Pedigreed Housewife World

Anyone that knows me well knows that there is one big event that I plan each year – my annual tea party!   And involving the kids is a great way to teach them lots of things, including table manners, hostess skills (primarily sharing and greeting their guests at my kids' ages), and playing with, versus around, their friends.   My tea party is usually a time when my local female friends from all of my different activities (book club, running club, my volleyball team, my old job, Gymboree, StrollerFit, the kids’ school hopefully this year, church, my neighborhood, etc.) get together and get to know each other.    Last year, for the first time in quite a while, I did not have my tea party because with 2 kids under 2 I just didn’t have time to plan it in a way that I would have been happy with.   I could have an entire blog devoted solely to tea party planning.   I could write a book on the subject…well, technically I have but that’s another story.   Suffice it to say that a tea pa

The Look and See Adventure is one of the reasons I decided to start this blog.  Well, that and the birthday contract.  Whenever I tell other moms about those two things they always tell me that these are such simple, but great, little things to do with the kids.  So I figured I would start a blog to share my random ideas. Ok, so the Look and See Adventure.  This is one of my kids’ favorite things to do and it started so simply.  My kids are about 18 months apart, and when my youngest, Abigail, was born, my oldest, Briana, was really getting into doing things that Mommy and Daddy do and getting frustrated to find out that she couldn’t do some of the things.  One was driving.  And we spent a LOT of time driving to calm a crying Abigail.  So I invented the ‘Look and See Adventure’ to appease both kids while still having some fun and learning.  And as it turned out I learned a lot too. The premise of the Look and See Adventure is simple.  Get in the car, drive around, and talk about what

As fall is coming, my kids are asking a lot about why the leaves on the trees change color.  I asked Briana to tell me why she thinks the leaves change color.  Her answer was "The green leaves have to go because it's not their turn anymore so they jump off the trees, but some fall on our grass because of gravity. The others are less dense than the air so they fly around forever until it's there turn to get back on our trees. Then the colorful leaves get a turn and that's called Fall."  A pretty well thought out answer for a 2 year old, I think.  But unfortunately it’s not accurate.  Sadly, that made me realize that it took my oldest less than 3 years of life to ask me a question I couldn’t answer - “Why do the leaves change color?”.  So I looked it up on http://www.na.fs.fed.us/fhp/pubs/leaves/leaves.shtm .  Basically the leaves change color because as the nighttime gets longer, less chlorophyll is produced.  The chlorophyll basically overpowers the carotenoids (

I’m about to let you in on one of the big secrets of my success…such as it is.    As far as I’m concerned my dad invented this idea, but sadly I also thought my dad invented the phrase “all the tea in China” for, let’s just say ‘way too long’, so maybe he didn’t, but unless I hear otherwise I’m going to say my dad invented this idea that I consider one of the secrets of my success. Did I build the suspense?   Hopefully.   Anyway, every birthday of my life (and a whole lot of sci-fi movie opening nights, but that’s another story) my dad and I had a father-daughter day which usually entailed going to see a movie and then dinner to debrief the movie and spend time talking together.   However, one other really important thing happened at those birthday dinners – the Birthday Contract.   I had to tell my dad what I wanted to be when I grew up and three steps that I needed to do that year to get there.   The important thing to me was that he never cared what I was deciding to be as long