Last day of September

I feel the need to note that September is ending.
We are about to begin our first full week of Kindergarten
and I'm looking forward to it, but I feel a pressure to
make it really good. Princess keeps asking "what are we learning next?"
"what craft are we going to do?"
Oh well, tomorrow is "Homemade Cookie Day", so we will be baking.
I will try to post what we read and how we made it a "fun learning day"
after our lunch break. But I'm thinking "If you give a mouse a cookie"
will be on the "menu", check out the web site for some fun games and stuff.

Fig Recipes

foodnetwork.

Here are some fig recipes...I'm going to try them.

Cooking Figs

Farmer Dad went to the Rutgers game with a friend of ours so we are quietly
doing our own thing on this breezy Saturday afternoon.
I've spent a good deal of time today cooking figs.
We had our tea outside today as the weather was so lovely
and Princess played and we picked flowers to press and
talked about Autumn.We have a ton of figs (I'm sure it's an exaggeration)
and I need to do something with them before they rot.
We can only eat them so quickly. I am also working on tomatoes today.
Princess is playing with some of her new toys in the living room while I work.
She gave up trying to work with me about 10,000 figs ago.
I will have a book post on Monday if anyone is interested, I made a huge
score last night at the library.

Second day of Kindergarten

Woo Hoo! We made it through our first week (OK- 2 days)
of Kindergarten! Princess is very excited to be "back in school"
and has been asking to "do more" and "can we start now?"
Today we worked on a bit more Autumn theme, she colored a
squirrel and leaves, I cut them out for her and we put them on our
"Autumn Bulletin Board" which is on the door of one of my hall closets.
She also traced and colored another leaf page and colored in, cut out and
glued in numerical order, the numbers 1-10.
Her cutting skills are improving (I have always been hesitant to give her scissors)
she also did a worksheet with objects to count and write the number.
She read some of the worksheet to me, I was very impressed.
We then went for a "nature walk" in the backyard to look for "signs of autumn",
I was going to let her photograph said items, but our camera's battery died.
We put them to charge and picked figs and cherry tomatoes instead.
Once we came back inside she watched "Max and Ruby" and painted with watercolors.
I will post one of her paintings when the batteries are ready(she gave me permission this time).
Now she is playing with her felt board. She received a new set from one of her cousins for her birthday
as well as some felt letters and shapes from her Grandmother and has been playing with them for about
45 minutes this afternoon. First she was spelling,"I love you" ,her name, our cat's name things like that.
Now she is making up stories with all her various pieces.
Only another half hour or so before Farmer Dad comes home with promises of many more board games
tonight. Maybe I can get to the library to pick up some holds and look for books for October.

Kindergarten Begins.....

Thursday was the beginning of Kindergarten around here. Princess arrived in the kitchen
with her hair combed and dressed for the day. After breakfast, we began to talk about Autumn
and she traced a picture of a leaf and colored it in. We did a little worksheet about leaves,
she told me how she would finish the sentence, I wrote it on our white board, and she copied it.
I always ask "how do you think that word would be spelled?", today she knew how to spell the
word "up". I was pretty impressed. Since I had this sheet in a "page protector", we used a white board
marker to write her sentence, so her letters are a little wobbly looking. We counted the leaves as she colored them, "please use yellow to color in 5 leaves," It was pretty successful. Then I had her trace her own hand and arm to make a tree. She chose an apple tree. She even copied the word "Autumn" off the work sheet and wrote it on there. We will hang these on her bulletin board (our hall closet door) for the month.
After all this, we took a lunch break and watched a little "Bill Nye the Science Guy" on VHS.
We have a couple tapes that were my younger brothers passed on to her from when they were young.
The afternoon was spent playing with her blocks and matchbox cars,reading and waiting for Farmer Dad's return from work. Princess was very excited that her Uncle Andy stopped by after work too. She used the money he gave her to buy her souvenirs on Wednesday, so she couldn't wait to show him what his money paid for.
Farmer Dad took her outside to play and pick tomatoes and peppers and figs while I made dinner and checked a couple of blogs out. After we ate, I got time to read more blogs and they played a whole bunch of board games and blocks. It was a nice evening. Before bed, we called California to sing "Happy Birthday" to Princess's little cousin.It is so nice to hear the conversation between a 5 and 3 year old who love each other!

Liberty Science Center Homeschool Day!

