Domestic Adventures

That’s what Emmaline said, and so when last I broke out the clippers to cut Micah’s hair, I caved and cut Isaac’s too.

I was shocked by how different he looked after I cut it. All that dark hair was only the top layer, the underneath part was a much lighter brown. By the time I was done, two or three times as much hair was on the floor as was left on his head. Of course, I saved a few dark locks in a little envelope.

I was a little sad to see the baby hair go, but I like his new haircut too.

We spent Thanksgiving at the beach with Trent’s family. Despite the look of these bright, sunny pictures, it was cold! Of course the kids begged to go down to the beach, then they begged to dip their toes in the water. It wasn’t long before they were splashing water all over their jeans and then Micah belly flopped into the water. After about five minutes of being completely soaked, they started shivering and so we hurried back inside to get some dry clothes on.

Emmaline has been dying to get her face painted at one of the Disney parks. This work of art is called, “Mermaid Princess”.

A while back, Emmaline and Micah’s outdoor explorations yielded a real treasure: tadpoles! There were dozens of them, more than dozens. They excitedly asked if we could keep them and when I said yes, the kids were over the moon. I love saying yes. We captured about 30 of them with plastic cups and made a pollywog home in a rubbermaid container on the kitchen counter.
How do you take care of tadpoles? I wondered that too, and googled this. Basically, they like clean water and eat cooked lettuce or spinach. They really, really love spinach.
It took about a month and a half from them to grow from little dots with squiggly tails to frog shaped blobs with hind legs. A few grew faster than the others but we only got to see one fully develop useful front and hind limbs. The day before we left for Kansas he suctioned himself to the side of the container fully out of the water declaring himself “frog”. That evening we had a little tadpole releasing ceremony at the lake and bid them all farewell. Even I was a bit sad to see them go, but I promised next time the kids found tadpoles, we could do this all again.

Time with our dear friends is so refreshing and encouraging. We had a wonderful week in Kansas. We kept busy going to the zoo, the library, a children’s science museum, art lessons, gymnastic lessons, kids club, ladies Bible study and more, but the real joy was just spending time with our friends. The kids played outside in the autumn coolness and the grown up sat indoors drinking coffee and chatting. We had lots of good meals togethers, read books, watched movies, and stayed up too late. All in all, a wonderful vacation. Thank you, Hope and David for a wonderful week, and a wonderful friendship!

When faced with driving twenty-something hours with two small children and an infant we decided we should build in at least a day-long break, so we drove as far as Chattanooga, Tennessee the first day.
There is definitely more than a day’s worth of exploring in Chattanooga. We chose to spend our time at Lookout Mountain. We first headed to Ruby Falls. To see the falls more than 1000 feet below the surface of Lookout Mountain, we took an elevator to a cave where our tour guide would lead us through about a half mile of winding caverns. It was during the elevator ride down that I began to doubt the wisdom of bringing Isaac along on this adventure. Will his ears pop? Will he start screaming at the top of his lungs? How loud do you think the echo of that cry will be inside the cave, and how long do you suppose this tour lasts? Oh well, I figured, too late now!
It turns out Isaac did just fine. In fact, he slept almost the whole time. We all enjoyed the caverns full of strange formations and of course the beautiful waterfall hidden deep underground.

The biggest hit of the day for the kids: mining for gems with sluice boxes after our Ruby Falls tour. They both came away with a handful of hard-earned treasures.

After seeing Ruby Falls, we visited Rock City and its absolutely gorgeous walkways twisting high and low, over and through enormous boulders. Mist from the rain still hung in the air making it all look sparkly and fresh. I loved the narrow paths that threaded between mossy walls of rock, and the views from look outs were amazing. We even all dared to cross the swinging bridge leading to a cliff top looking out over seven states. I really wish we had brought a real camera. The camera in my phone just doesn’t do it justice. This is definitely the kind of place that makes you wonder how anyone can think this creation came to be without a magnificent creator.

Emmaline turned seven years old September 15, and we celebrated with an animal adventure party the following Saturday. Given that theme, I wasn’t sure what direction to take it at first, but we finally decided on a safari-based scavenger hunt.

