It's been really interesting to see how the stress of moving is affecting each of my kids differently. Interesting as in, these poor kids!
One of my girls has starting picking fights with her best friend. The books I've read say that this is common, sort of an unconscious way of making the separation easier. She also has gotten a pretty bad attitude toward me and her sisters, but that may also be a function of her age.
Another has become really fearful of being away from me. She won't even go to a friend's house to play anymore. Church is a major ordeal if she can't come into service with me. She can't articulate what she's really worried about, other than she's afraid that she'll be afraid and then won't be able to find me or her sisters.
The third has become terrified of weather and storms, specifically tornadoes. If the wind starts to blow and/or clouds start to build, she gets absolutely panicky. Never mind that tornadoes are fairly uncommon here, and I think pretty much unheard of in northern Thailand. She's even having nightmares about tornadoes pretty regularly.
Since all this has really happened in the last month or two, I'm attributing it to the stress. I'm hoping that once we actually move and the stresses change, their reactions to it will change as well (I have no delusions that our stress will go away, though). I'm glad that we'll have a few weeks between leaving here and arriving there where there won't be quite as many pressures all the time.
Edit: I should add that for the most part they're really handling all this very well. They're excited about moving (mostly) and generally have good attitudes about it. I think that's what makes these (unconscious) effects even more interesting.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
This is just hard.
The endings.
The mess.
The house.
The packing.
The kids.
The stuff.
The to-do list.
And Tim in Istanbul for another week and a half.
Sigh.
</pityparty>
At least I've got great friends.
Now back to it.
The mess.
The house.
The packing.
The kids.
The stuff.
The to-do list.
And Tim in Istanbul for another week and a half.
Sigh.
</pityparty>
At least I've got great friends.
Now back to it.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Repost - The Tangled Tower Cake
This has been a very popular post on our old blog, so I thought I would repost it here. This was from May 2011.
First, credit where it's due. The beginning of the idea came from here: http://bit.ly/ilJhm3. I liked the basic idea, but I didn't want to have a styrofoam base; I wanted cake. After I pondered how to make that work, a friend put together a dowel in a piece of plywood with another thin round piece of wood with a hole in it that could be threaded onto the dowel (thanks, Bob!). I then drilled a hole in the center of a large plastic platter I had so it could also go over the dowel, and added some extra supports for the plate. I used a little hot glue to hold the plate, plywood and supports together.
I made up two cake mixes. I baked one round layer, one small bundt-shaped pan, and 18 cupcakes. I bought a package of eight pecan pinwheel rolls and one huge cinnamon streusel-topped muffin, plus a pack of large waffle ice cream cones. (I got the muffin after I took these pics--it was from the Target bakery).
I started by cutting the layer in half and putting it around the dowel. I put a little icing (http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Buttercream-Icing) over the layer then threaded the bundt cake over the dowel onto the layer.
This is where I made a big mistake. I took the paper off a cupcake and threaded it onto the dowel, upside down, so it rested on top of the bundt cake. As I built the tower, it slowly sank. I should have either (a) used a bowl cake, (b) stuffed the center of the bundt cake with more than one cupcake, or (c) used a non-edible support of some kind there. Lesson learned: gravity always wins.
Once that cupcake was in place, I started building with the pecan spinners. I used a Pampered Chef "corn cob knob" to pre-drill holes in each one, then threaded them onto the dowel. I used a bit of icing as mortar, and reversed the direction of each one as I built.
Except I had just made my second big mistake. That muffin was HEAVY. Within a few minutes the whole tower had sunk close to an inch. I put another cupcake under the muffin, but it kept sinking. The tower just couldn't bear the weight of the muffin. So I took the muffin off and threaded the little round platform on. By this time, the dowel was so sticky that the platform barely went onto it--there was no chance it was going to sink. Unfortunately, the tower continued to sink under it so I ended up with a gap between the top cupcake and the muffin platform.
