The Valdez Quintuplets

New Names!

2012-01-26T20:24:00.001-06:00

To better reflect our heritage, we've been given new names. So please use them from now on. Thank you!

As you can see, our colors are still the same. And our personalities haven't changed. :)

Love,
Tatiana, Violeta, Sabina, Catalina and Zipporah

Our Birthday Is Approaching Fast!

2012-01-17T22:47:00.001-06:00

Our birthday is in 28 days! We've been thinking hard about what we would like for presents. Of course, we always love to get new clothes, but our parents just spent a fortune getting us the outfits we really wanted for Hanukkah. So we feel it wouldn't be right to ask for anything real expensive (collectively, or individually) for our birthday.

What we'd really like is to have a party with all our friends. But, some of our friends live far away.

So, the next best thing would be small(ish) presents, right? So, this is what we've decided to ask for:

Sora-
1. a Sherlock Holmes book
2. a microscope
3. Molly's Route 66 Dress (made by Mama)

Violet-
1. a bouquet of flowers
2. a box of chocolates
3. a dollhouse

Lorikeet-
1. a vintage camera
2. toys for Clue
3. a Poirot book

Lyre Chickadee-
1. a Guitar
2. a Saxophone
3. Lesson books for whichever I get

Zipporah-
1. Nancy Drew books
2. Nancy Drew games (there are some inexpensive ones on Amazon.com)
3. a Patchy Beanbag Chair

When's your birthday? What was your favorite birthday gift?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Independence Center Mall Shooting

2012-01-15T03:58:00.001-06:00

Hey everyone!

There was a shooting at the mall here in Independence. We weren't there, as we're not really mall people. So we're safe, incase anyone was wondering. We are praying for the victims though.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Hello Again!

2012-01-08T21:14:00.001-06:00

Hey everyone, we're back!

Our sister Wren spilled pop on our family's computer back in October, so we've been offline since then. But now we have a new computer and the internet again!

How was everyone's holidays? We had a blast! We got Kit's School Skirt Set and the polar bear sweater, and from Santa we got a puppy! An adorable basset hound named Clue.

Hope you all are doing well!

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Our New 'Do

2011-10-03T21:01:00.000-05:00

Well, what do you think? Our hair is now curly! We've been wanting pin curls for ever so long. They're quite old fashioned, which we love, of course.
Sora's on the left, Violet next, then Lorikeet, Zipporah and Lyre Chickadee.

We're planning on replacing the bows with smaller ones. Or do you think these are fine?

Love,
Us

Check Us Out On Etsy!

2011-10-02T02:20:00.001-05:00

Jillian has opened an Etsy shop featuring things she's made for girls like us, and guess who got to model the items? Yeah, us! Currently only three items are up, but we all got our picture taken.

Check it out: http://www.etsy.com/shop/valdezquints?ref=si_shop

Also, it looks like we'll be getting makeovers on Monday! So check back then for pictures of us in our new 'dos!

Love,
Us

Jillian's Website

2011-08-16T19:55:00.002-05:00

It's come to our attention that the recent spike in page views might not be because more people are realizing how adorable we are, but in fact they may be looking for a way to contact Jillian.

If you are so wishing, or just curious to learn more about her, you can visit her webpage where contact information is available: http://www.jillifish.com/

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

P.S. If you do contact her, be sure to mention how good we've been all year and how she should keep that in mind when planning out our Hanukkah gifts (which she is working on right now).

Change of Hair Color - Again!

2011-08-16T01:16:00.000-05:00

Okay, so we've decided to be natural dark brunettes instead. It's how we were originally, and we do like looking like the Dionnes. So, that's our decision.

Of course, if you are asked to change our looks by a publisher or someone, we still might change our minds again. But until that happens, we'll just go on being brunettes.

Love,
Us

We Have News!

2011-08-04T23:12:00.001-05:00

Sorry for not keeping in touch in the past two months. We just didn't have anything to really write about. But we do now!

Have you seen our new header? Then you've noticed our hair is a bit different. What do you think? We're pretty pleased with it. So much so, that it might become a permanent thing. Jill's been doing some thinking, and has almost completely decided we are actually natural redheads. It started out as her just wanting to make us different from the Dionnes, but then she decided to stick with how she envisioned us in her head. Which was fine, until she kept envisioning us as redheads even after we had gone back to brunettes.

For those wondering, yes, Spaniards can have red hair. Those in the north of Spain have lighter features than those in the south. But we actually get our red hair from Mama, who isn't Spanish but Romanian. Apparently Ashkenazic Jews commonly have red hair. In olden days, it was even assumed you were Jewish if your hair was red. At least, that's what Wikipedia says.

Now, Sora's making me say that we don't just get our red hair from Mama. She's blabbering on about recessive genes and how we'd have needed the red hair trait from both parents. Whatever. I'm sure you knew what I meant - that Mama has red hair.

Another very exciting thing that has happened recently is that Jillian finished our first mystery story! She's now in the process of querying agents about it. We have all our fingers and toes crossed that someone is interested. In the mean time, we're telling her about our second mystery so that she can write up a book about it, too.

Oh, yes, and we found polka dot fabric in our colors! TWO different kinds, actually. White with colored dots and Colored with white dots. And white with our different color dots altogether. So, three kinds. Bunkumsquint!

Love,
Zipporah

Our Heidi Book

2011-05-30T00:48:00.000-05:00

Half Price Books had a Memorial Weekend sale, and Papá decided we could have our allowances early so we could buy the Heidi book we wanted at a lower price. Here it is:

Aren't the illustrations wonderful? We were wrong, though. It isn't an antique. It's from 1986. But it's still a very special book. The edges are gilded and there's an attached ribbon bookmark. Now we're arguing over whether we should read it or put it on a shelf and leave it alone. It is a collector's item, after all.

Speaking of books, we finished telling Jillian (our writer friend who is writing about our mystery cases) all about our first case. She's written it up and now will be editing and revising our tale. :)

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Hanging Out With Tirya

2011-05-27T22:39:00.000-05:00

We've just been lounging around this week, watching episodes of Murder, She Wrote. We've been in our pajamas the whole time! We feel kind of bad that we haven't done anything special with Tirya, but she seems to enjoy lounging with us.

Today we watched Heidi, the 1990s version. Lately we've been a bit obsessed with the story. We're reading it and we've watched the Shirley Temple version and this version, twice. And we found an antique version with "magical" illustrations that we're hoping to get with our allowances next time we get paid. It costs $50. That'll be the most we've ever paid for a book. There are cheaper versions. We've even been able to download it for free. But they don't have the beautiful illustrations that this version does.

