Marriage and Motherhood: Saint Martin's Day and the Sunday Update

This week started off very busy on Monday morning with lots of baking with the girls in preparation for Saint Martin's Day celebrations at their school that evening (11 November). We baked a giant batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies yesterday (photo posted at the end of last week's update), and this morning, we baked two types of scones - one sweet and one savory. Ri is here "cutting" the butter into the flour and sugar for the chocolate chip scones.

Tay is cutting the butter into the cheese scones.

This is what happened after we added the milk…hehehe…very sticky dough at first.

Since they made these simultaneously, I just chronicled the one I needed to supervise the most. Here, Ri is flouring the surface to work the dough.

Here she is shaping and flattening the dough to prepare it for cutting.

Here she is using a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the dough for baking.

The chocolate chip scone hearts…

The cheese scones…of all sizes. She used a knife to cut these into the shapes. These were particularly delicious, by the way. Reminded me of the cheese scones from the Starbucks in Korea…cheesy goodness with a hint of sweet. I'd probably cut the sugar more next time I make these. I'll share the recipe at a later time.

Ready for the festivities!

The girls went to school at a regular time, and then I went at the regular time to pick them up to join in on the festivities. When I arrived at the school, the children were still in the classrooms preparing to come out in their lantern procession. I got there around 4:50pm and took some photos of their courtyard where they had set up two large fire pits:

A long goodies table loaded with all varieties of snacks/cookies/finger foods, and another table around the corner with various drinks including Glühwein and Kinderpunsch.

They also had a few of these small standing tables with these lovely tea lights set up for the parents to mingle together before the children came out.

Outside the school yard, there was a horse standing by. I wasn't sure what this was for yet, but come to find out, it was for their small St. Martin's Day play.

It got dark by 5:15, and all the parents were relocated outside the school yard across the street to a small field that had been taped off. The parents had to stand on the inside of the tape and the children began their procession around the taped off area. It was hard to see the kids in the dark as they paraded around the parents, but I finally saw Ri walking by with her lantern (and she saw me):

Here she is showing me her lantern, but it's all blurry because it was dark and my camera had a really hard time focusing…sad.

Shortly thereafter, I saw Tay walking by holding another little girl's hand. I almost didn't recognize her because she was in costume for her play! How adorable. (She saw me, too…I promise I didn't yell…too loudly).

I did *try to* take some photos during the little play, but they all turned out completely black because they didn't do it on any stage…just in the middle of the circle of parents. I did get a video, but again, it's very dark and you can't see hardly anything. You can just hear the voices…barely. :( Oh well…it was Tay's first play and she had some lines! In German! It was adorable. She was the beggar in the play - she was one of three characters - St. Martin, narrator, and beggar. Proud mama. After the play, we walked home - I brought the stroller because it was going to be dark on the walk home and I didn't want to try and keep track of two little kids walking home in the dark! Yikes. They were pretty happy they got a ride…and Ri seems pretty happy about her cupcake she got. We did stick around for a little while after the procession and play were over, but it's hard to mingle when all you can really say is "hallo"…I really need to get all the way through the Rosetta Stone program. I'm still on Level 1, Lesson 3. Anyway…moving on.

Now, on to some of this week's activities. I was pretty lazy this week, so there aren't any particularly new or interesting activities, but the usual activities are fun and the girls enjoy them. Here, the girls are playing in the playroom. Tay is writing a restaurant "menu" for me to come dine, and Ri is playing music with the instruments from the instrument basket. You can see her improvising by using the maracas handles as drum sticks…(a girl after my own heart).

Here, Ri is working with her sandpaper letters. We worked on the letter "A" this week. She's such a different learner from Tay, I have to readjust how I teach this one and not get frustrated.

I've been giving Tay some guitar lessons lately (mostly working on rhythm at the moment), and Ri wanted in on the action. She is singing and strumming…hehehe...

The girls have really been getting into the whole My Little Pony show (thanks, YouTube) and the German version of "Fillies" figurines. They spend much of their time using imagination to play with these figurines and interact them with their princess figurines…as Tay is doing here.

Ah, as Christmas draws nearer, we found out that the church was going to be doing a small children's Christmas pageant. Tay said she wanted to participate, so today (Sunday) was the first "rehearsal." She learned a song today, and as we waited for our ride to come pick us up, these other two girls came outside to practice their singing while they waited for their rides. Tay was playing in the leaves by herself when the two girls approached her and asked if Tay wanted to practice with them. Sweet girls…they were a six year old and seven year old who were just darling and sweet to include Tay for that brief time they were outside practicing their song.

On to the littlest one of the family. This week, she got reacquainted with some old friends.

"She's not as big as I remember her, Mama."

And she did some of this...

…and this. She would struggle to sit up, and then plop back down again. And just stare at me the whole time. Strange…no smiles…nothing. I dunno.

Baby girl turned 8 months old this week!

She prefers the bear crawl to the standard crawl…and she's picking up speed, but still not very fast. Here, Tay is quickly moving her plate away as Rea makes an attempt to get the plate.

My smiley. How I love this baby.

…even when she makes this face because I won't stop taking photos of her.

…hehehehehehehe…I was trying to get a good photo of her doing this! That's why I kept taking photos…I'm not sure what she was doing, but she kept doing it over and over. Ta-da!

This profile view was just too cute not to capture…except Rea moved right as I took the photo.

How can this face not make you grin? Impossible.

It was chilly one morning when we were hanging out downstairs, so I wrapped her up in the blanket, and she seemed to like so much that she stayed just like this for about five minutes without budging!

While I was reading stories to the big sisters, Rea, who had decided she didn't want to go to bed yet, sat by me and played with the big sisters' ponies. :)

Bath time for Rea these days have become very…lively. She LOVES splashing.

Really, REALLY loves splashing. Look how happy she is…even with water going up her nose because she splashes so hard!

Silly girl…:)

We had a lot of family bed time this week. I don't know what was going on, but the older two girls kept migrating over to our room and snuggling in...

Here, Ri said she absolutely needed my arm to sleep. She she hugged my arm and almost instantly fell asleep!

Clearly, Tay is the last one to arrive because Ri is always sleeping next to Rea and Tay is tucked away at the foot of the bed…usually snuggled under the big covers.

Ah, sleeping babies are so…peaceful.

We tried a new-to-us fruit today. It was a pretty melon. I looked up the varieties of melon and I think it's a Juan Canary melon, but it is bigger than the photos I saw of the melon they showed on the website. Anyhow…it is about the size of a honey dew melon and fairly smooth.

The seeds inside looked like the Korean style smaller melons called "cham-weh" (Golden King melons, I think…?)

And last, but not least, I tested out a pumpkin bread recipe in preparation for Thanksgiving in muffin tins and they were DELICIOUS. I made a quick and easy cream cheese frosting to top the muffins and turned them into delectable pumpkin spiced cupcakes.