At that point, it was just frosting. I did the assembly and a crumb coat the night before the party, then decorated the day of. I had to thin the icing for the tower--it was pulling the pinwheels apart. I only had 4 tips--three rosette sizes and a piping tip--so everything was done with those. I just colored my buttercream with food coloring and worked my way from the bottom up. To do the "roof," I first globbed purple frosting onto the muffin then put the ice cream cone into it and frosted them both. I made the "shingles" with a table knife.
To do the architectural trim, I set out a few graham crackers the day before so they'd get stale and a little soft. They were much easier to cut that way. Using a small serrated knife I cut the shapes for the supports, doorway and window and placed them with icing.
I probably could have done this with just one cake mix, but I wasn't sure exactly how it was all going to come together or what I was going to need. So I frosted the extra cupcakes and put them around the cake.
By party time, gravity was beginning to take its toll, but I didn't really care. :)
We celebrated Bethany's 10th birthday a few days ago. She wanted a "Tangled" theme for her party. I went a little crazy on the cake.
Oh, the insanity.
They say you should never see how sausage is made. If you feel that way about architectural cakes, stop reading now. If you want to know how I did it, read on. (Please forgive the slightly fuzzy pictures--the battery in my camera was low and I didn't realize it.)
First, credit where it's due. The beginning of the idea came from here: http://bit.ly/ilJhm3. I liked the basic idea, but I didn't want to have a styrofoam base; I wanted cake. After I pondered how to make that work, a friend put together a dowel in a piece of plywood with another thin round piece of wood with a hole in it that could be threaded onto the dowel (thanks, Bob!). I then drilled a hole in the center of a large plastic platter I had so it could also go over the dowel, and added some extra supports for the plate. I used a little hot glue to hold the plate, plywood and supports together.
I made up two cake mixes. I baked one round layer, one small bundt-shaped pan, and 18 cupcakes. I bought a package of eight pecan pinwheel rolls and one huge cinnamon streusel-topped muffin, plus a pack of large waffle ice cream cones. (I got the muffin after I took these pics--it was from the Target bakery).
I started by cutting the layer in half and putting it around the dowel. I put a little icing (http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Buttercream-Icing) over the layer then threaded the bundt cake over the dowel onto the layer.
This is where I made a big mistake. I took the paper off a cupcake and threaded it onto the dowel, upside down, so it rested on top of the bundt cake. As I built the tower, it slowly sank. I should have either (a) used a bowl cake, (b) stuffed the center of the bundt cake with more than one cupcake, or (c) used a non-edible support of some kind there. Lesson learned: gravity always wins.
Once that cupcake was in place, I started building with the pecan spinners. I used a Pampered Chef "corn cob knob" to pre-drill holes in each one, then threaded them onto the dowel. I used a bit of icing as mortar, and reversed the direction of each one as I built.
I topped it off with another cupcake, then the jumbo muffin (with its paper still on). I tested it by putting the ice cream cone on top--the height was perfect!
Except I had just made my second big mistake. That muffin was HEAVY. Within a few minutes the whole tower had sunk close to an inch. I put another cupcake under the muffin, but it kept sinking. The tower just couldn't bear the weight of the muffin. So I took the muffin off and threaded the little round platform on. By this time, the dowel was so sticky that the platform barely went onto it--there was no chance it was going to sink. Unfortunately, the tower continued to sink under it so I ended up with a gap between the top cupcake and the muffin platform.
At that point, it was just frosting. I did the assembly and a crumb coat the night before the party, then decorated the day of. I had to thin the icing for the tower--it was pulling the pinwheels apart. I only had 4 tips--three rosette sizes and a piping tip--so everything was done with those. I just colored my buttercream with food coloring and worked my way from the bottom up. To do the "roof," I first globbed purple frosting onto the muffin then put the ice cream cone into it and frosted them both. I made the "shingles" with a table knife.
