Moon Jellyfish

Warning: this post will be full of parental bragging, since we are so darn impressed with our kid.

She did it! Anya saved up $230.00 to.the.penny and I ordered her moon jellyfish tank this morning.

Backstory: at some point earlier this year, I can't even remember when, Anya spied this moon jelly fish tank in her Insect Lore catalog. She told us she wanted to save up for it. It's $460. Considering that she only gets $5 a week in allowance and she was only 5 years old and somewhat fickle, we figured there was no way she was going to reach this particular goal. But, since it seemed she *really* wanted it, I told her that if she managed to save up half of the money, we would cover the other half. It seemed like a safe bet that Chris and I would be keeping our money and that she'd move on to something else within a few weeks.

She made it through months and months of saving. Sometimes it was torturous for her, especially over the summer. She'd hear the ice cream truck down the block and come tearing out of the house, a bit of her allowance stash in hand. But every single time, she'd stop in front of the ice cream truck, pause, look at her money, back to the pictures of ice cream offerings, back to her money, sigh, and walk back home, saying she wanted her moon jellyfish more than ice cream. It was all her. No pressure from us. 

And there were a handful of times I took her to the toy store to pick out birthday presents for friends. Anya decided to bring her allowance. She would sit quietly in front of the horse figurines (or other toys, but usually the horses) while I shopped, trying to decide if she really wanted to spend her money at the toy store or save up for the jellyfish. The jellyfish won out every single time and she decided to leave the store with all of her allowance. 

She received some monetary help around her birthday from some generous family members and friends who wanted to see her reach her goal (thank you!). This morning I gave Anya her weekly allowance. We counted up what she had, thinking she was a bit short. But when we added in her change, she had exactly $230.00. Not a coin left over. So she handed it all over to me and we ordered the jellyfish online.

Now comes the other hard part for her of waiting for everything to arrive. 

She is so unbelievably thrilled this morning. I heard many an ear-piercing scream of excitement. She told everyone at the bus stop this morning, and by now I'm sure her entire class knows. 

She is also very proud of herself, as she should be. Chris and I are proud too and quite impressed that she managed to pull it off. Congratulations, kid!

School Pictures

So here we are with the very first (of many) annual school pictures. These are memorable for two reasons. 1) they are the first and 2) Anya got in a little trouble with us over them.

On the morning of picture day, we (OK, I) had picked out and ironed a cute dress. The bodice was the perfect blue-green to complement Anya's pretty blue eyes. Over breakfast, we talked about why it was important that she look nice for picture day and wear the outfit I picked out (normally, I let her wear whatever she wants as long as it's weather-appropriate). She said she wanted to wear pink like one of her friends. The compromise was that she wear the dress for pictures, which were first thing at school, and then could change into whatever she wanted to wear for the rest of the day.

As you can see below, it didn't quite work out that way. After Anya got off the school bus, she proudly told me that she decided to change into playclothes *before* the pictures. Unfortunately, the pink shirt she grabbed was pretty stained and I think was in her dirty clothes pile.

Her consequence for her decision to go against us was to cover the cost of retakes (if needed) and the cost of the class picture, since we can't retake that. Fortunately, the stain isn't obvious and we didn't bother with retakes. But funny how she's front and center in the class pic. Notice her shiny dress shoes :-)

In the moment, we were pretty annoyed with her. A few weeks out, though, it's funny and now there's a story to go with along with the pictures.

Halloween

Now that Birthdayhalloweenextravaganza week is behind us, time to update on the Halloween bit.

It was fine this year. I suppose it always is for the kid. Halloween was always my favorite holiday, up until Anya was born. Now it feels more like a chore to get through, since I put a lot of energy into her birthday. But there are some fun bits to it. For one, we always start the Neighborhood Boo (fill a bag with treats for neighbors with a ghost image to put on their door, showing they've been boo'ed. They need to do the same for other neighbors and keep it going). I started it years back in our micro-neighborhood and it finally seems to have caught on. This year, pretty much every house on our regular walking route had our little ghost on the front door. That filled me with glee. What I also loved is that we got boo'ed by someone using a different format. Not our ghost. I'm guessing a classmate from a different neighborhood. Fun!

Anya also really got into decorating the house/yard this year. There were cobwebs all over every picture and many decorations in the big picture window. She wanted a little scarier this year, so we hung a zombie-thing from the tree out front and put up grave stones. And more cobwebs over all the bushes. It looked pretty good.

As for costumes, Anya wanted to be a ghost-fairy (something she saw in a friend's costume catalog over the summer). Easy enough. I just serged some gauze together to make a tattered tunic and underskirt. She wore a ballerina outfit and some wings and it was done. I was supposed to be Medusa and Chris supposed to be Perseus, but I didn't manage pull the costumes together. Instead, I was the Queen of the Spiders and Chris a fisherman. Easy. Done.

The kids got to wear costumes to school and had a big party in the afternoon. I helped run it. There were a handful of games and activities and a bit of sugar. The kids had fun.

Once home from school we put on or refreshed our costumes and headed over to Liam's house to meet up with PEPS families. The group went out en masse for trick-or-treating, but pretty quickly separated into Type A and Type B trick-or-treating personalities. It's a pretty easy guess which group Anya was in. After a little while, our family drove back home so Chris and Anya could trick-or-treat in our neighborhood, while I handed out candy.

Chris and Anya ended up meeting up with some neighbors (Anya's school / bus friends Naomi and Paul and their parents) and they had fun collecting tons of candy.

Speaking of Anya's candy haul, her Kindergarten class collected Halloween candy to send to soldiers. Anya wanted to trade most of her candy for a necklace that holds bugs anyway (priorities, people), so she turned in lots for the cause. For that I'm glad, since once it's out of the house, there's none for me to sneak.

Birthday Party

We threw a "Halloween Birthday Bash" for Anya the other week, as kiddo wanted a Halloween-themed birthday party this year.

She invited seven friends over to the house for fun and games. Two were new friends from school. The rest were friends she's known awhile. Everyone wore costumes.

Scary ghost-fairy

Queen of the spiders

 

We did a few games. One was the fishing game, that we've done the past two years (at Anya's request). Basically, I hide behind a curtain in a doorway while the kids cast a makeshift fishing rod over the curtain. I clip on prizes for them to "catch". The kids love it. This year, Chris dressed up as a fisherman and he was the kids' expert guide. 

Another game was the balloon popping game. I put pieces of paper in a bunch of blown up balloons, one with a star drawn on it. The kids pop the balloons. Whoever finds the star gets a prize. That one didn't go over as well as we had hoped. Three of the kids were too afraid and didn't want to participate. But the rest had a blast. 

Anya also insisted on bobbing for apples. Almost all of the kids loved that one, Anya more than anyone. She soaked through several costume/clothing changes since she kept coming back to bob for more apples. 

Anya: "I got 3 Apples"

 

We made all sorts of "gross" foods to eat (totally fun for me). Mummy dogs (hot dogs wrapped in crescent dough strips), blood punch with zombie hand (mixed fruit juice and sparking cider with ice frozen in the shape of a hand), inside-out caramel apples (thanks, Pinterest!), banana ghost pops, and our favorite: worms. 

worms made from jello and molded in bendy straws

chow time

And instead of cake, Anya requested Top Pot doughnuts again this year. Works for me; one less thing to prep. 

blowing out her birthday candles on doughnuts cut in the shape of a 6. 

 

Afterwards, we set up the bounce house in the back yard and let the girls start burning off all that sugar until their parents arrived. Anya had a great time. Happy Birthday!