Amara and Grandma Kc — Life in AmaraLand

Helping Others

Posted on: February 1st, 2012 by Grandma Kc 6 Comments

Usually my posts on AmaraLand are about our personal adventures with Amara. I’m not sure I have ever posted anything here that was hearsay but I don’t want to ever forget this memory so I have to keep it here.

Jenna, Amara’s Mommy and my awesome daughter, told me about what happened to her and Amara the other day on their way home. There was a homeless man with a sign standing at the corner where Jenna stopped at the red light. She knew she didn’t have any cash on her but she also knew Amara had her purse so Jenna asked her if she had a dollar? Amara fished one out for her and Jenna handed it out to the man. She would have had Amara give it to him since it was her money but she was strapped in her booster in the back on the passengers side so couldn’t reach. The man told Jenna “Thank You” and he said something else she didn’t catch. She asked him to repeat it and he told her “Tell the little girl Thank You and that sometimes it isn’t just about the money. It’s about having someone just say hello to you.”

Jenna told this to Amara who of course wanted to know why people didn’t say hello to him? How do you explain this to a seven year old? Amara knew that there were homeless people, she had seen them before, but I don’t think she ever considered that you would treat them any different than anyone else. I think this says a lot for both of her parents. Jenna did a wonderful job of telling her that sometimes people don’t know how to react to someone who is less fortunate then they are so often they turn away and don’t speak or even make eye contact. It can be very lonely to be homeless. She went on to explain to Amara about Karma and how when you do something nice for someone then maybe someone will do something nice for you sometime when you really need it. Amara didn’t quite get it so she went on “If we give someone a dollar today then maybe if we have a flat tire some time somebody we don’t know will help us.” She was getting the idea.

A few days after this happened Amara told her Mom she thought she would donate the money in her quarter jar to a homeless shelter. Now I should explain about the quarter jar. Jenna has been trying to get Amara to remember to turn off her bedroom and bathroom lights so she designed a beautiful jar so that when Amara forgets she has to put a quarter in the jar. Guess she is planning on filling that jar as she is making plans on what to do with the money!

I am so proud of all 3 of them.

Tags: Amara, homeless, Karma, Mommy
Posted in Parent | 6 Comments »

Sharing with Amara

Posted on: January 28th, 2012 by Grandma Kc 5 Comments

A few weeks ago Lisa over at Grandma’s Briefs introduced me to a great website called Open Source. Not only do I really enjoy it but they often post things (videos) that I can share with Amara. When Amara got her new computer for Christmas her Daddy set her up with a Gmail account so now not only do I get to see her all the time we can email each other, too. Amara’s computer is right next to Mommy’s and they are very careful to monitor everywhere she goes and every thing she does. They are very protective of her, as are we.

So I had sent her the link to The Joy of Books and she just loved it and sent me back a reply “AWESOME! How did they do that?” Which was just the results I was hoping for! I see a project in our future!

Then a couple of days ago I saw the video below on Open Culture and since I knew she was sleeping over on Friday night I waited to share it with her until she got here so that we could watch it together. It really is fun sitting together at my computer! She just loved it and about half way through she says “He lives in a great place.” Once you watch the video I think you will agree with her but I thought it very wise for someone who is only seven.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Tags: Amara, books, Grandma, Open Culture, videos
Posted in Indoor Fun | 5 Comments »

My Little Fashion Designer

Posted on: January 26th, 2012 by Grandma Kc 8 Comments

Then there was Sunday morning. We finished watching The Smurfs, and I agree they aren’t the best but the company was wonderful! Amara had Captain Crunch and I had a peanut butter sandwich (and a lot of coffee). Once that was done we headed to the office. Amara was very excited and wanted to show me Mattel’s Barbie website. Amara is still sure she is going to be a fashion designer when she grows up so this site is just a dream come true for her. It is a fashion design site!

She showed me a section where you could insert your face into Barbie’s head shot. I asked her if she wanted to upload a picture. She seemed to forget that I have about a gajillion of them. “Of course Grandma!” I knew right where a really good picture was and she loved it, too! So I showed her how to copy it to the desktop. She went back to her browser and I showed her how to use the “Browse” button to look for the picture and upload it. She figured out how to adjust the size of it so she fit perfectly into Barbie’s hair. Which she got to pick the color of. She picked blond. Then you could pick the background photo. She picked the pink photo shoot one! We printed it and she was thrilled! I was thrilled because we were doing all of this together. I didn’t think to scan in a copy to save but here is the picture she used.

Next she showed me a section of the site where you can create your own fabric samples. It lets you pick any colors you want using a color picker. You could add any shapes you want and even change the size and rotation of them. You could then take these 8-10 fabric swatches and use them to fill the black and white gowns — and you had 8-10 of them to pick from, too! Different parts could be made from different fabrics and if you needed to you could go back and make more. Not only is it a fun site for her as an artistic outlet, she is also learning a lot of the things about using a computer and many of the same techniques you need to use in such graphics programs as Photoshop. I was quite impressed! We sat and did this for hours. It was so fun when she would turn to me and say “Do you want to try and make one Grandma?” Grandma’s opinion on lots of her choices seemed very important and you know I loved that! When we were done with a set of gowns we would print them. They printed out like paper dolls and even came with a special Barbie.

