Koi Bath Bombs

These turned out better than I thought they would as I was making them - the mold was very soft and I felt I didn't have enough moisture, but they popped out nicely!

Poppy the Country Dog

Some people look down on little fluffy dogs as some kind of accessory or a yapping annoying little gnat, so I decided to make some scrapbook pages from the point of view of our tiny country dog! I admit my best dogs were probably my Rottweiler, Hannah, and my half-St. Bernard, Megan, but this little dog, not yet 7 months old, has brought so much joy to our lives. She is a tiny blast of sunshine - we just smile goofily when she is around. She is cuddly and sweet but also fierce and sassy - she ain't afraid of nuthin! If I had half her exuberance for life or half her social skills, I'd be a happier person!

My gang

I love my gang! I love that they not only will go for walks with me every day - usually two unless it is raining - but they are excited about it. It is vital for my health issues and sometimes I am tired and don't have the motivation, but their eagerness always gets me up and going, and it's great for the dogs too. We have some of our best talking time during these walks and find so many natural treasures since we walk not only on the acreage we live on but also at every nature preserve within 30 miles of our home.

Next step on the hope-to-do list - camping! I really want to take my girls camping. Camping with my father is one of my favorite memories. Our complications are all our pets and a car on its last legs, but we are hoping to find a way this fall to start - and also to go canoeing. Wow they are growing up fast and I want to have more adventures with them before they flit away.

Rolling on the couch, gasping for air!

People, if you're having a hard week and you need something to get your belly laugh going, Mad Libs are a must!

When Jing came home at nearly 7, we began homeschooling a few months later, but the first couple of years, she had great difficulty with English work and was very tense when the workbook and textbook came out (this was not introduced immediately, of course, but after she had learned English). For the life of her, she could not even tell the difference between a noun and a verb. I decided to put the text away and find a fun way to learn where she would not even know she was being educated. Enter: Mad Libs (and many other games and creative ways of learning).

These are simple little booklets with a short story on each page where one person who is holding the book asks the others in the room to give a random word - a noun, a verb, an adverb, an adjective, a part of the body, a famous person, a color, a number, etc. These people do not know what the story will be about. The book holder fills in the blanks with the words and then reads the story, which is often hilarious to the point of laughing so hard you have an asthma attack (me) or maybe a little pee in the pants (me again) (forgive my candor, but it's true).

A few evenings on the couch at our nightly together time doing Mad Libs, and Jing had not only nouns and verbs down pat - after a year of struggling with it in school books - but also all the other parts of speech. Some Libs are not as funny as others. The girls watched the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies last year and we got that Mad Libs book (there's one for Star Wars too), and those haven't been that entertaining for some reason. But tonight Lily drug out a book of Christmas Mad Libs that we did year before last, and honestly we all were in agony we were laughing so hard, tears rolling, weird strangled sounds coming out of us.

Here are some selections from our Christmas Mad Libs. The word in parentheses is what the players were instructed to provide and the bold words are the word they provided to fill in the blank.

"Yesterday I took my friend Alice (person) to see Santa Claus at the department store. He is only 6000 (number) years old, so I had to hold onto his bladder (part of the body) whenever we crossed the flower (noun)....Santa is a bit, fat, plush (adjective) man with a black (color) beard who dresses in a bright red bra (article of clothing)."

"The next morning when the moon (something round) came up, Scrooge jumped out of his bathtub (piece of furniture) and said, 'I am a changed scroll (noun). I only hope it is not too stinky (adjective) for me to become a kindly, generous squirrel(something alive).' He put on his underwear(article of clothing), rushed to the butcher shop and said, 'Give me the biggest Red Tanager (type of bird) you have.' Then he bought cakes and yucky (adjective) cookies and a beautiful cake (noun) pudding....Scrooge said, 'Boring (adjective) Christmas, Bob Cratchit. I have rats (plural noun) for everyone, including Tiny Tim.' And they had a disgusting (adjective) dinner and sang jolly lanterns (plural noun). Scrooge had indeed changed from an exciting (adjective) skinflint into a wonderful dragon (noun). He gave Tiny Tim a solid gold eyeball (noun) and Tiny Tim said, 'Merry Christmas, and may Paris Hilton (famous person) bless us every one!'"

At one point, Charles Ingalls needed some movies to keep his appendix warm, and fifty years ago children got caring electric trains or baby dolls that said "Yee-Haw!" Santa put the presents in the boxer shorts that the children had hung on the mantle. After he did this 5 times, he went home to get ready for Chinese New Year (holiday)! Then we did one on New Year's resolutions where "I promise to help bathe my pet sewing machine and help snuggle the dishes after dinner."

I love to see the Chinese influence in so many of the words they chose and the "famous people" they picked - Charles Ingalls heehee! Lily was really into the body parts and instead of arms and legs would say "sphincters," or "intestines." There are some Junior (easier) Mad Libs for the younger kids, and be careful as there are also some adult Mad Libs! There are Survivor Mad Libs and Nancy Drew Mad Libs, which we enjoyed during Lily's obsession with the titian-haired sleuth. They are a lot of fun and a great way to laugh together as a family while teaching the littles the parts of speech!

Georgie goes all Mao on us

The girls dressed Georgie up in their Red Scarf someone sent them from China and did a photo shoot. She seems quite proud of herself. Another amusement to fill time during the freeze of 2010 when it's too cold to go outside for a walk (we are easily entertained)!

Cats bouncing off the walls!

It has been exceedingly cold for central Georgia, and our cats, who normally prowl through the woods like little tigers much of the day, have decided they need to stay inside. But they are very antsy and Daisy, our resident diva, keeps leaving my room and coming back in again and again begging for treats very vociferously! Normally when she comes in for a visit I give her treats and I guess she figures no matter how many times she enters the room she will get treats. So she just leaves and comes back two minutes later. Pretty smart, but she is driving me nuts! She has been playing with her own tail like it's a mouse and galloping back and forth through the house literally crashing head-on into walls. Then she sprawls across the foot of my pitiful little twin bead and I have to sleep in the fetal position. Did I mention she is a diva?!

So while grocery shopping I found an inexpensive pull toy with some irresistable feathers on the end, and both she and her mom Zoey have returned to kittenhood, batting, pouncing, attacking, wrestling and chasing us through the house, which has also turned out to be good exercise for us, as we've been missing our daily walk, not having anything but a light jacket. It's very cute but the dadburned toy has two little bells on it so now I find my nerves being stretched again with the constant jingle, but we have had fun!

The Simplest Things

I love how kids are so thrilled with the simplest things, even almost teenagers. We only had some clear mugs from Walmart - seen in the background - to drink our hot stuff out of. I had at the time not been able to find any pretty ones and decided it would make a good Christmas surprise. So I ordered us all one from online - Lang for the girls and Leanin' Tree for me because I fell in love with the little Shetland pony on this mug.

I think this was almost their favorite thing they got for Christmas. They have told me numerous times how much they love them. They get up an hour or so before I do because I get them in bed in time to get to sleep before daylight - on the nightshift I always see the sun come up before I go to bed. I worried about them getting hungry but didn't want to give up having lunch together, though I need to get them started making some meals, so I suggested they get up and fix a mug of hot cocoa. They love this new little independent pleasure and do it almost every day.