Little Miss Wee One #3 is officially 4, officially not so much a little person anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know that 4 year olds are still tiny and sweet and mispronounce words in the most delicious ways, but 4 is a pretty big deal. We’re homeschooling right now, but it’s technically ‘school age’ and she’ll be enrolled in the same independent study program as our other two this fall. It’s really neat to see the little person she is becoming – so exciting!!

We had a wonderful weekend plan in place for her birthday until a totally unforeseeable kink was thrown in and our plans had to be moved around so much they hardly looked like our plans in the end! Not to be deterred, Mr So Very Domestic and I cooked up a new plan and I think it ended up even better than the original one.

Festivities kicked off on the morning of her actual birthday. Just like with everyone’s birthday, my husband and I blew up 20 balloons, tied curling ribbon to them and hung them from the ceiling in the living room. So cute to wake up to! Wee One #3 is our only earlier riser (but not as early as us so by the time she got up, Daddy was already at work) so we had a tiny little early morning celebration just the two of us. I confess this so much it hardly feels like a confession at this point but the only thing I ever miss from before homeschooling is not having the alone time with the littlest that I had with our older two. Stealing all the little pieces we get makes up for it. 😉

I whipped her up some birthday pancakes, which are really just normal pancakes with a hit of cake mix and sprinkles. I have seen this recipe all over the place (and of course by that I mean Pinterest) and it’s a thinned out icing that’s sprinkled on top. I’m not above sprinkles in pancakes but I draw the line before the thinned out icing sugar, man. I went with pure maple syrup.

Cake Batter Pancakes via Betty Crocker

1 cup Bisquick mix (or any pancake mix)
1 cup yellow cake mix
3 tablespoons candy sprinkles
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs

The recipe included the thinned out icing sugar recipe I mentioned. I didn’t use it, but I’ll include it in case you want to!

2 1/2 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
more candy sprinkles <-- I do recommend adding more sprinkles on top though!

I’m not going to tell you how to make pancakes. Even if you just dumped it all in a bowl at once and attacked it with your whisk it would work, so have at it. Just make sure you stick a candle on top of the stack and cut into triangles!

It was a busy day around here aside from it being a birthday! We had JiuJitsu, we had ballet and we hit the library between the two. On our library visit this morning, they were celebrating Dr Seuss’ birthday as well! So we hung out for a bit, took out a few Dr Seuss books to add to our bedtime haul for the week and headed back home.

We spent the rest of the afternoon singing songs and playing games and coloring in all her coloring books because coloring is her second favorite thing. Dare I admit publicly what her favorite thing of the moment is? Sigh, my littlest little really, really, really loves to play Minecraft. My husband and our two older littles play together on a private server. They build these epic villages together and laugh and joke and I watch and knit. On her birthday, Wee One #2 had a long dance rehearsal and when I left to drop her off my husband and our oldest started playing Minecraft with Wee One #3. They played all afternoon and long past bedtime. They built a huge mansion, complete with a library and a massive kitchen. Wee One #2 built a barn to house all of Wee One #3’s farm animals after she got back from the studio. There was even a pirate ship! We interrupted the festivities to sing happy birthday and blow out some candles and open a few gifts. Then it was back to Minecraft! Hahah one track mind!

My friend Katie, (or maybe I should say Wee One #3’s friend’s mother), dropped off a really sweet package filled with so many of her favorite kinds of things. After she opened that gift she played with it’s contents for an incredibly long time for a newly 4 year old. Then the following day she wore a hilarious assortment of accessories from it when we ventured out for more celebrating.

The second part of her birthday was spent at the Santa Monica Pier! We divided our time between Pacific Park (always a great time) and the Santa Monica Aquarium!

The Santa Monica Pier has become one of our favorite places because it combines my love of the ocean and palm trees with the kids’ love of rides and fast food. It’s also a nice drive so my husband likes it, that and all the great photies we get of the kids there! The girls have passes so they were hopping all over kiddie land while I snapped these pics and my husband and our oldest wandered around the pier.

The Santa Monica Aquarium was celebrating it’s birthday this weekend too! They had face painting and balloons and cute little candles in the tanks. Adorable! We even managed to stay on time and make it to the shark feeding! Wee One #2 was one of the kids who got to toss a piece of squid to the little sharks and Wee One #3 got splashed by an excited shark and decided she’d rather go to the touch tanks and poke starfish instead (apparently she only wanted to touch the rocks in the tanks hahaha).