She was having so much fun she wanted to print a set out for her pen pal! Why not! Then I remembered that I have a lot of pictures of her pen pal that we could put into one of Barbie’s head shot and send her that, too! Amara was so excited and I was so pleased to see that she remembered how to copy the picture to the desktop and how to upload it and everything!

When we were all done in the office she got her pen pal box and sat down to write her a letter to go with the paper dolls and head shot we were sending her. I think Amara put in one of herself, too! I am so glad that this pen pal friendship and letter writing is continuing! And I am so glad I get to be a part of it!

Tags: Amara, Barbie, fashion, Fashion Designer, pen pal
Posted in Indoor Fun | 8 Comments »

Mini Pizza Monkey Breads and The Smurfs

Posted on: January 23rd, 2012 by Grandma Kc 3 Comments

Grampy and I were really looking forward to Amara spending the night with us Saturday. I was lucky and got to see Amara a couple of times last week, even thought it wasn’t for very long. Grampy hadn’t been so lucky and he was really missing his girl.

Amara and I had made big plans to try out a new recipe for Mini Monkey Bread Pizza and we were going to watch the Smurfs. Not the new Smurfs which we watched a couple of weeks ago, but season one of The Smurfs from 1981. The ones that her Mommy had watched as a girl. It was one of those times that having the DVD service with Netflix instead of the streaming only service really got us extra Grandparent Points with Amara. It isn’t available on the streaming service that her Mommy and Daddy have so I had ordered this special.

We had a blast making the Mini Pizza Monkey Breads together.

Amara helped cut up the peperoni

and mixed in the cheese.

She helped cut up the bread dough and to line the muffin tins but when it came time to actually assemble them, she had problems!

She is so her mother’s child! Jenna wears plastic gloves to debone a chicken. Amara really doesn’t like to get her fingers all yukky and sticky and this was definitely going to be very messy! The yukky sticky rule does not apply to things like finger paints, wet sidewalk chalk or buttered and cinnamoned fingers that are the result of the other Monkey Bread!

But this was different and so she put her first ball of dough on a spoon and put it into the sauce and scooped it out and she thought she could just dump all of this into the cheese/peperoni mixture without ever having spaghetti sauce touch her fingers. “No Amara, that’s not going to happen!”

So the decision was made that Grandma would be the one to get her fingers yukky and messy. Amara would put them in the sauce — by which I means she would drop them from 12 inches up into the sauce so that they would plop and then sink and Grandma could/did fish them out! Almost lost one completely! But who cares? We were having a blast together!

And they were very tasty but again, just like her Mother, she didn’t want to get her fingers all messy taking the paper off and getting them to her mouth. I helped with the papers and she ate them up. They were messy but they sure were tasty! Next time I would spray the cups better so they would come out easier. Oh, there will be a next time!

I have to tell you all about the fun we had on Sunday morning. I’ll be back soon.

Tags: Amara, baking, Grandma, pizza monkey bread, The Smurfs
Posted in Indoor Fun | 3 Comments »

Long Distance Cousins

Posted on: January 16th, 2012 by Grandma Kc 19 Comments

Amara has a little cousin she had never met who is about 4 years younger than she is. At least I call her Amara’s cousin. I have never been good at figuring out those relationship things. She is my stepbrother’s granddaughter. I’m not sure what that makes her relationship to Amara so I’ve just gone with the generic label of “Cousin”. Cousin is lucky because she lives near Amara’s Great Grandma, someone else Amara’s has never met. They live in Michigan.

Every year for Christmas, I make Amara’s Great Grandma (my Mom) a photo gift of some kind through Shutterfly. Some years I make her coasters, some years I make her a calendar and sometimes it is a mouse pad. Cousin has always loved these gifts. Great Grandma tells stories of how Cousin kisses the Amara coasters and carries them around the house with her. When she was little, she thought the calendars were books. Great Grandma would sit her down and tell her stories about the pictures. She loved them and I liked that these things became her treasures and her toys. And Amara loved having an admirer.

So a couple of years ago I got inspired to make Cousin a real book. A book all about Amara. I used lots of pictures of the fun things Amara likes to do and I wrote the book as if Amara herself were narrating it. Cousin loved it and I do think this is a wonderful way for cousins that don’t get to see each other very often or who may never have met, to get to know one another. The only problem was I had never seen the finished product and neither had Amara.

So last week when I got a new Shutterfly coupon — Amara got a new book to add to her collection!

Tags: cousin, Shutterfly
Posted in Relatives | 19 Comments »

How to Define Grandma Pride

Posted on: January 10th, 2012 by Grandma Kc 8 Comments

Yesterday was Amara’s first day back to school after a long Christmas break. I stopped by her house after work and she was telling me all the details and about how wonderful it was to see all of her friends that she had missed.