If you're familiar with the story of Heidi, would you have stayed with Grandfather or gone to live with Clara? We've been ~~arguing~~ discussing this for some time now. Violet is torn, but Lorikeet thinks she'd stay with Grandfather because she'd be more free. Zipporah thinks she'd have gone back to Clara's, because she'd have prettier clothes and a better life. Sora agrees with that idea, but then will point out that in the book Heidi lives with her Grandfather for years before going to Clara's. So it'd be much harder to leave a place for good if you'd been there that long. And I just can't decide! Clara seems like a good friend to have, and those clothes are awfully pretty. But, how do you leave Grandfather? He's the only family that wants you around. That means a lot, doesn't it?

Love,
Lyre Chickadee

P.S. That's a bowl of boiled peanuts we're eating while watching Heidi, in the picture I posted. We thought Tirya might like to try them. She said they were interesting, lol.

Tirya's Here!

2011-05-14T00:45:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone!

Today, Tirya arrived from Ohio. She got to spend the day driving around doing errands and grocery shopping. I'm sure she's real glad she came here! We went out to lunch, then to the grocery store, then to the dollar store then home.

Then we showed her around our house, and our bedroom. Then we hung out, admiring her absolutely adorable bag and all her souvenirs so far. Well, at least she tried getting us interested in her souvenirs. But we were all pretty mesmerized by her backpack. It's crocheted, or maybe knitted, and it's the perfect size! We've all put in our orders to Violet, who is the best knitter/ crocheter of us. Of course, she hasn't a clue how to make the bag. But that's a minor detail, right? We're thinking our signature colors with white trim, and a white star decoration at the closure. Alike, but different. And totally cute! (Five pointed star is our symbol; one point for each of us, and the points can stand alone but come together nicely, like us.)

This is the second time we've hosted a traveler. The last time was Sophie in December... 2009? Waaaaaay too long ago! (We miss you Sophie!) Anyway, their adventures have us feeling a little jealous. We'd really love to travel. But, Mama and Papa don't think it's such a good idea. They say it's too expensive, that they'd miss us too much, blah, blah, blah. It's so unfair!

But we've thought of a way we can still have fun with traveling, but we won't actually leave home. We're going to send our dolls out instead! Doesn't that sound like a bunkumsquint idea?

Love,
Zipporah and Lorikeet

Distracted

2011-04-11T18:56:00.000-05:00

Do you ever have a hard time concentrating on what you should be doing, because you keep thinking about something coming up? That's how it is for us right now. We should be doing our schoolwork, or other things. But we're all thinking about the delicious snack that's waiting for us. Mama ordered boiled peanuts for our family and they arrived today. We're going to have a can tonight, before we go to bed. But that's only if we get all our work done.

It's been slow going. Minutes are crawling by and we're not getting much of anything accomplished. We can just taste the salty peanuty taste of boiled peanuts. Lorikeet and Lyre Chickadee have each tried to sneak a can up for us to eat in our room. But Mama seems to be able to sense that one is missing, and comes after us right away.

Are you anticipating anything?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Lookie!

2011-04-05T22:03:00.000-05:00

If you've been following our Facebook account, then you know we've been spending an enormous amount of time looking for fabric but not finding much we liked.

Well, that's still true. But look what we did find:
http://www.fabric.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductID=55eeb885-b91c-411c-96c9-b4a512a5b818&CategoryID=a2799d0e-1439-40c0-a29d-8886781a2a6d

Yup, that's our quilt fabric in Pink! Fabric.com got it in sometime between when we ordered our fabric and a few days ago when we were looking at their site. So, now we can have the sixth bed match the rest of ours!

Our apologies to Sophie who may visit and have to sleep in a pink bed, which we gather she doesn't like too well.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Been Lazy

2011-04-02T19:38:00.000-05:00

We've been feeling lazy lately. We even completely forgot to have our pictures taken yesterday and the day before. :( We're planning on getting back on track though. And making up for the missed ones. We just need to think of ideas.

What we have been doing is oohing and aahing over Mamă's collection of vintage patterns. She's agreed to make us some, and we've been discussing which we want. Originally she was just going to make us one. But now she says she can make us more, but not all at once.

So, our first pick is this oh-so-cute sailor dress from the 1930s:

The short sleeved version. It's going to be white, with our signature colors for trim.

Then she's going to make us slips like what Molly has, but the bows will be in our signature colors. Then, we want her to make us this dress:

We found seersucker gingham in each of our favorite colors, and are thinking of using that for this dress.

Of course, we'll then be needing the proper undergarments for that dress, which she's found for sale at Kindred Thread and hopes to buy for us. If she can't, she'll make them.

That's all we've settled on so far, but we keep looking. We recently discovered that the 50s had many awesome outfits. We're in love! Violet especially loves the white gloves worn with dresses.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Our Weekend

2011-03-13T22:27:00.000-05:00

Our weekend was pretty good. We went to synagogue on Saturday and helped Papá cook lunch. Then we spent the day reading and relaxing in our new beds.

Then today we played games. Mamá bought us a "Triple Threat" of Nancy Drew computer games, which is what they call three for the price of one. They regularly offer the older games in combination packs, so we've been getting those instead of a newer game. It builds up our collection faster, and seems cheaper since you get more than just one game for the same price. Our new games are called Treasure in the Royal Tower, The Final Scene, and The Secret of the Scarlet Hand. We've played the Scarlet Hand game before, years ago, but not the others. Now we have games #3- 12 and #14- 16. We do have #17, Legend of the Crystal Skull, but it won't work so we want to buy another of it.

Anyway. We didn't spend all day playing computer games. Which by the way, we're still playing #7 Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake.We got stumped on one part a few months ago, and sort of took a longer than expected break. Today we played it for a little bit, enough to *finally* finish taking bird pictures and then get knocked out, tied up and left in a burning building! After that we needed a break to calm ourselves. Nancy Drew might have no problems living through things like that, but we do.

So, we played another game. It's kind of babyish, but it was fun anyway. Remember London Bridge?

Now, we have a couple questions for you. We'd really, really, really appreciate your responses.

1st - If there were real books about us, would you like them to be about our everyday lives (like the Sweet Valley Twins books, if you're familiar) or just mysteries? The everyday lives *might* include a line of mysteries but they wouldn't be in every book.

2nd - We're thinking of growing out our bangs (aka getting rewigged with bangless wigs), what do you think? Our sister Yemimah said bangs were part of our signature look, and that we shouldn't get rid of them. But, we love Sophie's hair and she doesn't have bangs.

Thanks for your help! How was your weekend?

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

New Beds!

2011-03-10T17:40:00.000-06:00

Mama and Papá bought us new beds! They're from St. Louis, Missouri and arrived yesterday.

First, here's photo 13 of the 365 photo challenge:

The beds were supposed to arrive on Tuesday. We waited all day long, but they never showed up. But they did arrived Wednesday!

