Living History Museum

4th graders at Virginia Run Elementary, and maybe across Fairfax County, have a Living History Museum.  Each child picks a person from history and learns all about them.  They make a poster that tells some interesting facts about the person they selected and put a button on it that you are supposed to push.  Then on the day of the museum they dress up like the person and get "in character".  You walk around the hallways pushing the buttons on the posters and kids come to life telling you all about the person they studied.  Hilde chose Susan B. Anthony.  She did a fabulous job.  She had everything memorized and spoke clearly and confidently.

One of the things that I believe strongly in as a parent is that my kids do their own projects with minimal help from me.  I help encourage them to complete projects and homework, but I think it is really important for them to do all the work.  To this day it still bugs me that when I went to school some of the kids had a LOT of help from their parents.  I hated being judged against a kid who didn't do all the work themselves.  At the time it was frustrating, but now that I am an adult, I am so glad my parents stood back and watched me grow.  I think that helped me build my self esteem and my independence.  I was super proud of Hilde.  She is an awesome kid.

Gourmet Chez Younce

I don't think I can overstate how much we love the America's Test Kitchen cookbooks.  We have subscriptions to Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country, we own no less than 8 of the cookbooks and they are some of our most used, well loved recipes.  But the Menu cookbook is daunting.  Each menu takes days to put together.  However, we finally pulled one off.  The bad news is that we made this on Fast Sunday.  The first Sunday of the month we abstain from eating for roughly 24 hours.  So all day, while we were hungry, there was delicious yumminess cooking all around us.  It made for some pretty cranky moment.  Don't worry, there was food induced ecstasy at dinnertime.  Here was the menu:

Hearty French Lamb Shank Dinner:
Skillet-Carmelized Pears with Blue Cheese
Braised Lamb Shanks
White Bean Gratin
Garlicky Swiss Chard

And for fun, I added Bread Machine home-made bread and a green salad

This was really delicious.  I especially loved the white bean gratin and Dave discovered that Swiss Chard can be quite awesome.  It made me want to go to the effort to try some more of these, but not on a day of fasting!

Caramel Popcorn

Growing up, the High family had a Friday night tradition.  Pizza from Little Ceasar's.  Then we would make caramel popcorn and watch a movie.  I remember digging in before the caramel was cooled off and burning the roof of my mouth, or my fingers.  But I just COULDN'T wait.  One night, out of the blue, I craved caramel popcorn and realized that the kids were missing out on an important part of their heritage.  So, I found the recipe and Hilde and I whipped up a batch.  It was just as good as I remembered, and the kids loved it too.

Knight Readers

Our children have all developed a love of reading, which is fantastic on many levels.  On top of that, Phineas wants to be wherever Enoch is.  Add to that Enoch's desire to dress like Phinn and you get two knights sharing a chair poring through books together.  I really wish I could pause the clock sometimes. These boys are awesome.

Be My Valentine

Happy belated Valentine's day!  This year we kept it simple.  The kids enjoyed making crafts at school and making Valentine's for their friends.  The three big ones had parties at school.  We had playgroup at our house and so even Freya got to celebrate with friends.  Everyone got a chance to decorate heart shaped sugar cookies with neon pink frosting.  Overall it was a really nice day.

Haircuts

My boys will tell you that nothing makes me more giddy then seeing them right after a haircut.  I love running my hands over that short, adorable hair.

I know you cannot see Phinn's hair in these pictures, but he too had just had a haircut and I rubbed that little head until it shone.  Then he promptly went and put on his pajamas, pirate hat, aviator goggles and fire belt.  Because nothing says it is bedtime more than ARRRR!

Phinn's first stitches

It was supposed to be a fun night reconnecting with old friends.  They came over for dinner, we ate, and then let the kids loose.  6 kids running around is not an unusual sight at our house, and for the most part everyone has fun.  But about 15 minutes into the fun, Enoch and Phinn ran from our living room into the kitchen and bumped into each other.  Phinn fell into the railing and started crying.  Enoch then turned to me with a worried face and voice.  Then I looked at Phinn.  Blood everywhere, tears streaming down his face.  We cleaned him up the best we could and took a look inside to find his lip split pretty deeply.  It meant that we had to take him in for stitches.  So we loaded him into the van and my good friend came with us to keep us company.  It was not the night we intended, but we did get a lot of time to talk!  Phinn was a trooper.  We ended up at Fair Oaks Hospital's emergency room where I was really glad that Phinn only had a split lip.  Some of the people there looked pretty sick with what I assume was the flu.  It took about 4 hours, but he finally had two stitches and a popsicle for being so great.  He did not even cry when they put in the stitches, he just calmly told me that it hurt.  I was extremely proud of my little guy.  I picked up a bottle of antibiotics on the way home and at about 1 in the morning put a very tired kiddo to bed.  Something tells me that this is not our last emergency room trip for this kid.  Phinn has an independent, energetic spirit.  He is nearly fearless.  He loves adventure, fighting whatever he can (monsters, bad guys, his family members...) and jumping, climbing and exploring.