Elf on a Shelf

A thank you goes to my aunt Deb, who introduced my mom to the Elf on the Shelf book and doll. My mom picked this up late in the year and we unpacked it last weekend at the beginning of the month. Our family has had an "elf", Pixie, for years - writing letters to the girls and delivering their letters to Santa. Now Pixie has brought in a proxy. The girls named their elf on the shelf, "Tom-Tom".

When we went online to register "Tom-Tom", we discovered the author, Carol Aebersvold, was going to be reading the book and signing autographs at our Barnes and Noble on Monday. I packed the four kids and headed out. Once there, we discovered the author was stuck in the snow storm in Nevada. They rescheduled for Tuesday.

Luckily, we were able to return this evening to hear the story of the Elf on the Shelf and get our book autographed. Erik stayed home with Woody on our return trip. The reading was fun and intimate. Morgan told Carol about Tom-Tom and Ingrid said she had a nice brother.

After we got our book autographed, we stayed and browsed the childrens' books. The girls picked out books that easily matched their personalities. Who do you think is hiding under the PINK book?

Christmas Break Reading

Tomorrow starts the official Christmas break from school. Morgan's excited for the vacation. Not so for Annika. She really wants to go to school tomorrow and the next day and the next day. I think she enjoyed the class parties a little too much.

Morgan and I worked on a list of books for the break. She has been reading a series of owl books and recently finished the first two books in the Guardians of Ga'hoole series. Before picking her up from school, I stopped at the bookstore and picked up the third book.

Before Morgan starts in with that book, I showed her a classic holiday book that I enjoyed years ago. Morgan readily agreed to start with this book before continuing with the owls' adventures. Do you remember this one?

Pea Sandwich with One Strand of Spaghetti

Last night, we had spaghetti for dinner, with peas on the side. Morgan had big eyes - this is one of her favorite meals. Annika likes it, but tried to pretend the peas weren't there. On other occassions, we've resorted to saying the alphabet for each pea she eats, using milk, lining them up, and other such strange tricks. On this setting, Annika noticed Ingrid had a piece of toast with her spaghetti and was piling everything onto the toast. Annika asked for toast and and said she'd eat her peas, if we let her make a toast sandwich with them. That was fine with us. We handed her a half piece (triangle) of toast. She gingerly piled the peas on the toast and then picked it up. Guess what? The peas rolled off. Undeterred, she looked over at Ingrid and got an inspirational idea. She put the peas back on, and then took a piece of spaghetti and roped the peas in like a fence on the toast. Self-absorbed, and humming with her own grin of ingeniuity, she picked up the toast and ate the "pea sandwich with one strand of spaghetti".


Maybe I should get her this book to go with her new food creation:

Yesterday evening's reading instead included the third go-around with Annika's library book, David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes. Annika laughs and laughs at the book. After getting this as a reading book from school, Annika decided it was the BEST BOOK EVER! This opinion comes from the toasted pea sandwich creator.

Chung Family Election Headquarters

We planned an evening with the girls eating pizza and watching the election results. Woody and I got to the polling location and found no wait. Yeah! It was changing as we were leaving, but we were glad to not have to stand for an hour.

After some grocery shopping for salsa ingredients, we picked up the girls from after school care and preschool and headed home. It was a quick dash to set the table for pizza and veggies when the first results started coming in. Morgan was ready with the colored pencils and enjoyed calculating the electoral college votes.

We ate and colored, and when the hour went by and the polls too close to call, we started reading books and doing a bit of homework. We worked the USA puzzle and checked the results and added up the electoral count.

More results, more blue (feelings...), and we switched to baths and more civic reading to wind out the night. It was fun explaining the process to the girls and watching them find the states on the map. Annika fell asleep during the last book and the girls eagerly decided to end the day after that.


Just as impressive as CNN's interactive HD board, isn't it?

Annika gets more serious with the coloring and the count. A future statistician maybe??

