Happy Birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas to you all, friends and family, near and far!

The Banisters
Christmas 2009

Winter Crafting

We have been making lots of crafts this winter. Here are a few of the girls' with their works of art:
Genevieve likes to work with alphabet beads and buttons. She strings them with pipe cleaners and asks for some clay so she can stamp the letters and shapes. Here is a picture of her wearing one of her creations...an alphabet choker necklace.

For a Christmas gift, Olivia made a pointer stick for her 1st grade teacher. We painted a long wooden dowel, stuffed a glove with fiber-fill, attached the glove onto the dowel, and decorated the pointer with an alphabet bracelet and button ring.
Olivia also made friendship bracelets for her classmates and teachers at school. Since they are called Parkside Mustangs, we decided to spell out "Mustangs" in alphabet beads on each bracelets and add a jingle bell for a Christmas touch. Olivia made four bracelets and I was proud of her for sticking with it and doing that many because it can get frustrating when the beads fall off the stretchy string. Several nights, I stayed up into the the wee hours finishing up the rest so the task would not seem so insurmountable to her. We might try something different next year, although, with one more year under her belt, she may be able to complete a few more. The kids in her class had fun wearing the bracelets the last day before the Christmas break.

Cold Hands, Warm Heart!

With our recent move, Olivia is attending a new elementary school this year, and we have been so pleased with the kind and caring staff. Something special that they do for the car riders is teachers escort them from their cars into the school each morning; they also escort them to their parents car each afternoon.

We had been parking on the street and Genevieve and I would take Olivia to her classroom each morning, and in the afternoons we would wait for her outside of school and walk her to our car parked on the road and get in to head home. Genevieve would cry: Imagine...waking up to be put in a car, parking, walking your older sister to school in the freezing cold, getting strapped back in the cold car and finally getting home to have your breakfast. Well, with the freezing weather, we needed a new strategy because both girls were sooooo cold walking to and from school. We started going through the car rider line, and it has been so nice to stay in the nice warm car up to the very minute Olivia goes to school or gets in the car to come home. No more tears about the cold from Genevieve!

We started thinking about how cold the staff must be waiting outside to escort the kids. Each morning they are shivering but are there ready to help the kids out of their cars; and they are usually smiling or have some warm greeting. For some reason, I kept thinking about how cold their hands must be (probably because my hands often go numb in the cold), and thought about making them hand warmers. I looked up on the Web about making homemade ones and saw that they could be filled with dried corn or rice. Also, instead of making little squares, I thought about filling up small little gloves like the kids hands that they hold when they help them out of the car. My MIL, Mary Ann, told me they had stretchy cotton gloves two pairs/$1 a Walmart, so we went and bought a whole stack of different colors. I read online that brown rice held less moisture when heated than white rice, so Olivia and I mixed up 3 big bags of brown rice with a bottle of whole cloves (for that Christmas-y smell!). We scooped some into each glove and tied them off with rubber bands. Then, I set about making a tight blanket stitch across the top to hold the rice in. We made little tags that said, Cold Hands, Warm Heart (the saying came from a little wreath craft I saw in an Oriental Trading Comapny magazine) and had instructions to zap in the microwave for 30 seconds on high (30 sec = about 30 min. warmth).

After we were done, we drove through the car rider line the next couple of mornings, and Olivia handed them out to the staff. They were so delighted, and we were so glad to see them being used the next few cold mornings. We hope they know how grateful we are for their kindness.

Design Your Own Instrument

Olivia's QUEST class project was to research an instrument of her choice and how it makes sound, and then design and create one herself using clean trash. The one criteria of the instrument was that it had to have at least two pitches. The teacher had the band director from Vista Ridge High School come and talk with the students about instrument design and sound. Several high school students came with him to play their instruments for the kids.

At home we watched the YouTube video of the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra and the girls jammed out with our Thanksgiving pumpkins and other squash. (We did end up eating the squash for dinner the next day so as not to waste it, and it was very, shall we say, tender!)


Olivia chose to make a bass drum with three different pitches using an old bathroom trashcan. The top, middle, and bottom made different sounds. At the end of the presentation, the kids played "Frosty the Snowman" with their trash band instruments.

Little Miss Sugar Plum

Little Miss Sugar Plum Fairy rocks out with Elton

A Thankful Thanksgiving

Thank you, God, for all of your blessings, including family, food, and fun.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Brad!

Choon Be!

Olivia recently took her first karate test and became an orange belt. She loves learning the self-defense skills and trying out her karate moves on her daddy. ;) Karate not only is great exercise but it gives Olivia a way to acceptably release stress. There is a lot of pressure on kids to be "contained" at all times and be perfect mini-adults. Sometimes kids just need to be kids and not worry so much. In karate class, Olivia can yell and kick within the confines of the class and it is okay; she can be a tomboy without being looked at as different, and she has the biggest smile on her face each week after class. This is definitely worth $35/month to me! [step...step...stepping off my soapbox now.... Maybe I need a karate class! ;)]Genevieve loves going to watch Olivia and you can usually spot her doing her own karate moves on the sidelines. She also thinks Olivia's helmet is pretty cute on her, and we have to agree. :)

Home Sweet Home

Closing Day and...

Home at Last!