It was easy deciding who got to sleep where, because three of us wanted top bunks and two wanted bottom bunks. So everyone got to sleep where they wanted. The extra bed will be for when we have friends sleep over. It was also suggested to us that we turn it into a couch like area, for when it isn't being used as a bed. We like that idea!

Mama is going to make us new blankets for our bed. Here we are with the fabrics we chose. Aren't they pretty? We thought we were incredibly lucky to find a print we all liked in each of our favorite colors.

What's new with you?

Love,
Us

We'll Always Have Each Other

2011-03-05T20:10:00.000-06:00

Being quintuplets is a blast, most of the time. The best part is being with your four best friends all the time. But, the worst part is being with your four best friends all the time. Fights happen, and they're usually no small deal.

But, today's post isn't about us fighting. Today, we had a great day together! Yesterday, too. Yesterday we were detectives, and went around spying on people. It's not just a game with us, as you'll hopefully learn someday soon (our first book is almost completed!).

We did a lot of peeking around corners. You always have to be on the look out for danger when you're a detective.

As many of you probably know, we have four older sisters. Raven is our oldest sister, and she goes to college. When she's not at school, she's usually studying or working or hanging with her friends. But last night, she was home for a change. She heard about our 365 Day Photo Challenge and suggested we play the game "Light As A Feather, Stiff As A Board".

It's really cool! To play, you need a group of people. That's one other great thing about being quintuplets - instant group! One person lays down on the floor, then the other people stick one finger under the person laying down. Be sure to spread out, so that you have the whole body covered. Then, everyone except the person laying down starts chanting "Light as a feather, stiff as a board." The person laying down stays quiet and stiff (as a board). The people chanting slowly lift her up together.

Have you ever played this game?

Love,

What We Got

2011-03-03T19:43:00.000-06:00

Nobody's asked about what we did choose to buy yesterday. That's very surprising! Well, we chose the Pretty & Plaid outfit. Yes, even though it had two things we didn't like about it. And even though Mama could have made us the outfit. But, did you see those boots? And we also liked the print a lot, and Mama wasn't sure she'd be able to find something similar.

We talked it over, and decided we'd give this outfit a B rating. We love the style, the boots and the print. The beret is cute, but awkward to wear nicely. The fabric is okay, but we'd have liked something more... flexible? With better drape? Something like that. Shirting fabric, maybe. It wouldn't be too good for a fall outfit like this is supposed to be, though. But it'd make it a dressier outfit. A classier outfit. And, of course, we'd prefer hemmed sleeves and real working buttons.

The style of the dress is great! It reminds us of dresses from the 30s, and the shirt underneath and the boots give it a modern twist. We really like that.

We had fun modeling our new outfit today! None of these pictures are our official 365 Photo Challenge photo for today. That one was of us with some fruit snacks Papá bought. They are of Alvin and the Chipmunks (Lorikeet's favorite movie) and they come in red, yellow, purple, green, orange and blue! We LOVE things that come in our favorite colors.

Our new boots are fabulous! We highly recommend them. They're kind of soft, almost like suede. They aren't suede, or even fake suede. They aren't quite that texture. But they're softer than other boots we've touched, and were pleasantly surprised. They also fit perfectly!

This outfit seems perfect for spring to us. Doesn't it just look like the perfect thing to wear while jumping in puddles? Mama says that all we need now are umbrellas in our colors!

Love,
Us

Our Greatest Wish

2011-03-02T20:23:00.001-06:00

Do you know what our greatest wish is? Can you guess?

It's not for new clothes, better looks or more money. It's not even something for ourselves. Our greatest wish is for Sophie and her twin sister Juliette to be reunited. We think it's just awful that they have to be so far apart!

So today, when we were out shopping with Mama, she asked us if we'd like something.

"Da," we said. That's Romanian for "yes".

"What would you like?" she asked us.

We looked at the Pretty & Plaid outfit. It was finally back in stock. We've been wanting it for months, but everytime we went they were out of it. Those boots would be great with our Kick Pleat dresses, don't you think?

But, Mama could make us an outfit like it. Maybe even better than it. You see the sleeves? They're not hemmed. That's horrible. And the buttons down the front are fake. It velcros instead. We didn't like that either. Mama could make this, with real working buttons and hemmed sleeves.

Of course, she couldn't make the boots. But, did we really want to spend so much money for an outfit we aren't totally happy with, just to get awesome boots?

Then we looked at the Hunny Puppy PJs. Imagine, pajamas with our puppy's picture on them! We've wanted these for ages! They might not be around for too much longer, since they've been out for quite a while.

Mama couldn't really make these herself. She can't make her own fabric designs, and these have the cutest puppy print! But, we did just get pajamas for our birthday. Do we really need more? Not to mention, Mama has bought fabric for summer pajamas or nightgowns for us. So, these aren't a real necessity.

But, they are awfully cute! However, they're not in quint colors. We looked very carefully and realized they're missing purple in the leggings. That makes them not quite as desirable to us. We love it when things come in all our favorite colors!

By the time we'd looked around some, we were getting pretty hungry. So we hit the food court. Zipporah and Violet shared a huge plate of Chinese food. Sora, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Mama had Arby's sandwiches.

There was so much food, we couldn't eat it all. We tried. Well, Lyre Chickadee probably could have eaten all of it. But Mama didn't give her the chance. Once the rest of us had finished, and Lyre Chickadee had eaten a decent amount (that girl could eat forever!), we threw our stuff away and went back to browsing around.

We wandered into a shop that was playing Elvis music and had Elvis memorabilia on display. Further into the shop, there was Betty Boop, Marilyn Monroe and I Love Lucy items. But what caught our attention was the corner dedicated to The Wizard of Oz!

There were clocks, figurines, snowglobes, magnets, stationary, lunch boxes, dolls (with their eyes crossed out, so we didn't care for them) and probably lots more. It was just a small corner, but it was packed with stuff. It was wonderful!
"So girls," asked Mama, after we'd walked around the whole mall. "What was it you were wanting?"

As much as we loved the clothes we saw, and the Wizard of Oz items, there was only one thing on our mind. You see, we really like Sophie. Zipporah met her first when she went visiting, and had lots of fun with her. So much, that she begged to have Sophie come visit us, which she did. Was that a year ago?

Anyway. When we learned that Sophie was a twin, we were ecstatic. One Sophie is great, so we could only imagine how amazing two Sophies would be! Not that Juliette (Sophie's twin) would be the same, of course. We knew better than to think that. But from what Sophie told us about Juliette, we really thought she was just as cool as Sophie, just in her own way.

And then she informed us that she hadn't seen her sister since coming to America eons ago! We nearly fainted. How can twins bare being so far apart? We've only been separated once, when Zipporah was in the hospital. It felt like we were missing a piece of ourselves.