To do the architectural trim, I set out a few graham crackers the day before so they'd get stale and a little soft. They were much easier to cut that way. Using a small serrated knife I cut the shapes for the supports, doorway and window and placed them with icing.
I probably could have done this with just one cake mix, but I wasn't sure exactly how it was all going to come together or what I was going to need. So I frosted the extra cupcakes and put them around the cake.
By party time, gravity was beginning to take its toll, but I didn't really care. :)
New York - today was a good day
I have had a love/hate relationship with New York City for several years. As a kid in the 70s I was just scared of the place. It was dirty and violent from what I could tell on TV. As an adult I didn't enjoy doing business there mostly because I encountered so much of the stereotypical New York abrasiveness. It made for some really unpleasant dealings. But I really loved going there with the band and playing the CMJ music festival and being able to play on air at WNET. The people I worked with on musical things were fantastic and it's in that world that the city came alive for me. I'll never forget lugging a trumpet and accordion and a suitcase through the subways to get to from Queens to midtown to play, or dinner with the band in Brooklyn, or getting to ground zero in October of 2001.
Fortunately the bad memories are several years removed now and fading and there are many more good times to remember.
I only saw the city in passing through JFK on my way to Istanbul. On my return I will fly through Paris and not return to New York. And just a week after that it's time to leave the US, perhaps for a very long time. So today was farewell to New York. One day I hope to visit again.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Songkran
The whole family is looking forward to this epic 3 day water fight next year. Happy New Year - 2555 - Thailand!
Our ongoing homeschool journey
It's been interesting to reflect a little as I both packed up our last four years of homeschooling portfolios and prepared for our annual homeschool evaluations (which we did last weekend). A lot has changed, and a lot has stayed the same.
Our curriculum choices haven't changed that much. Tim started the girls with Singapore math but eventually switched to Christian Light Publications. Science has gone from Sonlight to other stuff and back again. Sonlight Cores have been a constant. Language arts... well, I'm all over the place with that. But what has really changed is my attitude. I no longer worry (much) about whether my kids are keeping pace with their public schooled peers. It's like I've told them from the beginning when they asked if their friends knew more than they did: "You're learning different things. There are some things that they know more about, and there are other things that you know more about." I've realized that it's okay if my kids can't write as long a paragraph or essay as the PS kids in the same grades, something that used to bother me a lot. But really, why does a 3rd grader need to be able to do that, anyway? To pass the FCAT? Not my kids. As long as they are developing the building blocks for those kinds of skills to be in place when they actually will need them, I'm satisfied. And they are doing that.
What my kids are learning right now isn't multiplication, or verbs, or outlining, or the American Revolution. What they are learning is how to get along (or at least how not to kill each other), how to get rid of (almost) everything you own, how to say goodbye well, how to prepare for life in another culture. We haven't "done school" for weeks, but we all are learning these things and more every day. And to me, that's what homeschool is really about: learning what you need to learn, when you need to learn it. Dates and grammar can wait: we've got more pressing things to learn about right now.
I am really looking forward to the day when we're settled in our new home in Thailand, when we can get the books out again and continue our more formal studies. But in the meantime, the school of life is keeping us plenty busy with its lessons.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
More Progress
This move becomes more real every day. The garage sale is over, and what a sale it was! We cleared out most of our stuff and are now left to sift through the remains. It amazes me that we could get rid of so much stuff and yet still have so much left.
Last weekend marked the beginning of the endings. I led our church's choir for the last time, which was a great experience (click on the player below to hear our closing song). The endings have continued this weekend, as we met with our small group for the last time. This week will bring the end of our homeschool co-op. Each day, each experience is bittersweet.
Last weekend marked the beginning of the endings. I led our church's choir for the last time, which was a great experience (click on the player below to hear our closing song). The endings have continued this weekend, as we met with our small group for the last time. This week will bring the end of our homeschool co-op. Each day, each experience is bittersweet.
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