The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

.... is Advent.

We brought home our tree early this year. 

The girls decorated it, as is evident from the charmingly-random placement of ornaments, none of which quite made it to the topmost branches. Except for the star, which I was given strict instructions to emplace upon the highest bough while every one else was (unwillingly) in bed.

The little brown table that, 11 months of the year is covered with coloring sheets and markers of all kinds, is now laden with Christmassy figurines and other display items.

And Emily made a stable for a new set of nativity characters from Grandma K and Grandpa A.

It is a rare and wonderful thing when our family is ready for Advent before Advent actually begins.

Now it seems that all we need to do is bake a lot of cookies, play and sing a lot of carols, buy a lot of presents, and enjoy a lot of family.

Happy eve-of-the-eve-of-the-eve-of-Advent!

Boringism

Kate: Mum, our front yard and backyard and downstairs are boring*, boring.
Me: Why are they boring, Kate?
Kate: (no answer).
Me: Well, if those are boring, what's not boring, Kate?
Kate: Well...... Emily's school backyard and my school play area are not boring.
Me: What else is not boring?
Kate: Computer games and watching TV.
Me: What about cleaning up?
Kate: That's boring.




* Although she says it "baw-in".

Emily Does Watercolour

I love what the schools do in art here. I cannot remember what we learned in art in Primary One (first grade) but it wasn't this. Every time I am in Emily's school building, I gawk at the artwork on the walls. Either the kids are all incredibly and naturally gifted in art, or else the teachers are good at teaching it. Or both. 

There's a lot of art done by the kids on this blog, and not as much other-academic-subject matter. To an extent, we do a lot more art (than any other learning area) together because the girls are so young that it's something they can all enjoy. Also, art is a lot more interesting to document and photograph than, say, a sine curve (not that we're there yet). For instance, we do a lot of random counting exercises, mostly for Kate's benefit, while we're out and about on the road. Our most current game is to spot and count Brown Trucks (aka the UPS delivery vehicles). Once the girls unexpectedly spotted a UPS airplane and were beside themselves with joy. But as it was technically not a truck, we were initially perplexed at how to include that in our daily tally. Last week, we added another game - spotting and counting school buses, and on a particular day, we counted 44 school buses and 18 brown trucks. The challenge for the older girls is to simultaneously keep count of both kids of vehicles.

Jenna, our resident colour aficionado, recently suggested we also play the very popular game of spotting coloured cars. Her rules were: no bicycles, skateboards, work vehicles (including construction-type things and semis) but motorcycles were allowed, and pick-up trucks were allowed. We were also not allowed to spot white, black, brown, tan or grey vehicles, because they were "boring", or pink (surprisingly) because it was "too hard". In other words, colours of the rainbow. Jenna is very one-track-minded that way.

Mathwise, Emily makes Dave give her mental sums during supper. Her rate of success depends largely on whether she happens to be in a daft mood that evening or not. I'm glad I'm not the one in charge of her Math education, because I just have no clue as to what sort of things are appropriate for the early elementary school level. A couple of months back, Emily missed a whole week of school because of a bad cold, and I thought she should have some make-up lessons, so I taught her Venn diagrams. Apparently, it was slightly too advanced for a first-grader, even with plastic fruit and vegetables and large sheets of paper with large circles drawn on, strewn all over the bedroom floor. And by "advanced", I don't mean Emily didn't comprehend the concept - the challenge was stopping Kate and Jenna from stealing the plastic fruit and making fruit baskets with them on the side while the lesson was in progress. How was I to know they would completely miss the point?

That's our academic update for the week! Emily has a field trip tomorrow to watch an outdoor play. She's very excited about it, which is a good attitude, especially since it was 24 degrees this morning and we were several inches deep in snow. Yes, winter has suddenly descended upon us.

Have a good week, all!

