Happy 8th Birthday Sugar-bear!

Alice's birthday took 3 diffent events to celebrate.

On January 1st, Mom and Dad surprised Alice with a trip to Houston's America Girl to get the brand new Girl of the Year. Alice has been talking about going to AM on New Years day for months, but we never committed, so it was a surprise when we woke her up and loaded her into the car. We stood in line and waited for our turn to enter the store and see the new girl. Her name is Lea Clark.

The second event was her birthday party on the Saturday before her birthday. The theme was Pancakes and Pajamas ( and mustaches too :-). The girls (20 2nd graders) came for breakfast in their PJ's. Dad was the  pancake chef and the girls topped them with syrup, sprinkles, chocolate chips,sugar sprinkles and whip cream. While the girls ate, a balloon artist made them animals, crowns, etc....  Next the girls decorated pillow cases with fabric paints and lastly, we played musical chairs. I'm pretty sure everyone had fun.

The last birthday event was a small intimate affair at home. On her birthday Alice got to pick what she wanted for dinner. The gourmet meal she selected was........McDonalds - cheeseburger, fries and a shake. Afterward we had red velvet cake.  Happy Birthday sugar-bear!

Christmas 2015

As usual, the Austin Bickel family traveled to Dallas to spend the Christmas holidays with the family. It was a rough start..... We got to Didi and Pops house to find out there was a water leak in the attic and the water was turned off. It would be 1.5 days without water. We flushed toilets with water leaking from the attic and washed dishes with boiled hot water.  A real Little House on the Prarie experience. Luckily the water was back on my the time we returned from our annual girls trip to Neimans on Christmas Eve.

We arrived at Neimans around 10:00 and the line to see Santa was about an hour long..... Not too bad to see the REAL Santa - not some helper fake :-). Alice was a champ about waiting in line. She played games on her iPad and listened to music on Spotify.

Our lunch reservations was not until 1:00 so we spent some time exploring the store and taking pictures with the displays - a new tradition started by Alice last year.

Christmas Eve before bed Alice, set out cookies and milk for Santa. The cookies were hand decorated by Alice and myself....although ones selected for Santa were all done by Alice.

Alice had a hard time sleeping that night. She woke mom up at 12:00, 2:00 and 4:00 wanting to know if it was time to get up. Morning finally arrived and Alice got to open her presents. Her favorite present from Santa was a net canopy for her bed. Her favorite present from her parents was a new iPad mini.

Alice saw her cousins the day after Christmas for another family gathering and of course, more presents :-)

After our second Christmas, we decided to head back to Austin. We could be home before 9:00 and sleep in our own beds....sigh!!!!!  Not long into our trip, it started raining and then a warning came over the phone.....tornado watch.  Lots of lightening, lots of wind....but not too much rain.  However, within an hour of driving we were out of the bad weather and made it home in less than 4 hours, not bad.

The next morning, we found out that within the hour after we left, several tornados tore through the exact same area, and hit the city adjacent to where our families live.  Luckily our families were spared, but very sad for many families who lost homes and a few who lost lives. 

Definitely a memorable holiday. Here's to a Happy New Year!

Finished 2nd Grade Math before the end of 1 half of 2nd grade!

beware, parental bias potentially in effect

We switched Alice's after-school math exercise to Khan Academy this year.  Its an improvement over the quizzes I was making for her and introduces her to many more styles of questioning.   Khan Academy has a well organized and high quality math learning program.  She took to it right away and began to prefer it for her daily exercises.

She gets incentives for her math exercises.  She gets a "point" for doing her homework each day and if she does math each day she gets a random shopkin toy on Fridays.  This proved to be sufficient incentive but just barely (especially on hard or long days), so in order to increase her motivation and properly communicate the value we placed on the effort, we told her that if she finished 2nd grade math, before the end of her second grade year, she should could pick out a toy at Toys-R-Us.

minor narrative digression
Not long after, early November, she walked up to me and said:
Her:  "Dad I bet you, I can finish 2nd grade math before the end of November."
Me:  "What's the bet?"
Her:  "One dollar."
Me:  "If you take too long, you won't cry and you'll give up the dollar, for real?"
Her:  "Yep."  (firm look on face)
Me:  
Her:  

return to main narrative
She finished 2nd grade math last night!  As soon as Cristy got home we went to Toys-r-us and shopped, then we went wherever she wanted to go for dinner, her choice.  She chose Which-Which :-).  She was so excited and proud of herself.  I don't think I'll ever forget how wonderful last night was.  I loved seeing her expansive excitement.  She felt proud and confident and was talking non-stop.

minor narrative digression
She probably put about six hours into math homework this week.  She was really pushing herself.  I had to make her take a break on two occasions and watch a show to rest a bit.  She really pushed through this week.  I'm officially impressed with the tenacity and drive I saw come through

return to main narrative
Her:  "Where's my dollar?"
Me:  "Let me get it!"  (smile on face)

I jumped up and quickly got her dollar; most effective dollar ever.  She took her dollar and put it in her charity jar.  Then we played with puppies until Cristy came home and we started celebrating.

