The Phantom of the Choir

One day a couple of months ago, Christopher jumped in the car and said, "Did you know, Mom, that I am the Phantom of the choir?" He begins to sing it to the tune of the musical operetta, "Mom, I...am...the Phantom of the Choir! LAAA!"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm there...but I'm really NOT there!"

This took some explaining to unravel the mystery to me!!

It turns out that because Christopher and Sanford are auditing the class, they are not on the rolls, and they get no grade. So Christopher was saying he and Sanford are nothing more than GHOSTS. They both think that it is hilarious fun. I guess it makes them feel important, special, and mysterious.

I am so sad that because of budget cuts there may be no more choir and band in the middle schools next year. :(

Hopefully something will change that will help it still be an available resource for the kids of Dallas.

Junk Food Anecdote

As we were getting out of the van today, Scott was handing out pork rinds leftover from a potluck at our house a few weeks ago. Christopher grabbed one and said "Yum, Junk food! I loooove junk food!" (We almost never have junk food at our house, so this was a disgusting novelty.)

He then gave one to Julianna to convince her to come out of her seat. She starts licking it and says "Mmmm.....Junk food!" Then she hears the birds tweeting and flying over her head and she says, "Oh, no! The birds want my junk food! No birds, NO! My Junk Food! Mine!"

Mmm....what did my daughter just learn?

Overall, our transfer to healthy, non processed foods has gone relatively well. I cooked black bean tacos for dinner last night, and at first all the kids complained and put up a huge stink...especially since I've been cooking beans a lot lately. Lentil stew, white bean chili, pizza beans, and now the tacos.

But then the kids surprised me. As soon as they started eating...the complements began! They all LOVED it! Even Courtney, my texture-driven bean hater adored this recipe. Everyone ate thirds and BEGGED me to cook it again...and it was soooo easy! I added a little extra coarse ground corn meal, and it made the texture closer to ground beef.

I'm so excited whenever I find a healthy recipe that actually works. I've been experimenting with coconut, peanut butter, and almond cookies. They have been quite good!

I don't buy ice cream anymore. I make homemade fruit yogurt smoothies in my vitamix and then just freeze them into a variety of popsicle shapes. It feels so good to not feel any guilt about giving your kids a treat!!!

I must admit, that my kids want to go crazy and binge on food that we don't have in the house if I'm not careful to allow them the occasional splurge. But just living life with parties, events, and other trips gives them plenty of opportunities to eat things we don't normally provide at home.

We start each day with a green smoothie. The kids each drink 8 oz, and the big kids and adults have 16 - 32 oz. I tell everyone that it is their daily "vitamin". We have been blessed with the healthiest winter of our lives as a result!

Angel's 5th Birthday

For Angel's 5th Birthday, she wanted a "Pony Party". So we invited all the cousins and met at the Carousel.

We were only going to do 2 rides per person, but we ended up taking 4 or 5 rides more because of the "ring game".

The carousel is so enchanting for the little ones. Angel and Julie loved choosing a new pony each time!

Julianna is fearless. She would choose the largest horse she could find. She didn't need me to hold on to her anymore. :)

No hands, Mom!

Look at those dimples and missing teeth!

I didn't get any pictures of Dorathy because she was always on the opposite side of the carousel!

Christopher was the luckiest guy of the day. He and all the other cousins were playing the ring game. On each pass they grab a ring out of the fishes' mouth. Each golden ring = a free ride. Christopher won EVERY SINGLE TIME. He ended up earning an extra 5 rides...thus the extra rides for everyone else! We finally had to have him start giving his free rides away!

We tried to play outside at the park afterwards and open presents, but it was just too cold and we were FREEZING! So we packed up and went home, warming up with some cozy baths.

Angel got to open the rest of her presents in her PJ's!

Angels' big present for her 5th birthday was a little ride on a pink stick unicorn. She's been begging for one since her last one broke a couple of months back.

I can't believe my sweet baby Angel is now 5!!!!!

Five is one of my most FAVORITE ages of all. It is a magical, dreamy stage of pretend, sweetness, and make-believe. It is the age where many children still struggle to tell the difference between make believe and reality. They happily flit between reality and fantasy. It is a great stage!

I enjoy all of Angel's imagination games. She is all "girl" and sweeps around the house pretending she's a fairy, or a princess, or a unicorn.

Boys Club Winter Field Trip

For the last Boys Club in January, we had an all-day field trip!

First we went to the Jensens Arctic Museum. We had a wonderful tour. The lady there in charge of the museum is so patient with children and is a good teacher. We had studied arctic and antarctic explorers, and so I think the boys were really prepared to enjoy the museum. The boys really got into the Inuit yo-yo's!

After our tour, we paused for a picnic lunch. It was so cold outside we were freezing, so we huddled in our cars away from the wind.