Bread Rolls

Thought I'd share the recipe for the bread rolls I mentioned in this earlier post. It was in the week's newspapers and I tried it for fun. I'm always interested in bread making, and will probably do it more in earnest when I finally buy myself a stand mixer with a dough hook. Winter is not the best time to make anything yeast-involved, because the temperatures, even if supplemented with space heaters and bright hot lights, are just lousy for rising. Case in point: this dough literally sat like a lump for almost an hour before I stuffed it in the oven that was cooling down after a batch of cookies. It rose, if a bit rapidly, and we managed to get some decent rolls out of them. I think they would be quite spectacular if the yeast actually behaved the way it was supposed to, but we do what we can.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milk (not skim)
• 2  Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp oil (I used olive)
• 3 cups flour (I used bread flour mixed with all-purpose)
• 2 tsp instant yeast
• 1.25 tsp salt
• 3 Tbsp packed light brown sugar 
• 1/3 cup instant potato flakes
• 1 Tbsp butter, melted, for fan tans
• 1 egg (for glazing)
• Sesame seeds, poppy seeds, dried rosemary etc for garnish

Method:

1. Heat milk in saucepan till you can comfortably swirl your fingertip in it. Remove from heat, add in butter and oil and set aside.
2. In mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, yeast, salt and potato flakes. I used a little less than the 3 cups of flour and left about 2 Tbsp for dusting later. This is so I wouldn't have to add additional flour that would make the dough hard/dry.
3. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ingredients by hand (or, if lucky enough to own one - a dough hook) and knead till springy, about 5-10 minutes. Dust hands with the remaining flour, only adding more if absolutely necessary (it won't be).
4. Place dough in lightly oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave in warm place (snort!) to rise for about an hour, till doubled in size. I used a warm-cool oven (lowest temp 170 F and switched off immediately upon reaching it) for about half an hour.
5. Shape rolls into cloverleaf buns, fan tans (layered), crescents, knots and snails, tucking all tails under, where applicable.
6. Cover with light cloth and let rise in warm place for about 45 minutes.
7. Brush with egg beaten with 1 tsp water, then sprinkle with seeds.
8. Bake in 350 F oven for 18-20 minutes or until golden.

 Recipe from here.

Operation Christmas Child 2011

Every year in November, the girls and I pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. Each time, we take photos of our packed boxes and mention that we dropped the boxes off at some collection center. This year, we finally remembered to take photos of the process and print out the little bar codes that will allow us to track our shoeboxes, so we know exactly where they finally end up.

Yesterday, we packed the boxes. As with the year before, we set up an assembly line of little stations so the girls could fill their shoeboxes. Here is our messy basement sofa, laid out with boxes of art supplies, toys, candy, vanity items and toiletries.

Today after school, we drove to the processing center, which happily was about 5 minutes from where we live. We carried our shoeboxes up that little black flight of steps to Suite 500,

where we dropped them off (they are stacked behind Emily on the table). The kids got little green I Gave A Shoebox stickers and a big thank you from the staff.

The nice staff guy also showed us on the map where the shoeboxes were headed this year (the year on the post-it note isn't quite right). Last year, they went to India.

The girls got to peek inside the warehouse where, come Saturday, tours would be held to take people through the process of moving the shoeboxes from the drop-off centers all the way to the recipients in far-off lands. Last year, Emily and I went on the tour and we are going to wait till Kate is a little older before we sign all of us up. Saturday will be a busy day, as will be the weeks following, as the boxes are processed for their long journey. Today, it was quiet, with only a few workers pottering about, receiving shoeboxes from donors and setting up the tables and supplies for the busy days ahead.

Before we left, we stood in front of a wall of cardboard cartons. 

Mostly because I can never resist cardboard boxes, let alone a whole wall of them, but also to capture a bit of the magnitude of this project. We gave just four boxes, but by the end of Collection Week, literally millions (8.2 million were delivered in 2010) will be packed into cardboard cartons like these, and sent to children in more than a hundred countries all over the world. Our girls, especially Kate, are still too young to understand the impact of those numbers; all their little heads (and hearts) know is the shoeboxes are for "the kids who have no toys." May God multiply that motivation a thousandfold as He brings our gifts to those other children we've never met, who have even less than no toys, but whom He loves just as much as He does ours.

Art Lesson

Now that school is in full swing, Emily has been continuing her governess duties with Jenna and Kate. Because she is now in full-day school, she no longer has entire afternoons to recreate the schoolday at home, so she does single lessons with her sisters, often after dinner. Her most recent one was an art lesson:

She drew up the colour wheel to teach the concept of warm and cool colours, stuck it on her wall,

got out the good colour pencils (thank you, Grandpa D!)

and had her students illustrate the concept.

This is Jenna's. 

Jenna explained to me that hot colours were the colours of fire, then paused and reflected aloud, "Pink is not in fire. But pink is a hot colour." She continued with, "Cool colours are..... blue, green, purple and even dark green."

Kate didn't quite get the concept, but she turned out some beautiful patterns, regardless. She always gets excited when allowed to use the good pencils.

