Author Archives: Jess

The neighborhood Christmas party

We thought it would give us a chance to get to know the parents of all the kids that spend so much time in our back yard if we had a Croker Heights

Christmas party. A very good time was had by all.

watchingsnow.JPG

It started snowing first thing this morning, which added even more magic to the anticipation for the guests to arrive.

johnsmash.JPG

The highlight of the party was rock smashing– and not just any rocks, mind you. Rock breaking has been the past time of choice down in Croker Heights. They all collect rocks and break rocks and use rocks as their money, so one day I got a bug to find geodes that we might be able to break open. A little Googling and I hit the jackpot. I got a box of rocks all ready for smashing.

girlsgeodes.JPG
opengeodes1.JPGopengeodes2.JPG

Aren’t they cool. Parents had fun too. It was very exciting to see what treasure lay in store. We found the best technique was to put the geodes in an old sock and gave it a whack or three. The sock helped keep all the pieces together and then the kids each had a red paper bag to keep their own pieces in. Some had bigger crystals than others, some had some iron mineral deposits, one of them had globby looking calcite instead of quartz crystals. It was way cool!

We also made graham cracker houses and ate goodies.

groupmotion.JPG

grouphouses.JPG

Merry Christmas!!

just popping in

So, the weekend is over and I still haven’t launched the Blog Husband Appreciation Club because for one, I did laundry (4 kids, 2 adults, diapers, towels, miscellaneous other dirty stuff) which I guess must take precedence over blog stuff, and because I want to make a button thingy to link to without the help of my blog husband. This kind of stuff takes me much longer to figure out than it does him. I must admit that I still haven’t totally made the Mac switch. For me it has been more of an adjustment to asking Barry a lot more questions because who has time to sit and learn new programs etc. etc. etc. when there are diapers to change and mouths to feed?

Anyway, I’m thankful for my Blog Husband.

Are you?

when I grow up

I will live in a tree house.

finished-portrait.jpg
(photo from www.treehouseworkshop.com)

Jenny linked to Small Magazine page 32. Wow! I have always said that when I grow up I would live in a tree house. We’ve tried to get near that ideal with Croker Heights and the beautiful Japanese maple out our kitchen window. But, the Tree House Workshop has set the bar much, much higher. Now that I am getting closer to that grown-up status (I will be 30 in 2008, which is starting to freak me out) I’m thinking part time tree-house living might be more realistic than really living in a tree house, but I don’t know, after seeing this and this. I may be ready to go back to my childhood dream of permanent arboreal residence.

The cool thing would be that my kids would know the names of all the birds. We had friends over for lunch yesterday and as we sat around looking out the window at the bird feeder my kids were so excited to tell everyone about the chickadees and juncos, and a Carolina Wren made a rare appearance clearly because we had company. There are some days I’m afraid I’m not doing enough for “school.” It’s good for me to have days like that.

They know all the birds, and in my book that’s way cool. Almost up there with living in a tree house.

(Oh, and about the Blog Husband Appreciation Club. The official kick off will be this weekend. That will be appropriate and get us all grateful in time for Thanksgiving. Stay tuned!)