Donut at Large

Artist's rendering.

One morning little Miss woke up and told me about a terrible dream she'd had. A donut was chasing her and trying to eat her. She drew me a picture."It looked exactly like that, it even looked like it was drawn with pencil."

She liked her flowers

Exhibit A

Left on my pillow

Zoe' Creations

Hermit crabs in the Specialist's room.

"The hermit crab got out of it's shell. And that yellow piece right there is the Batman symbol. And that's the woodchips, and the top of the tank. And that's its two eyes."

Anything else?

"I smelled the wet wood chips...and it smelled a little bit not good."

Twice a day they go with another teacher to do a variety of things: art, science, gym, the library. All very exciting.

Monkey!

A test in cutting skills I think.

But adorable.

Mystery bag. What is this Zo?

I got a blue whistle. 

Sure enough.

Wicket (our cat), Marble (the turtle, on the ground), Roman (with blue fairy wings), Daddy with our goldfish balancing on his head, Mommy, Zoe.

Mommy and Daddy, with a bird in the air and a squirrel on the ground.

This is a school bus.

"That's just stuff that I wanted to put on the piece of paper."

"Rex told me this was sloppy...he's not very nice."

That darn Rex. Forever in mama bear's radar as the boy who criticized my angel's work ;)

Zoe had Pete the Cat too. Pete got some pink and purple boots (fabulous!)

Zoe made this turtle on the first day of school (oops., she just pointed out his back leg was missing). She took it out and promptly gave it to Roman. What a sweetie.

She makes her own computer

On paper.

Complete with:

Fasbook

Goo[gle]

N[etflix]

pbs kids

R[esearch]

music

FW [Funniest Home Videos]

And, I am told the cat is Wicket (our cat).

She made another one with a black case and told me it was her work computer (like mine).

Cold.

Brutal Cold. Polar Vortex cold. I'm hoping I don't hear that term for another 20 years. We've had horribly cold weather over the last month. It started with January weather in December and then insanely cold weather in January. Colder in parts of the Midwest than in was in the Arctic. Happy 2014. 

I spent the weekend having fun with the other seasonal complaint: bad health. I got over it, although now Zoe and Dad have fallen...

Last weekend Zoe came in and produced a gift for me. I was half asleep, but Dad took a photo.

I HOP YOU FIL BeDr.

I did when I saw that!

Christmas Vacation Shenanigans (or: I couldn't think of a title)

Viewed in a magazine: "She's beautiful"

(snip, snip for her notebook journal)

Viewed on a digital kiosk at the mall ".....Mom, Mom...LOOK!" 

Source (any a very interesting site to poke around, lots of incredibly beautiful photos and illustrations by talented artists...)

Known in our house as the 'Pepsi Girl'.

Last week Zoe decided to write her a letter (as much as a 5 year old can). I think I planted the seed thinking that maybe we could figure out a way to write a note to Ms. Sofia Vergara (aka "Pepsi Girl") sometime. Sometime to the 5 year olds is typically RIGHT NOW. As I was cleaning up I found some leftover Christmas cards and blank envelopes. Zoe took a blank envelope and disappeared.  She came back with a sealed envelope (I did see strips of yellow paper at some point, likely part of the interior). She asked me to write on it. She didn't know how to tell me to address it and put a stamp on it, but she understood the concept by pointing and saying it in another way. Since we're several days out from that conversation I don't remember what she said, but I do find it amazing that we're at that level of conversing. And she's learned so much (Roman is no slouch either!). I don't know that she was happy with my hand drawn stamp, but after I wrote "To Pepsi Girl" she took it back and decorated it.

I confirmed that those are shoulders. ;)

So now, I need to figure out what to do. Zoe's pretty determined to get this in the mail. Yet I wonder about the mysterious contents, likely mysterious even when they are opened ;).

Proud Mama

This morning Roman and Zoe asked if they could go downstairs. Sure. Until Christmas this isn't something they'd want to do themselves, but this year Santa left their presents down there, so apparently the reward of going someplace kind of scary outweighs the scariness.  What did Santa bring? An art easel for Zoe and a foosball table for Roman.

So down they went, and I was getting things done around the house and Mike was reading one of his new books. It's awfully quiet I thought. For a few minutes. Then I went to check on them. They were fine, as expected, and Zoe had created this masterpiece on her easel.

WOW. I was blown away.

I had her explain to me what she wrote in this video.

I enjoyed it immensely (as you can tell). 

Little did I know that we have horse riding (horsridn) and too much shopping (zopin) in our future (nevermind zckol in our present and a food fit in our past).

It's winding down follks

I'm in full on summer-is-almost-ending mode. Time to cram in as much as possible.

The kids and I spent the night on a blanket eating dinner at a park/playground and I finally talked Zoe into moving on over to the outdoor stage are where they were putting on an outdoor production of Willy Wonka. We got about 20 feet behind the back row of lawn chairs and plopped down. Roman was interested and wanted to watch, Zoe was lagging behind. We finally got her over and about 10 minutes later she says "I can't see. Why are we sitting so far away?"

Kids.

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. 

We made a pilgrimage to the American Swedish Institute this past weekend. Zero in the way of expectations, which I think is the way to go.

Pleased as punch by the Dala Horse- Zoe was the brave first rider. A real Swedish cowgirl (except she's not Swedish....Norwegian, yes)

Then Roman.

Almost immediately we made our way to the 3rd floor of the Turnblad mansion/house/museum and spent a good deal of time in the kids area. A little kitchen time (not much)

Some time watching a short video on glassblowing and then perusing a book that showed a collection of works created from kids drawings.

Awesome.

It's amazing how close the final product resembled the kids drawings.

And there was a little table where kids could draw their own pictures and submit it for the chance to be made into a real piece of art glass. Wowsers. Zoe promptly drew a  unicorn and told me it was named Rainbow. Her description? 

It's a unicorn and unicorns are very pretty.

Roman's? 

The Eyeless Monster. 

It's really cool and it's colorful.

Okay then.

A chance to make their own glass.

Beautiful

And interestingly non breakable ;)

Roman loved these blocks - they were magnetic around the edges and very easy to build with. And I saw him putting them away in nice stacks, with like shapes together. WHY DOESN'T HE DO THIS AT HOME?

Write a letter to Tomte?

Who is Tomte?

(I think I read he makes a Christmas visit, so we may be going back)

Tomte lives at ASI.

He came from Sweden.

He is an Elf who takes care of things around the house. Nordic immigrants brought him in with them.

An invasive non-native species?

Perhaps, but we'll pretend he's harmless. ;)

Roman wrote his own note, I told him how to spell it ( I don't think I did this at almost 5). It read:

Would it be nice to drive a race car

Roman

 Time to check out more of the house.

On the stairs.

Onward we went. The exhibit at the moment is glass art, not exactly where you'd think to bring rambunctious preschoolers, but they were okay.

Reminds me of how much Sweden reminded me of Northern MN.

And it was family day, with demonstration of glass blowing on the patio with a real live Swede.

Did I say this was July and we were wearing hoodies? Yeah. A little bit of rain too, but we survived.

Crafts!

Roman and I made magnets - I had a preprinted Dala horse that I modge podged to the glass and Roman made himself a design that he glued. As you see, Zoe designed her own jewelry as well.  Let's not talk about how the clasp pealed off before we left the premises, ok? She was very proud (and then somewhat sad). We'll survive.

It was a good day. Go into it with no expectations, folks.

Pictures taken by Zoe. No Kidding.

At home.

Visiting Sister Helenette. 

Even the flowers caught her eye.

No cropping. See - point and shoot. :)