Emily now mounts all the formal artwork (the random colouring and doodles on scrap paper around the house don't count) on black construction paper. She says she learned this at school. Our walls are now beginning to fill up like an art gallery, with self-portraits and patterns and other fine art. 

I don't think I even knew what a colour wheel was, when I was seven! 

Backyard Romp

We've been blessed with outrageously gorgeous weather this November, with temperatures remaining in the 50s and 60s and no snow. No snow! At this time last year, our trees were laden with the heaviest, wettest snow we'd ever seen. Today's weather was beautiful, and the girls, after a morning of errands, ran out to play in the backyard. Here they are on the neighbour's swing set, since ours has been put away for the winter.

Also wanted to show you this strange fence-like structure in the neighbour's backyard. 

Do you know what it is?

It's their ice-skating rink! They fill it with water, which freezes and stays frozen all through the winter, and the neighbour kids skate on it. I thought our Singaporean friends and family would enjoy seeing this, since it's such a novel and wonderful (not to mention impossible) concept to go ice skating outdoors in a tropical country, let alone have that outdoors be one's own backyard!

When We're In the Kitchen

...we're really in the kitchen. This week and weekend have been declared Kitchenfest. I cooked and cooked and baked and baked like there was no tomorrow. We (the girls helped a bit) turned out cornish pasties, beef stew, baked potato soup, bread rolls, orange drop cookies, chocolate chip cookies, butterscotch cookies, mee siam (yes, mee siam!). Ah, it feels good to really cook. And when I cook, I like to have two or three dishes going on at the same time - stew in the dutch oven on the stove, rolls rising in the basement, cookies in the oven, another batch of cookies in the mixing bowl. Multitasking keeps up the mad rush of adrenaline, even during the waiting periods of stirring, watching the timer, percolating. I also unload and load the dishwasher at breakneck speed, and clean up the messy counters during those lulls. 

This doesn't happen all the time, just so you know. I usually loathe thinking up what to make for everyday dinners. But take me away from the kitchen for a prolonged period, like when I was sewing like a madman for Halloween, and I return with a vengeance. I took my notebook last weekend and asked Dave what he felt like eating (since I'm too lazy to think up dishes myself) and he rattled off his cravings. 

Another motivation for cooking was to deliver a home-cooked meal to a friend who had her third daughter two months ago. All too well I remember those odd evenings when Jenna or Kate was two or three months old, and on some growth spurt and I was nursing, nursing, nursing. And my already-fragile routines were turned on their heads once again and suddenly it was 530pm and there was no dinner and I was too tired to stay awake, let alone cook. If only Rachael Ray lived next door and was my best friend, were my desperate and idiotically-optimistic thoughts. Those memories are still fresh in my mind when I think of new mothers. What practical gifts meals are! But how I wished they'd been spaced out over the first six months of my babies' lives, instead of given all at the beginning. 

Anyway, tomorrow I get to deliver a meal gift, not as belated as it might appear, to a friend. Very happy. 

No photos in this post because I didn't stop to photograph any of the food. Next week we'll be back to takeout pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches and things like that. Fast meals, but not cathartic to make the way the ones this week were. I've always loved baking, and I enjoy cooking in spurts, but only when the mood strikes me. This week it did, so I'm riding it for as long as I can!

Cupcakes and Plants

Random photos today requested by the children.

Jenna has been working on this display of cupcakes:

They came as a craft kit of small paper trinket boxes which Jenna decorated to look like cupcakes. This is the view of the other side of the stand.

Emily has been working on a Science project at school, involving growing plants from stem cuttings. She brought them home today and asked me to take a picture of them. This one was a success.

The other one wasn't. Emily explained that this cutting never took root, so it never grew.

Kate had no request for photos today.

Kateism

Today, while in the van, driving to do errands, Kate said, "Mum, are you following the speed limits?"


I glanced nervously at the speedometer before answering, "I think so. Why, Kate?"


She answered, "Because they're on the road, far, far apart."


Eh?


"Where, Kate?"


"There!" said Kate, pointing and wiggling her finger. "See? They're in the middle of the road! Not the long, long things. The little rectangles!"


"You mean the lane dividers, Kate."


Silence from the backseat as Kate processed this.


"How did you know they were called speed limits?" I asked her soon after.


"Emily told me." she said.


I smiled. Kate will learn anything from her sisters.


Soon, we came to a zebra crossing (as we call them in Singapore) she became agitated again and began pointing. 
"Look! Speed limits!" she yelled. "Big ones!"

