Nordic Bo Peep and Long Lost Sheep Costume GIVEAWAY

Nordic Bo Peep and Long Lost Sheep Costume GIVEAWAY!!!!

Children's Classics: Caldecott Medal Winners

I've been meaning to do it for a while, but this is my first time to link up to 5 Minutes for Books. The 2nd Tuesday of each month is Children's Classics, and this month it has a Caldecott Medal Winner theme. My son, Timothy, just started kindergarten this year. Every 2-3 weeks the class focuses on a different author. I've learned so much! Since Timothy 's class is reading several books by each author, we go to the public library as well and check out every book on the shelf. Through this process, I was introduced to an author by the name of Kevin Henkes...

• Winner of the 2005 Caldecott Medal for Kitten's First Full Moon (Timothy's favorite Henkes book). Kitten sees the full moon and, believing it is a bowl of milk, tries unsuccessfully to obtain it! It's a sweet book, but I don't know that I would have picked it out as "best of year" if I didn't know beforehand. I actually prefer the story of Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, which is one of the Honors books from the same year. Since Caldecott winners are determined by illustrations, though, I'm sure the charcoal black & white drawings in Kitten's First Full Moon tipped the scales.
  

• And winner of the 1994 Caldecott Honor for Owen, which is one of the books in Henkes' darling Mouse Books Collection. Each book presents a different issue that preschoolers deal with. I'll give a synopsis of the ones I've read:

Owen-he has a blanket that he can not live without, and his parents receive all kinds of neighborly advice about how they need to handle it
Wemberly Worried-fantastic book for a child who has fears-addresses starting school
Lilly's Big Day-assumes she'll be her teacher's flower girl (Lilly has huge pride issues!)
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse-takes purse to school
Julius, the Baby of the World-Lilly has to learn to accept her new baby brother
Chrysanthemum-deals with being made fun of by others

I got this excerpt of an interview with Henkes from his website:

If you had to sum up in one word the characteristic you most admire in each of your mice—Chester, Chrysanthemum, Lilly, Owen, Sheila Rae, Wendell, Sophie, and Wemberly—what words would you choose?

Chester:	reliable
Chrysanthemum:	sensitive
Lilly:	exuberant
Owen:	centered
Sheila Rae:	brave, of course
Wendell:	clever
Sophie:	tenacious
Wemberly:	thoughtful

I do think Owen deserved the Caldecott honor, but I just don't know how they plucked it out of the whole series. I think if you're going to read it, you'll want to enjoy all the Mouse Books.

Henkes has many Picture Books that you and your kids would enjoy thoroughly!

What is your favorite Caldecott winner?

Which book do you wish was a Caldecott winner?

Veteran's Day

Timothy and his classmates were carrying these when they left school today. In the middle are the lyrics of a song the kids learned:

VETERANS DAY SONG

For freedom is precious
We love it, and we need it!
We would like to thank our veterans
For keeping us free!

The National Guard, the Army,
The Air Force and the Navy,
And the Coast Guard,
And forever the Marines!

Timothy was showing it to me, and after he read the song he said, "I'm going to give it to my dad." I don't know if his teacher told the kids to thank a veteran or not, but I'm glad Timothy thought of his dad.

Dan, I know you're not far, but since you're not here and I don't know where you are it feels far. I don't ever take the time to tell you, so today is a good time to thank you for serving my country. You are a veteran in the truest sense of the word (I just read it to make sure!) Your career of over 12 years has both peace time service and war time service to include the gulf. I know it doesn't feel heroic, but nonetheless our country states that "Veterans Day is a day to honor all Americans who have served in the U.S. military, both during wartime and in peace". Since you're the one that Timothy and I know best, we say thanks!

Click here for the President's Veterans Day Proclamation.

Winning Stuff Is So Fun!

I just won a book that I'm very excited about called "The New Language of Toys". And I won it through a fantastic blog called 5 Minutes for Special Needs (button is in my sidebar). The button says "support...insight...inspiration," which has definitely been my experience. I highly recommend this site for anyone with special needs of ANY kind, but you will enjoy it even if your kids don't have special needs. A recent post about special needs kids and going to church was extremely powerful to read. Take the time to read the comments.

CF Videos

I'm late again for the 2nd month in a row-this time a surprise visit from hubby. It was wonderful! The breathing treatment videos are way too long, so I'll have to figure something else out. In the meantime, I thought I would talk about the digestive side of things.

Samantha takes Creon-10 and Prevacid daily.

For the last 3 years, we have opened up the capsules and dumped them in some kind of food (yogurt, applesauce) and fed it to her. A few weeks ago, she started doing this....

.

For those of you who have to do this, I don't have to tell you how this has revolutionized our life!

Yes, I'm more than embarrassed by how short I am with Samantha in this video! It's awful! I think I was trying to hurry it along because I was taping, but Samantha was having too much fun watching Timothy ham it up for the camera.

What a Great Post!

I've probably given BooMama a shout out before. If you aren't familiar with her blog, you're in for a treat. She referenced a "must-read" post from The Christian School Journal, and I have to say I couldn't agree more. Click here to read it.

It's Dry!

I shared in my last post that it rained today. It was so lovely-a nice steady rain, heavy sometimes, light others, lasting for hours. It's only the 3rd time I recall rain this year (not that you should trust my memory), but there clearly hasn't been much. The local news just gave San Diego's rain stats: The average rainfall by this time of the year is .89 inches (or inch?), and this year we are only at .32 inches so far!

