Science Project

Fourth grade means a lot of things, and that includes mandatory participation in the school's science fair.  Callie was unsure of what type of project to do, and after several conversations that involved pulling teeth, she landed on an experiment involving the acidity of drinks.

John and Callie got the opportunity to go to the store to purchase a wide array of beverages for the experiment.  Mrs. Fehr, the science teacher at Cassidy, truly made this as easy as possible by outlining four different phases of activities each student needed to complete.  But when it came down to it, we still needed to block out a good three hours to execute the experiment according to her outline.

Of course it is important that the student do the work for the project, so we made sure that Callie did the heavy lifting with a little guidance from her mother and a lot of patience from the entire family.  Once we got going, Callie certainly got into it, which helped.

We also decided to take lots of pictures since one of the requirements of the science fair was to put together a poster board illustrating the steps of the experiment as well as the findings.  Fortunately our newly renovated kitchen had a lot of room available for Callie's displays.

This is one example from the ten beverages Callie tested.  On the left is the red cabbage solution (aka the acid indicator), the middle cup contains lemonade, and the cup on the right shows what happens when the two were mixed.  The red color shows the relatively high acidity of the lemonade.  Although Callie did not win any medals in the science fair, she received an A on her project and learned a lot about what it takes to devise and execute an experiment, and that was the whole point of it anyway.  Good stuff all around.

Tape Ball with the Abrahams

One of the best holiday traditions we now have is Tape Ball night with the Abrahams.  John is always so proud of his tape ball, though after last year's ordeal that included bloody knuckles and a game that went on far too long, he had to make this year's version a little easier to tear apart.  From this picture you can see that he believes he has made a tape ball with the perfect blend of tough but fair.

Each Tape Ball night starts with pizza, for one does not tear apart a ball of paper and tape on an empty stomach.  The girls love hanging out with Ella and Claire no matter what we are doing, but there is always a special buzz in the air on this night.  You can tell they are already wondering what kind of special gifts await.  Will they get something they really want or will they end up with one of the duds that Kelly and Sarah have made sure to include.

And right here we see what can happen when you automatically decided to pick the gift box that is the biggest.  Reese became the proud owner of a massive jar of pickles.  You can tell that the girls are more comfortable with  each other because the stealing efforts have more than tripled over the years.  And you can also tell that they are getting older because there is less crying over ending up with a jar of pickles.  A great night all around.

Christmas in Song

The fall semester of LOGOS at our church led up to the Christmas pageant performed by the children involved in the program.  It is always a performance that we enjoy seeing, and not only because our kids are a part of it.  This year was special because Vivie Ann was chosen to be the angel and had several solos.

At this point we know just about all of the kids who are a part of the production, so it makes the entire show more meaningful.  It isn't just a bunch of kids alongside our own precious children.  There are kids who Sarah has had dinner with every Wednesday for the past twelve weeks and kids that John has led through games and other activities throughout the same period of time.

That being said, our kids are pretty cool.  This year Callie took on a narrator role, which complemented some of Vivie's parts.  It made for a sweet picture since they have been a part of this performance for the past five years.

Singing doesn't only happen at church, however, and both girls are part of their school's choral program.  Reese is part of the Choristers, which is for 1st and 2nd graders.  Miss Stringer, their music teacher, does an amazing job of picking great songs and engaging the students so that they perform to their greatest potential.  It is a sight to see and a sound to hear.

The 3rd through 5th graders are part of the Cassidy Chorus, and this year their concert had a 1950s theme.  It meant we got to buy a poodle skirt for Callie, which our regular readers will remember from our post on Halloween.  Miss Stringer not only puts together great music, but somehow gets these boys and girls to perform multiple movements.  In one instance this year it included the whole chorus doing the hand jive.  Overall, it was another great performance.  And although we don't have a picture of this, Callie was also part of a performance by the Cassidy Dance Team.  Just to give you a taste, they danced to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy trap remix.  We'll let your imagine run wild with that.

Reese Turns 7

Reese turned 7 this year, and because it is an odd number, we had a birthday party for her at home.  She wanted a theme of winter wonderland, which we gladly obliged especially sine it meant we could leave a lot of the decorations up after the party was over.  And it blended in with our Christmas tree.

