The diamond in my ring is from DH's great grandmother's ring. His mother offered it to him when she knew we were headed toward engagement. He had it reset in a new band, partly because the old one was quite worn, party because I prefer silver colored jewelry and he knew that (my ring is white gold), and partly just to make it its own special thing. On Valentine's Day after we got engaged he gave me the band that the ring came in, which he'd had my birthstone set in. I rarely wear it since I don't really like to wear rings (my wedding an engagement rings being the exception), but I love that I have the whole original article in two separate rings. Neither of us has any intention of ever ending our marriage, but I wouldn't keep the rings if we did. They came from his family, and they're my family now too, but, if they ceased to legally be my family, I wouldn't want to hold onto stuff that's important to their history.

I like the water bottle and the backpack.

I didn't even know those weren't the original words until I was in high school :).

They did it! The Cubs are going to the World Series for the first time since 1945! Think about that. My dad, who is 78, was 7 years old the last time that happened. Most current Cubs fans weren't born yet. And they're playing against the Cleveland Indians, another longsuffering team. Of course, we may have to keep an eye out for the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the stands, but this is going to be awesome :).

You all have my permission to have a 1950's day in your own homes :). So we stopped by the consignment store after school today and came out with a new fancy dress, a cardigan, and a big matching bow. She preferred the dress to me making a poodle skirt, and she can wear the dress to church, whereas she probably would never wear the skirt again. This is what it looks like. I'm not sure how 1950's accurate it is, but it's really cute and definitely not what a girl would wear to school in 2016.

Ask the leaders. If it's a good pack they'll let it slide, maybe requiring a donation and maybe not. Oh, and he's six so he's a Cub Scout and the big group is a pack. His smaller group is a Tiger Cub den. He won't move up to become a Boy Scout until middle school. In my son's pack, only about half the kids would participate in popcorn selling. It was encouraged, but not required. He's a boy scout now, and in his troop boys are encouraged to sell popcorn and the troop's percentage of anything they sell goes directly to an account to pay for their outings. If they don't sell anything they simply have to pay more for their outings.

As a general rule I don't follow sports, but I'm a Cubs fan born and bred thanks to my Dad the Chicago native. My Dad will be over the moon if they win tonight, I'm sure, and he'll have fun rubbing it in with his brother, who gave up and became a Sox fan about 10 years ago because he was so tired of rooting for a losing team. My Dad is 78 and battling cancer (though it's actually going well and there's a good chance he'll live for many more years) so this would be a great year for his team to win.

The teacher did make it clear that improvising something very simple was fine and about 1/3 of the kids in the class are on free lunch, so I'm thinking those parents won't go out and buy elaborate costumes. I really like the idea of whipstitching a felt poodle onto a skirt, but I'd have to buy a skirt because DD owns one skirt total, the one I bought earlier this month for her Supergirl costume, and it's way too short to turn into a poodle skirt. She owns a lot of dresses, but isn't a big fan of skirts. I think we'll hit the consignment store this weekend and try to find some things she'd wear again. Thanks for the ideas!

Next Monday my daughter's school is celebrating the 50th day of kindergarten with 1950's day. Kids are encouraged to dress in 1950's style. How can I make this happen without buying new clothes? My daughter has a huge dress up box but nothing that I would consider 1950's-like.

I would have jumped parties and voted for Kasich if he had gotten the Republican nomination, but, alas, he didn't really stand a chance. Probably because he actually seems to be a decent human being.

I have kids with the same age gap. Last year, when they were 4 and 10, the Fudge books were a huge hit. The little on related to Fudge and the big one related to Peter. The early Little House books went over well with both of them, but the younger kid got bored as Laura got older.

Yeah, it's crazy how much my kids loved that place.