"Because you are Americans!"

Last year, our little family of four walked together to the voting booths. Dan and I did our best to explain the voting process to our 4 & 1 yr olds! Well, this year Dan is gone and had to vote absentee, so I decided to vote after taking Timothy to school. I figured 1 child would be enough to handle while I filled out my ballot!

Being from Texas, I'm used to living in a state that's not exactly considered "battleground"! And yet, voting is so exciting to me! And to top it off, it's raining today!!! That's my favorite weather, and it happens about 5 times a year in San Diego! My voting location had about 12 or so voting booths, and I would say almost half of the people there had preschoolers. So child friendly! Here are some pics from our voting adventure.

I was trying (failing) at getting a picture of us in line, and the girls (in their 20's?) in front of us offered to take our picture! So here we are in front of the voting rules.

It was getting quite chilly, so I waited to take the "I voted" pictures until we got home. I can't get Samantha just to smile at the camera. If I say smile, she says, "CHEESE!" As you can see...

But this is my favorite...

In case you can't understand her...when I ask her "Why did you get to vote?" She says, "Because you are Americans!"

Talk to Me Tuesday: Halloween Show and Tell

I thought I was done with all my Halloween posts, but the Tip Junkie is doing a Halloween Show and Tell, which I thought would be really fun! Timothy decided out of the blue he wanted to be Super Mario, and a quick search showed buying a costume was out of the question. Well, it ended up being so much fun to put together and it was affordable!

Let's break it down:

Red Angels ball cap-Walmart $5.00

Red & White pieces of felt to make the "M"-craft store $.20/each = $.40

Mustache-black eye liner or black face pencil (since Timothy was wearing his costume at school, this made more sense than a stick-on mustache)

Red long sleeved shirt-borrowed from friend

White gloves-borrowed from friend

Overalls-size 5T from Target $16.00 (More than I wanted to spend, but couldn't find them second hand in the size I needed)

Buttons-punched out from yellow paper

Missing: Mario's boots-Kohl's had them for $27 and Payless had them for $23, but thankfully my son was cool with his tennies!

Here are 2 ideas that would have been really fun:
1. Mario and Luigi (for brothers or even twins-so cute!)
2. Mario and Princess Peach-I really wanted Samantha to be a princess so we could do this, but she already had her feline ideas!

Alicia Gets Political

Those who know me know that I'm not very politically motivated. Opinionated, yes, political no. This post is not about expressing my opinion on how you should vote Tuesday, but there is something related to voting that I want to comment on.

I took the picture below at my front doorstep. A few days ago this sign appeared in the patch of grass in front of our home. As you can see I live at the end of a dead end street, and I guess someone decided this spot is pretty visible for a political statement. In this case "Vote Yes for Prop 8". If you don't live in California, I guess this sign doesn't mean much to you. (Here it's all we hear about!!)

Prop 8 is the ban on same sex marriage. Voting yes means you define marriage between a man and woman. Voting no means you want marriage to include same sex partners. And because we live in a democracy we get to vote on Tuesday to decide what the majority of Californians want. Whatever that is will be the law in California. That's how it works which is why I'm bothered about these 2 things:

1) A California judge already threw out a ban back in March, which is why several famous people got married this year. I'm confused by the fact that a judge basically instituted law before we all get to vote on Tuesday. Really confused.

2) Last Monday, the San Diego City Council convened to vote on this issue. Click here to read about that. I rarely listen to local news, but just happened to that night and was pretty disappointed to hear our city council voting on something when their vote doesn't determine the outcome. That will be decided by the state's general population on November 4.

But to be encouraged about our democratic process...the same issue was brought before the La Mesa City Council (a suburb of San Diego) on Tuesday. They voted 5 to zero to "take no action at all when it comes to Proposition 8". Thank you, city of La Mesa, for placing the power back in my hands, the American voter. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that, and I will show that appreciation by being at the polls on Tuesday!

Tropical Tree Frog Costume GIVEAWAY!!!!

Get used to seeing these posts. This amazing talent has giveaways every two weeks! And all the clothes are for girls 2T-5T!!!
Tropical Tree Frog Costume GIVEAWAY!!!!

Halloween Costume Ideas

So Thursday night Timothy said, "Mom, I know what I want to be next year for Halloween."

I braced for it.

"Underdog"

Do we have a red/white/blue theme going on here?:



Or does he just really like long sleeved red shirts?

Go to 5 Minutes for Mom to see all kinds of costumes!

Halloween Day

The kids were allowed to wear costumes today, and here is 1/4 of his class! There was also a "fall festival" party where I got to hear Timothy scream every time he didn't win musical cheers. Good times.


After school we went to the "Pirate's Cove" (Sonrise Community Church's fall festival). Impressive event. Timothy saw this half way down the street. They were giving people rides about 10 feet in the air.


You don't have to tell Samantha twice to get on a ship. She LOVES climbing on Daddy's ship.


Look at that tiny captain (it was a HOT day, and thankfully we were costume-free).


They had 7 or more bouncy things. I think Timothy did this one about 30 times:






So when we started the day Timothy was dressed as Mario. But as the day went on he took off his hat, gloves, shoes, and socks. Mario's mustache wore off, and my attempts to wipe off the batman mask that was painted on at the school party just look like he's been rolling in dirt. Then I plopped him on a horse which completed his transformation to a country bumpkin!