As usual, Sarah's birthday organizational skills were at their peak and we were able to handle a total of eleven girls without breaking a sweat, or at least that is how we choose to remember it.  The key was to have activity after activity after activity.  Of course you can't plan for everything.  For instance, the first excitement of the day occurred when the first guest arrived.  Reese brought her upstairs to show off her room and her pet fish.  Seconds later, Reese came running downstairs to announce that Chuck had died.  So we flew into action - Sarah distracted the girls while John swooped in and flushed Chuck down the drain.  But like all things, the show must go on.  First up was decorating pre-fabricated gingerbread houses.  As everyone knows, it is important not only to help young kids with the smaller decorations, but also to try and make sure more get on the house than in their mouths.  Not an easy task.

It is also important to have lots of choices when it comes to decorations, for young children have preferences and no problem declaring them.  The island was littered with candy canes, dummies, frosting, sprinkles, mints, and the list goes on.  One particular crowd pleaser was the sugar ice cream cone turned upside down to create a Christmas tree.

It all happened in stages, and the roof was typically set number one.  Here we have a picture of Reese's good friend Ella with stage one of her house complete.  Each girl approached their design very differently - some were strategic, some believed more of everything was better, and some were too busy eating the decorations to care.

We were running around assisting all the girls with all of their requests and demands, and we were very happy to see how helpful Callie was throughout this process.  In fact she never made her ginger bread house because she was so busy assisting all of Reese's friends.  In other words, Callie was the perfect big sister in this situation.  We could not have done it without her.

And at the center of it all, Reese was having a blast.  She was so excited to have a birthday party, and loved decorating the gingerbread house.  She could not wait for the next phase of the party she had planned with Sarah.

But before the next activity could start we had to stop and get a group photo of the whole crew.  They are not a shy bunch, so they were more than willing to pose and smile for the camera.  There is a lot of sweetness and sass in this photo.

The next activity was building snow girls out of the various items we had put together.  We divided the girls up into three groups and each group had to work quickly together to make one team member a snow girl.  It was noisy, silly, and fun to watch, that's for sure.

When the buzzer sounded we had three fine looking snow girls - Reese, Mary, and Shelby.  Each one had a distinctive flair and was proud of the work done by their respective teams.  We were pretty impressed that the activity was such a hit.  Two down, two to go.

Next up we shifted our attention to the dining room so that the girls could show off their arts and crafts skills by making book marks and snowflakes.  Again, each girl took this task in her own unique direction depending on her personality.  Some were detail oriented and others had the need for speed.  But one thing they all had in common - everyone loved the laminator, which was a purchase made specifically for this day.  We can now help you with all of your laminating needs.

One of Reese's favorite aspects of the party was that everyone got a polar bear cupcake, a treat that was quickly followed by the final event of the day, a dance party.  The polar bears, decorated by none other than Sarah, were one more big hit on a day of hits.  The girls absolutely loved the polar bears, and Reese was excited to tell them that her Mom made each one.

And here she is, our wonderful daughter.  And so we are clear, the seven looked right to her.  Somehow we managed to forget to tell her to turn it around for this picture.  Regardless, you can see it in her face that she loved every minute of her birthday celebration and will cherish the memories for years.  At least that is what we choose to believe, and we are the ones writing this after all.

December Activities

For the past year, Reese has been asking to play basketball, and we finally made it happen.  There is a great league that plays its games a short drive from our house, and the kids practice their skills for the first half of the "game" and then play for about 25 minutes.  It is the perfect balance of instruction and organized chaos.  Reese loved it, and she was pretty good for her first time out there.  We'll see if she sticks with it - we hope she does.

For Callie, fourth grade brought the opportunity to play in the orchestra, and she was excited about playing the violin.  Not so excited that she wanted to practice every day, but excited enough.  Before her school's Christmas break she was part of the holiday band and orchestra concert, and she did a fine job.  The entire concert lasted only 30 minutes, which is a perfect length for an elementary school band and orchestra concert.  We'll leave it at that.

Even though Callie did not participate in the Girls on the Run program this fall, she still got to run the 5K at Keeneland.  That happened primarily because her friends Murphy and Vivie Ann asked her if she wanted to do it with them.  Callie was more than happy to wake up early on a cold December morning to run with her friends.  It's hard not to support that type of friendship.

