growing & learning with him
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This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday.
Welcome to Read. Explore. Learn! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing the ways you have learned with and explored books.
Steps:
Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.
My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:
The quote placed at the top of this post talks about waking up to live your dreams. As the mom of an almost three year old, I find that some days are not filled with fulfilling my dreams or even building towards them.
Some days are about making my son’s dreams come true or helping him learn skills that will help him achieve his dreams later on. It may be getting to go to the local children’s museum. (JDaniel dreams of going there a lot.) It could be teaching him how to share or get along with other people. He will need to master sharing to be a successful child and later man.
Some days are about redefining my dreams. I spent twenty years as a teacher in a public school system. It was all I planned on being. That dream changed when I got married and had JDaniel. I was still a teacher, but one of different kind. The shift from classroom to home meant learning a new skill set and dreaming different dreams.
Some days present new paths and directions that cause your dreams to shift. Things happen in our world’s that show us we have woken up to a new world or circumstances. There are family struggles, job changes, or economic shifts.
So when I stumble out of bed following the announcement through the baby monitor that it is morning time. I am not always sure if the goals and dreams I have for the day are going to happen or if something else will happen that I have yet to even dream off.
What goals and dreams do you have for the New Year?
This post is a part of Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop.
Every week for about nine months I have written a post for Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday. There are about seventy bloggers a week that join Jenny Matlock in sharing ideas, thoughts, reflection and more that begin with a particular letter of the alphabet.
Reading each of the posts along with the comments Mrs. Matlock leaves for all of her students or meme followers is a highlight of my week. (Yes, she visits every person every week and leaves amazing comments. She sends e-mails to her students if she has a chance too.)
During L week Mrs. Matlock’s post was called L is for Lemon. In her post, she mentioned she was going to give away boxes of lemons and peppermints. It sounded like she had a multitude of lemons growing in her yard. We love fresh fruit and peppermints at your house so; I left a comment stating that we would love to win a box.
Much to my surprise, we were picked by Mrs. Matlock to receive one of her special boxes. The box arrived two days before Christmas. We loved the luscious lemon scent of the box. I wonder if the mail carrier kept it in the front of her truck just to smell the lemon scent as she made her deliveries.
We had guests over for dinner that night and I cut lemon slices for us to have in our sodas and iced teas. They were as impressed as we were that this wonderful box filled with candies and lemons with leaves still attached had been sent across the country to us.
I loved having the Larsons for dinner, but I could hardly wait to begin looking through my cookbooks for a recipe for a lemon pie to make for the holidays. The first book I pulled out was The Taste of Home Cookbook my husband had given me several years ago. It was within its pages that I found a two page spread dedicated to lemon pies.
I settled on one that was label light and easy. With all the sweets we have during and before the holidays light was definitely needed. I am all for easy recipes that are guaranteed to come together.
The pie turned out so well. JDaniel and I were able to work together to squeeze the lemons and mix the ingredients. He did have to be distracted to keep him from drinking the lemon juice right from the measuring cup right after squeezing it. Mrs. Matlock’s peppermints were the perfect answer.
I could tell by the way JDaniel enthusiastically licked the bowl clean that it was going to taste good. Actually I knew it was going to taste good too. My fingers were dipping into the remnants left in the bowl as fast as his were.
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So, if Mrs. Matlock offers you lemons I hope you will accept some and use them to make this lemon pie.
Here is the recipe:
Many of you probably returned to working in the salt mines yesterday after a holiday break. I have been working in the salt mines for several weeks now without a break in sight.
My husband says I’m heading back to the salt mines almost every morning. I’m not sure if that is why JDaniel loved to pretend to work in the salt mines so much or it could be the Mighty Machines video on machines working in the salt mines that we have watched over and over again.
As JDaniel told his friend Nathan when he came over to play and was invited to work in the mine, “I work here almost every morning.” He does work in the salt mine every morning with me by his side. There is a space between the futon and closet in the guest room that has been transformed into the mine. There is also a brace that supports the futon that is the perfect tunnel for the machines to slip under to begin their work.
There used to be only construction trucks and machines on site. They would dig up the salt and transfer it to other machines that would carry it out of the mine.
Then the whole operation expanded. JDaniel has dragged or driven in almost every machine he has across the hall from his room into the mine. When I asked him about it, he said they all had to be there for a reason.