*There are so many fun projects to post about and so many fun projects coming up! The kids have been so busy and then by proxy (and shuttling) so have I. All for good causes, of course just extremely time consuming!

I mentioned last month that I’d post some things I do for my preschooler while I’m busy working with my older two and this one is a big hit. The first time I did this I used squirt bottles instead of eyedroppers and I’ll tell you right now, just get some eyedroppers. It makes the activity more fun and you will find countless other uses for them.

Pour out a box or two of baking soda into a medium/large container. Pour plain white vinegar into small containers and use food coloring to tint each one a different color. When Wee One #3 saw the baking soda fizz and poof up, she was sold. She played around with this for almond an hour. Then, she found another way to play with it! She asked for a tiny spoon, so I gave her my 1/4 teaspoon and she started scooping the baking soda out of the tupperware and plunking it into the vinegar. Check out the blue vinegar in the last row of photos for an action shot of that. Much bigger fizz! Of course dumping baking soda into vinegar isn’t as much of a time sink as the other way around, but it rounded out another half hour and I was able to start to finish a grammar lesson for my 2nd grader and a math lesson for my 7th grader and my preschooler happily experimented alongside us.

She has asked to do this activity over and over again also, so it’s definitely a repeatable activity!

Just a little Sunday post while I finish pulling together a whole lot of Valentiney fun!

Meeting a brand new baby is always a lot of fun, so we are thankful we got to count that among our recent adventures!

We spent some time at Silly Goose this week and we were lucky to be there on face painting day! Then we spent an afternoon at the park doing science experiments and sensory activities with our friends. Fun!

I tried anew baked donut recipe with nutmeg and a berry glaze, and I kicked off Valentiney month with some pink heart pancakes and heart shaped bacon. Both were a serious hit.

A little more South Bay exploring this week too!

Whenever people tell me they don’t know how I do it – the it being the juggling of homeschooling, having a social life, plugging away at my blog, my general June Cleaver-ness etc etc, I always tell them it’s not like I woke up one morning with three kids, an overachieving husband, and all of this…life. Please picture me gesturing wildly. I also usually tell them I’m not all that big on sleep, which is also totally true.

However, when it comes to homeschooling, I really did just wake up and start doing it one day. I’m going to attempt to outline how we homeschool, what our schedule is and the challenges we face while we do it – with the hopes that it will help others who are starting out on this journey with kids in multiple grade levels and one not yet school aged child. I should add here to people who don’t read my blog on the regular that we are homeschooling for a set period of time. Our school aged children were in public school before we moved to Los Angeles and they’ll go back into the same public school system when we move back to Canada in a couple of years. For us, this is a three year situation. I’m sure for people who have done this for a decade plus, or people who are planning to do this for their children’s entire academic career what works for us might not work for you. This post is essentially a (hopefully helpful) response to all the questions we get. 🙂

So, let’s do some honesty first, shall we? Most days I wake early, wake the kids with a cute breakfast, sweat glitter and kick ass all day (more or less). Then there are days when my toddler isn’t into anything I present to her. At all. Instead of all the fun amazing things I painstakingly set up for her, the thing she wants to do most is pester my 2nd grader. Or days when my 2nd grader isn’t understanding something right away and gets incredibly frustrated. Then there are days when my 7th grader is learning something tricky and needs a good chunk of the day. None of these things are anyone’s fault, they just happen. My kids aren’t horrible creatures who wake up ready to mess up my plans, and neither are yours. Honest, they’re not.

Take a deep breath and know that everyone who has ever homeschooled has had a bad day. I haven’t looked that up but I have no doubt that it’s true. Then look for ways to make it better! There are zillions! I didn’t look that up either, just fyi.

It seems so duh, but I find these situations don’t really affect me the same way when I keep in mind why certain situations play out the way they do. My toddler is really close to her sister, so naturally she wants to hang out with her all day. My 2nd grader gets pretty much everything on the first try so when she doesn’t, she gets frustrated pretty quickly. My 7th grader is doing challenging work, so of course some days are going to be even more challenging than others. There of course are so many other little annoyances – to the kids! If they don’t know when the next break time is coming they may start to feel antsy and distracted. If they’re hungry or tired they will probably get grumpy. This is my house, you have your own sets of challenges at yours, but I bet we have at least one in common!

