Hand made gifts.

This year we made a few hand made gifts and I decided to post some pictures. This is the high- light - our family's Nativity Scene. Mirek drew it , cut if from the wood, and I got busy woodburning it. We made four sets altogether, to give to our family and friends, and the last set, for us, Mirek and I stayed up till 3 am the day before Christmas Eve to finish it up.
With the cookies the girls were a great help! Especially the ginger bread cookies. All I had to do for them was to help with the dough part and the rest they were on their own. And with decorating them I did not have to do anything! We made a lemon powdered sugar frosting and the pastry chefs had a blast coming up with their masterpieces.
The photo frame for Leona had been in the works for a long time! I started it a long time ago, and decided it was about time to finish it up for this Christmas. It was a lot of fun to color the woodburned design.
Evan got this animals set. Again, I had fun woodburning it. When the wheels turn they create a cute effect.
And, more woodburning. Each got new personalized ornament this year.
Kids creations. The media this time was the plaster of Paris.
When I was assisting in the art class the kids were painting Van Gough's sunflowers. I got inspired by the young artists' creative projects and decided to make this "Happy Sunflowers" plaster wall decoration. I think it would brighten up an empty spot in any room!
Merry Christmas!

Christmas Concert.

We had our Christmas concert at the homeschooling co-op. And it was just fabulous! This is Leona's group performing their second song, "The Drummer Boy". The kids made the drums in the art class and used them to do a great job drumming to "taaa'ram'pam'pam" on the stage. There is a little girl in a white dress that does not have the drum but feels that she should be on the stage as well. That is Milana! She wanted to perform and there was no stopping her! Leona behaved so professionally and managed not to get distracted by Milana standing next to her and being "helped" to drum with her little puffy toddler's hands.
The choir sang eight carols and the theme was "Christmas Around the World". Ivana got to sing a mini solo from the song "Go tell it on the Mountain". And this year we were treated to a great live music, as the accompaniment was not only the piano, but the violin and the drums as well!
And this is Ivana performing a violin duet with her teacher Mrs.D., accompanied by the piano. I will try to download the video, for now it is just a photo. Out of eight students Ivana is the most advanced student and performed the last. They played "Pachelbel Canon" and " A Scarborough Fair". We could not be more proud of her!

Woodburning display.

And this exhibition symbolises the end of our woodburning class! The kids have enjoyed learning a new art and I have gotten back to woodburning again, after a pretty long break.

The first project we did was creating a unique design folding the paper , kind of like when you cut a snowflake. Everybody followed the instructions but the results were so different and the kids were amazed. Then we traced the designs onto the wooden boxes and got busy learning to handle a hot tool for the first time! It was a great idea to start kind of with an easy project, but still enjoying the process and the result, of course. On the back of the boxes the students woodburned their favorite quotes.

Second stage of learning included choosing an image, carbon tracing it and applying the techniques learned doing the first art project. I did not push them, they were able to make their own choices of the wooden shape and an image to work with and, thus, the display looks so interesting, I think, as all the art works are very different. We have a Dutch floral desigh that a student made to give to her parents for their wedding anniversary, we have a music mini tray that was intended to be for a Mom pianist, we have a butter churn that would be presented as a Christmas gift for a Mom who dreams of having a farm, we have flowers and birds, horses and a butterfly for nature and animal lovers. And , my assistant, another Mom, got to create a mini shelf that she wanted to put in the corner of her kitchen.

I truly enjoyed teaching this class and will totally miss it! I won't miss dragging to the co-op a heavy box full of woodburning equipment every Wednesday, though! Sniff, sniff...

Ice Skating.

That is when a frozen lake can provide a ton of fun! And besides being on the fresh winter air, exercise quite a bit, see the kids try new things and enjoy themselves, it is all for free! When everything and anything is requiring a fee these days, whether you want to go ice skating on a closed in rink, or roller blading, or take the kids to run around and go on the slides in those closed in gyms, we embrace the natural and free ways of spending the quality time together.

We had our friends with their four kids join us for the ice skating fun. And even though Mirek and Tomas cleaned the area for ice skating, the girls were still wondering off and trying to skate on the ice covered with snow, which was very successful, I should admit. And then there was a lot of laughter and joyous sreeming when they were sledding down the hill and making snow angels.

After two or so hours, "the rosy cheeks" were more than ready for hot chocolate and a homemade apple pie.