Now there is a fire truck that waits just outside the mine encase there is a fire after salt is dynamited out of the mine. You won’t want to have a fire and not be able to put it out immediately. The ten feet between JDaniel’s room and the guest room is just too far for the truck to travel.
A lawnmower that makes popping sounds when you push it is used to dynamite the salt. The pops of the ball in the mower are the sounds that come from the explosion. We have to back away from the mine and close our eyes during all explosions. Salt in our eyes would really hurt.
A drum has been added to the mine too. It is a salt drum crusher. Once the salt has been extracted from the mine, it has to be brought over to the crusher to be banged on with drum sticks. In the Might Machines video, there is a crusher and we couldn’t leave it out of our pretend to play.
There are tons of assorted cars and tractors parked on the edge of the mine now too. They belong to the mineworkers. Other than the plastic dogs that drive the fire truck JDaniel and I are the only mineworkers I know off, but apparently there may be others I just haven’t seen them yet.
What pretend play are you doing at your house?
We had a Chinese carryout meal for > at my house. It was just the three of us so; I decided a fun meal that required no more than mom ordering food and taking it out of little takeout boxes would be wonderful. My guys both agreed a restaurant meal would be a perfect way to welcome the New Year.
We ordered shrimp with broccoli, sweet and sour pork, and pork fried rice that came with fortune cookies. (I love pork. Can you tell?) It was all really wonderful and we loved feasting on it. Oh! JDaniel also had a New Year’s cracker with chocolate bits in it.
JDaniel have a few opinions about the meal that he shared with my husband and I. He didn’t think the sauce on the shrimp and broccoli was good in fact he announced it wasn’t a favorite. He usually loves shrimp but commented on how the sauce made it not good. He loved the restaurant nuggets. Most of the world would call it sweet and sour pork JDaniel renamed the dish restaurant nuggets. The dipping sauce that came with the restaurant nuggets was very much loved. He dipped everything in it including the fortune cookie.
This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday .
Welcome to Read. Explore. Learn! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing the ways you have learned with and explored books.
Steps:
Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.
My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:
A Wish to be a Christmas Tree is a wonderful book about a tree that finds out he has a purpose all year long. What fun it is to be so helpful to others all during the year and not just look pretty at Christmas time.
What did we do?
Thank You Notes Using Hand Tracings
What is the toddler style? It means we will be celebrating at 12 noon on New Year’s Eve with JDaniel.
What do you need for a toddler style celebration?
Ingredients:
Food
A meal that matches a place in the world that is actually celebrating New Year’s a twelve midnight.
We are actually going to cheat and have Chinese food even if it is really a thirteen-hour time difference. You can check The World Clock and find a country that is twelve hours ahead of you.
Balloons
Mixed Drinks
You may have your own fun kiddy cocktail. We love juice here and don’t keep it in the house all the time.
Treat Cracker
An old toilet paper tube covered in tissue is a perfect treat holder. We will be having little candies in ours. We will pull them at 12 noon to start the New Year off with a bang.
What are your New Year’s Eve plans?
We had talked (JDaniel and me) about how Santa was based on a wonderful man that live long ago named St. Nick. I had mentioned that presents come on Christmas Day in remembrance of this wonderful man. We had also read books that had Santa in them. I tried not to make a big deal about him.
All seemed to be going well until we need to stop at our local BI-Lo for milk one evening. Seriously all we went in the store for was milk. We got a whole lot more than milk on this visit.
Right inside the doorway of the BI-Lo is a photo studio. (Not all BI-Los have them. The one closest to us does.) Right outside of the photo studio in front of the frozen foods was set up an area where you could have a picture taken with Santa. Sitting right on an emerald green wingback chair was Santa as happy and jolly as could be.
JDaniel had never seen Santa outside of a book. This man in a white beards and read suit stopped him cold in his tracks. Peeking at him from behind my legs JDaniel waved and smiled broadly. When Santa invited him to come and sit with him, JDaniel suddenly remembered we needed to get milk and guided me quickly away from Santa and through the frozen foods to the milk cooler.
After retrieving and paying for the milk, we headed out the door and JDaniel looked back at Santa’s chair and Santa was gone. “Where did he go?” JDaniel asked. I told him I thought Santa needed to go and eat dinner just like we did. JDaniel seemed think that made sense.
While eating dinner that night, I asked JDaniel to tell his dad who we saw at the grocery store. “I saw the real Santa,” he said, “Right there at BI-Lo.”
I guess we have seen Santa and for the next few years he is real.
How did you handle Santa at your house?
