Snow Princess

 My sweet hubby got me a new camera for Christmas and I'm still learning how to use it.  The snow was a perfect backdrop for my little sweetie.  I just love these pictures!

Snow day fun!

We have had a lot of snow around here lately, which has meant days off from school and lots of outside play in the white stuff.  Thankfully Chris loves to sled with the kids, while I am quite happy behind the camera!

 

I was on the phone to England when everyone was getting ready to go out so I wasn't really helping anyone get dressed.  For some reason when the kids were sledding this thought popped into my head " I wonder if Ella has socks on"  Sometimes she will put her shoes on without socks, and I wasn't sure if Chris has just asked her to put socks on, or if he had helped her.  Sure enough when we took of her boot, there was a bare little foot!!  Thankfully I was wearing two pairs and gave her a pair of mine to wear.

 

The Weather Man may have been wrong!

They predicted 3-5 inches of snow last night.  In fact this is what they said last night before I went to bed:  "Around seven am we expect to have about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground with some light snowfall continuing."  They called school off at about 9:30 pm last night.  (I was grateful not to get a 5am phone call this morning)

This is what we woke up to:

I think we have about 11 inches of snow right now......

..... and it's still falling!

Scholar Bowl Round 1

This is Riley's second year in Scholar Bowl and I love going to watch him compete.  This year he is team captain.  They compete against other schools in our district so its a lot of fun because they get meet other kids outside their own school.

I had to take Ciara to a doctor appointment so I was a little late.  One of the mom's told me that Riley seemed to be in a bad mood and boy was she right.  When I went to take his picture of him in the first round doing word problems, he looked up, saw me with the camera and well if looks could kill.........   I put the camera down!

Here he is in round 2.  This round is called The Judge.  When the question is asked they have to buzz in and the person who buzzes in the fastest has to answer the question.  If they answer correctly, their team gets a bonus question which they can discuss as a team and then the team captain has to give the answer.  If they give the wrong answer, the other team has the opportunity to answer.  This particular school was well matched and Riley's team barely squeaked in a win. 

 Thankfully Riley was in a better mood at this point.

This is Riley's reaction when he and a team mate buzzed in at the same time.  The team mate buzzed in quicker but answered incorrectly and Riley knew the answer.

I advised him this was probably not the best reaction for the team captain!

 Here he is playing Target Number.  Riley is wicked good at this game!  They give them 5 Uno cards and then they have a target number they have to reach.  The more cards they use to get the number, the more points they get.  Riley almost always uses all 5 cards.

Two of his team mates also playing Target Number

The whole team with their coach who is also Riley's teacher.

I didn't realize two of the kids had their eyes closed darn it!

They didn't end up winning overall but they did really well.  Riley's table won Target Number.  They won 8 out of 9 games of Mancala and they won The Judge.  Can't wait for Round 2.

Raking Leaves

We have a lot of trees around here.  Which means we pretty much have to rake leaves or gumballs year round.  Ask Chris how much he loves this chore!  Ella loves being outside though so as soon as she saw dad with the yard stuff, she immediately went out to help.

Perfect light snowfall

I think kids just don't feel the cold the same way adults do.  On New Year's Eve we had a really pretty dusting of snow.  Enough to make everything pretty, but not enough to disrupt our lives.

Riley volunteered to go out and shovel the driveway (We wondered where our real son was and who was this kid that had replaced him)  He did our driveway, Grandy and Grampy's (Elna and Howard) and our immediate neighbors.  Then one of the boys that lived on the block came out and said he would help him and wanted to know how much he was charging.  Riley said he was doing it just because.  That's my good boyscout!!  He ended up doing every single house on our block!!!  (Thank goodness we live on a short street!)  I will say that the snow was pretty light that day, and he pretty much just had to push it with the shovel, but I was still impressed - he even did the sidewalks!

Ciara went out to supervise and throw snowballs at her siblings.

Ella wanted to clean off our cars with a handy dandy long handled brush.  I'm praying that the layers of snow protected my paint from any scratches!  I told her to put a hat on - as you can see, she complied.

A Report on Chinchillas

I seriously love Riley's style of writing.  Sometimes I have a hard time throwing his reports and assignments away cause they are just too darn cute.  I just love this one so I'm going to share.  I highlighted my favorites parts in blue.

A Research Report on Chinchillas

by Riley

If I said to you, "Hey, want a chinchilla, they're pretty cute," you'd probably have no idea what a chichilla is.  But look below....

 (At this point there was actually a picture of a real chinchilla, but I think the one Riley drew for the cover is way cuter!)

Just look at it!  It's a pretty cool animal actually.  Though you'd have to look pretty hard to find one in the wild, these common house pets can still be found in the Andes Mountains in Chile.  The Andes are in the tundra, a biome where it is very cold.