What WASN'T so great is a better question? No, really, let's see if I can put it into words: The Lego theme is all over the place, including parts of the outside looking like they're built out of Legos. There are cool Lego statues all over the hotel, including both the lobby and the rooms. The rooms feature a king bed for the parents and a bunk bed (including a trundle, so it could sleep 3 kids total) in a separate area. The Lego Movie plays continuously on one of the TV channels. The pool has giant foam Lego blocks. My 11 year old spent 4 hours in the pool one day swimming and building things out of the blocks. A free breakfast is included with every night of your stay, and it's a buffet with lots of options, both kid-friendly and parent-friendly. Every night at 8pm there's a pajama party in the lobby, hosted by a princess and a girl pirate. In includes a pajama fashion show, a parade, a dance party, and some kind of storytime. Better yet, it's not the same every night. I can't tell you how many variations there are, but we were there two night and the two parties were different. There are four themes to the rooms - Kingdom, Adventure, Pirate, and Lego Friends. There's a character from each theme who regularly walks around the hotel. They don't have the star quality of the Disney characters, but they're much more readily available. The elevators feature lights and disco music. Even the lobby bathrooms are decorated with Lego characters, including a different theme on each door. The carpets in both the guest rooms and hallways are printed to match the theme of the floor. We were in a kingdom room and there were spell books, swords, crowns, etc, on both the hallway and the room carpet. There's a treasure box for the kids to open. First they have to find the combination using clues, and then they open it to find some juice pouches, Lego magazines, and Mixel sets. All the staff are extremely friendly and helpful. Now, if you think all of that would overwhelm you or you just don't think it's worth paying extra for a hotel to get a cool theme, by all means stay at a different hotel and just visit the park, but I thought staying at the hotel was well worth the money. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I should say that we stayed there Monday and Tuesday nights and the park was actually closed Tuesday and Wednesday. I guess they don't get enough visitors to justify being open every weekday during the school year. That greatly decreased the rate. We visited the park Sunday and Thursday.

Bump because I edited the first post.

Update: Now that we're only one day out from leaving the kids have decided that it's okay to miss stuff and are super excited that we'll be in Legoland in two days!

Many of you helped me think through my decision in the spring to send Kittygirl to a Spanish Immersion Magnet school for kindergarten, so, now that we're six weeks in, I thought I'd give an update. In short, it's wonderful. She's learned an amazing amount of Spanish, but, even without that, I'm thrilled with the school. There's lots of movement during class and all the work I've heard about is developmentally appropriate. They're working on phonemic awareness and letter sounds, in stark opposition to her brother's kindergarten classroom, where there was a huge sight work emphasis and lots of seatwork. Yesterday it rained during recess, but they still got to go outside and play with chalk in a roofed over concrete area adjacent to the playground. After my son's public elementary school experience, which had quite a few good aspects, but also often frustrated me, I was nervous about sending my free spirited little girl into that environment, but it turns out the environment I've sent her into is different from his kindergarten environment in all the best ways. I wish every child in public school could have this kind of experience. I do admit there are days when I wish I were homeschooling her simply for the sake of convenience. It's kind of annoying to have to tailor our schedule to her school schedule and be done by 2pm every day so we can go pick her up, but it's really far and away the best place for her right now and I'm so happy I chose it.

To clarify, no, we didn't know about any of the events we'd be missing when we scheduled the trip. The school events weren't even scheduled yet, and the scout event was rescheduled to happen during our trip - he would have been able to attend it during the original dates. If we didn't have nonrefundable reservations we might have considered cancelling after we learned about everything we were missing, but we don't want to throw away money. Plus, I'm absolutely sure we'll have a blast once we're there.

Thanks for giving me some perspective on their point of view! I think you're right, what they're missing with peers just seems more real right now than what they'll hypothetically experience on vacation. It's totally crazy though how much is going on while we'll be gone. Last year we went to Disney during the same time period and we missed nothing (other than DS, who was in 5th grade in public school, missing three days, which his teacher was totally understanding about).

We leave Saturday for a week in Florida. DD (who is in public school kindergarten) has next Thursday and Friday off and we're pulling her out for the whole week. We're going to Legoland for one or two days, going to Clearwater for a day to meet the famous dolphins, going to Kennedy Space Center for a day, and, if the weather is right, going to the Disney water parks. We're spending two nights at the Legoland resort. Basically, it's going to be a really fun trip. However, things keep coming up that we'll be missing while we're gone. DD is missing picture day at school. She was going to miss her first field trip, but, thankfully, it got rescheduled. DS is missing a coop field trip to an apple orchard and, of most concern to him, the Webelos Woods campout. This would be his first year there as a Boy Scout. Just this morning he was saying that he wants to not go to Florida because he'd rather go to Webelos Woods. The worst part is, we decided to do a Legoland focused trip this year right after a Disney trip last year because we really wanted DS to be able to go before he completely outgrows it. He's 11 now and I've been told that's already at the cusp of being really bored at Legoland. I think he'll have a lot of fun, but I didn't want to wait even one more year. So why is my kid complaining about a fun trip that we're doing in large part for him? I'm not really looking for advice, I just wanted to whine somewhere. Most likely once we get there it will be fine. As I predicted, once we were actually on the vacation, they had a blast and didn't miss the things at home in the least. Legoland is a really cool place. The five year old enjoyed all the rides but her very favorite thing was trading minifigs with the employees. She came with four minifigs and I ended up buying her four more that she didn't like so she could keep trading. She went through multiple trades with most of them and even scored a Mickey Mouse minifig. The eleven year old thought the rides were pretty tame, except for Ford Driving School, which he did several times. He loves any ride that allows him to drive something. He loved the theme in general. We also really loved Brick or Treat, their Halloween event. The trick or treat trail is really well done and each station gave out huge handfuls of candy. The park is decorated really well, and the fireworks are amazing, They give you fireworks glasses that make the fireworks look like Lego bricks. It's incredible. The party isn't quite as cool as Disney's, but it's included with admission every weekend in October, so that's hard to beat price-wise. The Legoland Hotel is amazing. I didn't think anything could equal the Disney hotels, but this one does. We enjoyed our hotel stay at least as much as we enjoyed the park, maybe more. It was really cool to meat the famous Dolphin Tale dolphins Winter and Hope, though we were a bit disappointed that Winter actually spends quite a bit of time not wearing her prosthetic tail and so we didn't get to see her with it on. We made it to Kennedy Space Center before that part of the state was evacuated due to the hurricane and really enjoyed it. We also made it for the first time to Disney Springs, which we've never made time for on our Disney trips. There are some neat shops and restaurants there, and we enjoyed the atmosphere. We cut our trip by a day due to the hurricane so we didn't get to visit the Disney waterparks, but we made a pit stop in Atlanta at World of Coca Cola on the way home, so that made up for it in my son's eyes. We don't let him drink Coke or soda in general often, but he loves it when he gets it.

