Edible Cars

Why is Daddy always gone when these "fun" projects are assigned?

Our friends' daughter came over one night a few weeks ago and I was to help her with homework since her mother was back in the states. One assignment I read in her agenda was the task of creating an edible car. I was glad my only assignment was to help with spelling sentences and that her father was the lucky one to help her later in the week with the car. I smiled to myself as I thought my son's classroom was exempt from the car assignment since it was nowhere to be seen in his agenda.

Then the letter came. We weren't exempt. Just delayed a day.

So, Daddy left on Sunday and the edible car was due on Tuesday. There's no way you can help a child make a cucumber last longer than it's destined to, so I had the task of helping R make his edible car Monday night. Not too fancy, but it rolled. That was the requirement - and that everything except the axles be made from food. I can't wait to see what the next project will be since it's Daddy's turn to help with that one!

We've Finally Gotten Around to Learning to Ride Bikes!

With spring in the air, my kids have been coming home ready to play outside after school. Sadly, we have put off one of the best outside activities, riding our bikes, because it's an inconvenience. We have a gravel driveway (who wants to fall on that when they're learning?). Our back patio is huge and flat, but not by any means a parking lot size for the child who is just learning to steer. Another excuse, our car isn't big enough for both bikes to fit in the trunk. Last, our street is just way too busy with speeding cars to risk learning on the sidewalk out there.

So, my little determined child decided one day that she needed to learn how to ride her bike. I agree! Let's do it!
She practiced all day long while Daddy was on the flight back to the states so she could report a creative, useful birthday present for him - learning to ride her bike. Big brother was able to sharpen his skills since he's been a nonrider for over a year now. (I know, I feel like a horrible parent!)

Happy Birthday Daddy!

On Friday, our daddy received an e-mail from his boss asking him to come to Indy from Sunday through Thursday to cover for him while he's on spring break. K would arrive back in Brussels on Friday morning. I don't think his boss knew his birthday is on March 28th, or maybe in the corporate world nobody really cares like your children. Our oldest goes with the flow and nothing really shakes him too badly, so he thought nothing of it. Our youngest was concerned that Daddy wouldn't get the party he deserved because of course, you know he's the best daddy in the world!
We made do and handed him our home made cards Saturday night - with our oldest deciding Daddy needed some challenging brain activities. He came up with 4 brain teasers where K had to decide which item was different from the others and why.

So you can see the smile on R's face as his dad tries to figure out which answers are the correct ones. J's in there too trying to make sure daddy is smart enough to pick the right ones.
She's the one who comes home from kindergarten wanting our help in figuring out the challenge questions of the week. Stickers are at stake! The teachers use the letter of the week to inspire more difficult words. For instance, last week the letter was "E" so she came home wondering what a green diamond is - oh, emerald. "What about a tree that stays green all year long?" Evergreen. "The tallest mountain in the world?" Mt. Everest.
She loves puzzles of any kind!

So we celebrated with our traditional cookie cake and ate our favorite take out, Yoko Wok, so we could send Daddy off on Sunday. Happy Birthday Daddy! We love you and miss you already!

Disneyland Day Off

While the teachers sat through an in service day, we headed to Disneyland Paris with some friends. One of the families is leaving within a few weeks while the other is moving back at the end of the school year. What a great way to make some lasting memories together!

The boys enjoyed swapping hand held video games in one car while the girls watched movies and colored in the other during the 3 hour car ride.

I'm proud of us moms for helping the kids to have such a great time in Disney. We were calling each other to coordinate one mom taking the boys on a ride, and the other two helping the girls with their favorite rides. We really tag teamed like pros and allowed the kids to maximize their time in the parks.

We hit all the rides on their to do list and brought back some pretty sleepy kids.

It's All About Starbucks

That green logo. That's why we ran the marathon, just so we could justify the calories and trip to Brussels airport for the savored treat. We have it down to a science now. After at least a 5 mile run on any given Friday, the crew heads to the airport, parks in the "Kiss and Go" line, waves to the police officers making sure people are actually going after a few minutes, and out hops at least 2 of our team while the other mans the car. Our drinks are 2 nonfat, decaf, white chocolate mochas with whipped cream and 1 vanilla latte. It only takes about 5 minutes until the drink hoppers arrive with the goods and we're off.

Here we're sporting our lovely orange race shirts to document the memories of our routine.

Do It Yourself - How to 'Pretty Up' Your Flooring

K has invited 2 of his old bosses for a Sunday evening dinner and another family friend who used to work with him. One of them had just arrived from the states. You know the routine - clean the house, prepare the meal, set the table, make sure everything looks just fine and then BOOM! All craziness broke loose - literally. J had been into the crafts today while I was busy with preparations and the boom consisted of the dropping motion of a big bead-filled box, spilling tiny beads across the kitchen floor in an 8 foot diameter. If math isn't your thing, basically the beads were everywhere.
So as K leaves to go pick up one of our guests, she says, "Well, at least the floor looks pretty."
Yes, I'm sure the guests will appreciate the beauty in this! What are the chances Lowes will want this as a Do It Yourself project to beautify your drab flooring?

Neighbour vs. Neighbor? Colour vs. Color? UK vs. US?

I know it's all English, but the UK people spell many words differently than the US people.