• Have loads of activities on hand for your toddler. Looooads. Make sure a lot of them are things they can do when sitting alongside siblings.
  • Make fresh play doh with Jello so it’s vibrant, soft and non toxic.
  • Beads with long, thin elastic for making bracelets.
  • Colorful buttons and small containers for sorting.
  • Construction paper and scissors – cutting doesn’t need a reason!
  • For most toddlers, markers are serious contraband. Let them use washable markers (at the table only of course)!
• Post a schedule for the day in a prominent spot and stick to it as closely as possible.
  • If you don’t get everything done you planned to in the alloted time, think about changing the schedule to reflect that in the future.
  • If it’s time to move on to another subject and you’re not finished, move on and assign the leftover as ‘homework’ or….
  • Choose a ‘catch up’ time to finish up anything that wasn’t done within the time you alloted for it.
  • Make sure to include a decent lunch break and a hearty (but not food coma-inducing) lunch.
• Have light, nearly mess-free snacks on hand all day for school aged kids.
  • Whatever healthy snacks they like, lay them out shortly after you start.
  • Replenish the snacks as they are eaten, it helps keep the kids from constantly breaking for a snack but helps them stay energized.
  • This should go without saying but I’ll say it anyway, choose light, healthy snacks, not sugary treats.
  • We usually put out orange and apple slices, banana chunks with toothpicks in them, grapes, banana chips, nuts, seeds, carrot and celery sticks and crackers.
  • Keep them hydrated too!
• Make a ‘nibble tray’ for your toddler.
  • Even if your toddler likes the same snacks as your older kids, toddlers love having something just for them.
  • Fill an ice cube tray with different small snacks like Cheerios, halved grapes, banana chips, nuts, seeds, tiny pieces of favorite fruits and cheese.
• Let their lunch break be a fun break!
  • If at all possible, let them play outside and run around. We spend our lunch break in the pool when it’s nice out but even hitting a nearby park for a quick picnic or just the backyard is great for them.
  • Resist the urge to quiz or drill them during their lunch break – it’s a break!
• Have a backup folder of additional work for your school aged kids on hand.
  • If you’re in the middle of something with one child and another needs your assistance, turn to your backup folder for help!
  • You can include worksheets with additional practice of what they are working on so one is busy with that while you’re helping the other one.
  • If you’re not a fan of worksheets, you can include things like word searches, sudoku or crossword puzzles to give one of the kids a little break while you help the other.
• Keep something messy and fun on hand for your toddler.
  • For those days when your toddler isn’t happy with beads or buttons or markers have something messy ready for them – you know they’ll love it.
  • Keep a cheapy dollar store tablecloth on hand with your messy ideas so you can lay that down under them and make clean up easier on yourself!
• You hear this all the time, but be sure to mingle your children with all kinds of other children!
  • Having friends and being active in the community helps your children feel connected in a similar way to how kids in school connect with their classmates.
  • Karate, dance class, swimming lessons, boy / girl scouts, volunteering, mommy group, whatever, get out there!
  • Meet other homeschoolers, this is just as much for your own sanity as theirs.

This list is saving my sanity, especially the schedule! I see them looking at it and checking the time throughout the day and it absolutely stabilizes the mood. Kids of all ages like to know what their day looks like, don’t you?

So onto how we homeschool. 🙂

We homeschool through an independent study program within the Unified Los Angeles School District. We use the materials they provided and hand in assignments and check in with them once a week. I also have a closet full of both Canadian and American curriculum that I supplement with. I posted back in September a big list of books we planned on using but we ended up getting even more and we use these most. There are a lot of second grade books because of the flip carts and vocabulary cards and that kind of thing. The 7th grade books are huge and cover a lot of material in one book.

California Treasures 2nd Grade LA, Book 1	California Treasures 2nd Grade LA, Book 2	California Treasures 2nd Grade Grammer & Writing
California Treasures 2nd Grade Flip Chart	California Treasures 2nd Grade Phonics	California Treasures 2nd Grade Cursive
California Treasures 2nd Grade Oral Vocabulary Cards	Wonders California 2nd Grade Content Reader	California Treasures 2nd Grade Decodable Reader (5 books total)
California Mathematics 2nd Grade Math Teacher’s Guide	California Mathematics 2nd Grade Math	California Mathematics 2nd Grade Math Workbook
Houghton Mifflin 2nd Grade Social Studies Workbook	Houghton Mifflin 2nd Grade Social Studies	Houghton Mifflin 2nd Grade Social Studies Assessment Options
Harcourt Science 2nd Grade Science	Harcourt Science 2nd Grade Science Workbook	Harcourt Science 2nd Grade Science Assessment Options
California Mathematics 7th Grade	Prentice Hall Literature Bronze Level (7th Grade)	Prentice Hall Literature Bronze Level (7th Grade) Workbook
McDougall Littell World History 7th Grade Medieval and Early Modern Times	McDougall Littell World History 7th Grade Medieval & Early Modern Times Workbook	Holt California 7th Grade Science
Holt California 7th Grade Science Workbook	Math Makes Sense 7