And then, last night, Sophie blogged about missing her twin. Well, sort of. But we could read between the lines and tell that's really what she was saying. So, we talked it over and thought that maybe we could get Juliette to come to America, too. The amount of money Mama and Papá would spend on clothes for us, could pay for her ticket. We'd even got Yemimah to give us a set of her old ballet clothes, because Juliette likes ballet.

We had it all planned out. First, Juliette would fly to Independence and spend some time with us. We'd be real careful to only speak French with her, because Sophie said once that Juliette prefers French. Then we'd take her on a tour of the sites here, to get her acquainted with some American things (which we were figuring she wouldn't like too well, from what we'd heard about French people). But, we wanted to welcome her before she got back on the plane and flew to where ever Fair Hollow is. The idea was that Juliette would arrive ahead of Sophie, and be a total surprise. Pretty great idea, huh?

There was just one thing we hadn't thought of - Mama didn't agree. She was afraid that Laura, the big wig at Fair Hollow, might not like being surprised with a new student. And she didn't want to spend all that money unless we could guarantee her that Juliette would be happily welcomed there. We begged and pleaded and cried, but it didn't do any good. Mama had made up her mind.

She did let us get something else, but it just isn't as exciting as reuniting Sophie and Juliette would have been.

Love,
Us

Going Shopping Tomorrow!

2011-03-01T21:38:00.000-06:00

Mama's taking us to the mall tomorrow! She feels like getting out, looking around the stores and having lunch. Doesn't that sound fun?

Sorry about not posting our picture yesterday. We did have one taken! We were just having internet problems last night. Here are yesterday's and today's pictures:

We were tossing Pooh in the air, like they do at the end of the Pooh movie.

We played hide and seek today. Violet counted to ten, while the rest of us ran to find hiding spots. That's Zipporah in the middle, Lorikeet on her right and Lyre Chickadee up near Violet. Sora is ducking into a closet up front. We had lots of fun!

How was your day?

Love,
Us

A Visit To The Hundred Acre Woods

2011-02-27T19:57:00.000-06:00

Violet is a HUGE Winnie The Pooh fan. So today, we had a Winnie The Pooh Day! We hung out with all her stuffed Poohs and Friends. We watched the Pooh movie and read from Winnie The Pooh book. For lunch, we had food that we dipped in Hunny, in honor of Pooh.

Today was the day we learned who won AGPT's Academy Awards. Sadly, it wasn't us. :( What is harder than not winning, is feeling like maybe people either didn't like your entry or just don't like you, personally. It's really hard not to take it personally. We were really proud of that photo. And we just really want to win something, sometime. One of our friends told us these (this and Little Miss Playthings) were just popularity contests, really. That didn't make us feel any better. We'd like to be popular. We'd like to be liked. (And we'd really like a cool special title under our username, like the winners get!)

So, we're a bit sad. But we'll cheer up soon. We're never ones to stay down in the dumps very long.

Congratulations to all the winners, especially the girls at Fair Hollow who won for Best Photostory!

Love,
Us

Making Jewelry And Tunes!

2011-02-26T20:36:00.000-06:00

Well, okay, maybe not making tunes. But listening to them, or at least, Lyre Chickadee was today when we got into our sister Raven's stuff. She told us we could as she was leaving for work. We just had to not mess anything up, returning things to where we found them.

Sora and Violet tried on a necklace Raven had been working on. She uses a caboodle thing to store her jewelry making supplies in, and that has a mirror on it. Lyre Chickadee relaxed to some music on Raven's MP3 player and Lorikeet and Zipporah worked together on a new creation.

We were quite busy today, but we were good and cleaned up after ourselves.

How was your day?

Love,
Us

Game On!

2011-02-25T20:25:00.000-06:00

We had a Toss Across tournament today. Lorikeet was the ultimate winner, much to Zipporah's disappointment. Everyone kept beating her, and she was so upset. :( But it was kind of funny.

Left to right: Sora, Zipporah, Lorikeet, Violet and Lyre Chickadee.

What did you do today?

Love,
Us

Made A New Friend!

2011-02-24T14:20:00.003-06:00

There was still some snow on our balcony today, so after lessons we went outside and made a snowman. The snow wasn't paking together very well, so we could only manage a small snowman. But, isn't he cute? What should his name be?

Lyre Chickadee is on the left. Next to her is Lorikeet. In the middle is Zipporah. On the other side of her is Sora, and next to her is Violet.

Hunny and Brownie enjoyed playing in the snow too! Hunny liked eating it, and Brownie frolicked in it.

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Enjoying A Good Book

2011-02-23T22:56:00.000-06:00

We've decided to challenge ourselves to have a picture a day taken of us. Some of our friends are doing this with their dolls, but we thought we'd do a slightly different challenge. Instead of us taking the photo everyday of one of our dolls, we're going to have someone take a photo of us every day. And it's a rule that the pictures have to be different.

So, here's our first:

Day 1 of 365: We're reading The Secret of Red Gate Farm together. It's a spooky Nancy Drew book about a nature cult that dresses up like ghosts and dances around at night. If you haven't read it yet, do!

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Latest Obsessions

2011-02-21T19:22:00.006-06:00

Would you believe us if we said that despite AG releasing new items only a few days ago, we're not obsessing over them?

Well, we're not. We're too busy obsessing over these two cuties:

Hunny and Brownie are the cutest things ever! And they're getting along very well together. They seem to like to play with each other. And they take naps together in the living room. Brownie is very smart. He's already learned the word "Treat". We are trying to teach him to sit and stay. He doesn't seem to get it yet. But he's new, so it'll probably take a while.

The other thing we are obsessing over are American Girl clothes, but they aren't new releases. We're in love with the old clothes they used to sell back in the 90s. They had really colorful outfits, in several coordinating colors. Their whole collections went together beautifully. We'd love to have some of those old clothes! Right now, our favorite is the fruit dress:

It's really Violet's style, and at first it was just her favorite. But, then, we all started thinking more about it, lol. We do wish it had been available in all our colors, not just purple. Or, better yet, that we could find similar fabric in all our colors and make our own. Or, rather, have Mama make us something.

Then again, maybe it's the style we all like? Because we've been drooling over this set, too:

If only it had come in purple, too. And if only we could find one of each color in our size! We also really like the culottes. Such cool and comfy, and pretty colors. Lorikeet and Lyre Chickadee actually refer the culottes to the slipdresses, just because they aren't so fancy.

