Eulogy for Pinchers

After a few months together, we discovered this weekend that poor Pinchers had passed on. Being that crayfish are nocturnal, he may have been dead for a couple of days before we noticed.

This was our first pet experience, and a good opportunity to see if the girls were ready for a "real" pet. Starshine assures us that many other classmate's crayfish have already passed on, so we are not the world's worst crayfish owners - yeah. Starshine doesn't seem to devastated, and considering for the past 3 months Starshine barely remembered to keep him fed, we are definitely not getting another pet anytime soon. Pinchers - we'll miss you...

Room Makeover

Due to the Labor Day 2010 water leak, we had to get the bathroom re-drywalled and a new door. Well, one nice door in a lower level of crappy doors didn't make sense, so I decided to get everything fixed that I still hated about our lower level. So, goodbye crappy doors, warped shelf boards, ugly paneling and bad baseboard workmanship. It was an ugly two weeks of the clan getting on each other nerves caged up in the upper level, but wow does it look nice.

And, since Starshine's room needed to be repainted because of new drywall, I decided it was time to let her makeover her room how ever she wanted. Here she is painting it dolphin-blue...


And because she had an ugy mish-mash of hand-me-down furniture, here is her brand-new loft bed (curse the 4+ hours it took to put this together, and the now waiting for 7 more screws to be sent by mail...)

It's not totally done yet, but as of tonight both girls are sleeping down stairs, alone. (Though Jr. Princess is not looking at this as a positive like M&M Dad and I are.)

Needless to say, Jr. Princess is P.O.ed that she is not getting a room makeover until she's a little older. Aaaahhh, second child syndrome.

At least the loft bed came with oodles of thin pieces of Styrofoam so we could have super fun practicing our karate moves! Can you tell we've watched the original Karate Kid lately :)

3rd Grade Science Fair

At the girls school, they are now required to participate in the science fair at least once in 3rd-5th grade. Guess who excited to hear this - me! How come my schools never did this??

Starshine is not a fan of science right now. Well, neither was I in elementary school when it's all about earth science and other "not chemistry and physics stuff." So in an attempt to make sure she enjoyed this experience I asked her to pick anything about science she has enjoyed in the last 3 years, and we would make a project out of it. She picked growing crystal trees. Done - we ordered some on the Internet.

After a planning meeting a few weeks ago, her friend came over this weekend to run the experiment. They worked so hard typing up their info, taking data, and assembling their board. I had to help with the general guidance of how to run an experiment, and we had to bring in M&M Dad's assistance to make some good graphs, but other than that, this was all there hard work. (Though, I don't really think the school prepared them AT ALL to be able to do this. I hear now that 1st and 2nd graders are be prepped, so hopefully Jr. Princess will be more prepared...)

And here's the result:

Feel free to ask her about whether crystal trees grow better with hot, room temperature, or cold solution! (Oh, and Grandpa L - do not start asking lots of complicated questions!!!)

I had so much fun doing the science fair project with my friend.

Yeah - that's success in my book!

Happy MLK day!

Yesterday, Starshine asked me why we don't celebrate MLK day. I tried to explain that it's more like Veteran's or President's Day - more of a remembrance than a Christmas or 4th of July-like celebration.

Well, that did not appear to be a good reason to her. While I was at work, and she was home from school with M&M Dad, she crafted her own MLK family celebration, including festive banner and other decorations, a MLK trivia quiz during dinner (I'm proud to report M&M Dad and I tied at 7 of 8 correct), and ice cream sundaes for dessert.

"Happy MLK Day

Blacks and Whites are Created ="

She loved her class book on Harriet Tubman, and is currently working on her class biography project, where she picked Ruby Bridges. She has such passion and interest for learning about desegregation and the Civil Rights movement.

It was a wonderful MLK celebration.

Happy New Year!

OK - I didn't blog for several weeks due to all of the holiday craziness, and I ended up finding all kinds of funny photos as I was cleaning up some cameras this weekend. So, I'm definitely belated on our New Years Eve festivities.

We had our second annual family game night this New Years Eve. Jr. Princess was a surprise winner last year with her Rock-Paper-Scissors domination, but this year she had to learn the agony of defeat. (Losing gracefully is still a skill she is working on...). The girls made fun medals again, including a large, Grand Champion medal.

This year's big winner was Starshine! At first she had a mini fit because I "suggested" she take a dive in Guess Who so her sister could at least win one game, but then she decided to be nice. If only she knew how many games we have lost on her behalf in the past.