This is the general schedule we follow for what I usually call ‘double days’ where we get twice as much done as the lesson plan calls for. Our standard school days are Monday – Wednesday and Friday & Saturday. Thursday is the day we check in at school and it’s also our ‘catch up day’. So whatever hasn’t been done from the previous Friday-Wedneday, we finish up. It’s never usually more than just an hour or so of work, but it’s so much better to get it done on Thursday afternoon when we get back from checking in than it is forcing it into whatever school day it spilled over from. If there is only a page left to do, or a few pages to read or something very quick at the end of the day, I give them the option to do it before dinner, but after they’ve had a break for a while and they almost always choose to do it that way, so it’s done. We work on many Saturdays to make up for the lost Thursday.

I have found that with all the one on one time the kids get from me to learn new concepts, we never need this much time. Some weeks we double up a day here and there so we’ll manage to get two days worth of language arts done in the morning, depending on what is assigned in the lesson plan. On days when we know for example that our friends from my local mommy group (hi ladies) are going to be at the indoor playspace down the street (or the beach or a park or whatever), we’ll plan ahead and do a double day the day before. Or if there is something happening at the aquarium in Long Beach or my husband wants to take us to Disneyland on a Wednesday or explore the tide pools (man those are cool), we make sure we are ahead a day so we can do that. Some other weeks we don’t do any double days and we’re done with the lesson plans by lunch, on those days if we are not meeting up with friends we’ll get crafty or I’ll help the kids bake or cook something from their cookbook. My oldest loves messy science experiments and board games that require a little mental math are pretty big around here too.

To clarify this table a bit better, we alternate between art and music, and between a special interest they have and French. So we go between doing each of them twice a week and three times a week (if we did art on Friday, we’ll do music on Monday). The special interest time slot was added to make sure we made time a few days a week to focus on something the kids want to learn about. Naturally, they continue working on their special interest activities in their downtime as well, but I wanted to make sure they had a time when they knew I’d be available to help them out no matter what. Right now, my 7th grader is working on video editing and my 2nd grader is big on rug hooking.

I just bought this Scholastic File Organizer Pocket Chart to organize all the folders their work is kept in and it’s visually right there for them to see how many more folders are left at any given time in the school day.

Because you asked, here are the workbooks we supplement with!

Spectrum Language Arts 2	Spectrum Math 2	Brain Quest 2
Bright & Brainy 2	Complete Canadian Curriculum 2	Complete Canadian Curriculum 7
Complete Math Smart 7	Spectrum Science 7	Harcourt Test Prep 7

I will dedicate specific blog posts to more detailed ideas, but all of this hyper-organization to save my sanity (and frankly my zest for homeschooling) brings up a newish issue for me. I mentioned in this post that I was a serious planner for years and years and years and California has chilled me out so much that I even stopped making lists!! I really loved the freedom that came from not making specific plans and doing whatever when the mood happened to strike. However, I noticed some not so fun behavior changes in my littles. Miss Wee One #2 was becoming sassier and a little ok, a lot harder to handle and that as responsible and amazing as Wee One #1 is and has always been, he has been a little lazier and less into following through with chores. The littlest of course learns from the other two and if they were slipping into a place I don’t even want to think about (cue bratty 7 year old stomping around the house) she’s the next in line.

So, the planner had to come back out. I will try not to be as crazy OCD about everything as I was before the move, but being so chill about everything has created issues I never thought I’d have to deal with.

I will post activities I find or come up with for my littlest to share!

*When I started this post, it turned out to be a crazy long novel that included all of this and a whole lot of info about the program we homeschool through. It’s only relevant to people living in Los Angeles County and people who are curious but a lot of people seem interested so I made it into a separate post I will polish up and share next week.

This is everyone’s favorite thing about being able to open up pretty much any afternoon while we are down here.