An Abbott and Costello Moment

Early Monday morning, as the hour of pandemonium before school breakfast and backpack loading drew near, my five year old came up to me and asked about her pre-Christmas list. This is the weeks old list she concocted with her older sister to start some "thinking" time for Santa, since it was still October.

My eyes hadn't opened in the dawn of the morning, but I was able to respond. "Check the refrigerator".

"OK.", said Annika.

She returned and said she was going to add to the list.

"Mom, how do you spell D.S.?" asked Annika.

"What?" I replied, more shocked that she knew what it was, and is now trying to request one.

"You know, a D.S. How do you spell it?" she asked.


I FEEL AN ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MOMENT COMING ON IN OUR HOUSE .

Now more awake, I smiled and told her with a calmness and a slight upturn in pitch with my response, "D.S."

"I know, I want one for Christmas. How do you spell it so I can write it here."

"You want to know how to spell D.S.?"

"Yes!!"

"D.S."

"That's what I want mom. How do you spell it? I'm ready."

"What's a D.S.?"

"D.S. is a game, Mom. C'mon. How do you spell it?"

"D.S."

"Morgan!! Mom won't let me write D.S. on my paper."



Morgan gave her the answer. Well, it can be written, but not fulfilled...She's five.
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This evening is the night before the election. We're planning a little family time watching the votes tomorrow. I'm nervous, but I don't let it show.

Tonight we read a new book I bought:

Paddington Bear is 50 Years Old Today

Today is the anniversary of the release one of my favorite book characters, Paddington Bear, by Michael Bond. Set in London, Paddington is a bear that was shipped from Peru to London's Paddington Station and found by the Brown family.


I read all of the Paddington books to the girls earlier this year. My old Paddington Bear is in storage. I'll look for him later today. We've ordered the latest Paddington book, released this summer to coincide with the anniversary.




During the celebrations today, Paddington will be following the path he took to get to the Brown family, with sightings throughout London.




Even the search engine Google got in the spirit today, changing its banner to a Paddington theme.

Tonight's Reading & Happy Birthday to Rick

We're in day 2 of fall break. The girls have gone for walks and read books. Morgan's been helping with some Korean cooking. We had a delicious fish dinner tonight with a rice and vegetable stew.

Morgan's read two chapter books since Sunday. Way to go! She's participating in a fall break reading contest with her classmates.

Tomorrow is the start of October. It's also my uncle Rick's birthday. Happy Birthday. Rick is my mom's youngest brother.

Reading as a Tactic for Stalling

Morgan finished two chapter books this week and is ready to choose a new one on Monday.

Annika is hooked on Dr. Seuss or Dr. Seuss' I Can Read series.

Ingrid will listen to just about anything, or if she's trying to avoid a nap, she'll listen to just about everything.

Friday Fun Reading

It's common in the Chung house to find the kids doing something related to reading on Friday evenings. Sometimes it goes a little beyond actually reading: like Annika jumping around pretending she's Junie B. Jones. Really, Annika E. Chung is enough to handle. [SMILE].

Morgan understands Friday Fun Reading to mean she can pick out what she wants to read. That was exactly my point - choose a different genre. Ingrid and I read nursery rhymes together. Morgan is usually reading a magazine (Zoobooks or National Geographic Kids). One Friday she stretched the definition to include toy magazines. I let it go.

Tonight I handed her a box from my parents attic. It had all of Todd's old comic books. Morgan said she could "dig it", her words, and took the stack to her room.




An unrelated Morganism that needs to be documented for the future:


On Tuesday last week, I explained to Morgan that the short week at school would mean less days to complete all of her homework. The idea was to get her thinking about breaking down her assignments into manageable chunks each day. Morgan informed me that she didn't need to do anything on Tuesday evening. When pressed, she replied that on Wednesdays they actually don't do anything in school but breathe. That's a Morganism.

