Fun Day at School

Today both kids had fun stuff planned at school. For Owen, today was Immigration Day. All the kids get to choose a persona and come to the US via Ellis Island. For Elise, today was Penguin Day. The kindergarteners all read from their penguin journals.

Here is Owen, dressed as an Irish immigrant: (?)

Here is Elise's class singing and reciting penguin poetry:

Here is Elise reading her penguin journal: (Hard to hear her, but she did great!)

Brrrrrr!

We have been having record cold temps here in Denver the past few days. They recorded -15 at the airport yesterday (not nearly that cold at my house, luckily!). We have ice sheets on the inside of our windows when we wake up. This morning, the thermostat on my computer desk read 58. This is not a comfortable temp to sit and read emails! It now only reads 61. Brrrr! We do set our house thermostat down to 62 at night, so it is understandable. But amazing that it is so cold that we haven't yet reached a comfortable temp in the dining room! (New windows, you are for sure on our list!!!!!) It finally got above zero outside, we are now reading 2 here.

I forgot to mention in my last post, one of the coolest things that happened lately. We were going to lunch, and I completely drove the wrong direction. No reason, and I drove way out of our way. BUT - going that way allowed us to drive right under the path of a bald eagle. Yes, flying right through our neighborhood, on our street, low enough for us to see details on the bird. Definitely white head feathers and tail feathers. Elise noticed it out her window, and called it - a bald eagle. We watched as it flew over us, and yes, it was a bald eagle. I stopped dead in the middle of the street, and we watched it fly away.

Now I'm off to sit in front of the fireplace and try and warm up!

The past week and a half

I don't know where the time has gone, I last posted over a week and a half ago. Nothing too exciting here - just our everyday life. I did remember to take a few pictures, so I'll add in comments to show what we have been doing.

I started a new knitting project. Quite a few, actually. I love when the decision of what colors to use, what size to make, casting on is happening. That might be my favorite part of a project.

Made super yummy butternut squash soup, had some lovely whole-grain nutty bread with it.


Cleaned out Elise's closet - the storehouse for all of the kids' outgrown clothes. Donated.

Elise has been making up funny names for her lunches. This was "tongue-twister Tuesday", with Pauletta's pesto pasta with parmesan:

I hosted book club at my house. We discussed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See.

We had a beautiful snow. I loved the shadow of the swings on the newly fallen snow:

Owen was doing his evening reading assignment, and chose to read a book to Elise. It was all so picturesque.

We went to Rockwell's Holiday Party for John. It was nice, not as good as last year ;-p A friend asked me to be at the birth of their baby. I am so honored.

Owen and Elise made us breakfast. Hot chocolate, raspberries dipped in chocalte, and chocolate hearts. Wow.

Anyone want to buy this car? John's new car is in Chicago. It's not going anywhere until all of this snow is done!

I'm working on my Nia routines - a friend has asked me to lead one song/dance at her solstice party. It should be interesting leading before a group (of non-Nia people) for the first time.

I have been thinking about this for a long time, and this year I really decided to have a non-commercial (less-commercial?) Christmas. Shopping, trying to guess what people will like/want, just the general stress that everyone seems to carry. I don't want to be part of that this year. A few friends helped me to make teacher's gift baskets for school, and I decided that I would share what I have done creatively over the past year with family. Maybe not the perfect gifts, but gifts that I have put my energy and good thoughts into. If you are a recipient of one of these gifts, enjoy if you can. Regift if it works for you. D0nate it :-) But appreciate the thought.

I did buy some gifts for my kids this year, but I think they are thinking along the same lines as I. Did you read Owen's Christmas Wish List? Elise didn't make one, but she had very few requests. We will be enjoying the days home from school, together, our warm fireplace, and hopefully MORE SNOW!

It IS snowing yet again (just after John finished snowblowing it all....)!

And last, but not least, FOAMHENGE:

With all of this cold weather, fort-building in the basement is at an all-time high. Creativity is soaring.

Sadness

Why? I never got an actual picture of the final majesty of the igloo. And yesterday it collapsed. Owen is here trying to salvage a bit of the snow, hoping to save some for tomorrow, when it will get cold again and maybe snow.





Here is how it all started. Remember
all that snow we got? Well it continued snowing all day Sunday. The kids went out to play, and Owen ended up staying out for FOUR HOURS. Yes, in the falling snow. I finally had to beg him to come in at the last photo, to eat something. Then it got dark, and I didn't get another photo after he went BACK OUT again and finished it up.

