Happy Birthday, Rora Grace!

Last Wednesday my eldest daughter turned the ripe old age of eight years old.  It has been so fun and quite an honor as her mother to watch her the last six months as so many things started to 'click'.

Birthday Pie!

We decided to have a friend party on the Saturday, when all those that attend school could come, so for our family party she chose to have pie.  Pumpkin pie.  And she was happy.  The gifts from the grands were opened and loved, gifts from sisters played with, and gift from Mum & Dad delighted in.  This is the gift I hunted down:

She outgrew her 1/8-size violin awhile ago, but having the money for a new one proved very tricky.  I did, however, recently discover a great guy named Todd who sells violins out of the back of a church 30 minutes away, and only charges $65-$75 for the violin, bow and case.  That is where I got this beautiful violin (the picture can't do justice to the beauty of this instrument!) for the extra $10.  Hoorah!

Saturday's party was sort-of based around the American Girl dolls.  For invitations I found a fun picture online with with eight first dolls all listed with their dates and a caption above that said, "Choose your favorite American Girl".  Well, the challenge was on!  I added Aurora's picture on the side with the year of her birth (2004, the four matched the fours in the dates of all the dolls), and bigger than the other dolls.  If I have energy to put a picture on at some point, I will.  The info was at the bottom of the invitation.  Aurora handed these out to her favorite people, including our 25 year-old neighbor and two couples that are in their sixties and winter in Arizona.  The winter visitors were such sports to come; I made them quiche in appreciation. :-)

Aurora's favorite doll is Kirsten (it's the doll she owns), so I turned our Holly Hobbie cake pan into as close an approximation of Kirsten as I could.  (The yellow frosting is meant to be her braids....)

I decided to play a couple of games from America's past with the children who came.  We played one called "Corners" (there are four corners the children run to while "it" counts to ten with eyes closed, then calls out a number.  All children at that corner are out and must come to the center.  You play until there is one left...if you can get there within a few calls) and another one she requested called "How Many Miles to Babylon" (a variation of Crack the Whip with a dialogue-d rhyme at the beginning).  After those games, we had a relay race.  This is where it comes in handy to be the wife of a reenactor.  I hauled out our dresses and aprons and had the girls race by threes to put them on, then run back and tag another girl (or boy, we had one at that point), run back with them, undress while the next girl dressed, and then run over and build a log cabin out of lincoln logs.

Here are some of the kids with the dresses...












                 ...and building the log cabins!







The last project before having cake was to make a journal, since the best way to know about anyone from history is reading their journals.  These were my own invention and really easy.  I cut some white paper about 1/2" on two sides and then used card stock for the covers.  Take five pieces of paper and one cover, fold them all in half.  Center the white papers inside the cover paper and the Paper punch one hole in each end, through all the paper.  Take a piece of string (about 18" long) and thread the paper from the inside so you can tie it on the outside.  I tie in a square knot first, then put on a bow.  Last part is to decorate the cover however you choose.  One ended up looking like this:

Ending in cake and presents, then giving each girl a baggie and letting them raid the leftover Valentine's candy rounded out the party and each girl left happy.  And I don't have to be creative like that for another few months...the twins are old enough now to ask for a party all their own and haven't had one yet so I don't mind.  

A couple of things Rora got for her birthday are books about baptism.  That is our curriculum for the next two weeks: learning all about baptism, its covenants, and its meanings.  She's excited and eager to learn, which makes me excited to share with her all of my love and knowledge of the subject.  Yippee!

A New Year, A New Resolve

Our family has been working diligently to get on a regular schedule with our stewardships.  The girls have been trying hard to remember to keep things tidy and help clean the house.  We have officially combined a few different "chore" systems to help the girls manage their stewardships: Accountable Kids, HAnnDi Household Work System, with ideas from Values Driven Family, and "The Parenting Breakthrough" as well as a checklist I made myself (yeah, how ever did I do something myself with all these books and systems to guide my path?) and the combination just might work.  We'll see!  At least the downstairs has maintained a level of tidiness it hasn't seen in a while (since Aurora grew old enough to drop things wherever she wanted to on the floor and would do that repeatedly until the floor could no longer be seen - all within the space of one minute).

I think it might also help that I have more vocal/piano/violin students and my new children's choir classes meeting here and I have to stay more on top of making sure they follow through with putting things away (and only getting one item out at a time).  Hopefully we will all get the hang of the newish system relatively soon so that we can get more actual school time in.  We've been slipping in our school time because I can't think in chaos and I've needed to get rid of clutter and mess.  Goodwill has profited greatly from my need to be less cluttered!

Speaking of my new choir classes...I am rather pleased with how the first classes went this last week.  We went over proper posture and breathing; matching pitches; listening and following directions; then we learned "Hot Cross Buns" (our first technical piece).  At first I didn't know how quickly we'd be able to progress, but I have great hopes of moving quickly...if I can get the youngers to gather some better focus.

Aurora is starting to get serious and worried about getting baptised (and yes, I know that is spelled "wrong" according to American reasoning, but you will discover my British spellings scattered throughout this blog when the mood hits me!).  We are going to be spending a lot of time the next couple of months talking about the doctrines and principles and ordinances of our faith, then defining terms and defining those definitions and writing it all down, then reasoning everything and writing that down until she understands as well as possible the commitment of baptism and wants to make that commitment.  (We are also studying the virtues of honesty and kindness in the same manner....)

The twins are so excited about learning, and that makes me excited again!  It's been so long that I've been struggling with Aurora's antagonism toward "official" learning that a lot of my spark disappeared.  It's returning in full force (partly because of my house becoming a nearly livable space, too, I admit) and my time is spent gearing up for some exciting prospects.  One plan is to start a trip around the world: I am making passports and world adventure books for the girls, so we can begin our journey soon.  Other plans are a bit more hush-hush for now, but it's good to be excited again - thanks Aria and Belle!