Jillian, the lady who writes down our mystery cases for us (Zipporah would, but is more interested in writing other things), used to dream about having this collection of clothes:

She particularly wanted the velour jumper and one of the satin shirts, she could never decide which one. And she wanted the sparkly logo pin, too. We really like this collection, too. We've asked Mama to make us the jumper or overalls, and bright satin shirts in our own color. She says she'll get to it by the next blue moon. She's kind of swamped with customers' orders right now, so she can't make anything for us. But, she thinks we could handle making our own shirt jacket things.

What are you obsessing over?

Love,

Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet and Sora.

Our Thoughts On The AG New Releases

2011-02-19T17:24:00.004-06:00

¡Nos encantan las nuevas versiones, especialmente ropa nueva! Esto es lo que pensamos de algunos de los nuevos elementos.

Ne place versiuni noi, mai ales haine noi! Aici este ceea ce credem a unor elemente noi.

We love new releases, especially new clothes! Here is what we think of some of the new items.

Lyre Chickadee loves the style of this outfit. She's a fan of sweats. Violet likes the colors. We all like the jacket best. Sora dislikes the outfit, but not the jacket, because it's not "appropriate attire". She's not a fan of sweats. We'll probably only get the jacket, since it is sold separately.

This is Sora's favorite of the new releases. She just loves tennis outfits in general, but epecially when they're yellow. She thinks we should all take up tennis this summer, so we can wear this outfit. Zipporahdislikes it because it has gray. She says gray is too depressing. Gray is our sister Wren's favorite color.

Sora and Violet really like this dress as it is. Zipporah likes the style, but not the fabric. Lorikeet and Lyre Chickadee don't like it because it's too dressy. We'll probably not get it, but one of our friends plans on getting it.

Most of us love this outfit. It's stylish enough to please Sora (who likes to look nice) and Zipporah (who likes to wear fashionable things). But it's not too dressy or difficult to move in, which pleases Lorikeet (who likes to get dirty) and Lyre Chickadee (who hates being uncomfortable). Violet, actually, isn't too fond of it because it isn't pretty. But she loves the hat and shoes. We'll probably be getting this when the weather warms up.

You cannot imagine how happy Sora was to first read that there was going to be white rollerblades, then to actually see them. She LOVES white. It's clean and classy, she says. Violet loves the purple. Zipporah thinks they're the most stylish skates she's seen in our size, and Lorikeet loves them because they're skates. Lyre Chickadee even approves of them.

We had to return our other skates, but we still really want skates. So we'll probably get these.

So, what did you thin of the new releases?

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Okay, We Won't Go/ Meet Brownie!

2011-02-17T18:47:00.003-06:00

Alright, due to popular demand ;) we've reconsidered quitting. And we have something exciting to share with you!

After school, Mama shoos us out of the house for some sun and exercise. We took a walk around the neighborhood, and in front of one of the houses was a sign. It said "Puppies - Free to Good Home".

Lorikeet ran up to the door and rang the doorbell before any of us could stop her. She asked if we could see the puppies. The woman led us inside, and down into the basement. There in the livingroom was a chocolate lab doggie, and several little chocolate lab puppies. They were soooooo cute!

"How old are they?" asked Sora.

"Eight and a half weeks," said the woman. And she handed us each one. They were sooooo warm and soft!

"We've got to have one," said Lyre Chickadee, who is the biggest animal lover of us all.

"Do you think Mama and Papá will let us?" asked Violet, quietly.

"We don't need another dog," said Sora. "We have Hunny."

"But, Sora," said Zipporah, holding her puppy up in Sora's face. "How can you say no to such a cutie?"

The puppy licked Sora, and we giggled.

"All right," said Sora. "Let's ask."

So we ran home.

"Whatever it is," said Mama, as we entered. "The answer is no."

"But we have to!" cried Zipporah. "We'll take good care of it!"

"They're very cute," said Violet.

"What are?" asked Mama.

"Puppies!" we said.

"You have a puppy already," said Mama. "He's very cute, too."

We didn't say anything, but clasped our hands and looked at her pleadingly. It's the Sad Puppy Act, and it always works.

"Girls," began Mama.

"Please," said Zipporah. "Hunny needs a friend."

"I don't know."

We stuck out our bottom lips.

"Oh, all right. But you'll have to be fully responsible for her and Hunny."

So we ran back to the lady, and picked out our puppy. It's a boy and we've named him Brownie.

Here we are playing on the balcony outside our bedroom.

Brownie and Sora rubbing noses.

Us with Brownie

Isn't he adorable? We're so happy to have another puppy! And we're excited that it's actually nice enough to go outside without a winter coat on! Of course, it won't last. It's too early for spring here. Still, it'was nice for today.

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

On Second Thought

2011-02-16T20:35:00.002-06:00

Hi everyone,

We've been doing more thinking, and we've decided we don't want to have a blog anymore. We're sorry to anyone who actually liked our blog, but we just don't feel like we can do a good enough job.

In fact, we're feeling so inadequate that we're not sure we'll remain online at all. We just don't seem to fit in anywhere, and we're tired of being reminded of how different we are from others. How inferior we are. We're not creative. We don't lead interesting lives. There aren't any interesting places to go to show you, besides the fact that technically we live in Independence, MO and Jill doesn't live close, so we can't do anything accurately. There are loads of neat places in Indep. but we can't go and take pictures.

We have little in common with anyone, and it seems to get in the way. We're younger, we're homeschooled so we don't have school to talk about like others do. We like old things and are totally lost whenever someone mentions Hannah Montana or anything else that is current.

It's our own fault we feel this way. We really wanted to feel important and special. NOT because we're quints. But because of who we are (as opposed to what we are). But everything seems to be a competition with us. We're so tired of feeling like everyone is better than us. So, we're just going to go offline. Then we can't see that people are better than us, so it won't matter.

Love,
Us

Changes Are Coming

2011-02-16T19:41:00.002-06:00

If you've been a follower of this blog since the beginning, you probably remember that it started with Zipporah. Now it's shared by the five of us. It's always been written about us living with Jillian, our human.

Well, know we're going to change that. See, our storyline has changed. We used to be dolls come to life, or friends of Jillian's. But now we're part of a family, and have separate friends and live in a whole different place. That's what Jillian's writing about us. It's weird to keep up two different storylines.

The other reason we want to change direction is because of the AGPT Academy Awards. We took a good look at all the blogs that were nominated for Best Writing. One is historical, but the rest are about regular girls' lives. We want to be more like them. If you know Zipporah, you can probably imagine how hurt she was to not be nominated for "Best Writing". Writing's her life. But we don't feel we deserved to be nominated because our blog hasn't been well written and hasn't been too interesting. That's really what we want to change.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with us and kept reading our blog. We honestly don't know why you keep coming back. But it's really nice to see you.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

We've Been Nominated!

