Saving for a rainy day....

10.31.2007

Each year we save the change we find around the house to pay for one or two of our museum memberships. This year the time between a full change jar and our membership expiration fell a few months apart. The girls were begging me for a trip to our favorite children's museum but we wanted them to learn the value of saving and waiting. When I thought we were getting close we dumped out the jar, sorted and counted. We were still 20 dollars short. Ughh. Annie did pretty well at counting and making piles of quarters and dimes. She left the nickles and pennies to me. Maddie just wanted to steal all the money.

After a few weeks I figured we had to be close and I really needed a museum trip. So we headed off to the bank so the big machine could do all the counting for us.


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The girls carried in their big jars a change, handed them over to the teller and waited. We were 13 dollars short, I kicked in the rest because I really never learned that whole lesson about saving.

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The membership is $88 so I had the teller give us 8 tens and 8 singles. Annie has been working on counting by tens and Maddie on ones so it was perfect. No one even had more money than the other. We did a practice run counting out our bills and headed to the museum.

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We headed up to the counter, each girl with 8 bills in her hand and they counted. Thanks goes to the very patient visitor services staff and the kind mom waiting behind us who understood the value of what we were doing. We had such a wonderful visit and now when we go to the museum the girls will know that they saved and paid for it. I was so proud of them for tackling the real world of money but even more they were both so proud of themselves.

What are you all saving your change for?

I think the bank staff thought I was a bit nutty taking pictures of them turning in the change. I didn't think saying that they were for the blog would change the whole nutty thing.

Happy Halloween

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Goldilocks and Baby Bear hope your Halloween was as spooky as can be.

I was able to borrow Maddie's cute little costume and Annie's chose hers from a picture and pattern in last years fall Cutting Edge magazine. How can you turn down making a costume with knitted golden locks. It's really just a hat with 6 really long strips added to the side and braided. I can now add wigs to my knitting repertoire. I'm off to sleep off my candy coma.

One swings and one climbs

10.16.2007

We went to one of our favorite fall festivals on Sunday. They had a set-up for climbing 30 feet or so up in a tree using ropes and a foot ascender. We waited in a fairly long line and watched many kids shimmy up the ropes and some struggle up the ropes.
Maddie took the first turn and was too small to climb but got high enough to take a brave swing over mommies head.

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Annie ended up on the tallest rope and was determined to climb to the top. I had my doubts and the man belaying wasn't sure she could even get going. But get going she did. I watched as she climbed

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and climbed

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and climbed

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and climbed

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all the way to the top, all the while smiling away. In the end I didn't think we were going to get her down. Who could argue with her after such and accomplishment and such a wonderful of view from the tree.

Making Playdough

10.07.2007

The girls love to cook and Annie is starting to be able to follow a recipe. A bit back I made this little recipe up for her and the two of them worked together to make a batch. It is still being used. Here is a link to a recipe.

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For any of ya'll that checked in today sorry if you caught the blog in dissary. I had a bee in my bonnet to update the look of the blog but none of the templates do what I want so I guess I am sticking with what I have. How I wish I would have taken a graphic design course. It's never good when ambition is thwarted by lack of skill.

And thanks to those of you that introduced yourselves after my last post. It was so great to find out a bit about those of you that do check-in. I would love to hear from more of you. Just to clarify I can't check out everyone that is reading the blog I only check my stats to make sure that no one is searching for anything odd (read creepy) that might involve the girls. As with many bloggers I am often torn by how much to put out there. I do check out any links I find and am most often plesently surprised to see how many of you have included me in your favorites list. I thank all of you for this. Okay the Bears are rallying gotta go cheer them on.

Just a bit of housekeeping....

10.04.2007

Hey if you are visiting my site from

course.on.alpharoute

would you mind shooting me an email and letting me know how you got the link. A few of you are showing up in my stats and your pages are password protected. Given that my girls are shown on the blog I like to check-in on searches and visitors to make sure nothing odd is linking.

A nice day in the country is...

10.01.2007

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being silly sisters and making each other laugh.

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picking and eating too many yummy apples.

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riding in wagons.
warm apple cider doughnuts.
a camera full of beautiful pictures for mom.
the kind of tired that only comes from fresh air.

Everyone needs a nice day in the country.