Museum of Science

for a special treat, we took elenora to the science museum the day after thanksgiving.  she was so very excited.  the best part about the whole thing was probably the iMax movie we took her to in the omni theater.  we sat at the very top and she just snuggled in my lap.  the movie was about whales and was breathtaking.  at times i had to remind myself that i was sitting in a seat, because it felt like i was soaring high in the air over the cliffs and out to sea, and then i'd feel as if i were bobbing up and down on the ocean.  elenora was so good.

to the tiger in the zoo, elenora said "pooh, pooh."

oh, and there were dinosaurs, too.

we ended the afternoon at the children's discovery center, which had a water table.

Happy Thanksgiving Elenora!

If you look closely, you'll see 4 girls here:

where was i?

the other day i was telling elenora about something that happened probably 5 years ago when j. and i were first married and she said "mommy, that was when i was in your belly" and i said "no, actually you weren't even in my belly yet" and she said "where was i?" and i said "you Weren't. you didn't exist at all back then." and she got this look on her face that i can hardly explain other than that she looked up at me with wide eyes and a mouth that was shaped like a surprised O.  i guess she'd never really thought about the concept--that there was a time when she just Wasn't.

and actually, when i thought about it, it surprised me, too.

elenora and i went cranberry bogging last weekend.  she's made a good friend at school, rose, and rose and her father were hiking out into the dunes of crane beach to harvest some cranberries on saturday, so ella and i went too.  it was quite the undertaking with 2 girls at around 30 lbs each on our backs.  the dunes are pretty steep, and it's never easy walking in sand.  especially 45 minutes in and then 45 minutes out.  our pace had to be pretty accelerated since the sun goes down so early now.  but it was a ton of fun.  elenora helped me fill my bags while rose ran around in her bathing suit (it was unseasonably warm that day) and had a picnic in the sand.  then the girls did a "cranberry ballet" and played ring around the rosie.  the moon rose over the dunes as the sun was setting on the opposite side of the sky, and as we hiked back to the cars we could see the waves crashing on the shore and the mists rolling in.

i know the whole adventure made a huge impression on ella, because she will randomly tell people all this week "did you know that i went cranberry bogging with my mommy?"

we made a batch of muffins and 2 loaves of cranberry brown bread.  we're saving our last bag of cranberries for the sauce for thanksgiving next week.

the other morning i walked into elenora's room to get her ready for school and she was trying to take the clothing off of her teddy bear Nikki.  she said "i need to take these clothes off of her because they don't fit her anymore. they don't say 3T."

he's got the whole world in his hands

so tonight before bed i was singing "he's got the whole world in his hands" to ella and she broke me off and exclaimed "mommy!  how can he have the whole world in his hands?"

i said "because he's HUGE."

"huge like a horse?" she asked.

"no, huge like the SKY," i said.  "but he's also everywhere, because he takes care of everyone, so he can live in your heart and you can talk to him."

hm.

"but how can Jesus live in my heart, too?"

ah.

"because Jesus is part of God," i tried to explain.

"mommy, what did Jesus do?"

"he died on the cross, ella."

"why did he die on the cross?"

"to show that he was God.  God is huge and is everywhere but he became a human just like us so that he could die and rise again to show that he is God."

how do people explain this stuff???