Since most of the books our children read are coming from the UK, these words are spelled differently and I wonder how this will affect the future of my kids.

1. Will they ever have the potential to win a spelling bee since we lived in Belgium and they learned to spell flavor with a 'u' as flavour?

2. How many words does this affect?

3. When does this confusion stop?

I'm starting to forget which one is correct (if there is even an actual "correct") and am conflicted on how to tell my children to spell these words. There are so many more words that are affected than we think! I googled this phenomenon and found there are so many words that I can't even begin to count them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences


We're talking honour, humour, favourite, theatre, centre, practise, defence...I'm telling you, the list goes on and on. I'm not confident that I could now pass a 4th grade spelling test since I've been here for over a year and am getting more and more confused by the day. Or is it confuzed?

Student Led Conferences

Wednesday and Thursday were scheduled as conference days where students spend an hour discussing school work with their parents in the classroom. Ours happened to be on Thursday, so Wednesday we slept in, took a walk around the neighborhood, pet the horses nearby, collected possible craft items from the ground, housed a play date, and took our french lessons.

In case you're wondering about this strange pink outfit, it came from Istanbul and is a little halter top with a skirt and hat. Very cute, but not ideal for such a cold climate here, so she has to layer. She's still into dressing up in princess type attire.

Thursday started bright and early with J's conference time where she showed off her portfolio, discussed the upcoming letter of the week (P), read classroom created stories to me, potato stamped a pattern, and counted money at her local restaurant (right upstairs in the loft of the classroom).

Only at an international school would you find the letter of the week as 'P' with the picture representations being Pisa's Leaning Tower and Portugal's flag. She did remember the name of the former, however, Portugal is one country we have not yet visited.

During R's conference he articulated information learned from his units of inquiry on senses, Kenya, and explorers, demonstrated math regrouping abilities with numbers in the hundreds, showed me a video presentation of his explorer (Zebulon Pike who is known for Pike's Peak), read and critiqued his short story based on word choice from the 6 Traits of writing, and followed a computer based map program.
Masai village in Kenya created by the class.

A video of music class where he's playing the xylophone. (I know - it's a bad picture, but I had 4 of our daughter, so I felt like I had to put up this one to keep him at 4 too even though the quality is horrible!)

After all of the academics, my kids needed to get their wiggles out. We headed to the ice rink with some other school families where the kids skated the afternoon away. Mesmerized by a young figure skater's leaps and turns, J is now asking for ice skating lessons after trying to mimic the moves.

How Much Longer Does it Last?

Kids say the darndest things! That's one thing I just love about them, but how much longer does this last? While we were reading our little Bible this morning about Abraham and Sarah having a baby in their old age, my 6 year old says, "Well, I want Nana and Papaw to have another baby boy and another baby girl." I thought, "Ok, I'll let them know how you feel about that. Not so sure what they'll think about it, but I'll let them know you want that." So, Nana and Papaw, what do you say?

Official Pictures from the Race!

These are the ones taken by the company contracted with the race.

http://www.maindruphoto.com/advanced_search_result.php?cPath=1696_1697&numbercompetitor=34294&submit2=Search&&language=en

You should be able to click on the link and our pictures show up. You can then click on them individually to enlarge.

As you can see, some of the other competitors weren't quite as enthusiastic as we were.

Get 'Er Done!

Our mission for touring 13 miles of Paris on foot March 7 was accomplished: Cross the finish line!

Picking up our pink AKA 'slow' bibs. We are definitely in the jogging - not running - group!

The camaraderie at these events amazes me. I can't even begin to describe the ambiance of running in a race. We started out in the very back corral dancing to "Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night" until we crossed the start line. Along the route random people outside the barricades shouted, "Allez" in french to us, which means "go". Everyone cheering along the route was cheering for my friends and me. We just know it!

There were so many tear jerking moments like witnessing a man with some kind of condition where his legs don't quite work like ours. He was running with a cane for 13 miles! There was the lady with a breast cancer t-shirt with a few inspirational friends taking turns pacing her, encouraging her every step of the way. Then there's the 55 year old guy willing to give us a 10 mile tour of France while we questioned the name of every beautiful building along the route...he ended up being faster than my friends and me, so we allowed him to go ahead of us.

Of course there's the crazy outfits...sorry everyone, I didn't want any extra weight on me, so my camera was not a necessity for my pockets during this race. Running with us were some male ballerinas in bright pink tutus, a lady with orange boas wrapped around her, and many other crazily dressed people just wanting to have a great time.
Supposedly this guy was there last year, but not to be found this year. Perhaps he's retired.

Here's my official bib and just to prove I finished, my medal. J was disappointed I didn't come in first, but you can't always be first!

These are what I walked in to the house to find since my husband is in the states.

I'll post some more pictures later of us, but I don't have the photos just yet.

The Countdown - 5 Days until the Paris Semi Marathon

Why do they call it the semi marathon? I'm not sure, but 'semi' makes it sound like it's going to be easy. We ran 10 miles in cold, rainy weather Friday which was difficult, and I'm sure that 13.5 is not going to be simple for us to get through. Since we finished our 10 miles on Friday we all made our trip to Starbucks to replace the calories lost during the run. I had a white chocolate mocha with all the fattening tasty stuff! Well worth the run.