Tonight's Reading and Speaking with an Accent

Annika brought this book home from school today. It didn't register with me that the book is an "action" style book until we started reading tonight.

Each page is a piece of a story about a boy lost in the jungle. On the next page, the comment goes something like this: "Oooh, that's bad." And then the chorus of children (Morgan and Annika) add the irony written underneath on the page, "No, that's good". The next page explains something the opposite.

It reminds me of the book, "How to Talk Minnesotan" by Howard Mohr. The book has a chapter that explains why the common Minnesotan phrase, "Not too bad," is actually better than the phrase, "not too good." Click here if you're interested in this very funny book. You really have to leave the state for a few years and THEN read the book. It's funnier when you take a step back and can laugh at yourself. My friends love to point out the few remaining remnants of a Minnesota accent which they claim I still possess.

Speaking of Minnesotans, my family has pointed out that I missed two of my cousins' birthdays in August, Abby and Katie. I only have one young picture of Abby, which I posted last year. This year, I found a picture that includes Abby, me, Katie and our grandpa.

Happy belated Birthday to both of you.

Cornucopia of Reading Books

A nod and big thanks go out to our neighbor, Delaney and her mom for the wonderful books they brought to us. Delaney is a sixth grader in the CATS class (Chandler's Academically Talented Students), and has outgrown some of her library. Morgan was ecstatic to arrive home after school on Friday to see the stacks on the buffet table

We will be needing more bookshelves sooner than expected. Thank you Delaney!!!!!!!

This is only a partial representation of the lot.

Tonight's Reading

Tonight's reading didn't materialize. More than half of the family partook in a late afternoon nap. We missed the library, and had to drop off last weeks books in the after-hours bin. We missed one library DVD and had to return home and go back. Dinner was replaced with breakfast food. Evening baths became afternoon showers. And our phone stopped working unexpectedly last Thursday and still does not work. Is the Earth slipping off its axis, or did tonight's full moon really affect us?

We did read quite a bit Friday and Saturday night. We finished the library books. Most of them were Caldecott winner books. They have been a joy to read, especially those I remember from childhood. The newer winning titles are equally enjoyable.

Here's Ingrid reading a non-medal winner, Bee Bim Bap (aka Bibim Bap), a rhyming book about a Korean staple food dish.

Tonight's Reading

We just finished a book called, Rosie the Dancing Elephant by Maureen Daly, copyright 1967. The book is about an elephant, who broke her leg and the post break efforts of a boy to help the elephant mend and gain her confidence. All three girls were well into the story. It took two days to read the multi-chapter book to the girls.

Homework was interesting tonight. Morgan came home with her weekly packet of homework and her daily math sheet. Annika also has "official" homework. [For those of you reading last week's blog entries, Annika tried to quit Kindergarten over homework. We're happy to report that she's back in class and back doing homework.] With two girls at the table doing their assignments plus Ingrid coloring, it was easy to get distracted or become more interested in what the other sister was doing. We had to finally separate the girls to get it done. Hopefully, we can utilize the kitchen table in the future once the novelty of someone else's work wears off.

Two Books I Have Not Read

There are two books I haven't read yet. I thought I should flag for the future. One book I had heard about but never found the time to sit down and read it from cover to cover. Excepts are found everywhere and most people recognize the title. After thinking about the book this week, I thought Annika should have been one of the guest authors or atleast subject material. She certainly summed up her feelings about Kindergarten in very, very Robert Fulgrum style.



Here's how Annika responded to the axiomatic question about her experiences on the first day of school.

1. Annika said she held up her dress and still was able to avoid touching the toilet seat.
2. Annika said she burped real loud at lunchtime and the class laughed. And she was proud of it.
3. She didn't need to answer any more questions about 1-2-3-4, because she already knows how to write her numbers.
4. Her substitute teacher was Mrs Happy-Good. (Not true).