I'll come up with a code for her to break today, time for a math break.

Next target:  3rd grade math...

Time Capsule: Lunches

Leaving this as a time capsule in case Alice every wonders what she ate for lunch when she was a kid.

Alice's standard lunch during 2nd grade hasn't changed much from late 1st grade.  I make two individual sandwiches using Hawaiian sweet rolls, hard salami, cheese (muenster, american or Swiss), and some mayo.  These are 2nd grade Alice's favorite sandwich.  Along with that she gets 2 cookies or 2 candies and a small portion of chips.

There is nothing at the cafeteria she much cares for but sometimes she eats there if it makes sense socially (lunch source determines seating opportunities).

Lastly, she is in the habit of sharing her snacks with special friends, that is why there is always two pieces of whatever packed for her.  She has just started to mention food trading which I don't discourage, even though its against rules.

Completely Unwarranted Parental Aside:  I see this as a Spartan situation, where breaking the rules to make a mutually advantageous trade is the optimal lesson she could learn.  She must endure whatever punishment she receives but will get none from me.  I just expect good trade and a good reaction to being punished.  Those seem like important lessons too.  She has ample opportunity to learn how to obey, life is rife with them.  Other lessons must be learned - society does not thrive on obedience alone.

Random Entry

Just wanted to record some observations regarding 2nd grade Alice, off the top of my head, this morning before they slip away with so many others.

Alice has a couple new pairs of PJs that she loves.  They are both winter heavy and soft, with the built in feet.  One is an Owl and the other is a kitty.  They are very warm so she often needs to sleep with the fan all the way up and only a sheet; that is how much she likes these PJs :-)

Lately Alice often worries about Cupcake and his perceived persecution from his newly adopted sister puppy.  She will lift him up onto chairs, which Pepper is still too small to reach.  Or she'll take him back to her room for music videos, leaving little sister in the kitchen with Dad.  She is really good with Pepper though and is practicing good training techniques, and does her best.

She is exploring her boundaries a bit with after school homework.  Our default program is to complete any school assigned homework first, then depending on whether Dad thinks the school assigned enough home work or not, more will be added ;-)  Usually the additional homework consists of a math quiz or the exploration and discussion of a specific topic, which takes more prep so its usually a math quiz.  She has suggested lately to make a graph of pop star genre popularity which was a fine suggestion so we did that.  Lately she is suggesting we do math quizzes using Khan Academy so we are doing that.

Alice loves to make up silly dances.  There is something the Teacher does in Spanish class where a child can make up a dance and everyone else has to mimic it.  Alice enjoys doing this.  There is a girl that doesn't like to dance for some reason, too tough or something and Alice gets a second-grade-mischievous pleasure from making the dances extra silly and goofy so that they annoy this girl even more.

Lastly, she recently hates the word "proper".  She bristles anytime it comes up.

Happy National 'Talk like a Pirate Day'

September 19th is National Talk like a Pirate Day.

The day started off with the end of a friend sleeping over the night before.

Then we attended a Birthday party for another friend at a Skating Rink. (Alice's first time to roller skate)

Then we top if off with dressing Alice up like a pirate and getting a free dozen donut from Krispy Kreme. wheeeeeeee

First Performance

Alice is an aspiring pop star.  She has been taking voice and guitar (to a lesser extent) lessons since the beginning of the year.  Alice participated in her first recital with the school. She was nervous but excited. Didi and Pop came down from Dallas to watch.

With Her teacher Ms Tracy accompanying her on guitar, Alice rocked the house singing Taylor Swifts Shake It Off.  There was a small snafu in the performance where Ms Tracy stopped the song short of the rap.....the most fun part of the song. Alice turned to her and let her know she was not finished and her Dad almost jumped up to cry out 'what about the rap!' Ms Tracy laughed and accepted her mistake and the song continued this time with audience clapping. This seemed to relax Alice and she nailed the rap and end of the song.

I think the recital got Alice more excited about performing. She said she has already picked her next song and began practicing it the same weekend.

Love my little performer!