Honor Roll Four-Peat
Amara did it again! She made The Principal’s Honor Roll for the first trimester of second grade. For those of you who may have just joined us, she made the honor roll all year while she was in first grade. She gets her report card today when Mommy and Daddy go to her parents/teacher conference but yesterday she brought this home from school.
Jenna found it in Amara’s class folder when she was going through it. This is probably one of the reasons Amara continues to do so well in school. Every day when she gets home Jenna goes through her folder and looks at her homework for the evening and all the class papers for the day and they talk about them. Jenna checks all of Amara’s homework and drills her on her spelling words every evening. She is really involved in Amara’s education. She is also really involved in Amara’s classroom and I think all of this makes a huge difference in how Amara looks at studying.
Justin is a great Dad, too. Every night before Amara goes to sleep (with the exception of a few times when she was younger and would lose a story or two) he reads 2 stories to her! Jenna and Justin both love to read and have surrounded Amara with books which has made her love to read. Amara’s room is filled with books, so is her room here. Justin has always spent quality time with Amara when he gets home from work. He helps her with her arts and crafts and he is also her go to person for anything science related.
They are awesome parents and I am very proud of them!
I have been busy working since Amara started second grade so I have only gotten a couple of chances this year to drop her off or pick her up from school but I’ve heard all about it. I always make a point of asking her how school has been and I get all the details about who got moved to what table and why! Sometimes I even get seating diagrams! She really likes her new teacher and she if obviously doing well.
Amara is also awesome and I am very proud of her, too.
Making Bread Pudding
This is another episode of Previously on Amara from January of 2009. Amara was about 5 years old. I was inspired to write this post after visiting Nanny Anna’s blog and reading her post about Peach Bread Pudding.
I have always loved homemade bread pudding. So when I got to craving it I thought it would be a fun cooking project for Amara and I. This was one of the first things we baked together. We had such a blast. I had been saving crusts and stuff from making sandwiches for Grampy to take to work so I was all prepared.
When Amara came over to spend the night I told her I wanted to bake bread pudding. I explained to her what it is — she looked skeptical — she had never had it. Amara has never been big on trying new foods. I told her it was kind of like cinnamon toast only better and it has raisins in it, too! She loves cinnamon toast and raisins but she still looked skeptical. I asked her if she wanted to help me. She loves to help me! I told her that she would be perfect for making the bread crumbs because she has little hands. She doesn’t even miss a beat and says “Well they say on the commercial that little hands do big things!” She had fun tearing up the bread and she helped me to carefully add the raisins and the cinnamon.
Baking it together was a wonderful experience. The bread pudding was as good as I remembered and I loved eating it warm with just a little whipped cream melting into it. I had way to much of it and just wanted more. I sent these pictures to Mom. We had used her recipe to make it. Amara never did get up the nerve to try it. I may not have tried to hard. I already had to share it with Grampy!
I am anxious to try out Nanny Anna’s Peach Bread Pudding — maybe after Christmas. I know Amara would have fun tearing up the bread again and we all love peaches! Her pictures make it look so yummy. Maybe I could even get Amara to try it this time.
This is the recipe we used.
OLD FASHIONED BREAD PUDDING
Place in 1 1/2 qt. baking dish 3 cups stale bread crumbs/pieces (4 cups for a firmer pudding).
Blend in
- 2 cups milk, scalded with 1/4 cup butter
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 eggs slightly beaten
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon or nutmeg
- 1/2 cup seedles raisins
Place baking dish in pan of hot water 1″ deep. Bake until silver knife inserted 1″ from edge comes out clean. Serve warm, with or without hard sauce or cream. Temperature 350 degrees, 40 to 45 minutes. 6 servings.
What would Santa think?
Last weekend when Amara was here the two of us started decorating our little Christmas Tree. It is a fake tree that Grampy and I have had since we moved in here and we like it! Like all Christmas Trees the best part of the tree is the decorations and the memories that they hold. This is the first year that Amara has helped me to decorate the tree. We got most of the bulbs and stuff on it but I ran out of hooks so one whole box of ornaments did not get put up! That was two weekends ago.
Poor injured Jenna got me a package of hooks and brought them over when she dropped off Amara Saturday night. I don’t mention often enough that I have a wonderful, thoughtful and amazing daughter. Amara is lucky to have such great parents.
Sunday morning Amara’s plan was for us to make monkey break (our best yet!), wrap Christmas presents and finish decorating the Christmas Tree so that one night next week we can take pictures for our Christmas cards. Yes, I am behind on them again. The last 2 years I have sent New Years cards because I was so far behind!
Once we got the tree decorated Amara started going back through the big blue tub that holds the decorations. There were still a few things left in there like Grandma and Grandpa’s Christmas stockings. We each have two. We have the velvet ones that Amara’s Mommy made for us a long time ago and that have your names on them — in glitter! There are also the beautiful handmade ones that my Mom made for us a few years ago. Amara has one of these of her own at home. She took the stockings and started trying to find a way to tape them up to the ledge where I usually put them. She asked if I was going to hang up all of them. I of course replied “Do you think if we hang up two socks each we can get more presents?” And my wise grandchild says to me “If you do that Grandma, Santa might think you are greedy”.
She is wise beyond her years!
The Nightmare
The nightmare began 17 days ago. I’ve wanted to blog about it but I was waiting until there was some kind of end to the story.
Amara’s school had another skating party. This time I was going with them but I wasn’t going to skate. I just wanted the chance to spend some time with Jenna and Amara together. It is always fun when it is the three of us. I was planning to take pictures and hold phones and water bottles and stuff. This time Jenna was going to skate. She hadn’t been able to at the last skate party because of her foot surgery.