Our new kitchen provided the perfect space for another annual December activity - chocolate dipping!  Sarah and Kelly had at least twenty-five pounds of chocolate and a host of goodies, both savory and sweet, to be dipped.  This has been a wonderful way to take a day off of work, hang out with a good friend, and mentally prepare for the month of craziness.

In the end, a lot of chocolate was dipped, and those dipped items will go into making numerous teacher thank you boxes and party dessert trays.  The girls definitely enjoyed coming home to this and quickly asked to eat one of each dipped item.  Even with all that is given away, we end up having quite a few tins of treats that last us well into the new year.

This December Sarah and John had the opportunity to go to a UK men's basketball game - the annual tradition here is getting to know the new crop of players wearing the white and blue uniforms.  Regardless of who is on the court, however, it's always a fun evening out.  Here you can see Scratch the Wildcat in his Santa suit, supported by the perennial national champion UK cheerleading team.

Santa and our Trees

Each year, as soon as we step off the plane from Thanksgiving, we literally jump right into the deep end of the Christmas season.  The first order of business is to get the tree up and decorated before Reese's birthday.  This year we headed to our favorite spot on what was an unseasonably warm day and found a tree that was just right for us.

For the first time, we gave in to the begging and pleading for the girls to have a tree that was just right for them.  So they picked out a cute little tree that they put in their room and decorated with all sorts of homemade arts and crafts.  They could not have been happier.  We got to decorate our big tree not once, but twice, because we had tree stand mishap that led to a fallen tree, broken ornaments, and a new tree stand.  Hopefully we have finally learned all that it takes to keep a tree upright so that we don't lose any more of our favorite ornaments.

This year getting our tree came before our annual trip to see Santa at the Ingle-Mayfield house.  We love this Santa and the girls are now more than willing to hang out and talk with him, though they are more interested in running around the house and eating sweets on a school night.  And we can't blame them because we enjoy having a couple of glasses of wine and kicking off the holiday season with some great family friends.

When Sarah bought the girls Christmas outfits this year, she had no clue that Callie would be matching Vivie Ann.  This would not be a problem except for the fact that the Johnson family always attends this annual get together as well.  Here is a picture taken by Jessica Johnson, and not Sarah, since Callie would not indulge her mother's request for a picture but had no problem doing the same thing for Vivie's mom.  Gotta love kids, don't you? Don't worry, parents are ahead because we will use this tactic in the future for bigger requests.

It is hard to believe that Vivie and Callie have been taking photos together at this event before Reese was even born.  And although we didn't get the boys in this shot, Mason and Emerson certainly rounded out the cuteness.  Hopefully next year we can get all five of them together.

Thanksgiving at Zac and Brandi's House

This year's trip out to California was an adventure to say the least.  Sarah, Callie, and Reese headed out early because John had to teach.  And as often happens, delays turned into more delays and ultimately they didn't get to Zac's house until 3:00am PST, which was 6:00am EST.  But true to form, the girls were awesome travelers.  They had a brief power sleep and woke up to go ice-skating in downtown Sacramento.

Both of the girls enjoyed the experience, and Reese particularly liked the training walker/slider that got her comfortable with skating techniques.  Callie preferred just holding hands with Uncle Zac.  And Uncle Zac was very good to both of them.

One of the things different about this year's trip was that we stayed the whole time at Zac and Brandi's new house, which was awesome because we got our own bedrooms and bathrooms.  And it also meant we got more time with both of them, which is always a good thing.

More time with Zac and Brandi also meant more time with the Herring family - Brandi's brother Brian, his wife Bri, and their kids Nathan and Caroline.  Let it be known now that Callie has the sweetest spot for Nathan that we have ever seen.  She loved playing with him and taking care of him.

Callie's love for Nathan was wonderful, and it also made hanging out easier because Reese and Caroline were definitely two peas in a pod.  Reese continuously talks about her cousin Caroline, which is fantastic because we will be spending holidays together for years to come.

Did we say something about cousins?  Do you want cousins?  Because we have a whole mess of cousins in California, and GA is the pied piper of little ones.  When we scheduled a day to go out and visit GA and GU, she had a list of activities to be accomplished by all eight of the little ones who were going to be there.  It started with a golf cart trip up to the club for lunch.

