Kindermusik

After playing several music games (like London Bridge
is Falling Down), listening to some music by Mozart (The
Magic Flute and a waltz), we came in out of the heat and
learned a new song to practice on our glockenspiels.

Kindermusik -- Young Child 1

These pictures were actually from mid-October, but I'll post
them along with the ones from this week (above) just so you
get a flavor of Logan's Kindermusik class.

In this Kindermusik class we were talking about bird songs.
We were looking at some bird photos (robin, chickadee, owl, etc.)
and listening to the bird calls. Then we played a singing
game "Blue bird, blue bird flying through my window..."

Playing the glockenspiel in Kindermusik

1. Leah
2. Delenn
3. Christian
4. Christina

Afternoon Pics

Elora at 9 1/2 months (see her nice teeth, 2 on top, 4 on bottom).
Boomer in one of her favorite spots -- under the trampoline.
They built another cubby house inside and everyone is
playing in their "own room."

The Pool Fence Project

The pool fence project started several weeks ago at the end
of October. With lots of help from our friend, Mark, we were
able to get it up and to get the pool in. We're still working on
the shade cloth, but as far as the kids are concerned, the fun
has begun!

More Work on the Pool and then...

the final product (minus the shade cloth which is half-made).

Fun on the Mexican Hat

Our friends came over for some fun in the pool. On the hat
are Bradon and Seth, Lexi and Sydney, Logan (in black) and
Delenn (in pink).

Enjoying the Pool

Holiday Cinnamon Rolls

Here's our family's favorite holiday breakfast. We're starting off our Thanksgiving festivities early this week with a breakfast feast (and Snoopy Thanksgiving Special, thanks for the movie Auntie Wendy and Uncle Joe!)

These CINNAMON ROLLS are wonderful!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 package instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup warm milk
1 egg, room temperature
1 tablespoon white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 cups flour
1 package active dry yeast

**Combine all ingredients, knead till a dough ball
**Let rise for 45 minutes, knead and let rise again for 20 mins or so
**Or you can add all the above ingredients and place in a bread machine if you have one and set to "dough cycle" -- I've never done this
---------
**Prepare pecan mixture (I always have lots left over so you can probably cut this in half):
1 cup brown sugar
4 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup chopped pecans

**take 1/2 the dough and roll out on a floured surface into a rectangle about 6 inches by 10 inches (1/2 inch thick or so).  Spread some
softened butter and then sprinkle on some pecan mixture.  Roll the dough from the long side and slice into 3/4 inch slices.  Place in buttered
a 9X13 pan.
--------
**Preheat oven to 350 (170 Celsius)

**Bake for 15-20 minutes
---------
Frosting:

1/2 package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered (confectioners') sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoon milk

**Mix together and spread on top of cinnamon rolls.

Cinnamon Roll Feast!

We started Thanksgiving early this week with a Cinnamon
Roll brunch. The kids helped make the rolls (Logan was
particularly intrigued about those little organisms... yeast!)
We read "The First Thanksgiving" and then watched the
Charlie Brown special about the Mayflower and the first
Thanksgiving.

Making "Storm" Paintings

Elora's Update

Earlier this week Elora started to stand
on her own for up to about 30-40 seconds.
At book time she often stands and looks at
Mom, Logan and Delenn proudly and grins
as we all cheer wildly and compliment her
on her cleverness.

Dad just gawks when he arrives home from
work.
































Also making an appearance this week were
two new teeth. On Monday (Nov 10; age 9
months 1wk) Mom noticed one tooth
popping through and two days later the other
was also through. We guess that's why she's
been waking every hour or two for the past
six or seven days.

Heavy Rains Brought out New Critters

This morning, Logan found a snail in our yard. It's an unusual
find for the Outback. Of course, we then ran in to find out more
about snails on the Internet (Yay for Enchanted Learning!).

When Logan and Delenn headed off to Melissa's for the morning
Logan put the snail into a plastic bin for safe keeping. Boomer
thought that would be a tasty snack. Yum!

Scroll on down below to see pictures of the Todd River flowing
and don't miss the pictures from Daddy, Logan and Delenn's
campout last weekend (Nov. 8) at Junction Waterhole. Those
pictures were just posted today.

Math Fact Lapbook

Logan has enjoyed working on his "Math Lapbook" and
practicing some basic addition facts. Delenn also loves
the lapbook and flips up the sheets and identifies the
numbers. Otherwise we're still doing lots of the same
-- the days of the week, skip counting, identifying the
number of beads on the abacus (up to 100), and learning
to write the numbers 0-9.

The Todd River Flows!

It has been very, very rainy here in central Australia. The
heavy rains have caused a number of roads to close. (Don't
forget that the Todd River normally has NO water in it!)