Cookies exchange.

It's that time of the year to add on a couple of extra pounds without feeling too guilty! We had a talent show and cookies exchange at the homeschooling co-op today. Our family performed three pieces. First, Ivana and Leona played a violin/piano duet. Then myself and Mirek played a piano/guitar duet. And, finally, myself, Leona and Milana sang a Czech folk song accompanied by Ivana playing the violin and Mirek the guitar. We were shining like real starts!

The cookies exchange was great, as we got to taste so many yummy creations and even got to bring a bag home. Last year the cookies in the bag did not make it to last till we got home, this year there were more of them and they did last till home. However...Now it's past 10pm and guess who is devouring them while the kids are in the dream land?

My centerpiece on the table was enjoyed by everybody! The ornaments we created with my students during our woodburning class were the center of everybody's attention. With over 40kids at the co-op we had worked hard the make the ornaments on time, even finishing more than half of them today during our last woodburning class, right before our Christmas party. And when every child went home with a personalized woodburned ornament I was very satisfying to see their happy faces.

Monday is a big day! It's the Christmas concert and the art work displays. I will be setting up the table with all the woodburned projects the children made in my class. Can't wait for the pictures?

Babushka.

Hello from our "babushka"!

Music together.

Mirek loves to play his guitar but could neither find time to practice nor the drive to play it. I have been discovering the joy of piano playing for a few months now and recently we started playing duets. It has been so wonderful and so relaxing to do that and, apparently, we have set up a good example for our girls.
They decided to play the duets from Leona's piano book all by themselves, without me even suggesting it. And, boy, they are having a great time! I love to see how they work things out together, exercise patience for each other and laugh when they finish the tune without any mistakes. This is my dream coming true right before my eyes! I think music is one of the most important relaxation and bringing togetherness "tools". I hope the tradition will grow over the years and everybody will be able to pitch in for our family's band!

Hand made greeting cards.

We have started making our hand made Christmas greeting cards. We chose this art project and everybody had great time creating the masterpieces. I had to help the younger ones to use the white oil pastel to draw the snowflakes on white paper. Even I found it to be a bit challenging. But then the rest of the project they were on their own with picking up the water colors and watching the snowflakes appear on the paper.
We cut the shapes out and glued them on a colorful card stock. A bit of glitter glue was a nice touch for the front of the card.
Since we made a lot of snowflakes some of them we turned into a "Merry Christmas" greeting for our living room.

Long live the Unicorn.

Here is a page from Leona's notebook that she wrote today. I think she did a phenomenal job at 5 years of age. I could not stop praising her, especially when she so deserved it.
Then we made a ceremonial mask and while Ivana was finishing her writing page Leona and Milana took turns scaring their baby brother.
And here is Ivana's page that she wrote today. Instead of choosing to narrate her own passage about the Harappan cities, she picked to copy a page from the book we were reading, The Ancient South Asian World, by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer. Very neat and beautiful writing for a 8 year old, I think. We didn't get to make the unicorn, but they did mind. There is always another time.

When studying history is fun!

We are on the chapter 10 (out of 42, for the first volume) in our studying of the Ancient World History. The girls and I are having a wonderful time learning together and we have been exploring a lot of ways of learning about the past. I decided to go a bit deeper for each topic and instead of doing one day of history, we will be doing two.

Today we have gone more East. After learning about Egypt and Mesopotamia for a while, it was time for the Harappan cities and the mystery of Mohenjo-Daro. Everybody took upon the idea of building Mohenjo-Daro with a citadel, a well, houses, crop fields, a river, a road, oxen pulling on a cart and a public bath house. It took us a long time to make the bricks and while creating our mini city we were discussing the facts I read out loud to them. A lot of fascinating information kept me going and it seemed that we wanted more and more, we were hungry for knowledge.
We learned that , unfortunately, the Harappan civilization gets very little credit and gets to be overlooked. Since the ancient Egyptians were so preoccupied with leaving noticeable marks in the way of pyramids, the Mesopotamian history is full of stories of fighting, conquering and the empire expanding, apparently, the Harappans were very busy making a nice living for themselves, not worrying about leaving any significant mark in history.

Their writing has not been deciphered yet, and it means that there is still so much to be discovered about this amazing civilization. One thing the girls will remember, for sure. The images of unicorn were among the first to be found in the Harappa cities. It's not that hard to guess what figure we will be making and painting tomorrow.

