Tom Thumb is 3, a princess tea party, and Old Car Festival!

Last week Tom Thumb turned 3.  Yay!  It was such a great day.  He was so happy and loved all his gifts and his Thomas cake.  We bought him a big set of Magna-tiles which he adores, as you can see here:

It was a pretty big week.  Red also went to a friend's birthday party,which was a princess tea party.  We took a pink limo to the party (the mommies were invited), the girls had their hair done and got to wear ball gowns, participated in a fashion show, and ate ice cream sundaes and other treats.  This all happened while a group of women dressed like princesses and ladies in waiting sang and danced.  Needless to say, the party was over the top!

Here's the princess welcoming them to the party!

Here are all the little princesses.

And introducing Princess Red!

And just to top off another busy week, we took the Model T to Old Car Festival. 

We had a great time driving around the car, seeing friends, and participating in car games.  The funniest one was the Chinese firedrill when Red got out of the car and just kept running to the finish line instead instead of getting back in!  We stayed for the fireworks and dancing to 1920s music that night, and Andrew danced with an older woman.

...and danced with Natalie.

I also drove the car for the first time and very appropriately won the slow car race. 

Cheers to another great week!

Our First Day of Public School and forget China

Red started public school this week.  She only had two days because our district had off two days for Ramadan, but so far she really seems to like it.  What's working for me is that she always required a lot of extra attention while Tom Thumb was down for his extended afternoon nap.  Now she's not here.  It's like a 3 hour break when I can actually do some housekeeping and stuff.  Have I done that yet?  No, but I have good intentions.

One thing that does bother me though is that she will not tell me what she did at school during the day.  It's probably a control issue on my part.  When I've asked her what she did, her response has been, "I don't know" or "I forget".  I told the Cobbler that I'm just going to start grooving next week with what I originally planned to do (i.e. our read aloud list, OPGTR, Rightstart A, a bit of Getty Dubay A) so have some idea what is actually going into her little mind.

Now as far as our studying China plan went...well, it didn't really go.  We did watch Big Bird in China, which the kids really liked.  We read a couple of books.  Then, when I took out something else to do that was Chinese the reaction was, "Another thing about China? (sigh)"  I guess I learned my lesson.  When the path of study is not child led, it can be too much especially at age 5.  Now that I'm writing this Red just walked in with a piece of paper and said, "Look Mom--- I wrote in Chinese!"  And she had!  She copied characters out of one of the library books about China.  Then she said, "What do these say?"  Of course, I have no idea and really no way to find out.  (Big sigh)  I guess something did sink in.