This week we went to a fun preschool storytime at Fred Hesse and then later we played in the playground. The storytime event was called Little Critter Afternoon Tale, it was put on by the Palos Verdes library, so sweet! It might be my new favorite picnic spot! These activities are held once a month so next month I think I will bring our picnic basket with us! There were stories (duh) and songs, a puppet and some crafts that actually held the kid’s attention. The most hilarious thing about it to me was the theme was winter – any time someone in Southern California says ‘winter’ a Canadian rolls their eyes – and since there is no sign of actual winter down here, the kids made paper snowflakes. Hilarious. This time last year, our oldest was rolling a snowball bigger than himself around the backyard to make an epic snowman – and now he’s wearing a tshirt at the park.

We spent New Years Day playing board games and the little ones ate way too many cookies and chocolate almond milk, but I tried to level it out with some hidden kale in dinner and I’m going to go ahead and call that a win! Two of the games we played on Tuesday were the Pinkalicious Cup Cake Party Game, super fun for Wee One #2, and the Super Why ABC Letter Preschool Game, which totally worked for both Wee Ones #2 & 3. The Pinkalicious game reminded me a lot of Partini, but for kids. You roll the dice and you draw a card from the deck that matches the icon you rolled. You’re either doing charades, drawing, rhyming or dancing. After you perform the task on the matching card you earn a cupcake and the first person to get 6 cupcakes wins! You also have the possibility of rolling two other icons (duh), one gives you a free cupcake, one takes a cupcake away. Wee One #3 wasn’t huge on the rhyming or the charades and seemed to think it was pretty lame. Yeah, my three year old was too cool for it – and that’s fine because this game was technically for Wee One #2 who loved it so much she insisted we play it again after her menacing toddler sister went to bed.

The game we picked up specifically for said menacing toddler was the Super Why game, since that is one of her favorite shows and one of the few shows that actually teaches kids something useful! The show (and the game) focus on letter sounds and early reading. My seven year old liked this game because it was easy for her, but the littlest one liked it a lot too and it’s so neat to see the connections she makes and the little spark that goes off when she finally ‘gets’ something. In this game, there is a spinner instead of dice and you move around the board and land on one of four Super Why characters. Each of the four characters has their own deck of cards and each has the kids practicing a different reading skill – either you match a lower case on your card to the upper case of the same letter on the board, find the letter that the picture on the card starts with, rhyme with the words on the card or you replace a silly word in a phrase with a word that makes sense.

This recipe is my first cookie of 2013. Technically, I made these for New Years Eve, but since they ushered in the new year I’m counting them! It shouldn’t come as a surprise at all that I am posting a Martha Stewart recipe as my first of the year since I’ve been cooking and baking my way through her books since I was a teenager at my parent’s house cooking for their friends on Friday nights!

Soft & Chewy (M&M) Chocolate Chip Cookies – via Martha Stewart

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups semisweet and/or milk chocolate chips
1 cup plain chocolate M&Ms

My granny would dump M&Ms into her standard chocolate chip cookies sometimes if I was in the kitchen with her. It kept the grown ups from eating them all and my sister and I loved them even more this way. This is your standard sift together the dry, cream the butter and sugar, add eggs and then add dry to wet style cookie recipes.

To clarify…whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Cream the butter and both sugars together, then add the eggs one at a time and the vanilla. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet and then stir in the chocolate chips and M&Ms. Bake at 350 for about 11 minutes.

There was a whole lot of baking going on around here this month but most of it was so pedestrian it wasn’t worth posting recipes of! I let the kids choose what we baked every time they asked to, so we ended up with A LOT of chocolate chip cookies and we did sugar cookies over and over and of course we made gingerbread maybe half a dozen times. They teamed up and decorated a gingerbread house together and there was much decking of halls and wrapping of gifts and watching of Christmas movies while I knitted on Christmas socks (as in, gift socks for Christmas, not Christmasy socks).

When I had a little time to steal, like say after they went to bed and before they got up, I tried out these recipes and they were all winners. Usually, I make batches and batches of cookies starting in mid-November so by Christmas I have a stockpile of 6 or 7 different kinds of cookies. Then I make assorted tins and bring them around to our friends and family as gifts. This year, I didn’t do that because while I had a handful of people that I could have brought assorted homemade treat tins to, it wasn’t enough for a the amount I end up with when I bake so many different kinds.

The funny thing is, the closer it got to Christmas, the more treat tin-worthy friends we were all making and by Christmas week, I easily could have given away as many as we would have had if I had just done my Christmas baking as usual. Oh well! Next year I will make lots!!

