My Blue Shawl

I finished my varigated blue shawl. It is made from a yarn that not only varies in color from light blue to dark blue to purple but varies in the width of the yarn from thin to thick. My knitting mentor told me to use a prayer shawl pattern since it would feature the beauty of the yarn itself without distraction from a more complicated pattern.

I finished it about a week ago and wore it to church today. And as it was about 8 degrees this morning, the shawl felt very good in church.

Deborah's Bible milestone

We have a tradition in our family that when a child has read their Bible all the way through and has been tested by my dh, that child gets a cake to celebrate this great milestone. We start when they are reading well enough to read the Toddler's Bible. Then they progress to the Picture Bible. The Picture Bible is a great Bible that I remember reading as a child. The next step is an NIrV (a NIV Bible for Readers - they identify the pronouns and try to use simplier words). Final Step is an ESV (English Standard Version) Study Bible.

This last weekend, Deborah successfully passed her Picture Bible test and received her new NIrV Bible. She was so thrilled to pass this important milestone.

Doll Hair Rescue 101

Deb received Kirsten for Christmas (see previous Christmas post). My mom found her in Texas and she was in great shape except for her hair. So I looked on the Internet and found a site that told me how to fix her hair. Here is what she looked like at the start.

Hair unbraided prior to brushing.

I brushed with a wire wig brush and got out the tangles. It already looks much better now, but it was a little dull looking and the ends were frizzy. This took me a little less than an hour to brush it out.

I washed it and conditioned it according to the directions. To condition it, you soak the doll's hair in fabric softener for an hour then rinse. But the most effective treatment was to steam the hair with a hand held travel steamer. It certainly tamed the frizzy part of the hair. They weren't completely gone, but they were certainly reduced. This took me about an hour all told.

Kirsten newly braided and looking ready for Deborah to take her to church.

Sledding Day!

One of the great joys of homeschooling is going sledding when everyone else is in school. Today was just about perfect day for sledding. New snow from last night, no wind, and in the upper 20's. So we headed for the big sledding hill in town and had the hill to ourselves.

We had a great time. Look at that face!

Or this one!

We invited some friends to join us and they did! Sledding is more fun when you can make a big line.

A very enthusiast sledder.

Deb went down one time by herself and said that it took her breath away. After that, she was content to play with the snow on the hill...

...or go down with me. I could never get her to go down by herself again.

Missing are the pictures where Stephen flipped over backwards over one of our friend's boys or when Stephen later skinned his knuckles (no gloves because his hands were getting hot) or when Deb and I ran over my friend's poor 5 year old. As he went over us, I caught at him to make sure that he didn't come down on his head. His head and my jaw connected but thank goodness no one was seriously hurt. Deb got kicked in the head as he went over her. He kinda just shook himself, got a hug from his older sister, and went back up the hill and started sledding again. And after a short cry, Deb insisted that she too was ready to go back up the hill and sled some more. I was the one who wanted to sit down and nurse my sore jaw. Oh to be able to bounce back like the little ones do!

Geography Bee

Yesterday Nathan and Stephen participated in our local homeschool Geography Bee. They made it to the final round. Stephen is second from the left and Nathan is fourth from the left.

They didn't win, but they are ready to participate again next year. Some of the questions were very hard. I was trying to answer in my head and there were some questions that I got wrong. It's interesting how much geography you can pick up just by reading. I knew the answers to two questions because of novels that I've read in the past.

January 1st Tapas Meal

We had our fifth New Year's Day Tapas meal. For those new to the blog, this means that the children help my dh make a great Tapas meal for me on New Year's Day. Tapas dishes are from Spain and are usually small ones. You get a small taste of the dish. That is why we usually have 7-9 dishes during a tapas meal. I usually don't have to do anything except maybe locate ingredients or offer advice if the recipe is confusing. So first some prep pictures.

First Course: Deb's Marinated Olives. They turned out to be very spicy with an Arabian taste to them.


Also in the first course - Aaron's Egg and Tuna wrapped in Ham. They were boiled egg halves with homemade mayonnaise and marinated tuna and wrapped of course in boiled ham. Very tasty.

Second course: Grilled Shrimp. The shrimp were kept in their shell and drizzled with salt and olive oil. After 15 minutes, you grilled them and then put some lemon juice over the cooked shrimp. They were amazingly good. Stephen helped with this recipe.

Third Course: Aaron's Orange Salad. It had orange slices, golden raisins, very thinly sliced red onions, minced almonds, and dressing. Everyone liked this one.

Fourth Course: Stephen's Cod wrapped in Chard. Stephen wrapped the chunks of cod and some ham in blanced swiss chard leaves. It was served over a bed of mushrooms that had been sauteed. This was very good as well, though not all of the children liked it.

Fifth course: Nathan's Meatballs in Saffron sauce. Fantastic. Maybe the best dish of the evening.

Sixth Course. But he also had the pork loin with the pomogranite marinade served over rice. It wasn't too fruity and was very moist and tasty.

Deborah finished off the meal with her Fried Custard. She had made the custard the night before with my dh and then he (not her) pan fried it and rolled it in cinnamon sugar. We finished that whole plate!

Christmas break

We had a relaxing Christmas break. We didn't do much but Christmas, go to church, cook our annual Tapas meal, read lots, watch some Pink Panther episodes with the children, and practice with our new pocketknife.

8000th Egg!

On January 4th, we found Egg number 8000.

Finally - Episode I

Today was the day that I finally let the children watch Episode I of Star Wars. Their reaction to the movie is below.

They didn't like JarJar too much but they did love the battle droids and all the cool ships. They loved the light saber battles. And they asked the obvious question that somehow eluded Lucas - won't Padme be too old for Anakin if she is queen now and he is only 9 or 10? Do they elect 20 year olds to be queen? I think not. Anyway, the movie viewing was a success.