You may be wondering where these animals came from.  They are thought to be originated from an animal caled a Megamy, which were thought to have lived in the Andes, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru.  They must have gone extinct in Argentina (being wild) or they must have moved to other parts of the Andes, such as Chile.  Eventually the Megamy evolved into this creature called a Chinchilla.  They lived in Bolivia, Peru and Chile.  But then, some baddies called "European Explorers" arrived in South America.  Fascinated with the fur they saw, they brought back pelts to Europe and gave them to very important people.   A quick fact about Chinchilla fur - on us humans, where one hair would be, they would have 50!  The fur became very popular very quickly.

In the 1800's, more than one million Chinchillas were trapped!  The hunting nearly led these animals to  extinction, so in the 1900's, laws were passed to stop this treachery.

Then in the 1920's, Mathias F. Chapman trapped a couple of chinchillas in Chile.  Three were female, and eight were male.  He brought them to the States and began breeding them there.  Some he raised for fur, others he sold as pets.  If you have a chinchilla, it most likely descended from a "Chapman Chinchilla."  Without Mr. Chapman, we may never have had Chinchillas here in America.

It is now time for me to show you the life cycle of a chinchilla.  Let me begin.....

These are chinchilla "Kits."  When born, they already have hair.  They open their eyes a bit after they are born.  Think of these like mini adult chinchillas.  They weigh about 35 grams when born.  After about a week, they can eat solid food.

When Chinchillas turn six to eight weeks old, they stop drinking their mother's milk.  Freaky enough....they can have babies.  (Shudders)  (Well, the girl ones can anyway)  But because of their age, they make bad parents, so keep the guy chinchilla and lady chinchilla away at this age!

At 8 months, the chinchillas have graduated from high school.  Well, not really, but they are now adults.  They are finally ready to have babies.  For about 111 days, the mom chinchilla will carry her kids around.  Each litter has about 2 or 3 babies.  Though they are now adults, they weigh a small pound!

The last stage of a chinchilla life is sad.  It's called the "Mature Chinchilla" stage.  At this point, Chinchillas are gray haired animals who don't want to play and just want to sleep.  Too bad!!  At this stage, chinchillas may get ill, so if they do....you now know why.

In the wild where chinchillas live, water is scarce.  So these little rodents must rely on the morning dew for water.  They feed on cacti if they need to, as cacti have water stored in them.

Remember earlier when I mentioned the cold in the Andes?  Well, remember when I said they have fifty hairs where one human hair would be?  Well, that's where they adapt.  The extra hair keeps them warm in the terrible cold.

If a chinchilla got in a fight with a hawk, it's pretty obvious who would win.  So Chinchillas travel in packs.  They usually consist of up to 100 chinchillas.  That way the hawk would have less of a chance of winning and finding dinner, and the chinchillas could enjoy beating up a hawk!

That concludes my report, so I hoped you learned a lot about chinchillas!

Ella rockin' my boots!!

You are never too young to rock out a pair of boots!!

New Years 2011

How do you celebrate New Year's when you are a cool kid of the .....?  What do we call this era anyway? How do graduating classes describe themselves?  I guess you can't just be the class of '13 you have to be the class of 2013?  Anyway, I digress.

So, how does a cool kid these days usher in 2011?  You find your mom's (or your moms friend's) very best pot or pan as well as a utensil such as a wooden spoon.  At the stroke of midnight you run out into the cul-de-sac, scream "Happy New Year!!" at the top of your lungs and break the wooden spoon by banging it as hard as you can on the pot!

Here are the kiddos right before the countdown.  Check out the far left.  That's my daughter being a stick in the mud and refusing to participate.  She's just too cool!  And in the bottom left corner, you'll see my friend's little guy.  He'd been complaining of a headache earlier in the night and we kept suggesting he have a little nap.  He didn't want a nap!  He wanted to hang out and watch the ball drop and bang a pot darn it!  Poor little guy didn't quite make it.   Even during all the noise he just kept on sleeping!

And here's the mama's.  I remember the day's where I would party all night on New Year's.  This New Year's I was yawning at 10p.  My hair has gone flat and forget about the high heel's. (I'm wearing my comfy lime green slipper socks.)  I guess all that matter's is that we had a good time hanging out with each other.  And.... I got to kiss my hubby at midnight!

Gingerbread House

I was finishing putting away the last of the Christmas stuff today.  I went to throw away Ella's little Gingerbread house that she made at preschool and realized that I had never posted a picture of it.  It was pretty simple - we decorated it in cereal (to avoid her eating all the candy).  Everyone thought she had the best roof though.  We used muddy buddies because they looked a little like roof shingles with snow on them.

Ella's preschool teacher has a really clever way to make these gingerbread houses.  (You'll have to file this idea away for next year!)  First we took a little mini milk carton.  You know those little ones that the kids get at school?  First we used some frosting to anchor the milk carton to the plate.  Then we covered the entire carton with frosting and "glued" on the graham crackers.  It worked great cause the milk carton gives the graham crackers stability they wouldn't have on their own!  Then the kids were free to decorate it without us having to worry about the house falling over.   Too cute!