While posing for these pictures at the Telegraph Station,
Delenn got bit by a 1inch long "bull ant." It really, really
hurts and Delenn cried a lot.

Todd River Forces Roads to Close

Behind Mom and the kids in the first picture you can see
the pedestrian bridge over the river. The road below
it was closed to traffic. Take a look at the road sign in
the bottom pictures!

Hungarian Goulash

This is currently one of my favorite meals and is very, very easy. I
serve it over noodles.

HUNGARIAN GOULASH:

Crock Pot:

beef stew meat in 1 inch pieces (sometimes I heat in oil and cook beef
before putting in crockpot; sometimes I don't -- it depends on how busy
I am that morning)
1 lg onion (I usually just use a half an onion and that turns out well)
1 can (14 1/2 oz of beef broth)
1 can (6 oz.) tomato paste (I use something called pizza sauce here in
Australia that is a tomato paste with spices in it)
2 cloves of garlic (recipe says finely chopped, on just 1/4 them and
throw them in)
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp paprika
1 tsp salt

cook in slow cooker for 8-10 hours on low or 4-5 or so on high

30 minutes before serving:

1/4 cup water mixed with 3 T flour -- mix and stir into beef mixture
1 medium red bell pepper
a bunch of chopped up mushrooms (if desired)

**** Today I forgot to throw it into the crockpot so I did it on the
stove on low -- cooking for 2 hours. I floured the beef and cooked in
oil then added other ingredients. With the extra flour, the sauce is
quite a bit thicker than the above crock pot method. I'm not sure if
I'll need to thicken the gravy with flour/water as written above.

Jumping Fun!

The Human Body

For several days we talked about the organs of the human
body. We brought out the human body model and put all
the pieces inside, we did a small lapbook, read the Magic
School Bus human body and also watched a couple Magic
School Bus episodes that talked about digestion and another
that talked about germs.

A Week at the DingoDen

This past weekend Mom was pretty beat and rundown and needed a good
break from the kiddies, so Dad played with them Saturday morning, and
then took Logan and Delenn out camping at Junction Waterhole with pals
Bradon, Seth, and Jesse (with Sydney, Lexi, and Mark joining us just for
the afternoon). It had been raining heavily the previous day and thus
the normally dry Todd river was flowing and we wanted to take advantage
of the cooler weather for one last campout. Out at Junction Waterhole
we went on a few short hikes along the river and up a few hills. Delenn
enjoyed making Wombat Stew and Mud Pies with Seth while Logan and Bradon
made mud balls while sliding, swimming, and sloshing around in the muddy
river (amongst the many rocks and small waterfalls). The kids loved
getting into the tent at night and proclaimed their undying love for
camping. As always, Dad told a made-up bedtime story, this time it was
about some water rats surfing down the river trying to catch Logan and
Delenn, but luckily the good-natured frogs held the rats at bay. The
frogs needed to be the protagonists in the story as their croaking was
so loud that Dad wanted the kids to sleep soundly knowing the frogs were
their friends. The next morning (Sunday), the howling of dingoes woke
us up (real dingoes, not the kids :-) After pancakes and cereal, more
mud fun was had and at around 11:30 AM we headed home with mud-caked sad
kids who wanted to stay forever.

Bedtime routine these days has usually meant one book for Delenn and one
for Logan. Then they require one or two oral stories (in the dark).
Dad keeps getting harassed as the made-up oral stories tend to be too
short for their liking. They started at being 5-10 minutes long, but
now tend to be 20-40 minutes long! And yet, they are STILL too short.
Dad now has to abruptly change the subject and ask them what sort of
dreams they want to dream at night, followed by giving each kid
'goosebumps' on their back, a head rub massage, and finally a good ol'
backscratch. What happened to the days when a Dad could simply say
"Good night kids" and tuck them into bed with a good night kiss???

This week has been a bit quiet WHAT YOU'RE JOKING RIGHT!!! . Mom
pulled a muscle in her neck so we've stayed close to home. We're not
working on any big projects for Logan's school this week so we've done a
number of little things. It's always hard to describe homeschooling
because "academic" stuff is interspersed with constant play. We still
have a pretty hard-and-fast rule that there is no TV until the end of
the day. As we eat breakfast Logan usually reads a nursery rhyme (a new
one each day) and Mom usually reads a book or two as we all eat. Then
the kids often play outside with Boomer or on their own as Mom does some
chores (throwing in laundry, doing up the dishes, etc.). During the day
this week we made turkey pinch pots out of clay, did crayon rubbings,
and did some map work and did treasure hunts based on a map we drew of
the house. We've had some fun with Fruit Loop math this week -- doing
lots of counting (for Delenn) and skip counting by 2s and 5s for Logan.
Plus we made a little math fact lapbook for Logan. We baked
banana-blueberry muffins together. We've taken the dog for walks around
the block and in general the kids have spent a lot of time outside
playing with Boomer. We also played in the splash pool and read lots of
books. One of the books we read this week was the Magic School Bus goes
through the Human Body so we pulled out the human body model and talked
about the insides of our body -- fitting together the stomach,
intestines, liver, lungs and so forth into the little model. We've
played a number of board games and Logan and Delenn both play with their
own toys. Logan is still partial to his jets, star fighters and legos
while we'll often find Delenn playing imaginative games with whatever's
on hand. For example, Delenn pulled all the shapes off the stacker,
called them donuts and hid them under the kindermusik scarves. Or
she'll play with a few little animals and have them talk to each other, etc.

