Nothin' But Net

Kyrie has been attending classes at a local community center since she was three. She started with swimming lessons with Darren and a princess dance class with her best friend, Isabelle. Since then both girls have taken several art classes and ballet (& tap combo) classes. Before the start of this session, we talked to the girls about other classes they would like to try at the community center. The girls chose basketball and tumbling in addition to an art class and a baking class.

First up was basketball! Basketball has been a great experience for the girls, especially because it is so different from the other classes they have taken. It is a large, active class filled with lots of boys! So far, I'm very impressed and Kyrie is having a lot of fun. The class is organized and the coaches are great! Each week, the kids work on basketball fundamentals like defense and shooting baskets. Kyrie did not have much exposure to basketball before this class, and it showed during the first class when she gleefully ran around the gym kicking the basketball. Though skeptical about her basketball skills, I knew that she was having fun. This past week, I peeked into the gym and saw her make a basket! Woo-hoo!

Goodnight Moon

In January, Degen began homeschool lessons. Our first thematic unit was about time, and we read the childhood classic story Goodnight Moon by Margaret Brown Wise. He loved it! Now that we've moved onto our next unit, he will often bring us the book to read during playtime. As soon as Darren came home from work, Degen insisted that he read him his favorite book. Darren was impressed that Degen could point out all the items as they were read aloud.

Biscuit Bears

Snow days are long days. This past week we had two snow days. Near the end of the day, Kyrie came to me with an old "High Five" magazine from the playroom. She had found a recipe for Three Bears Bread and asked if we could make it for dinner. We didn't have time for me to prepare bread dough before dinner, but I could get biscuit dough ready in time. Kyrie had a great time putting together her biscuit bears, and we all enjoyed eating them with our lamb roast at dinner!

Butter Chicken

Seriously, how do you not make a recipe named "Butter Chicken"? I found this recipe in the Penzey's Spice Catalog. My mother turned me onto Penzey's after she sent me a box full of curry spices for Christmas last year. They sell high quality spices of every type imaginable... did you even know that there were like 5 different kinds of cinnamon?! It is easy to get hooked on Penzey's after you start cooking, and more especially, eating the food with their spices. Delicious!

Back to my Butter Chicken. I was unfamiliar with this Indian dish, so I think it might be more Anglo-Indian, but no less delicious. The procedure for preparing the dish was not, in my experiences learning to cook at the elbows of Indian friends, authentic, so I, of course, changed the preparation. The recipe does call for a whole stick of butter... so rich! Like most Indian dishes, this dish does not have to be spicy. It calls for a sweet curry powder and you can exclude the peppers for a mild dish. I served it over rice with Naan (traditional, Indian flatbread) for scooping. Darren loved it, even in its milder form. I will definitely make this again! This was the perfect dinner at the end of a cold, icy day!

A Tree Falls in Arlington

We love our property because of its large maple trees, but when those trees get covered with layer up on layer of ice and then the wind starts to blow, things can get a little worrisome. As we cuddled in for the evening yesterday, the sounds of shifting and sliding surrounded us. Soon shifting and sliding became cracking and the small thunder of large, falling limbs. First, we just saw a scattering of branches across the ice-topped snow. Then a large boom had us scrambling to see into the night of the backyard. We lost an enormous limb off one of the trees in the back. More limbs would follow throughout the night. Hearing a crash and rising from bed to find what had fallen where became a frequent endeavor. The sounds of broken icicles pelting the window beckoned me to take more frequent peeks. We waited until morning to truly survey the damage. Thankfully, the trees do not hang over the house or the children's swingset, so there is no real damage, and the trees are large enough that they should survive with no trouble.

Ice, Ice Baby!

"Alright, stop, collaborate and listen....."

(I couldn't resist!)

So, in case you missed it, there is a giant winter storm over pretty much the entire midwest. Really, Columbus hasn't gotten anything too terrible from this storm, but we have gotten about 24 hours of freezing rain and/or sleet. The conditions are very icy!

We are going on day two of staying home, which I am grateful for because I had a cold that turned into a bad cold that turned into an asthma exacerbation that I am still trying to recover from more than a week and a half later. The kids are handling being homebound fairly well, though at many points during the day everything will dissolve into them screaming and crying. I'm trying to keep them busy with frequent snacks, TV and their lessons (no snow days for the homeschooled).

The ice coated everything on Tuesday. Here are a few pictures:

A Room with a Mew

Every few weeks, I feel like Kyrie's dollhouse begins to take on its alternate role as a shelf. The cozy rooms soon become littered with a wide assortment of not only toys, but jewelry, clothes, paper and various knick-knacks. At this point, I make her take everything out so that she can decorate the rooms anew.

Over the weekend, she had just that opportunity and found a new, fun use for her dollhouse when she turned it into a kitty condo. She placed blankets, small pillows and her two, very tolerant kittens into the rooms at Chez Kyrie. I have to say that when I first discovered her doing this, Franklin was actually reclined on the pillow and covered with a blanket. It was absolutely adorable, but I couldn't get to the camera fast enough to get the picture (isn't that always the way!?).