Later that weekend we watched Mrs. Doubtfire with the kids. Jr. Princess was so inspired, she wanted to dress up like a boy and try to fool people, too. Isn't she the cutest boy??

Glasses 2.0

Unfortunately, Starshine inherited her Dad's bad vision, and exactly a year after her first pair of glasses, we were back for more. She wasn't super thrilled with Target's selection this year, but I still think found a great choice in these purple ones...

Wow, her hair is getting long. They loved the movie Tangled, but I've been trying to make them understand that super long hair is a massive pain to keep nice. Maybe we'll do haircuts soon...

Super Skater!

Jr. Princess was dead set against ice skating last year, and preferred to be pulled around in the sled. When we told her this year that no one was going to pull her sled, she decided it was time to try. After one day of clinging like a barnacle to my arm, she was off on her own...

You can hear the wind it was so bad that day! Hopefully the weather will cooperate so we can try again.

It's never to early to learn about fiscal responsibility...

I volunteer for an organization that takes inner city kids to theater productions. However, this month they received tickets to a live taping of a Suze Orman PBS special. I volunteered to drive because I LOVE SUZE ORMAN. They ended up not having kids who needed rides, but still said I could have 2 tickets.

I wasn't sure if Starshine would want to come, but when asked she replied, "I remember her - she was on Biggest Loser!" Awesome. It was pretty cool to see the behind the scenes of a tv program (stage directions, shuffling of the audience for good layout, etc.

Unfortunately they gave us about 10 seconds o take pictures, and my camera wasn't cooperating, so this is the best we got...


Starshine got a little bored at the discussion topic that was over her head, though perked up significantly when the talk came to allowance. She, however, did not like Ms. Orman's suggestions that kids shouldn't get one - they should work for it :).

They handed out pads of paper for people to take notes, and Starshine used it to make a running list of words/phrases she didn't understand. When we met M&M Dad and Jr. Princess for dinner afterwards, it was quite the time explaining Roth IRAs and foreclosures! She's now the most financially informed kid in America.

We'll be DVRing the upcoming show locally on January 30th and nationally on March 8th to see if we can see ourselves!

P.S Suze Orman is not humor or a cup of tea for me unlike the rest of the crowd!

Go Gophers! And YEAH free ice cream!

I won 2 free tickets to the Gopher hockey game last weekend at work. Starshine even graciously agreed to let Jr. Princess go because she has never had the chance. Well, due to a string of bad luck to the other winner of two tickets, I ended up with four - fun family outing time! We decked out in our maroon and gold finest and braved the windchill to head to the game.

Now, it wasn't a regular conference game -they were playing the US National U18 team. That didn't matter to much to us, though, until 2 minutes into the game when the announcer mentioned that if the Gophers score 5 goals, everyone gets a free scoop of ice cream at Culvers. Sorry Jr. Hockey players, but now this is serious! It was fun to hear people chanting for ice cream every time the Gophers scored. The girls were super focused on the game and rooting for goals.

M&M Dad took the girls to get their scoops last night as a celebration for Jr. Princess's positive attitude in swimming lessons. Last week, her teacher almost kicked her out of level 2.5 because she was super clingy, and freaking out about everything. So this weekend I took her to the pool to work on her confidence. My main point was, "Why are you freaking out when you can stand here??" So, we practiced floating and other activities where I let her super-over-the-top freak out on purpose, and then stand up and save herself. It worked like a charm! She was soooo confident Tuesday night. I almost didn't recognize her doing bobs, floating, and gliding while flutter kicking. Now she just has to learn to kick. It must be a genetic issue in our family. Starshine was the WORST kicker in level 2.5, too. Even she remembers it. Now that she is a star level 4 kicker, she wants to take Jr.Princess swimming this weekend to give her some kicking tips. If Jr. Princess keeps this up, she'll be swimming soon!

School Holiday Parties

Today both girls had holiday parties in their classes. I was excited to help volunteer because I was on vacation, but unfortunately they were at the exact same time. When I told Starshine that I was going to help Jr. Princess for the first time she said - "oh good, I didn't want you to come to my party." Ouch...

Well, Jr. Princess and I had a great time making a gingerbread house masterpiece. Here she is very focused on the task...

She loved every minute, and enjoyed frequent finger licking...

I had to laugh because the teachers were recruiting one helper for every child. Really?? These kids knew exactly what to do. I pretty much just took pictures, but it was a joy to see her smile.