A dinner with friends.

What is the most wonderful thing for any family with small kids is the opportunity to start family traditions. And that is what we have been up to. Since the girls are growing now we keep the traditions from the past years and add on to them, as the kids start coming up with ideas and kind of take over the family celebrations.
To save ourselves some time I set up the table in the evening. It was more like 12 in the morning as I was not ready to go to bed just yet. The girls made the individual cards for everybody, even Milana was able to participate and made a card for Evan, who was delighted to hold it in his little hands before dinner.
I also managed to make a "Mayflower" ship as a morning surprise for the kids. As we set down to have the feast, we read out loud the little cards that kids had written on what they were thankful for. It was too cute. Among other things, there were a lot of "thanks" for Mom, Dad, sisters, a brother, house, toys, animals, flowers, holidays, Grandma, Grandpa, friends and we all smiled at an "avrithing" card.
It was decided beforehand that the host family would be "Indians" and the guest family would be "the Pilgrims". The initial meet and greet was truly grand! Our friends pulled over with the three of their older kids sitting on top of the mini van as if they were on a "Mayflower". From our side, we had the girls dress up as Native Americans. But, mostly, our Tata made it the most fun for all. Ready to hear this? I was a little worried about the neighbors, but quickly it stopped to be a concern of mine as were belly laughing. He stripped to his waist, stuck a rabbit skin behind the belt of his pans, put on a head band with a turkey feather, grabbed a stick to simulate a spear and was running like mad pretending to be a warrior.
The dinner was fantabulous, very delicious and the leftovers lasted us for almost four days. The five frozen kernels of corn on each plate was a small reminder for everybody of the times of hardship for the first settlers.
I think we did a great job trying to keep the spirit of one of our most favorite American holidays. With talent show before the dessert time and playing games the day was very eventful and it was great to relax before the fire and enjoy a few quite moments before heading off to bed.

More Turkeys.

Today was a busy day. We did half of the cooking we had planned for our Thanksgiving feast and I am exhausted. Tomorrow is another part of our holiday marathon. I have been reminding myself to take it easy and have a good time with the girls. As we baked the cup cakes in the morning I thought we'd decorate them first thing in the morning the next day, but to have some fun I decided to let them get messy today, this way the counter top would be devoted to other things tomorrow. Do you think I could be so cruel as to let the girls wait till tomorrow evening to taste those yummy "chocolate turkeys"? I couldn't...

So far we have to put on the table tomorrow our traditional eggplant salad, beet salad, brussel cabbage, pumpkin/butternut squash soup, pumpkin roll and chocolate cup cakes. The plan for tomorrow is, of course, to get on with The Bird, mushroom stuffing, buttermilk biscuits, baked sweet and regular potatoes, and key limes mini pies. Our friends are bringing the spinach pie, potato salad and an apple strudel.
The table has been extended and set ready for 12. Oh, I am so excited and can't wait to see everybody at the table tomorrow.

Peanut butter cookies.

It's great to get all the help I can from the girls! Soon, they will take over in the kitchen!
Ten minutes in the oven, half an hour later there were 5 cookies left. I guess they were very yummy!

Our turkeys.

We have started to decorate our house for the Thanksgiving celebration. Everybody is so excited because we are planning on having a lot of good food and a great time! And it will be even more fun because we have our friends coming over and staying for a sleep over. And they, too, have three girls and a boy! So, we will have to extend our table and pull out more chairs!
After going for a walk today we brought a bunch of natural materials to work with. As soon as we got home, the glue gun got pulled out and put to be heated. The girls, including Milana, got in charge of making the turkey tails, while I was trying to figure out what to use from what we had picked up to put it together so it remotely resembles the famous bird.
The recycled cardboard paper, some glue (well, in Milana's case quite a lot of glue!), feathers and the tails came up simply perfect! Almost authentic! We read a book about how the wild gobblers have a beard, and the longer the beard the older the bird. They agreed with me to use the red leaf instead of a piece of red paper even though it would wilt a bit overnight. The acorns turned out perfect for the heads, sticks for necks and legs. But the highlight of the turkey we think are the wings! As we used the pine cones for the body the birds looked a bit too skinny, and the dried up milkweed pods were the detail we needed. Now our turkeys looked quite puffed up!
We have put five of them hanging on our lamp that we have above the table. So, it is kind of a center piece. I shouldn't forget to dust the chandelier before the dinner, it happened to draw a lot of attention now. And Mirek's reaction was quite an interesting one. "Oh, I guess I'll have to learn to like our new lamp decoration now", said he. Gobble, gobble, gobble...