We spent Princess's birthday at the Liberty Science Center for their homeschool day.
This was after Farmer Dad took her to Dunkin Donuts to pick out her own donut.
We met friends who are also homeschooling that we have not seen in a while
and the kids had a great time together.They just reopened it after being closed for two years
during renovations and it is huge and fun and I know we didn't see it all, although after almost 5 hours
it doesn't seem possible.The kids explored the Hudson River,saw many live animals (snakes,fish,turtles etc),
learned about earthquakes and elevators and tried to move cargo containers with a computerized crane.
We played and investigated and had a fun lunch break filled with various renditions of the " Itsy Bitsy Spider".
We watched an operation being performed on a banana and learned how quickly diseases are spread
thanks to air travel. We let Princess pick out a couple small souvenirs with some of her birthday money
and headed out to dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. Fortunately there was plenty of traffic, so she got a nap
before dinner ;-) The restaurant did not impress her, but they did sing Happy Birthday and give her a balloon
and free ice cream sundae which she did not want to eat.
We walked into the house and had phone messages and couldn't even return them before the phone started ringing with more "Happy Birthday" calls. Including Princess's two Uncles who were unable to be at her party.
One is in California with his family and one is in grad school in Virginia.Then my sister came to take her for ice cream. She came home tired but happy and we watched a movie and went to bed.

Happy Birthday Princess!!

At 2:21 am on September 26,2002 my little Princess came flying out to join the world
and I have been trying to catch my breath every since.Here are some older pictures,
1 from each of her first 4 birthday parties.

Greetings from the Jersey Shore!

We had a lovely day at home playing with some of Princess's new toys.
A new box of wooden blocks so we could build bigger and the game
Balloon Lagoon...so much fun!!!













What could we possibly do to have more fun?






We packed up some food
and stuff and headed
down to Sandy Hook!
We had a nice light dinner of fruit salad,and roasted veggie sandwiches
that were both leftover from the party. We read a couple of "beach books"(see picture)
and hunted for shells and flotsam on the beach.














We stayed until the sun went down
and we could see the moon over the water!














Princess took a little nap on the way home and we all had cheeseburgers because we were starving
from all that sea air!

The weather was perfect, so thank you all for the "good weather vibes"!
We had about 13 children and 40 or so adults attend Princess's 5Th Birthday
celebration this year, and it all went pretty well. My backyard looked like someones held a "kegger"
out there for a couple of days, but Farmer Dad took Monday through Wednesday off so he could help
clean it all up.Princess was totally spoiled with so many lovely and thoughtful gifts!
The food was ready on time, no major appliances broke the day before (first time in 5 years!) and
no one was too sick to attend! For those of you who missed it due to vacation schedules, better luck next year!
LOL We even had two of my little brothers come home from college and attend (OK, they came home for other reasons, but they did attend while home).Farmer Dad's oldest brother and his family drove 5 hours one way to attend! Yes, we really appreciated the effort! We are going to try to drive down the shore today to explore the beach since we are all in the mood from reading one of our favorite gifts this year, Flotsam by David Wiesner.
Our very good friend,Miss Diana always gives the gift of her talents of face painting for the children as well
and here is a picture of her and Princess reading it together.















The kids even made good use of the fallen tree!
We played skee ball and "decorate your own cupcake".You can judge for yourselves if they had fun....

Farmer Dad takes a Day Off

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while....he stays home from work.
Today was a great time to do it, because we have a lot to do to get ready for
Princess's party on Sunday. I still can not believe she is going to be 5 next week!
Today she helped me cook, and Farmer Dad paint the garage window after he
went food shopping for me.I'll post some pictures, they were so cute.
We did take a break to play with Polly Pockets (ugh!) and swing on the swings,
but most of the day was spent working. I just sent Farmer Dad over to pick up the tent we are borrowing
from our friends and to another store. My sister has promised to take me to the "Big Bad Warehouse"
tomorrow morning for a few things I need and then Farmer Dad will go to the Yankee Game with our friends
who have an extra ticket.He has never been to Yankee Stadium, so he should have fun.
I'll be here cooking and doing some last minute cleaning and such.
The weather is supposed to be lovely and Farmer Dad has agreed to pull the "Skee Ball" game up from the basement, so hopefully the kids will have fun.

Tuesday afternoon.....

was lovely here in the Garden State, we played in the backyard and
enjoyed the company of a good friend who came over to pick some figs.
Princess loves having "new blood" to sing and dance for, and they took turns trying
to get her "boomerang" to fly. We also picked golden raspberries and tomatoes.
Our "pet" bunny came out to eat while we were out, and we enjoyed watching a woodpecker
high up in the cedar tree. I will post a couple of pictures before I head off to clean more.
Next thing we knew, it was dark and we needed dinner, so inside we went.
Everyone had the "leftover" dinner of their choice while we talked about our day.
Princess wanted to play some games, so we played CandyLand,Hi-Ho Cherry-O,
and two different versions of Memory.Then we read for a bit before bed.
I got some cleaning done during the day, so I feel good about company on Sunday,
although I am not done yet. The weather forecast is still looking good, so I'm hopeful.