Here's a picture of the cutest little Supergirl ever. Unless, of course, your own little girl is dressed as Supergirl, then you probably think she's cuter :).

I think our best family costume year was when DS was 4 and super into the old show My Friends Tigger and Pooh. He was Tigger, DH was Pooh, and I was Darby. I got the Tigger costume at a consignment sale for $10 and I pieced everything else together at Goodwill for under $20, including a yellow child's sweatshirt that I cut apart and made into a Pooh hood for DH.

This thread is really all about me bragging that my daughter finally decided on a Halloween costume (yes, it's still over a month away but we're going to the Halloween party at Legoland in a week) and I put it together quickly and fairly cheaply, mostly with stuff that can be reused as regular clothing. However, I love hearing about Halloween costumes, so please chime in with your costume successes, or chime in with your problems and maybe someone else will have a great suggestion. Last night we needed a quick dinner between Ultimate Frisbee practice and attending a ballet downtown, so we stopped at a McDonalds on the way. I don't really like the food, but I'm so glad we stopped there because the Happy Meal prized inspired this costume. Kittygirl got a Supergirl headband and said, "Maybe I should be Supergirl for Halloween." She wore the headband into the theater for the ballet, and our seats happened to be near a woman who is one of the teacher aides from her former preschool. She complimented the headband and Kittygirl said, "Thanks! I'm going to be Supergirl for Halloween." Now, this girl has gone back and forth on costumes for months, so I was so excited to hear a firm decision from her, quite out of the blue. This morning we went shopping and pulled together the rest of the Supergirl costume with the help of a consignment store and Target. It includes a red skirt with attached shorts, a blue shirt with the Superman/girl symbol, red high top converse shoes, and a red cape that we acquired for free at a superhero birthday party last weekend, plus the aforementioned headband. What I love most is that almost all the pieces can be used as regular clothing later. The red skirt can be paired with something else and just be a great skirt. The blue shirt with the super symbol can be worn with other shorts or pants. The red high top converse can be worn with any outfit they match, and even the headband could just be worn with a blue outfit. The only thing that's not reusable as normal clothing is the cape, which we got for free. This is quite possibly the best Halloween costume ever!

My favorite cheap and easy to find hot tea is Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice tea. It's kind of inspired by chai, but it's herbal so it's caffeine free. I drink it both hot and iced with no sweeteners of any kind, and it's just sweet enough to make my sweet tooth happy.

I agree that the photos are awesome. That's a huge plus to the book. And Our Creative World is really cool as well. I'm just not nearly as impressed as I thought I would be.

Two other things I forgot about when I posted yesterday: Miss: Getting Started with Spanish: Trying to do two languages at once was a flop to begin with, but I figured out in just the few days we used this that, if we do Spanish again, we will not be getting started with this book. I think it's a decent resource for someone with no access to a teacher, but, as a former Spanish teacher, I'm really unimpressed with it. I can use a real textbook, and I will if my son wants to pick Spanish up at some point. Okay: Exploring Planet Earth - I had this on my shelf after purchasing it used from my homeschooling neighbor just because I thought it might be fun to read through sometime (this was before we started homeschooling). We picked it up after I admitted that Novare was over DS's head. DS is learning, but I would never use it as the core of a science program. There's just not enough to it. Also, it's not as annoyingly Christian as Notgrass, but it's headed in that direction. I guess I just don't like most Christian material. Maybe I'll write my own someday for Christians like me.