Amara and her Mommy were having so much fun. Jenna was remembering how to skate backwards and doing a great job. Amara was impressed. Unfortunately we took Jenna’s little camera instead of my big one and for some reason it was having serious technical difficulties. I thought at first it was me but it wouldn’t work much better for Jenna so I only got this one picture.
Then Jenna fell. Even when your daughter is full grown with a 7 year old of her own you still panic when you see them sitting on the floor. She got up and she waved to me that she was OK but they immediately came over to sit down. She was alright but she was pretty sure she had sprained her wrist. She didn’t think it was broken but it hurt enough that we ended our evening. I helped her take her skates off but she seemed fine to drive and took me home. This was about 6 PM.
The phone rang about 10. It was Justin asking if I would come over and sit with Amara who was in bed sleeping so he could take Jenna to the ER. I went over and slept on their couch until they got home about 3 hours later. It was broken. This is when the nightmare really began.
ER sent her to see her regular doctor the next day. He sent her off to see an Orthopedic specialist. Now it is Friday. The Ortho doctor did X-Rays and told her she had a lateral stress fracture but he was concerned that there might be some kind of cross fracture that they couldn’t see so he wanted a CT scan to be sure but he doesn’t do those. She needs to go to an imaging center. This meant a referal from the insurance company, more forms and more waiting. Then came Thanksgiving and you know nothing got done. All this time she is still in a soft cast. Easily bumped causing lots of pain.
It went on and on. Faxes kept getting lost or not sent. Phone calls kept not being returned. Finally 2 days ago, after millions of phone calls, hours of frustrations and lots of tears she finally got the approval to have the CT scan done. Yesterday they did the scan but she still had to wait one more day to see the Ortho doctor and have the scan reviewed and finally find out — did she have another break — would she have to have surgery.
Today at 3 PM she got a beautiful pink cast and can now begin the process of healing. It has been a nightmare for her and really not her year for doctors!
Teaching Grandma Kc a Craft
November 15, 2011 —I stopped by Amara’s house this evening. It’s always wonderful to just stop by for a visit — and to get my dog fix! They have 2 dogs and it is so much fun to get love from Bogey and Newt. Amara was busy going at about 100 mph telling me everything. It’s so much fun being her Grandma. She started to ask if she was coming over this weekend but then she remembered that she is going to her first ever birthday party sleepover. So exciting! She went on to tell me that next weekend when she does spend the night she is thinking that she wants to teach me a craft! She learned how to make these new colorful bookmarks and she really want to show me how. I wrote this tonight so that I can add to it when she does teach me!
Fast forward to November 26, 2011 — Amara came to spend the night with us and as we always do we talked about what she wanted to do while she was here. We had a situation a few months ago where we ran out of time and she was really disappointed that there was no time left to play in the water. So I asked her what she wanted to do and she immediately responded with “Well Grandma, remember I wanted to teach you how to make those bookmarks?” I was glad she hadn’t forgotten and we made a plan to make bookmarks in the morning, right after the news.
Amara has a set of plastic drawers in her room and they are filled with construction paper, safety scissors, markers, rulers, stencils, water colors, paint brushes and more markers. When my friend Deb moved from California to Wisconsin she gave me a ton of craft stuff, lots of glitter, glue, stickers, feathers, all sorts of fun stuff and I have added to it over the years. (I miss you Deb!) So while Grampy and I watched the news she got out everything she wanted us to use and got it all organized on the dining room table. We didn’t even get out of our pajamas!
Sunday morning she taught me how to make bookmarks!
You begin by cutting a section a small section with a wavy edge.
You carefully glue it to your next color. Then you cut a little bigger section with a different wavy edge.
You keep gluing them together and cutting larger sections. You finish by gluing all of that onto a whole sheet of construction paper. It should look like this.
Then you cut the sheet into strips and begin to decorate!
She was very patient as she showed me how to shake off the excess glitter into the trash can.
It was so much fun making them together.
Now I have one of her bookmarks in the book I am reading! Sure made me smile when I went to lunch today.
Happy Thanksgiving
Two of the things I am very thankful to have in my life.
No Long Nails Here
Amara didn’t spend the night with us this weekend so I thought it was a good time for another episode of Previously on Amara. This one comes from Septemeber 29, 2007 and Amara would have been about 3 1/2 years old. WOW, it is hard to believe that was 4 years ago. She is growing up so quickly!
One Saturday evening the kids came over for dinner and Amara was going to stay and spend the night. It’s funny, when she was little and her parents would drop her off she would cry for 2 or 3 whole minutes when they left! Most times they didn’t even get out of the driveway before she was smiling and ready to play! As she got older she got more anxious for them to leave so the fun could start.
That evening as we were sitting around the dinner table Amara started “picking” at her fingernails, I think she was bored with grownup talk. This thing with biting and picking at her nails was something new she had started doing and that she picked up from… Daddy! I knew that Mommy had been trying to get her to stop. So when she started doing it I told her she wanted to have nice long nails like me and her Mommy — and even Grandpa has nice nails. So she got up and went to each of us and looked at our nails. She goes to me and says “Nice and long”. She goes to Mommy and studies her nails and says “Nice and long”. She goes to Grandpa and studies his nails and says with a little twinkle in her eye “Not toooo long”. And when she gets to Daddy she grabs his hands and looks at them intently. Then she turned around and looked at all of us and shook her head and said “Not nice and long”. She was so cute and smiley. Daddy had to hang his head as we all busted up laughing — which of course set Amara to laughing!
I took this picture later that evening. Amara did stop biting them and now has very pretty nails, too.