What They Were For Halloween

Musketeers.

Here is Kate in her ball gown,

Jenna in hers,

and Emily.

And here they are transforming

into musketeers -

Corinne

Aramina

and Viveca -

(all for one etc.)

They've often been called The Three Musketeers, so we just made it true this Halloween.

They spent about 45 minutes trick-or-treating in their outfits, and have worn them almost every day since (and before I even finished them). I'd say they're keepers.

More photos of the dresses here and the boots here on the craft blog.

Huntingism

We're in Moorhead for the weekend! Hunting season has begun, and Dave, clad in orange and camouflage, has gone hunting with some of the other men. While the menfolk are out hunting, the womenfolk played with Lego, went to the mall and blogged.


"Where's Daddy?" asked Kate this morning when she didn't see him at breakfast.
"Hunting." we said. 
"Oh" said Kate, her eyes big.
"Do you go hunting, too?" we asked her.
"No." she said.
"Why not?"
"I don't like killing deer. I just like to watch them."

And What A Birthday It Was!

• Buttermilk pancakes for breakfast, with sprinkles and cream
• Being sung "happy birthday" to by both sets of grandparents
• An hour in The Ball Pit (supervised play area) of IKEA, while Mum shopped all by her lonesome (but not complaining) self
• Lunch at the IKEA restaurant
• Uncountable rides at the amusement park of the Megamall
• Tea at the Barnes and Noble, with some reading by the train-table
• Ooh-ing and Aaah-ing at the tiny, tiny toy cupcakes and petits fours in the American Girl Store
• Riding the escalators
• Riding the elevators
• Watching the Mall guys put up the decorations on the gigantic twin Christmas trees
• Going home to open more presents
• Playing musketeer out in the leaves on a beautiful fall evening
• Pepperoni pizza for dinner
• Hot bath, reading and snuggling at bedtime
• Cupcake PJs and cupcake bedlinen
• Warm bed

Did you have a good day, then, Jenna? I asked when the day was done.
"Best day ever!" she said, softly and smiling.

Jenna Is 5 Years Old

Jenna turns 5 years old today!

Our sweet little girl! You love rainbows, cupcakes, cookies, frosting, baking, sprinkles and all things rainbowy and colourful. You request rice and mashed potatoes at every meal. You eat pizza, cream cheese sandwiches as if there were no other foods on the planet. You are a talented artist and fill each sheet of paper with colours, colours, colours, and turn them into masterpieces. You dance and twirl and do cartwheels in the living room, make piles of doll paraphernalia in your bedroom, and set up bakeries in every other room in the house. You want to do things all by yourself and we are amazed at how well you do them. You are a storehouse of trivia and deep, deep secrets and you surprise us continually with nuggets of information about whales and bats and synchronized swimming and squids and detective work. You love your mother's hair because it is "smooth, soft, black and stuck to her head". You have carefully named all your best stuffed animal friends, including Icingcakes Fluffluffs Bearaby, her offspring Precious Little Guy, and your rag doll Sloppy Joe. We love your hilarious observations on the world around you. You love acting out our grownup sillyness in your play. You give the best sharp-lip kisses. Your feet skip you to exciting places. Your hands punch the air in triumphant declarations. Your arms are the snuggliest, cuddliest place to be. And your smile is the unselfconscious window to a solemn little soul, a generous heart and an exuberant spirit.

Indeed!

We held a week-long celebration, beginning on Saturday with a party for her cousins, neighbors, sisters and schoolmates. Her party was all about cupcakes and cookies.

On Sunday, we celebrated with the family -Grandpa Arne, Grandma Karen, and our little family of five.

We interrupted the festivities on Monday by observing Halloween and collecting candy (photos later), took a mini-break on Tuesday, and continued on Wednesday with a cupcake feast in school. Here is Jenna with her cupcakes from the local bakery.

She gave out plastic apples filled with stationery to her classmates, and everyone made birthday cards for her (as is their practice whenever a classmate has a birthday). She coloured her birthday crown and danced out of school.

Today is the actual day so, at her request, we are having buttermilk pancakes with cream and sprinkles, and going to IKEA to play and have lunch. We're also planning a tea-time stop at the Megamall's Barnes and Noble, where Jenna has a coupon for a free cupcake. Yes, another cupcake. She can never have too many cupcakes, she thinks. 

Here she is, all grown up, in a picture from warmer days ago:

Happy Birthday, Jenna!