Once the kids were properly fed, the scavenger hunt began.  GA had a list of twenty-five different animals, sights, and items to find throughout their neighborhood.  And we drove two two golf carts from place to place while the kids would jump out and look for whatever was next on the list.

We don't get to see these cousins as much as we would like, but it is great to see how quickly they all start playing together within minutes of seeing each other.  They are a fun group and all eight of them are within eight years of each other, with Callie and Brady leading the pack.

Brandi's sister-in-law Bri has worked at the state capitol for over fifteen years, and offered to take Grammy, Sarah, and the girls on a behind the scenes tour of the building.  We jumped at the opportunity.  Although we took a tour of the capitol several years ago, that was just the typical public tour.  This took things to a whole new level as you can see from this picture taken in a hearing room, inches away from bringing a new law into effect.

Another great perk about having connections at the state capitol is that your connections have connections.  Bri hooked us up with Jody, pictured here, who had keys to everything.  He showed us between the walls, literally - where the old capitol building meets the new construction.  He also knew which senators had the best candy jar in their office, and took us on a tour to get jolly ranchers and m&ms.  The girls thought he was pretty cool.

The great thing about this picture is that we have a similar one from about 5-6 years ago.  Needless to say, Callie and Reese were much shorter in the previous version.  But the joys of visiting the state capitol remain.

What has also become an annual tradition is getting together with Lauren and her girls for a day since they have the same holiday rotation visiting Lauren's parents as we do with our trips to California.  This time around we went to Lindsay's Wildlife Experience in Walnut Creek.

This place has a lot of different rescue animals, most of which are birds.  However, they do have a porcupine, and we had the opportunity to hear a whole presentation about porcupines and what makes them tick (or poke).  The girls were captivated by getting to see a porcupine up close.

Even better they got the chance to pet the porcupine.  Ashlyn is an animal lover, and she was over the moon about the whole place in general, but really loved getting the pet the porcupine.  We must admit it was a pretty awesome experience and even Lauren and Sarah took their turn.

It's pretty amazing how quickly these four fall back into rhythm even though they haven't seen each other in a bout a year.  They loved going from activity to activity and we couldn't resist taking a picture of the four of them in a giant nest.

This visit also happened to fall on Ashlyn's eighth birthday, which is hard to believe.  We celebrated with lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and you can't leave the Cheesecake Factory without enjoying the dessert that lends its name to the place.  It was a fantastic day.

John finally arrived the next day and quickly was put to work.  He and Zac were given the responsibility of putting together and installing the new chandelier that Zac and Brandi had ordered to fill the space in their high ceilinged dining room.  It all turned out very well thanks to the fact that Zac knows what he is doing and John is good at following orders.

Later that day Grammy took us on the long awaited tour of the California Museum where she has volunteered ever since she retired.  One of the current exhibits focused on the idea of unity and inclusion, which is a great message all around.  We had a great time looking around the whole museum, but really loved this exhibit.

Thanksgiving Day arrived and Zac and Brandi took their positions as the host and hostess with the most and mostest.  There were a lot of great people and a lot of tasty food to go round.  All told there were fifteen people gathered around one big table underneath a beautiful and functional chandelier.

One of many special treats that day was Mary Margaret's presence.  She had made the long drive up from San Diego and though she had some car troubles along the way she brought her usual energy and good humor as well as lots of wine to make the occasion that much better.

Thanksgiving Day also meant more time with Caroline and Nathan.    And since we were staying at Zac and Brandi's, it was good for the girls to also have more time to hang out with Grammy, shown here putting the big squeeze on both of them.

Grandpa Dan was also a part of the festivities, and was more than happy to hang out with the kids at their end of the table.  He couldn't get enough of their giggles and his corny entertainment was a perfect fit.

By the end of the evening John and the fellas somehow ended up hanging out in the garage, watching football, drinking bourbon, and talking politics.  The women had a much better plan that included staying inside the house, drinking cosmos, and avoiding politics.

Before we left town we got in one more visit with the Pedones and GA and GU.  The girls enjoyed seeing Harper and Skyler again, and Sarah and John enjoyed some time with Ron, Teri, Haley, and Ryan.  These trips go by way too fast, but we know we will see them again soon.