tawbubby

Daphne’s class has a bake sale on Friday.  We made rice krispie treats with M&Ms.  She counted out 39 marshmallows from the bag, and the recipe asked for 40.  There was nothing we could do about that one marshmallow.  And she measured 5 cups of rice krispies and 3/4 cup of M&Ms.

She had so much fun buttering the pan! (I told her how I got tired of greasing the muffin pans as a kid.)  Some lucky snacker is going to enjoy these treats.

We spent Sunday morning playing with Amelia’s science kit from last Christmas.  You might remember The Cress Experiment and Static Electricity.  It’s a winner.   We re-did “static electricity”, and then looked at a bunch of small objects around the house with two little beakers and a magnifying glass.  Caught Daphne a few minutes later looking into the AC vent with some Arby’s binoculars!

This is what I love about the science kit.  It makes them play in new ways.

The coolest experiment? was this straw and styrofoam ball trick:

We called it Bernoulli effect, but I’m not sure wikipedia agrees.  Anyway, it is neat.  You cut the short end of a bendy straw into many slivers, open them, and blow through the straw to make the ball float.

Amelia played with water and magnets for a long time, also.  Making chains, watching pieces repel each other, and discovering plastic is not magnetic.

Look at the concentration, penmanship, and a little picture of a girl in a belly dancing outfit (see below!)…

Amelia wrote the letter to Grannie and Grampy.  I spelled a few words for her (maybe 6?), but not too many.  She has a new confidence in writing.

Our friend Chris’ iPad visited recently.  Oh, Chris did too.

It’s interesting how intuitive it is to Amelia.  He could show her something once, and she could do it.  They enjoyed a lot of games of Hangman.

We’ve been really good, Santa.

We are blessed with two daughters who really love each other.  Amelia loves to rope Daphne into a ballroom dance once in a while.

And them sometimes a marriage proposal.

They (still) love to wear the same clothes.  I suppose some day that won’t be true, but for now, we can’t have enough pink Hello Kitty pajamas.

Solo Amelia shot riding on Buttercup, a really cool pony, and a fun birthday party a couple weeks ago.  She makes quite a pink cowgirl.

Grannie and Grampy went to Turkey and found these dress-up gems!

The girls love them.  Bebe got to see them last night, and loved them.  Aunt Marion emailed today that she saw some pictures, and loved them.  They seem to be a hit, all around!

Sometimes Daphne can’t figure out why the top doesn’t go down to her hips!

Amelia, in the zone.

And reverting back to Disney-ingrained belly dancer who has to clean the house before the ball.

After a while, Daphne switched to her Supergirl outfit.  Amelia took this fantastic photo!

Ethan played this puzzle game with Daphne for a while tonight.  It has three cubes that you spin to get different shape/color combinations.  Then you have to weave the three correct pieces from the board into order underneath the cubes.  She is really good at it.  He enjoyed watching her problem solving.

She’s doing fantastic.  She’s had a burst of development this fall. She knows her whole alphabet, and probably her numbers 1-10.  She writes “DA” on the back of her projects at school- she thinks those are her initials. And she can write large versions of all the letters in her name. She recognizes some words and reading a digital clock.  Recently, she started asking us what words mean- that is really cool.  And she’s jumping all over the place.

I’m not really sure what she was doing, but it was an awesome set up.  If she could, Amelia would live in her pajamas 24/7.

We got two kid sized rakes today.  A bargain!  The girls actually made a good dent in the raking.

There was some leaf throwing going on.

And some jumping.  They started at the light post (see Daph in the back?), and ran to jump in many times.

We almost lost Daphne in the pile!  Good thing she likes to wear a bright color so we could find her.

Amelia lost a bunch of teeth lately…

We were really pleased that Aunt Cheri had a good set of candy teeth in her trick or treat bowl!

Amelia drew a cute lion for “L” week.

She’s been working on making a ‘grab bag’ for each of us.  This was Daphne’s.

Items included an addressed envelope, a card, a set of jack o lanterns, a love heart, some invitations (tissues are currently invitations, when they play), a Mr Golden Sun necklace, a glass green gem, a paperclip, some roasted pumpkin seeds for snack, and a couple other little things.  Sweet sister.  She also made me one, full of similar lovely items, and a note I’ll treasure for a long time!

The artist, hard at work tonight.

The multimedia result in pencil, pen, marker, crayon, and oil pastel on paper.  A mermaid princess with long rainbow hair, with her castle (lots of steps), a fish, and a treasure box that emits sound with ‘sound barriers’.  There is also a little telescope on top of the castle.  The rainbow window on the left of the castle lets the visitor choose who they are visiting.

She learned about sound barriers in SkippyJon Jones Lost in Spice, and got a telescope from some friends for her birthday.  I’m glad to see some technology creeping into the princess stories.