2011-02-15T18:44:00.002-06:00

On American Girl Playthings messageboard, they have an annual Academy Awards. It's for different things like Best Writing, Best Actor/ Actress, Best Set Design, Best Signature. Well, we were nominated for Best Signature!

We are absolutely thrilled, and would really appreciate your vote!

http://agplaythings.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=2010

Look for AG*Zipporah, and thank you!

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee, and Zipporah

¡Feliz Dia de San Valentin! Fericit Valentines Zi!

2011-02-14T18:03:00.003-06:00

That's Spanish and Romanian for "Happy Valentine's Day!"

We had a great Valentine's Day! It was great because we got new clothes!

Jillie made them for us. :) She got the plaid fabric from Hancock Fabrics with some money her dad gave her for Christmas. And she bought turtlenecks from the girls' department to use for the fabric for our turtlenecks. She designed the patterns herself. You can even see that the pair of pants Zipporah is wearing are tighter fitting than the rest. That's because she initially made the pattern too tight. It's supposed to be a 40s style pants, and they had looser pants back then. But Jillie thinks this is too loose. It's also suppose to be pleated in front, but she forgot to do that.

Jillian's dad treated us to Chinese Buffet for lunch today. Yum! We had chicken wings and vegetable lo mein and sweet and sour chicken. There was a new dish, too, and we tried it. It was called Japenese Pepper Chicken. It had slices of green peppers and fat chunks of onion in it. But the chicken itself was mostly picked over, so we each only got a little taste. It was very good, though! Despite it's name, it wasn't too peppery.

Now we're making dinner for Jillie. That's our present to her. :) We're making this chicken and veggies dish with fresh baked, home made biscuits on top. It looks really good!

How was your Valentine's Day?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Announcing: Quint Views!

2011-02-13T20:45:00.002-06:00

We did it! We made our very own show. It's a review show called Quint Views. We reviewed a product we recently received from Pippaloo on Etsy. Please check it out:

We had lots of fun. Because Jillie doesn't have a video camera, we had to use her photo camera. That doesn't record sound, so we then had to do a voice over. That was very fun! We kept messing our lines up. Some of the messups were very funny. Maybe next time we should include some bloopers.

Love,
Lyre Chickadee

Meet Some Of Our Friends

2011-02-10T20:17:00.004-06:00

Today we thought we'd introduce you to some of our friends. This group of our friends aren't with us yet, but will be one day soon, hopefully!

First is Sadie Maddox. We met her at a local spelling bee, and then saw her again at a science fair. She and Sora have a lot in common, mainly they're ridiculously smart.

Sadie loves math, can you believe it? She makes up her own math homework to do. For fun. I am not kidding. She and Sora talk in some weird foreign language when they're together, only occasionally can I make out something in English.

Her favorite color is baby blue and she likes listening to Mozart. She plays the flute, and we've been to a few of her concerts. She's very good!

In her her free time, when she's not doing math exercises for the fun of it, she likes to do science experiments, collect specimens for her various plant and bug collections and play with her new baby sister.

The best thing about Sadie is that she doesn't just know how to study. She has a great sense of humor, too. Ask her for some pie, and she'll give you a slip of paper with 3.14159265.

Lisa Marshall is horse crazy. She spends all her time at the stables. Sora takes lessons there, they're in the same class. But Lisa is a more experienced rider. She recently placed first in a competition!

For her tenth birthday, Lisa got her very own horse. His name is Pal, and he's a Palomino. He's super gentle and loving. They make a great team!

Unlike us, Lisa goes to regular school. Her favorite class is art, where she paints pictures of horses. In English, she writes stories about horses. And every single book report she's ever done has been of books with horses.

Her favorite books to read are The Saddle Club books. But she also has quite a collection of non-fiction books about horses. Lorikeet painted a mural of horses by a pond on Lisa's bedroom wall. Don't worry, she had permission from Lisa's parents.

The best thing about Lisa is that she's as devouted to her friends as she is to horses.

We'll do some more later. Not feeling too well right now.

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee, Zipporah

Change of Plans

2011-02-08T21:56:00.004-06:00

There have been a couple changes in our plans. One was necessary, the other was by choice. The first we're heartbroken over (if you ask Zipporah). Remember those great bunkbeds? Well, they're not gonna happen. The seller cancelled the sale, saying he hadn't looked at that site in 3 years and had thought about taking it down. Later he told Jill he could make her the beds, but it would cost her a whole lot more. >:( As much as we love those beds, we think very lowly of Mr. Donnie Deaette of Vermont and don't wish to give him any business. He should be true to his word and honor the sale because it wasn't Jill's fault he neglected to remove the website. Hmph!

By the way, he said he was going to shut the website down but as of today it is still up. So BEWARE! Do not buy from http://www.donniescustomwoodworking.com/home! So far he hasn't given our money back, either. >:( >:( >:( >:( >:( (Update 2/9/11: Money has been refunded.)

The other bad news is that we won't be making a music video after all. We just decided it wasn't something we wanted to do right now. What we do want to do is make a show for you all. We thought maybe a review show? Like, book reviews? But, I kind of think that'd be boring. So Zipporah thought maybe a mystery series. That sounds more interesting, but also more difficult.

What do you think? Do you have any show ideas for us?

Love,
Lorikeet

Busy Postman

2011-02-07T18:06:00.006-06:00

The mailman's been busy today. When Jillie went down for the mail, she returned with an armful of stuff. She'd ordered a few things recently, so some of them had arrived. But one box was her Valentine's Swap Gift! We were super excited to see that, because usually we get stuff in the swap. Last year we got fleece Winnie thePooh blankets in the Valentine's Swap. And in the Halloween Swap, we got Dorothy dresses in our signature colors.

This time we'd asked, or rather, strongly suggested that 40s style blouses would be very nice. And we'd included this picture:

With a note that we loved the top blouse. Isn't it adorable? We just love the scalloped trim!

So, we eagerly opened the box for Jillie and - There was only one dress.

"Jillie, they forgot the rest of our dresses," I said.

"No, that must be for Molly," said Jillie. "Isn't it nice that Melangell made something for Molly, who is new and only has one outfit?"

My sisters were going through the rest of the box. Lyre Chickadee pulled out a red box with pretty paper doilie, and opened it up.

"Cookies!" she cried, happily.

"They're for Molly," said Sora.

"No, they're six of them. One for each of us and one for Molly."

"Oo look!" gasped Violet. "Bracelets!"

There were six bracelets. A yellow, an orange, a blue, a green, a purple and a red. We gave the red to Molly and kept our signature color bracelet. Aren't they pretty? I love how there are variations in color and type of bead.

Molly tried on her new dress immediately. We can't post a picture of that, because it isn't time for swap reveals yet, but trust me. She's adorable in it! Thank you, Melangell!