By Friday she announced she didn't need to do Kindergarten homework because she already quit the class so the homework was no longer necessary.... Very flippant, very funny.
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The second book I came across during a google search. We were looking for pictures to run through the laminating machine to show what was in our baskets on the kids shelves. We reorganized the puzzles and games to make things neater. We also removed some of the last infant toys.

This book looked intriguing while looking for a picture of the old "Cootie game".

Warman's 101 GREATEST BABY BOOMER TOYS
The Essential Baby Boomer Toy Guide - A Reference and Price Guide.
by MARK RICH

Techincally, I'm not a baby boomer, but I can relate to many of the games listed below, some of which we played this weekend.

I have a few different retro toys I would have picked for review, but the list looks interesting enough.

Three Nights, Three Books

Here's what we've been reading. It's too late in the evening to comment about each book or to post the author/publishing information. I'll edit the post later.

Tonight's Reading

Tonight we were able to read one book while eating fresh pears for dessert. Be Nice To Spiders, written by Margaret Bloy Graham, is a story about a spider who eats the flies that permeate the different zoo cages. Only when the zoo keepers try to rid themselves of the unsightly spider do they realize what a help the spider is to the whole zoo operation. Hmmm... I know of a few people who can relate.

Tonight's Reading

This evening we made a dash to two warehouse markets to pick up home stock items: toilet paper, diapers, and cleaning supplies. Once home, the girls gathered their blankets and settled into a Saturday movie, complete with the luxury of popcorn (not given often in our house). Which movie? Disney's The Jungle Book.

After the movie, we realized it was getting late. I picked a new book for reading, one that's been on the shelf for awhile. Written and illustrated byMark Ludy, The Grump, is a beautiful story of how a little girl touched the heart of a grumpy old man. The words in the book are some of the most descriptive story telling words I have read. The illustrations are very detailed with a wonderfully realistic touch of color.

Morgan and I met and talked with Mark Ludy at one of the AZ Kidney Foundation luncheons. He autographed a book for Morgan and talked about some of his travels to Bulgaria and meeting the children there.

Both Annika and Morgan enjoyed the book this evening. Ingrid read an Elmo book with Dad, alleviating some of the common interruptions when we read "older" books.

Friday Fun Reading and Two Week Countdown

It's Friday Fun Reading day and the countdown has begun. School starts in two weeks already!

Morgan goes back to art camp on Monday. At the end of the camp series, there will be an art show at the Rec Center. She's looking forward to it, but knows it's the Friday before school starts. She said she wants to stretch the time out.

In a more dramatic final stretch, Annika will soon be completely done with Sunny Days preschool. That's 10 more "naps", two more show and share days, two more Stretch and Grow sessions, two more water days. It will be another three years before Ingrid goes to school again with Annika. *Sigh*

School nesting activities have started around our house.

We got "ahead" of the pack on the school supply shopping. Kindergarten is pretty easy. We don't have class lists, like other school districts. It's really a wish list from the teachers. Folks here are pretty generous so there is not a need for a dictated supply list, especially kindergarten. Each child needs their own backpack, waterbottle, tennis shoes, and if used, a lunchbox. Annika picked out a metal Hello Kitty lunchbox while we in Los Angeles last week. I guess she remembered Morgan's kindergarten box, which was a metal Hello Kitty Box. It's now considered retro. We got her backpack a few months ago on sale. It has bubbles on it that remind Annika of fish bubbles. First day of school dress? Yes, it has fish on it.

