Reston Mom

what we're reading

We love books! And reading with the girls right now is so great!!!!  Because of the range in ages, we haven't completely graduated from beloved picture books yet, but we most definitely now enjoy a wide range of chapter books too - the best of both worlds. 

At bedtime we've recently enjoyed The BFG by Roald Dahl, How to Eat Fried Worms, and an American GIrls Kirsten Mystery: The Runaway Friend.  We also read Matilda by Roald Dahl and then had spent a rainy evening together as a family on the fold-out sofa bed watching the movie - which the girls thought was totally great. Hope is about to finish James and the Giant Peach (also Roald Dahl) and I'm aware there is a movie for that one too, we might have to check it out.  (If you are wondering about why so many Roald Dahl books - I fell in love with him when I first picked up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child and then proceeded to reread it about fifty times (random insert here: the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is completely wonderful too, perhaps even better than the Factory) and so I just happen to already have had a fair collection of his books on our shelves).

Other favorites that Hope is known to pick up come from The Magic Treehouse series, Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, and the American Girl books.  Oh I can't wait to introduce her to some of my childhood favorites - I may have to snag a couple away from her and reread them myself for pure nostalgic and juvenile pleasure!

 While Maddie enjoys listening to chapter books at bedtime, she is still enraptured by picture books (me too.)  And we discover new treasures all the time.  My fave right now is Railroad John and the Red Rock Run.  From the fabulous and entertaining sepia toned illustrations by Michael Austin to the story by Tony Crunk - complete with a ton of adventure, characters like Lonesome Bob, Granny Apple Fritter, Wildcat Annie, Railroad John and Bad Bill - tons of whooping and hollerin' , and fabulous descriptions like "looked grim as a mule eating briers" and "the rain was so thick you could float toads on it" - we were totally enraptured from beginning to end.  The book was a ton of fun, the writing was great, and all I could think about was all the little boys I know who would really adore this book.  Definitely recommendable.

birthday girl

I can't believe she turns 1 year old tomorrow.  We threw a small celebration for her on Saturday - she had a ball, totally took out an entire cupcake in no time flat, enjoyed exploring outside in the beautiful weather and having the attention of all her family and friends.  

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Make and takes

I haven't been blogging as much, you've probably noticed.  It's a busy time for me.  I haven't been reading many blogs either, but when I get the chance, I like to hop on over to Make and Takes.  It's a great little place, check it out. 

somewhere a child needs you - read this

I hope that Heather doesn't mind that I am linking directly to her (where she drew from another blog) - but this is dear to my heart and I hope that God will use it to draw some of you into the wonderful gift it is to participate in this way of changing lives:

http://whittakerwoman.typepad.com/whittaker_woman/2010/03/every-stinkin-time-.html

Where's Ami?

I walked into the front yard for just a few seconds.  When I came in, I couldn't find Ami.  Circling our very small downstairs, I realized there was only one place she could have gone.  I found her upstairs, in Hope and Maddie's room, sucking on a pez candy.  

I took the candy away.

What made this so funny to me was:

1. She hasn't really paid attention to the stairs before - hence the absence of a gate (now remedied).  It's not like I'd ever caught her halfway up or anything - and yet she made it to the top in no time flat minus any falls or hesitation.

2. The room of all rooms that she chose to go into was Hope and Maddie's - no surprise, ALL the little tiny stuff is in there - it's a party for a baby! 

3. Somehow, she managed to rummage through their shelf and find a pez dispenser which only had two candies in it.  Then, she managed to open the dispenser, get out one of the candies, and put it in her mouth.  All this - including climbing the stairs, in an extremely short amount of time.  

4.  She was clearly very proud of herself and also very fond of the candy - which, believe me, she truly tried to hide the fact that she had it in her mouth.  

family night - spelling bee

I wanted to find a fun way to review spelling words with Hope and it had been a while since we had done a themed family night - so I decided to combine the two and we enjoyed an evening of spelling bee fun.  I kept it very, very simple this time.  First, I decorated with a few construction paper creations - dangling bumblebees with letters of the alphabet on their tummies and some honeycomb place mats.  Our centerpiece was a bowl of apples, snack baggies, and flowers.  For dinner we had alphabet soup (of course!) and honey cornbread.  Following dinner we all had a hilarious impromptu moment of buzzing around the kitchen like crazy to Rachmaninoff's Flight of the Bumblebee.  Then we took up our snack baggies for dessert - which were filled with Kashi Honey Sunshine cereal, honey-roasted peanuts, and chocolate chips, and headed into the living room for a friendly spelling bee competition.  We divided into black and yellow teams. Hope's words were chosen from all of her spelling lists that she has completed thus far this year for school, Maddie spelled 3-letter words, and for Matt and I, I printed off all the past winning words from Scripps Spelling Bee.   I had thought to rent Akkelah and the Bee to watch later, but didn't go the tv route.  We all had a lot of fun with very little effort and Hope got to brush up on her spelling skills.