I Can Read Party, First Dance, Sewing, Laundry Chute, and More Snow

Or maybe I should just say, how we spent our weekend. :-)

A few weeks ago our son C, in second grade, finished this book with me. Yay!!! It is such a privilege to teach my children to read ~ really a thrill. Now I have four down, one to go! We planned his "I Can Read!" party for Friday night.


We invited grandma and grandpa and some close friends over, and C read his favorite story from this book outloud to us all.

Then we sang "Happy Reading" to him (to the tune of Happy Birthday) and ate his Happy Reading cake. I thought I took a picture of the cake up close, but I guess I didn't. For the first time I used a homemade frosting squirter made from a baggie with the tip of a corner cut off, to write letters on the top of the cake. It worked beautifully!


He is halfway through his first "real" chapter book from the library - a Magic Treehouse book. For his reading practice each day during school, he is reading bible stories to me from a children's Bible Story book we have.

Then on Saturday night, my husband and our daughter went to their first father-daughter dance! Our daughter is quite reserved and has never ever been to a dance before, so she didn't decide for sure that she wanted to go until the day before. Saturday morning she and I went shoe shopping for dress shoes. That was fun. She also picked out a new necklace that she bought with her own money. She carefully got ready and came downstairs for the big "reveal" a few minutes before they were to leave. Doesn't she look beautiful and grown up??!!


She was wearing a long black velvet skirt, and for the first time, NYLONS. She looked so grown up, I actually felt quite a pang! They had a blast dancing together all evening and came home with big smiles on their faces and feet that were sore. The dance was sponsored by a homeschool group in our area, and is an annual event, so I think they will be going every year from now on. There were girls there as young as 3 and as old as 18. Some were very dressed up (long dresses and gloves, etc) and some less so. There were several dads there with more than one daughter, one there with five!! I'm so glad they had such a special time together.

Off and on all weekend I worked on sewing a bathrobe for our daughter. I have had the fabric for 18 months and it was supposed to be a Christmas gift for the Christmas of '08. In my defense, up until 3 months ago my machine was broken. And very shortly after purchasing the fabric my husband was laid off and we began the infamous unemployment period that just recently ended, so there was no money to fix it.

Okay, after all that explanation, my guilt is somewhat assuaged. ;-)

The bathrobe is nearly done and I will post pics of the finished product.

Do any of you with two story houses have laundry chutes in your home? These are the best little inventions I tell ya. We have one and I just LOVE it. In fact, we had one in our other house too, and that was just a ranch. But it took the clothes straight down to the laundry area in the basement and it was so nice not to have to haul all the dirty clothes down AND the clean clothes up. Well, after 8+ years in this house, a few months ago our laundry chute got plugged up. Really truly impacted. We pushed from above with a swiffer handle (which eventually broke off and also got stuck in the chute), and sucked from below with the long arm handle of our powerful wet/dry vac. Nothing. Nada. My husband has been working on a plan to get the clothes unstuck, and I have been hauling the dirty clothes down AND the clean clothes up. Or having the children do it.

He finally found the time to begin working on his plan, and spent all day Saturday building a long bendable arm with a grabber on the end. We had previously called rental places in our area to rent such a thing, but apparently no-one else has ever gotten their laundry chute plugged up, because such a thing does not yet exist. I'm thinking maybe we can get rich off this little invention. If it works. He is not quite finished (had to stop working on it in order to go to the dance). So I'll let you know how it works out once it's done. I shudder to think what is going to come out of that chute.

And, finally, we got some more snow last night! I was just thinking yesterday that I hate the stage of winter where everything is dirty looking and you're just so READY for spring to come, and now everything is covered with a fresh blanket of white and looks so pretty. Thank you Lord! It's really wet, heavy snow. Very packable for snowball fights. It took both my husband and I over an hour of shoveling to get the driveway dug out so he could go to work this morning.


Here is a snowman the children made from the old, dirty snow before our fresh snowfall. My mom sent us a snowman kit, complete with a plastic pipe, plastic "coal" pieces for the eyes and mouth, a carrot nose, and plastic buttons for the body. It also had the scarf and hat included. Isn't it cute??

Whether you have fresh snow, dirty snow, or no snow, may you each feel God's love today like a blanket surrounding you. Happy Monday!