Owen closed off the top completely. It was a very cone-shaped igloo, with a crawl-in entrance.
We were pretty busy on Monday, and after school stayed out at the library until dark, so missed another photo opportunity. And then, as I was doing laundry last night, I saw that it had collapsed. The kids were devastated.

Here's my little helper, in her snow garb (with quidditch goggles, no less) - note the bare feet!

And the snow man, he didn't survive either - actually he was sacrificed for the construction of the igloo:

Let it Snow!

Here is the view out my kitchen window. We had a very wet snow, so it all stuck to the tree branches and shrubs, power lines. Very pretty. Finally, in Colorado, winter is here!

Candlelight Walk

Okay, so I wasn't with it enough to remember to bring my camera to the Candlelight Walk and Tree Lighting Ceremony. So we burned the candles at home with dinner :-)

The City of Littleton lights a big tree with colorful lights every year, and has a procession, aka the Candlelight Walk, down Main Street, with all of the street lights out, lighting the trees along Main Street as Santa goes by on a truck. At the end of Main Street, a child is picked to "throw the switch" to light the big tree. It was beautiful, and as an added bonus, it started to snow right after the big tree was lit.

Here is my fairy girl, working on an art project:

Here we are preparing Thanksgiving Dinner. We invited Great Grandma over for our feast.

I am thankful for my family.

This week

This has been a short but sweet week. We enjoyed two early Thanksgiving feasts with friends (thanks, lovely friends!), two quick days of school, and then a holiday break.
First of all, I have been making small pillar candles for a holiday gift exchange. Each of seven of us crafty moms make 35 items, which we then redistribute and each of us gets 5 items made by each mom. We can then create gift baskets of handmade bath-type items. Robin and I packed ours up last night to send off to Pueblo and Kansas City. I think I will use my gift baskets for teacher gifts this year, rather than doing the "put in some money to buy a gift card" gift this year.

My candle pouring process is pretty basic, I used natural beeswax, and recycled items from around my house for molds.

Yesterday we spent the day at Littleton Historical Museum with friends.

Pioneer kids:

I found this doorway an interesting place to frame pictures - Elise was sweeping the classroom, and the rest were just enetering the classroom. Fun!

Climbing on the straw bales, always entertaining!

Looking for fish in the pond:

Last weekend I had some extra energy, so I rearranged part of my living room to make an"Art Room" for the kids. It just the area behind the couches in front of the back window. It gets great light, and is mostly unused space, so I decided it would work perfectly. We can store some of our art materials under the fish tank (behind the orange fabric).

Christmas List

Germany Trip November 2008

Hi All- Loelle here, posting a bunch of pictures from John's trip to pick up his car. All of this is second hand info, so don't blame me if there is something incorrect in here. If you want the real scoop, talk to John :-)

First full day in Germany, John and friends went to pick up his car. The BMW factory gave them quite a welcome. Your new car is put on a pedestal, literally, spun around and shown off. John said it was worth it for the trip alone to BMW Welt. (BTW, John's car is the silver coupe - the only silver one that day.)
A fancy-dancy building.

Here are Paul and John B sitting in the new car:

Here they all are having lunch at BMW Welt.

A BMW race car out front of the factory:

An engine? A special engine? The engine in John's car.

Walking around at night in Munich:

Dinner with musik!

Back the next day for the actual "pick-up":

Proud new owner:

Rear shot, the factory in the background:

Driving on the autobahn, the real reason for going.........

(I am told that John B took this, not the driver!)

Driving in the Black Forest.

Peeking in the Porsche factory the night before the tour (no pics allowed in the actual factory tour!)

Porsche Museum:

A 911 cut-away:

All sorts of race cars......

Another cool building, and many cool cars!

Another engine, special again no doubt.

Mercedes Museum?

Driving at night in Stuttgart - the new PanAmera, in disguise out for a test drive?

There it goes........

Out for dinner in a lovely resturant. John, Paul, Ringo.. no - John, Paul, John and Mike.

Food was predominantly meat-based, with a few potatoes.

Ahhh! A vegetable!! Who put THAT there?

Amsterdam was the last destination, after leaving the car in Munich for it's boat ride.

Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam:Boat ride on the river-

Bike riding in Amsterdam (John B and Paul?)-

John was amazed at all of the people riding bikes. They have so many bikes there, that they have a barge to park them on:

Whole families ride one bike at a time!

Flower markets, of course (I had to put these in, it *is* my blog after all...)

Look at all these bulbs!

Last but not least, the red light district. This photo is beautiful - apparently this is a tourist area - families walking around, swans in the river.