The next package we opened we had to be very careful with. It contained an article about the Dionne quintuplets at 12. Jillie had paid $10 for it, after watching another one for several months that was $15.

She's a little disappointed with it though. It's in perfect condition, and the seller was nice, no complaints about them or anything they did. It's just that, she wishes she'd known ahead of time that it was a super short article. You see that one column and the bit at the top of column two? That's the extent of the article. It basically just says the girls each liked different things. Jill already knew that. So really, the main thing of interest are the photos. Jillie says they're nice, but so were some other things she passed on getting in order to get this. She kind of wishes she'd gotten something else instead.

But there wasn't time to dwell over it. There was still another package to open. And inside we found:

Cookies! On a fancy silver plater. Jill bought them from Pippaloo on Etsy. Aren't they pretty? There were two things about this set that sold her on it, besides the price. One was that there are five cookies - always the first thing she looks for when it comes to AG things. The second thing was that one cookie with three perfectly lined up hearts. Can you guess who that cookie is for? (Sora, for those of you who don't know us very well. She loves things nice and neat and perfect.)

In the last package was this book:

It came up in an eBay search for Dionne quintuplet stuff. There is a whole chapter about them with several nice photos. But the real selling point for Jill was the price - $0.99! She's read us a few chapters, and so far it is only moderately interesting. We haven't read the Dionne quints chapter yet, though. But like the title says, it's a book about sister sets. It primarily lists off the sets found during research, with some mention of what made them famous but very little mention about their sisterly bonds. Jillie doesn't have a sister (except for Laura, her cyber sister) and was hoping this book would talk about the sister relationship. But it really doesn't. We're kind of bummed. We love being sisters, and were excited to read about other sisters but this book is just not what we were expecting.

So, that's all that was in our mailbox today! Some good stuff, and some not so good stuff. Okay, actually, only the Pippaloo stuff was in our mailbox. The other stuff wouldn't fit so it was being held by the office. But still, it all came today.

Did you get anything in the mail today?

Love,

Zipporah

P.S. Yikes, I just went through our folders of "Clothing Inspirations" (that's where my sisters and I copy images of anything cute we want Jillie to make us) and there are over 150 items!

2011-02-04T22:13:00.003-06:00

That's a picture of the bunkbeds Jillie ordered for us. We're planning on painting them white. Aren't the shelves and drawers great?

She ordered faric for our new bedding, too. We were so excited and eager to pick it out that we couldn't wait for Grammie to take us to Jo-Ann's. So we looked online at Fabric.com. Violet had this idea of white eyelet over our signature colors in pastels for our comforter. So we started looking for eyelet fabric. Then when we saw eyelet fabric in pale yellow, light purple, pale green and soft blue, we though it'd be neat to just have our color eyelet instead. So we did a search for orange eyelet, but that didn't get us anything. So then we tried peach eyelet, and we came across these:

You can't tell in the pictures, but they are eyelet. Those are all the colors they had. We didn't think we'd be able to find the same design in in our five colors, so we hadn't even bothered to look. We'd figured we'd just get the same print or use solid colors. But now we get to have a floral print and eyelet! Bunkumsquint!

Our sheets are going to be solid pastel colors that coordinate with the bedspread fabric.

The one thing we forgot about was Sophie's bed. That's what we've been calling the spare bed. She's our honorary sextuplet, so it's only right that she gets the sixth bed. But, they don't have a sixth color for her bedspread. :( It's too late to choose a different fabric, Jillie's already ordered it.

What do you think we should do?

Love,

Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet and Sora

We're Sorry

2011-01-31T20:22:00.004-06:00

We're really sorry about our last post. We sounded like spoiled brats. That's not at all how we wanted to sound. We do appreciate Jillie and what she does for us, setting aside a lot of money each month to spend on us instead of getting herself new clothes or CDs or something. Sometimes she even eats macaroni and cheese for weeks straight, to save money for stuff for us. And, of course, she's working very hard on our book. She's worked very hard on all of our books. It's not exactly her fault it took us so long to settle on the storyline for us.

We're just feeling a little left out of the fun. But that probably happens to everyone, now and then.

We did start work on our own music video. It's probably not going to be as good as Becky's, but at least it's something to work on. We actually started filming today, but then realized we didn't know what to do for one part. So now we're figuring that out and then we'll be rehearsing before filming again.

We wore our new shoes yesterday! They are perfect, thanks so much TracAn! We wanted to wear our new American Girl hoodies that we got recently, for our birthday or Hanukkah, we can't remember which. They've been hanging in our closet for a while, and we'd kind of gotten so used to them we thought they were old news. But we hadn't actually worn them. The tags were still in place!

So we dressed in jeans and tank tops, and put on our new hoodies. They are SO comfy and pretty! We've been talking about dressing differently (it's always being discussed, lol), and originally Lorikeet had called dibs on this outfit. That was fine with Sora, Violet and even Zipporah, until they tried it on. Now all of us consider it our favorite casual outfit. Our favorite casual dress is the kick pleat dress. Our favorite dressy outfit is the Cozy Plaid outfit. Our favorite fancy dress is the Silver Belle dress. That is, of the clothes we own.

We have exciting news! Jillie's getting us new bunkbeds! Currently we share three beds - 2 Kit's Daybeds folded out, and 1 Curlicue Daybed. But soon, we'll be giving our old beds to Grammie for her girls and we'll be getting three double bunk beds. Sora and Violet are going to sleep on two of the bottom bunks, and the third will be for guests. Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah all wanted top bunks.

Along with our new beds, we'll be getting a redecorated room! We are SO super excited. We want old fashioned wallpaper on our walls, like maybe this one from the 1940s:

Oops, that's sideways. But we think it's pretty, floral and lace stripes. We originally liked a different one, but then saw that it was meant for bathrooms. This one's for bedrooms.

But we might not have wallpaper. Jillie says that if we do, then we should probably have solid color bedding because otherwise it will clash or look too busy. We'd really like printed bedding. We saw a fabric last year that we wanted for bedding. It looked like that Shabby Chic stuff. Grammie loves Shabby Chic.

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Feeling Blue

2011-01-30T03:04:00.002-06:00

We hate to say it, but we're feeling very down right now. We spent some time watching videos made my Laura and Unodosginger's girls. Then we happened across Piper's blog. All their videos and photos are so good! Most of our stuff is boring or ugly. They have loads of fans. We only have sixteen. We had seventeen a few days ago, but someone must have stopped liking us. :(

There's not really anything that we can contribute, that would make us special. Our camera isn't good enough, we don't have the props or patience to make videos (or a good enough video camera). We can't sew or craft well enough to sell what we make. We aren't creative enough to do anything noteworthy. It's been ages since we were in a photo story, because we can't think of any new ones.