The best part was when she told me they had all gotten a chance to talk about their Christmas and the gifts they had gotten. Amara’s parents got her a computer for Christmas and she told all of her classmates about it.

But my heart sang and my eyes welled up when she said

“And I told them all about AmaraLand Grandma and that they could go there!”

Tags: Amara, AmaraLand, Grandma, school
Posted in Grandparents, Relatives | 8 Comments »

Postponing New Year’s Eve

Posted on: January 3rd, 2012 by Grandma Kc 6 Comments

Well, sometimes things just don’t work out the way you plan them but as you will see this turned out to be all good! We had been planning to have Amara spend the night with us on New Year’s Eve but her Mommy called that afternoon to see if we would be OK with changing our plans and having Amara spend the night with us on the first day of the New Year so that they could go to a family get together with Daddy’s family. Why not? Grampy and I didn’t have to work Tuesday morning so this just meant she got to have fun with everybody!

She brought the new Smurfs movie with her for us to watch and we splurged and had pizza, she had hers with her sparkling apple cider! Amara’s Mommy had loved the original Smurfs TV show and she had given the movie a thumbs up — so had Daddy. They were right. It was a fun movie. OK, Grampy liked it better than I did. I think I just expected to much. The pizza was good!

And of course the next morning was the best part! I had promised Amara she could have bacon and told her she could have either eggs or pancakes to go with it. She wanted pancakes! I asked her if she had seen the rainbow pancakes in the post her Mommy had sent me? She hadn’t so I told her about them. She ran to double check the cupboard to see that I did in fact have lots of food coloring left from when we did the lily experiment. “Grandma, you have to find that post and those pictures!” I did and she was determined we had to make those pancakes! Well I didn’t have any of the fresh fruit on hand but why wait? We can color pancakes even if we don’t have everything. (You really should see the originals!) Just means we will have to do it again!

Since we didn’t have the fruit to make the rainbow I decided we would only use 3 colors. Amara decided to start with 3 drops of color in each bowl. It was more than enough but the pancakes didn’t taste like food color.

I let her do most of the work but I did the pouring and she was OK with that. She is cautious in the kitchen and I like that.

Amara was very careful when she flipped them and she waited until they had lots of bubbles on top.

I just had to include this picture because I love the way the steam is coming up off the pancakes. It is really neat if you click on the picture and look at it large. Sandy says they look like planets and I think she is right.

Amara’s favorite part of any breakfast.

I am glad we used the neon colors because they were so bright and vivid when you cut into them. They probably would have looked prettier on white plates but I wanted to use up the last of the good china!

I have promised Amara that the next time I will get the fresh fruit for them. She wants to try topping them with whipped cream so that she can have double rainbows in a cloud! How cute is that?

After a morning of cooking and stuffing our faces full of pancakes and bacon we were off to enjoy the beautiful outdoors and the gorgeous southern California 70 degree weather on January 2nd! She got out her chalk and her chalk paint and of course we got out the hose. She really didn’t spend much time getting wet but she did spend a lot of time painting herself with chalk! And she did dump a bowl of water on top of her head before we headed for the bathroom and a nice hot bubble bath!

Bubble baths are so much fun. She was singing and floating on her back in a blanket of bubbles and having a wonderful time when she sighed and said

“Ah, this is the life.”

Grampy and I couldn’t agree more!

Tags: baking, New Year, pancakes, rainbow pancakes, Smurfs
Posted in Odds and Ends | 6 Comments »

What Year Was That?

Posted on: December 30th, 2011 by Grandma Kc 7 Comments

The funniest thing happened over dinner the other night. We had friends over the day after Christmas and I served Amara and their little boy sparkling apple cider out of champagne glasses. Sparkling apple cider is one of those special treats I like to get for Amara. She asked why I was using different glasses. I usually give hers to her in a plastic champagne flute that is left over from our wedding six years ago. I used to have quite a few of them but over the years they have either cracked or sprung a leak. I told her I only had one of those left so I was trusting the two of them to use my two good ones. These are my “good ones”. A friend gave them to us filled with M&Ms for New Year’s 2000. That is the good china behind the glass.

This somehow got her talking about how and when we had started the tradition of her drinking sparkling apple cider out of those plastic glasses. She was pretty sure we had started it on New Year’s Eve. She told our friends “I’ve spent every New Year’s Eve with Grandma and Grandpa except one.” I think Amara remembers my post from last year.

Grampy jumps right in there and asks her “What year was that?” I don’t know what inspired him but the conversation was awesome! She said she thought it was 2003. She wasn’t sure but she thought it was 2003. “Grandma thought I had spent the night every year but she couldn’t find any pictures for one year so I might not have.” (That quote is why I think she remembers my post.) Grampy repeats “What year was that?” “2003. I’m not positive but I’m pretty sure.” To which Grampy replies “Amara, you weren’t even born in 2003 so I’m pretty sure you didn’t spend the night!”

She just put her head back and laughed! So did the rest of us!

Tags: Amara, New Year's Eve, sparkling cider
Posted in Special Occasions | 7 Comments »