Here is the roundup of the four recipes I used this year.

	I made these one afternoon for a ‘bring a snack’ style mini potluck with some mommy friends at Silly Goose. They went over well with both kids and parents, which surprised me because I didn’t think the kids would be into it. (read)
	These were originally intended and baked up for my father and my dear friend’s brother. The kids always get to try new cookies even if the batch is destined for someone else – they liked these cookies so much they ate almost the entire first batch and once my husband discovered them, it was game over. I didn’t have enough left to send a decent package! Hilarious but nice to know when I have a winning recipe on my hands like this one. (read)
	This is not a recipe, it’s 5 things you have on hand mashed together and rolled into balls. Oh and you can drizzle them with chocolate but I was taking them to the park and they are not very mobile once they’re covered in chocolate. This is the kind of treat I’ll whip up before bed for the next afternoon when I know I’ll have no time but the kids will be asking for something. Be careful though, the part of you that is still 6 years old will want to eat as many as you can get your hands on and if you have a 6 year old, you’re going to want to keep a close watch on these babies. (read)
	I usually only do one cookie for Christmas that involves white chocolate, but this year I was so smitten with two recipes I went for it. This is the second of the two. I’ve never used maraschino cherries in a recipe before so it was a first and it totally worked out! Definitely drain the cherries well after you chop them, too much liquid will ruin the recipe and the cookies wont hold together as well. (read)

More little pieces of our Christmas, this time, kitchen edition.

-decorating a gingerbread house in your Hello Kitty pearls and Tink costume is a must (duh)
-making fondant from scratch and letting your kids attack gingerbread people with them makes for a seriously fun afternoon
-gingerbread houses can never have too many teeth breaking candies stuck to them
-pancakes taste better when they have seasonally appropriate shapes
-everyone loves festive treat boxes (I’m glad I haven’t met anyone who hates them, anyway)
-cakes should be baked in tree pans, painstakingly decorated with homemade buttercream and handed over to the little ones for dessert
-3 year olds are seriously into baking (another duh)

Here are a few pieces of our Christmas this year. Much excitement. Much fun. My husband and I LOOOOOVE playing Santa, absolutely one of the best parts of Christmas with kids! <3 Back soon with more recaps and fun recipes!

This elf of ours (Sparklez, for those of you following along) has had another busy week!

Day Eight – She was riding Barbie’s horse in the kitchen, and there were little pieces of carrot all over the place!
Day Nine – Sparklez was caught going for a ride on our ceiling fan in a paper cup!
Day Ten – She brought us a board game – Candyland of course! Right after breakfast we played three games and each of us (myself and Wee Ones #2 & 3 each won a game).
Day 11 – Playing a game of cards with one of her new Barbie friends! I wonder who won?!
Day 12 – She was trying to roast mini marshmallows over a candle using a barbecue skewer!	Day 13 – Clearly, she’s been watching Daphne’s journey though potty training!

The kids are over the moon with excitement that Santa has sent us an Elf on a Shelf!! Wee One #2 has been hoping and wishing for one since she first heard about their existence in the fall. The girls have named our elf Sparkle and she’s up been to all kinds of hilarity the first week she’s been here!

Day One – we woke up to a breakfast of teeny tiny pancakes! She tried her best to make us a feast, but I made some bigger pancakes for us.
Day Two – She was spotted on the kitchen counter reading a new storybook with some Barbie friends!
Day Three – Sparkle loves being in California, here she is sunning herself with a makeshift umbrella she made from a barbecue skewer and a cupcake liner! She also filled my favorite pie plate with graham cracker crumbs for her own personal beach!
Day Four – Sparkle got up early and tried to make coffee, but she made a mess instead!
Day Five – This was the day before advent began, so Sparkle brought us a lovely wooden advent project! The girls painted the wooden Christmas tree and cabinet and all 25 of the little ornaments! They had a lot of fun getting it ready, we do a few different advent countdowns and the kids really get into it (ok, ok, we all really get into it).
Day Six – Sparkle brought her own tree from the North Pole to decorate! It now has it’s own shelf in the living room!
Day Seven – We woke up to a very odd scene on Sunday morning. We found Sparkle crammed in a mason jar in the kitchen, with Wee One #3’s Cinderella doll suspiciously sitting beside it. Did Cinderella get jealous of Sparkle and stuff her in the jar?! *gasp* or did Sparkle get scared of Cinderella and hide in the jar? We’ll never know!!