Boomer, true to her namesake (a Boomer is an Australian nickname for
kangaroo), has discovered that the neighbor's dog gets better food than
we offer. Yesterday Boomer was in our yard munching on a fresh meat
bone. I was quite puzzled and the only thing I could figure was that
the crows that roost in the tree in our backyard had dropped it. This
morning Logan said that Boomer was in the neighbor's yard (over the
4foot8inch fence) -- and had taken the neighbor's German Shepard's meat
bone. Luckily we have some new fencing coming (in a few weeks) that'll
keep her in the backyard (where the fence between us and the neighbors
is about 9 feet high!!). On a good note, Boomer and the neighbor dog
got along really well so in that way we're very happy with Boomer. She's
good with people and with other dogs.

Kindermusik Puppets

This week in Kindermusik we talked about the composer,
Mozart. Delenn helped Mom color the puppets. We acted
out the story of the opera, The Magic Flute. We also watched
a short snippet from the movie Amadeus (the Magic Flute
scene). We also sang, played games, played instruments
and more!

Post Kindermusik Fun!

After kindermusik last Thursday (Nov 13), the kids had
a lot of fun playing together. The girls played dress up and
the boys played Star Wars. Leah was absent last week.

Below:
Pic. 1: Linda and Delenn
Pic. 2: Christian and Logan
Pic. 3: Back row Logan and Christian
front row Delenn, Christina and Linda
Pic. 4: Ms. Tina can also be seen.

Splash Pool Fun! (Nov. 13)

Fruit Loop Math

The kids really enjoyed doing some "Fruit Loop Math." Logan
sorted and counted by 2s, 5s and 10s. Delenn counted them
all, then sorted by color and counted each color. And, then
the best part of all was EATING the fruit loops!

Arts and Crafts

We got an idea from an art website for kids (http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/)
to make turkey pinch pots out of clay. Later that day we did
some crayon leaf rubbings.

Nov. 11

Campout at Junction Water Hole

We've had a lot of rain, but the weather cleared up. Daddy and Jesse
took the kids camping. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring a towel!

Outback Campout

Mark, Sydney and Lexi joined us for the afternoon, but went
home for the night. Mom was at home with Elora.

pictured below: Delenn with Sydney and Seth (climbing behind)
Below that are some pictures of our campsite.

For November, the weather was very nice. The rains brought
in a cool front. Most years, the temperature is somewhere
around 98-102.

Sunday morning (Nov. 9)

The next morning we did more climbing around. Logan and Bradon
were ready for more water but Delenn and Seth were determined
to stay warm and dry!

Dinner Time Scene

In front of Logan is a nursery rhyme. He's been reading a new
one most every day.

Watching Nicola Rehearse for her Show

Posing for Halloween Pictures. What's up with Logan??

Halloween Trick?

This is no trick! We got a new dog from the RSPCA today.
She is an Australian Cattle Dog also known as a Red
Heeler. Her name from the RSPCA is Ruby... it is undecided
whether we will come up with our own name for her. She
is 5 months old and just lovely with the kids. She seems
pretty smart so far -- and not in a sneaky, tricky way. She
is gentle with Elora and makes Elora laugh and laugh.

Trick-or-Treat

Second picture above: Delenn (left), Logan behind Missy, Seth
and Connell in front. Third picture: Logan and Delenn get candy
from Ms. Kristin.

One last Halloween Picture before turning in for the night

When Daddy, Logan and Delenn got home from trick-or-
treating, Delenn had fallen asleep in the car and Elora was
in her pjs. We didn't get a picture of all three kids in their
costume (because Delenn got ready right after her Friday
afternoon, 4:45, swim lesson). But here are Logan and Elora
on the front porch with our Halloween decor.

Ruby and Elora

Ruby is eyeing Elora's toys. Needlesstosay one of our first
trips to the store included getting some sturdy toys for the
dog. These dogs are pretty clever and will apparently put
their toys away into a basket after playing with them. Do
you think we can teach her to put the kids' toys away too?!

Playing in the Front Yard