Morgan still needs only general supplies - pencils, pencil box, scissors, colored pencils, ruler, glue, and the above listed items. No name brands listed, just get what you need. Check ~done~ for all that. Harmony and Harabagee bought school shoes for all three girls. That was easy. What's left? Remember the post a few days ago about Morgan arriving home but not her clothes? Morgan's clothes were left accidentally at my parents' cabin in northern Minnesota. Oops. When the yrealized the gaffe, Grandma quick whipped up a sun dress and skort. [I can't believe how fast my mom can sew together the cutest outfits, with matching doll clothes]. They washed the outfit she wore for the drive back to Roch and she wore that on the flight to AZ. I checked the clothes we left in her drawers before her trip. It seems Grandma and Grandpa must have fed Morgan well - most of the items in her drawer are now in a box saved for her sisters, a size too small for our growing 3rd grader. A little Internet shopping on Gymboree's Crazy8 and Children's Place website sales and we picked up a few additional items to get us along. The box of Morgan's cabin clothes is set to arrive from MN after my parents return to their cabin on Labor Day.

On Monday the school lists will be posted on the front door of the school. I'm anxious to get a peak at the list. I'm pulling for a certain third grade teacher for Morgan. Annika's hoping her best friend is in her class. We put in the recommendations, but there's no guarantees.

For now, we're finishing the summer with fun home activities and a new book every night from now until school starts - no repeats. Tonight we read, Fritz and the Beautiful Horses, written and illustrated by Jan Brett, copyright 1992. After reading the book, Morgan settled into bed in Friday fashion - enjoying a magazine. With gentle reminders that tomorrow is Saturday, and parents would enjoy NOT seeing the clock blink 5:30 [hello Ingrid], the girls went to bed.

Mission Bay San Diego

We arrived this afternoon in sunny and cool San Diego. Annika is having a blast in her side of the suite - complete with bunkbed and activity table. She has her own "mote", too.

Tomorrow we'll be getting up early to head out to San Diego Zoo. Annika wants to see the polar bears again. She loved the gondola ride that spans the entire park. After the zoo, we hope to head to the beach for some fun in the sand.

We'll be back in L.A. for the 4th of July and a clam bake.

Tonight's Reading: Junie B. Jones, Toothless Wonder, by Barbara Parks. Annika has started asking about the series after seeing the Stupid Smelly Bus Tour in Tempe last month.

Morgan Minnesota update: Morgan has grasped the finer points of fishing with Grandpa. Maybe the months of playing Bass Fishing on the Wii is finally paying off. She sets her worm and has caught several northern pike (returned to the lake). She's hoping for some sunfish or perch or walleye today for dinner. Trips by foot to the Cut Sioux Nature Center at the edge of the Chippewa Forest have been her second favorite activity.

Tonight's Reading

Last night I had the pleasure of reading a book, cover to cover, to one very interested four year old. Woody put Ingrid to bed and I stayed with Annika in the toyroom. It was mom's choice for reading. I picked the book, Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel, copyright 1971. The author uses simple words that are very descriptive and the stories are easy to follow.

The first chapter has toad writing a list of his planned day, starting with "Wake Up." He loses the list in the blustery wind, but decides not to chase after the list. Chasing after a list called, A things to do today, wasn't on Toad's list of things to do that day. This reminded me of Morgan's four day run of activities listed during her fall break. I think the list was over 40 items long. Annika liked trying to read the list in the book and she liked the illustrations.

Before we got to the page with the list, there was an inscription inside the cover of the book. I found out that this book actually was a gift to Todd and me when we were little from our great grandmother. That was a neat surprise.

And somewhere in the chapter where Frog politely tells Toad that gardens should not be shouted at, we found this piece of paper:

Another surprise. Annika so much enjoyed this book yesterday, that we're reading it again today.

Morgan Update: Morgan's full day in Chicago was full of great memories. She spent the entire day at American Girl Place on Chicago Ave. which included meeting the cast of the American Revue Theatre production, having lunch with grandma and her new AG doll, shopping, watching a "kid seminar" on doll hair care and other activities. She had her picture taken for a special magazine cover to keep and spent a long time looking over all of the dolls for sale. She knew she wanted to buy Julie, the 70's doll, right away. Tonight she is living it up at the hotel near Michigan Ave. using the plush AG robe and doll supplies brought to her room.