Next we went to the Polk County Museum. It is quite a treasure of local history. I can't believe I've never gone before. We stayed for about 2 hrs, the kids all had a wonderful time.

The girls favorite part was the dress up clothes in the pioneer section.

Don't they look like they just walked off the set for Little house on the Prairie?

The older kids favorite part was this old type writer. They all fought over getting turns with it!

Here the boys are all doing a matching game, matching the words of kitchen implements with the real thing. Which one was the toaster? They had a hard time figuring that one out!

Preston is a regular cowboy!

And here are a bunch of 12 yr olds playing with the cars and trucks...makes me smile!

After the museum, we got all our wiggles out on the swingsets at the Rickreall polk county fairground. I even got some book reading done while they played!

Samantha smiles!

Chinese Opera

At the end of January, we had the once in a lifetime opportunity to see an authentic CHINESE OPERA. These operas are usually only seen in mainland China. OSU, however, was doing a cultural exchange, and this Chinese opera group only performed in 3 cities world wide, and Salem was one of them!

All the actors come out afterwards, and all the kids got to have their pictures taken. The actors were so kind and friendly! They talked to us in Chinese, I am not sure if they knew much English. We saw subtitles for the whole opera.

These actors had amazing voices. I was enthralled by how quickly and intricately they sung. The acting and dancing was incredible.

My favorite part of the opera was the story. It was so beautiful, tragic, and moving that my sister and I cried through the whole show. It was too intense for young children, but our two older children LOVED it and were able to handle the difficult morality.

The title of the Opera was "The Chinese Orphan". Here is a basic summary: A wicked Military leader murders the ruling family. Hundreds are slaughtered and he is now the head of the government as well as the army. There is only one remaining member of the family. The princess who is expecting a baby. She was married to the heir of the kingdom, and is about to give birth. Once the baby is born, the wicked tryant plans to kill the baby.

The main character, who is a herbalist healer, just a regular poor chinese man finds himself hired to see how the princess is doing. He discovers that he could be the one to rescue the baby and preserve the kingdom from the wicked Tyrant. He assures the Princess that he will protect and care for her newborn son. He puts the baby in is herbalist case and sneaks out of the castle.

The General of the castle guard sees him leaving and stops him, discovering the child that he is escaping with. He allows him to escape, and then performs suicide to preserve his honor.

When our main character hero returns home with the baby, we find out that he himself has a newborn baby son, just 5 days old. We hear that the Tryant, enraged at the princling's capture, declares he will kill all male children 2 yrs old and younger unless someone confesses and brings the prince forward to meet his fate.

The only way to preserve the children of the country and prevent the Prince's murder is if the Main character gives up his own child in place of the prince, and then raises the prince as his own son.

This is just the beginning of the opera...but it was complex, beautiful, sad, and reminiscent of stories from Shakespeare and the Bible.

The themes of this story were love and self-sacrifice. I felt the spirit so strongly while watching this show. The final message of the opera was so pure and uplifting, I cannot express it in mere words.

If I ever have another chance to see a Chinese Opera, I will go in a heartbeat!

Dorathy is with the Prince(the grown orphan), and Athena is with the mother Princess.

Gilbert House

The Gilbert House Children's museum has a great Theater room. Dorathy organized all the kids and gave them costumes and then put on a play for us called "The Great Explorer".

Julianna was SO happy to participate.

Dorathy whispered the lines she wanted them to say whenever they forgot.

Tinker Toys

The kids are enjoying their new Piano Lessons and they love to work for their piano teacher. For the first two months my kids always brought books to read while they were waiting for their lessons....then they found the TOYS! Christopher said to me the other day, "I really like Piano lessons, but do you know what I love even more than playing the piano? TINKER TOYS!"

Just because you are 12 doesn't mean you can't have fun building stuff, right? Christopher has some great spatial intelligence. (not my cup of chocolate, but the boy LOVES to build stuff...with anything he finds lying around.)

I gave Christopher some soap bars and a whittling kit for Christmas. So sometimes during school while I'm reading aloud, he'll practice carving on the soap bar. He's been making Star Wars spaceships with it. I wanted him to get comfortable carving on something soft before I gave him some wood.

Dorathy loves toys, too, but she loves to set up figures to look like they are doing something. She doesn't like to PLAY with them, she just enjoys POSING them....and then she wants to take pictures. I could see her enjoying making "miniature" sets someday.

I love to see what the kids can sculpt with their clay and sculpty. Their cousins have also made some amazing homemade toys with sculpting, too. The possibilities are endless to what kids will do when they have the right tools given to them. I wish I had a huge supply of legos for Chris, but at least his cousins have good supplies that he can play with.

I love to see kids creativity!