As the guests arrived I informed them that some animals had gone missing and during the party today we were going to have to find them. To start, we needed a Missing poster for each of the eleven missing animals. The table was set with crayons and posters ready for a picture of the animal to be drawn.

Once all the guests arrived and had a chance to work on their posters, we served the pizza, my very favorite party food. Then we moved on to our next job: identifying the tracks of our animals. I googled images of the different animals tracks, printed them and glued them to pieces of construction paper. While the party-goers were eating their pizza, I snuck onto the porch with their posters and lined them up on the floor. The kids had the job of matching the tracks with the correct poster. Once all the matches were made, we flipped over the construction paper tracks to reveal a clue: This is no beach, but you could build a sandcastle here. That sent all the kids running to the sandbox where they found this:

Can you read that? It says, “Use the compass to decode the arrows. The next clue is at the machine that does this: _____ _____ _____.”

The sandbox had three large arrows drawn on the sand that pointed south, east, and west. Emmaline and Micah led the race to the sewing machine where they found this:

Which unscrambled into this:

The kids ran back outside to find a little plastic bird hidden in Emmaline and Micah’s “climbing tree.” They had to sing one song to the bird before I revealed the clue hidden inside it.

The clue inside the bird simply said, “big, blue bucket” and it didn’t take the kids long to find this big blue bucket:

.
The instructions here told each child to choose a fish. Written on the underside of each foam fish was a clue. The clue that appeared most often was the correct one. There were 2 wooden houses, 3 gardens, 2 mailboxes, and 4 green wagons.

Here the kids had to dig through this fresh sand for “food packages”. I used little bags of runts candies for this, though it turns out if you shake a bag of runts really hard to get all the sand off, the bag breaks open and sends your runts flying into the grass. Oops. Once everyone had found a prize, I revealed the last clue: “The animals are hiding in a place that would get way too hot if it was turned on.”

Okay, I had a hard time finding a place to hide the prizes that would be easy to access but not easy to see early on, so the prizes were in the oven. I used plain brown lunch bags decorated with copies of the animal tracks and tied with ribbon. Inside each was a toy of one of the missing animals and a good handful of candy.

After that was cake and presents and it was all said and done within two hours, just as planned.

Happy Birthday, my beautiful Emmaline. I love you!

I adore matching costumes. Once Emmaline decided to be Dorothy I couldn’t resist talking Micah into being the Tin Man. I had already been planning on Isaac wearing the lion costume Grammy made for Micah four years ago, so they all went together perfectly. Emmaline’s costume was made by Grammy and the ruby slippers we recently inherited from some friends (thanks, Emily and Natalie!)
We continued our tradition of trick or treating at Downtown Disney. Our trio of yellow-brick-roaders attracted a lot of attention which of course they all loved. Isaac probably won the most oohs and ahhs but the three costumes together got a lot of compliments. The most often heard comment though, was “You need a little scarecrow!”
The kids got enough candy, but not too much, we ate ice cream for dinner and rode the carousel before we were all exhausted. Thank goodness for the extra hour of sleep that night!

I love that my kids love the children’s illustrator exhibits the art museum hosts each summer. Last year’s featured artist was William Joyce, an author and illustrator we dearly love. This year’s artist, Jerry Pinkney, was new to me, though he has illustrated many classics such as Aesop’s Fables, The Ugly Duckling, and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. We checked out an armload of his books this summer, and it was fun to watch the kids’ eyes light up as they recognized paintings from the different stories. Then we spent some time in the cosy reading area and the kids enjoyed finding the paintings from those books. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi has become a favorite in our house.
Also displayed were rough sketches and drafts. Emmie and I talked about how the drafts were different from the final versions and how the artist changed his ideas around as he went. We looked at the details in the paintings, noticing how in a painting of some mice, the mice looked so real, but when you looked closely you could see he used not just brown or gray paint, but also blue and orange in the fur. It’s fun to take time to notice the details with children.
Can’t wait to see who next year’s illustrator is. I wonder if they take suggestions. Who would you choose?