Pearl showing a one step). 

Sapphire also benefited from a whole weekend of grandparent attention. I picked her up Sunday night. We had a peaceful snow day on Monday. I made a five foot snow man for the girls, but since Sapphire gets cold so quickly, I was pretty much on my own. Sapphire and I spent part of our quiet afternoons practicing her letters--and I wish you could hear the cute way she talks about "my Letters." This book and shapes she's using were a neat find at our local library: How to Build an A.

In the quiet of a half-empty house, I worked on curtains for the room Ruby shares with Sapphire. I've been putting off replacing these curtains since we moved in 9.5 years ago. Now I want some serious darkness to keep those little girls asleep past 6am when June rolls around.  This required panels with blackout fabric backing.  My plan is to discreetly place Velcro on the sill edges to really block the light. The sewing machine started acting up before I could finish the final window.

Trip Plans

Pearl and I enjoyed an afternoon at the Prancing Pig.  She is such a careful, delicate painter. I find the hardest part is choosing a piece to paint.

People are interested in Ruby's language acquisition, and it is coming along. Three weeks ago she developed a habit of taking a very demanding "NOW!" on the end of her sentences, sort of the way I do when I've asked the kids to do something once and it doesn't seem to be happening. The result? A toddler who insists "Grapes NOW!" in that very tone. "Cereal NOW!" "Socks NOW!" It was cute, but we saw the need to put a stop to it *immediately*.

In June I'll be making a trip to Northern Europe. This week Pearl and I are studying Europe. We have found many neat chart and map-making sites online.  Here I've created a map of the cities and countries I'll be visiting (in pink). The ones I saw during a semester abroad trip in 1999 and my trips with Jasper are in green.  I'm very excited, especially now that the grueling decision making is over.  I enjoyed researching hotels and means of transport, but now I've booked what needed to be booked (thank you Rick Steves) and I'm just reading for fun.

My traveling buddy and I have decided to try a night train--and while I know it won't be anything like the huge train compartment I remember from the Cary Grant movie North by Northwest, I am still a little excited about it! We're also taking an overnight ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo, and then an amazing scenic railway tour across the Norwegian peninsula to the medieval capital of the country, Bergen.  I didn't even know Bergen existed four months ago!  to be honest, I wasn't really sure which Scandinavian country was which four months ago.  Finland isn't technically Scandinavian, but Denmark is.  And since we'll have day trip to Malmo, Sweden, we'll be in all three Scandinavian nations on this two week trip.  Plus, with my few days on my own, I'll be seeing Reykjavik Iceland (which I can now spell without thinking), Salzburg, Austria, and then Munich, Hamburg, and Lubeck, Germany with my friend.


Finally, here is the video I came home from class to find waiting for me when everyone else was asleep one night.  Note the pile of tissues--such trauma!

 

And here's a photo of Sapphire and one of Ruby so Uncle Cary can't say I left anyone out.

Musicals and Menus and Six Month Review

Last weekend we enjoyed a bounty of high school musicals.  Sapphire and I went to see "Annie" Saturday night.  She was thrilled to see her big church friends in the pit. The dog and the threat of bad guys were other highlights that occasionally stopped the squirming.  "Annie" is a fairly complicated plot for a three year old, I now realize.

On Sunday Pearl, Sapphire, and I drove up to see "Joseph" at the high school where my brother teaches.  The girls have these lyrics memorized, so hearing other voices and seeing a stage production was mesmerizing for Pearl, at least.  Sapphire loved the flashing lights and disco ball.  Pharaoh, her favorite character, did not live up to her image of him from the 1999 film version, so she was disappointed.  My kids always like the bad guys/autocrats.

During intermission we toured Uncle Matthew's very tidy classroom, and afterwards we went to a Thai restaurant.

We've all be studying South America as our current continent. I say all of us, because even Jasper can't walk away from the documentaries showcasing the Amazon or anacondas. The girls have been walking around in a dazzling red poncho he brought home from Bolivia in 2003.

On Friday we used this focus to try a Colombian restaurant in Lancaster named El Maizal (the Cornfield).  Of course Ruby ate everything. She's very into international cuisine.  The other two tasted a bit. Pearl liked the white rice and Sapphire finally found her favorite when the flan course came out.  Unbeknownst to me, I ordered a very think slice of breaded fried pork which tasted just perfect with a squeeze of lime.  It was just a tiny simple restaurant, but I enjoyed the experience.  Maybe someday the other girls will too. 

imitating her big sister's pose

A social worker from our adoption agency visited us Monday to complete our six month post adoption review. This is the second of six (I think?) that China requires of parents. It is a costly visit because of all the paperwork that has to be filled out and sent to China, but Jinny makes it very pleasant. Pearl took her on a tour of the house after Jasper and I answered the form questions and chatted a bit.


The tour includes the basement (formerly "the lair") and the attic.  Poor girl had to see my basement and attic in one day! I try to keep them tidy, but rotating three girls' clothing sizes, shoes, and toys does not make for a super orderly attic, at least not in this house.  It was another milestone in this year of firsts.

Jaspher overlooking Machu Picchu, Peru, 2003