Cousins galore.

Over the weekend we had a mini family trip to see the cousins, Zeke and Lydia. The kids had a great time running outside as the weather was warm as in early September. A day of Indian summer in mid November! What a treat!

Favorite spot right now.

When the cold days are lurking in it's time to enjoy the indoor activities. With the fire going every day everybody's favorite spot right now is the comfortable chair we bought almost for nothing on a garage sale a few years ago. It is serving well by the fire place.

Leona is doing such a great job reading all by herself. She picked up a book and was mumbling to herself, reading page after page, before I distracted her with my videotaping and picture taking. Her older sister was right there to encourage her and make sure Leona was reading the words correctly.

And, climbing on that chair has become Evan's baby gym activity. He loves to tap on the fish tank and enjoys seeing the fish go frantically in circles. Pulling on the lamp is a lot of fun for him as well. When a few light bulbs went into the garbage in a course of just a few days after Evan learned to play with the lamp side table by shaking the bits out of it, we had to move the lamp on to the higher ground.

I have been enjoying my piano practices. And today I was lucky to experience a double pleasure. That would be playing some new music and... getting a head massage and a wonderful hairdo by Ivana. She took the picture, too. Maybe soon you'll see more of me on the blog! A shot of my back IS a start!

A recipe to try.

I wrote an article for "Mother Earth News" and "Countryside" magazines. It's an article about our mushroom picking adventures. We'll see if it gets to be published, but I thought I'd share a very simple soup recipe. This soup has become a staple dish in our family. I hope you'll enjoy it, too.

Traditional Czech Peasant Mushroom Soup
(Serves 4-6)

Mushrooms (the more, the better), cut into pieces
Potatoes (5-6 medium size), cut into cubes
Fresh parsley
Flour
Olive Oil
Salt/Pepper

What to do:

As the water in a pot is getting to a boiling point throw in the mushrooms and potatoes, salt and pepper to your taste. While the soup is cooking, on a skillet heat a few table spoons of olive oil and add two table spoons of flour. Stir so that the flour does not burn, but gets a nice light brown color. Add the mixture to the soup. It will thicken and cloud the soup a bit, giving it an interesting flavor. At the very end add chopped parsley.

Our boys.

These are the boys in our family!

Playing together.

The gang has been playing together very adorably these days. It's a "crazy hat" day and Evan had to be a participant as well.

Happy in Maine.

When revisiting old places or taking a trip to a completely new destination you always want to have the ultimate traveling experience. I don't know what I like more: to go to the places I have been before and feel the joy of reliving the happy moments of the past, or to go to a new place and experience the rush of unexpected happiness after discovering a beautiful new scenery and living in a new moment. In each situation there is unforgettable, irreplaceable momentum that only a true adventurer can not live without.

During our trip north we were able to experience the new and revisit the place we had been before in our early pre kids dating years. Oh, my, it sounds like we are so awfully old.
We drove by The Acadia National Park and spend a most wonderful day there. The rocks we had climbed before were not covered with the wild blueberries as a few years back due to a different season, but there was another surprise waiting for us. It seemed that the rocks just wanted to meet and greet us! The sky was bluer than blue, the chill in the air was almost unnoticeable, the view down to the ocean from the top was gorgeous. And right by our feet there was a good bunch of ... mushrooms! We picked them up, of course and felt like being at home right away!
As Samuel Chaplain named the island "Mount Desert Island" in 1604 the panorama of shore and sea emerges surrounded by magnificent rocky formations as far as you could see.
A real amazing thing about the area is the only sandy beach. Ivana was very observant and noticed even before we went back up to the board walk and read that the sand was actually crushed shells! The position of the bay and the strength of the waves created the conditions for this sandy beach to come to exist. It was written on the info plaque that the water there was only for the most hardy ones even in the summer, since it mostly stays around 50F.
We were taking the camera from each others hands with Mirek just simply trying to document all these beauty around us. Leaving Maine we were feelling spiritually uplifted and very happy for being able to live our day with our family in a serenity of God's artistic creation.