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                                                             Happy Birthday Daddy!

Home Spa

We have done a couple of the ideas from the book Fancy Nancy Ooh Lah Lah It's Beauty Day in the past, but tonight Bea asked for an oatmeal and banana mask, and I decided a 0 degree Tuesday night was the perfect timing to try it out, "taw-bin" and all:


                             I'm thinking the banana should have been mashed a little more!

and we didn't anticipate Sula taking licks from Bea's face!

                             I wonder if the big salons have a dog to clean up their bowls???

I didn't photograph my lovely hands after I was the recipient of a manicure. I have to decide whether to take off the glittery plum mixture surrounding my nails (and much of my finger tips) before a big meeting at school tomorrow, or leave them as-is and hope people understand that  I have a 6-year old daughter at home.

Tet Vacation

When we were waiting for final permission to go pick up Bea in Vietnam, we were told the worst time to have your paperwork pending was during the time of Tet, when celebrations could delay things for up to 3 weeks.  Well, this year I feel like that's how long we've been celebrating Year of the Goat in our house.  We started with the shopping, planning and prep for the Tet presentation/party held last week,before her vacation started.   Before the li xi and watermelon were handed out, the kids had fun doing a traditional "Cat chases mouse" game, chopstick relay, and folding paper fortune tellers. There was no good camera around, so I took these quickly of our grand finale dragon parade. 

 Beatrice really loves sharing this holiday with her friends every year.  (The next two photos are irrelevant to Tet, but in the spirit of this blog being a time capsule, I'll add that she's wiggling and wiggling one of her two top front teeth that are loose. Won't be long now!  And, I'm showing how very long her hair has grown this winter and very old (can you hear the mama sob?) it makes her look.)

Since she had a week off, one day was spent with Jay Jay hanging out, doing a toilet paper experiment (don't ask) and seeing Paddington. Another was spent with Daddy at the Providence Children's Museum:

Then the Tet loot started arriving---red envelopes, a cool color-it-yourself messenger bag from Uncle Moe & Aunt Sharon, a cash register with very real-looking money, a red kitty, and an awesome goat marionette from The Manhattan Fulcos.  

On Thursday, the first full day of Tet, I trudged through the snow to the maple tree to break off a branch (a New England twist on a Vietnamese tradition) so we could decorate it with plastic peach tree blossoms.  We decorated that together, let her play with her gifts, had a nice dinner together, watched a family movie, and played lots of games.  She's still loving Sleeping Queens and Very Silly Sentences, and now we can add Trouble to the list of favorites.

Last night we were invited by Hera to Marianapolis Prep School to celebrate Lunar New Year, so Bea pulled out the ao dai (which will now go into storage since the sleeves and pants are too short!) and got all prettied up for the big event:

The school had 24 stations set up with fun activities like paper cutting, ping-pong and jumprope,  ribbon twirling,

brush writing,

and of course lots of opportunities for candy:

Then we were treated to a catered Chinese dinner and performances by the students.  Here are the loveliest Vietnamese ladies in attendance:

They sure make Vietnam proud!

Then it was back home to play a game of "solitaire Trouble."  I tried this game about a year ago and she had little interest but we took it out on Thursday, during our own family little Tet party, and she loves it.  Last night she went over and played a game all by herself.  She played with only three of the colors and ran the whole things (but she admitted she was silently rooting for red to win!)

Meanwhile, I'm not writing or photographing much of this insane winter** we're having, but let's just say Beatrice the homebody has been in heaven staying in jammies most of the morning, watching far more TV than she should, and letting her creative juices flow.  The other day she made a mini golf course played with marbles and popsicle sticks.  Then she went to work on a pinball machine, and finally she worked diligently on a "prototype" for a "dispenser" of individual packaging peanuts.  Things there's a market for that? As much as she LOVES her messenger bag, the box filled with styrofoam peanuts in which it came was another gift in itself.  

Add in that we've redone our kitchen floor and painted so you can imagine the chaos we've been living in since mid-January.  And, with no way to get the boxes of ripped up till our of the 3 feet of snow/ice surrounding them, our yard looks a bit like rural Ballouville. I'm cleaning up at least some of the mess that is my house to get ready for  full back-to-school next week.  Goodbye for a year to Valentine's and Tet.  It sure was fun.

**sidenote:  found out the other day that Bea thought "kingdom of isolation" from the lyrics of a popular Frozen song, was kingdom of icilation, as in a place surrounded with ice and snow.  She described the Woodstock Fairgrounds as having a lot of ice-a-lation the other day.  So cute.  She also described the man from Mulan who most would call "fat" or at least "round" as "circley." I think both of these words should be added to the dictionary.

Caty Pary IN THE HOUSE!

I don't know if it's because she watched the Superbowl halftime show, because Bea and I have had only three full days of school in the past two weeks, or because we've all been stir crazy with a big dose of cabin fever with over 3 feet of snow on the ground, but the creative, wild juices are flowing with this little one lately.  Anthony and I were treated to a spontaneous "Caty Pary" performance the other night: 

"ROAR" is an absolute favorite:

and the combination of this picture and the sudden interest in a musician who is a bit more "sophisticated" than Raffia make me keenly aware that I have an almost-7-year old on my hands!

(complete with a original designed Lego microphone and princess shoes that are finally too small!)

First Book Report

Here it is, minus the writing part which will apparently be done in school.  The favorite part of the book  DRAGONS LOVE TACOS (teacher picked it) was when the boy realized that the "mild salsa" had a disclaimer at the bottom saying that it contained bits of jalapeno peppers.  It was important to the plot that, while dragons love tacos, you must never, ever give them spicy hot salsa.  I won't spoil the rest in case you want to read it some day...

p.s. She did this with Daddy and, unless they're both lying, his pencil never touched the paper.  He did help her by drawing certain things on HIS paper and she reproduced parts from his and from the book, but I'm still pretty impressed with how it came out, especially the expression on the boy's face. Can't wait until diorama days!