Recent family photos

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here we’re thankful from everything from raisins to life.  I hope you have a good celebration!

Tess the techie

Tess discovered the eject button on the DVD-ROM drive on the computer, and wanted to make sure she got enough practice using it.  Check it out:

Lightbulb moments

are so great to witness. 

Hannah and Naomi are both in choir, and they both are taking piano lessons.  One of the things that the girls learn in Naomi’s age group in choir is a hand signal set for the notes – Do Re Mi, etc., each have different hand signals, and they move up and down, depending on whether the note is going higher or lower.  Hannah knows the hand signals, too, since she learned them when she was in the younger choir.

Tonight at dinner, Naomi was regaling us with a song she’d learned at choir – a short, amusing, Halloween song.  Hannah was watching her do the hand signals and suddenly said, “Wait, Naomi!  I think I can play that on the piano!  Come here!”  Usually I discourage jumping up from the dinner table and running into the other room, but Hannah asked if she could have just a minute at the keyboard. 

Sure enough, she had Naomi do the song with the hand signals and she played it.  Then Naomi played it.  Then they came back to the table, both quite happy with their accomplishment. 

And it really was an accomplishment, since Hannah made the leap from Do Re Mi to C D E, something that I’m not sure she’d had explained to her yet. 

I just love the lightbulb moments. 

Lesson learned

Keep hair away from the wax that’s used to make fake warts.

Yeah.

Halloween!

Facepaint credit: Aunt Pammer

Costumes credit: Grandma Ellie

Piglet wouldn’t leave up her hood for love or money.

But Piglet happily wore a wig for several minutes.  Next time we’ll know the secret is to give her pieces of candy to investigate.  She didn’t ever get them open, so it was a safe bribe.  This time.

Pterodactyl

Tess is experimenting with loud, high-pitched, pterodactyl-like screams.  Sometimes this is when she’s upset, sometimes when she’s happy.  Sometimes she just seems to want to make noise…For some strange reason, this isn’t my favorite experiment.

Random sketches

I’ve got a whole bunch of things to blog about, but not a lot of time, so I thought I’d put a few things into one post.

Now that the weather has turned chilly, I’m feeling nostalgic for warm-weather days.  So I’m including some warm-weather pictures in this post.

Simeon, when asking for more food, says, “May I please have another load?”  Haha!  I really think this is funny, but I realize that it’s also far from polite, so I told him today that “another serving” is generally how we phrase that.  We’ll see if it sticks. 

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We got a new reel lawn mower.  Well, new to us – previously owned.  The kids all took turns helping me mow the lawn – except Tess, who was in the pack on my back.  However, this is ANOTHER good reason to use a reel mower:  Hannah will shortly be able to mow the lawn all by herself.  Naomi isn’t too far behind her, either. 

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Hannah and Naomi play piano now!  They’ve had three lessons.  They are, so far, highly motivated to practice.  This is good.  I hope it lasts.  We did have one meltdown about a song that I could tell wasn’t being played according to the music, but managed to get past it and on to playing the correct notes.  Their teacher is the pianist and organist at Blessed Sacrament, so they see her on Sundays, too.  I’ve found that the selection of a teacher is key for them – they’ll work really hard for people they like, and complain and whine and moan about things for people they don’t.  So far, it looks like we selected a good teacher for them.

*****

Tess signs up a storm these days.  In fact, she’s started doing two-sign combinations.  Her first one was “Baby Jesus.”  She signs “Tess Baby” when she sees herself in the mirror.   She also started saying, “Tee too,” when she signs “Thank you.”  The cuteness factor shoots through the roof. 

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I’ve lately found several dishes that our kids will ALL eat.  One is a beef vegetable soup that I made up.  Another is fish and corn chowder.  In fact, there are a few fish soups that they all like.  When I answer the question, “What’s for dinner?” with something that contains fish, they always are enthusiastic.  This seems strange to me, since I really didn’t like fish as a kid.  However, I don’t tell THEM that!

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Tess signs all of her siblings’ names, and asks for them when she wakes up in the morning and from her nap.  She will look at me and sign the name of the one she thinks is making any racket that she hears coming from another room, and she’s right almost every time. 

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Now it’s time for pumpkins and apples and warm pajamas!