We're not even sure why we bother with a blog. We never post anything interesting. Nothing interesting ever happens here. Our life has become all about clothes. All we ever think about is when we'll have something new to wear. Or we spend time looking at what's out there and making plans to get it in our sizes or colors. We don't really enjoy what we have. We're so focused on wanting something new. We even have stuff in our closet we've never worn, but it seems old and yucky already. Boring.

Our life is just so boring. :( :( :( :( :(

And it's so hard being a quintuplet! Others have lots of clothes and toys and props, and get lots of attention from their human. We have to share Jillie. She has a limit of about $150 a month to spend on doll related things. That's usually just one outfit for each of us. Or one accessory set. We live in an apartment, so it's not like we have a yard we can hang out in. Or any flowers we can pose by for pictures. Our friends can't ever come over, because Jillie sold most of their clothes to help pay for stuff for us. Not to mention, she's sold several of our friends.

Sure, we love having each other. But sometimes life feels so unfair. Why can't we live with someone who has lots of fun ideas? And a great camera? And more than just a monthly income?

Love,
Us

Yo Ho, Glory Be, Give Us A Life of Piracy!

2011-01-29T22:40:00.002-06:00

Okay, so we've said before that we aren't too in to pirates. But, then we saw this song by two of our favorite people. They make some excellent points. So now we're thinking being a pirate might not be so bad after all.

We love "This is absurd!" "Lose the bird!", don't you?

Love,
Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet and Sora

We're So Jealous!

2011-01-24T04:17:00.002-06:00

Check out this bunkumsquint video starring Rebecca (and we saw you Isabel!):

We just LOVE it! But now we're upset and jealous. We never get to do anything fun like that! Zipporah would have loved to play that role. She's been going around winking at everyone now, lol! Then she runs and flings herself on her bed. Drama queen!

But seriously, we want to make our own music video. Immediately we thought of "It Happens" by Sugarland. But, some of it would be difficult to act out. That's about all we know for music other people would be interested in. Otherwise, we could do "I Love To Walk In The Rain". That's a Shirley Temple song. Except, we don't have rain gear.

If we had lots of diamond jewelry, we could do "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend". That's a Marilyn Monroe song. We also have music from Dolly Parton, Barry Manilow, Crystal Gale and Judy Garland. Any of them interest you? We didn't think so.

Sigh. It's not fair! If we went to Fair Hollow School for Girls we'd be able to have lots of fun. Instead we're stuck here, doing nothing.

Oh, Sophie? Do you know where we could find five enrollment forms for your school? They do have fifth grade, right?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

2011-01-22T18:47:00.002-06:00

Happy Belated Birthday to Us, Happy Belated Birthday to Us,

Happy Belated Birthday to U-us,

Happy Belated Birthday to Us!

Jillie surprised us with new high tops! Aren't they lovely? Can you guess which are whose? LOL

The only problem is that we aren't allowed to wear them if we're wearing our pajamas. We LOVE our pajamas! Jillie's trying to get us to wear something else, but these pjs are SO comfy. She wears her pjs all day long, why can't we? It's not our fault we don't have as many to choose from as she does! Maybe if she bought us more pjs, we'd change our clothes. Buying us new shoes just isn't going to do it. We don't mind going barefoot!

What have you been up to lately?

Love,
Zipporah, Violet, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet and Sora

Yikes! Where'd The Time Go?

2011-01-19T00:33:00.003-06:00

We just realized we haven't written an entry ALL YEAR!!!!! We've just been so busy, and there hasn't really been much to write about.

Let's see, there was our birthday. Jillie spent all day making our cake. We only had one, but it was a big one. Five layers! Each layer was a different color and flavor, and then she covered it in blue frosting and dolloped white frosting on top. It was a sky cake, and the inside a rainbow!

We gathered round the cake, while Jillie and Grammie sang "Happy Birthday". Then we made wishes and blew out our candles.

The next day, we went to the American Girl store to see Kanani and pick out our presents. We had seen pictures of a new black souvenir t-shirt, and planned on getting that for our presents. But when we looked for it, we couldn't find it! So, we looked at everything they had. They were out of Pretty & Plaid outfits. They no longer had the Wilderness Outfit. And we didn't see, or think about the Sugar outfit. So, we decided to get the Snow Flurries set.

We loved how it looked, and really wanted the leggings to wear with our new kick pleat dresses. But, we didn't like the velcro closure. And Jillie felt a little sick about spending so much money on an item she was less than thrilled with, so we took it back. But, before all that, when we were in line to pay for the outfits on the first, we walked in front of a souvenir stand on the main level. And wouldn't ya know? They had about ten of the black souvenir t-shirt. So Jillie scooped up five.

So, that's what ended up being our birthday present. And we love them! See that ruffle by the sleeve? One of our wishlist items for Jillie to make us were shirts with ruffles on top of the sleeve. So we were THRILLED when we saw this cute shirt! Black isn't our favorite color to wear, but we had to have the shirt. (That's Lyre Chickadee modeling.)

We're still heartbroken over not keeping the Snow Flurries outfit. We really liked the looks of it. And we're also bummed about missing out on the Wilderness Outfit. It's been sold out online, and not pictured in the catalogue for ages but the MOA store still had them up through Jillie's December trip there. She'd FINALLY decided we could have them, (she didn't like them initially, but they grew on her) and they don't have them anymore. Some luck, huh?

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

P.S. Jillie reached a milestone in writing the book about us she plans on trying to get published. She's written a touch over 20,000 words. Only about 13,000 left to write! The most recent scene involved us hiding in a closet.

Our Christmas

2010-12-30T19:51:00.003-06:00

We had a great Christmas!
We all hung our stockings on the bookcases.

And the next morning we woke up and found lots of goodies in them! New toothbrushes, candy canes, stickers and sunglasses!

It's tradition to get together with Grammie's side of the family, and this year we gathered at Great Grandma Joe's apartment. We had breakfast there, because that's part of the tradition. It's always homemade bacon gravy on biscuits, eggs, hashbrowns and fruit. Yum!

Then we got to open presents! Everyone got lots of presents, except for us. But Jillie and Grammie saw that we each got something to unwrap - new pajamas and a new sundress!

Aren't our pajamas adorable? They're so comfy, too!

How was your Christmas?

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee, Zipporah

Kick Pleat Dresses

2010-12-21T22:31:00.004-06:00

Jillie shared this on AG Fans, but we forgot to share it on here. Here we are in our new kick pleat dresses.

Somehow Lyre Chickadee's got a little shorter than the rest of ours, but that's okay. Aren't the colors pretty?

We love our dresses. Gracias, Jillie!

In other news, did everyone get a chance to see the sneak peeks of the new AG stuff? We're in love with Kanani's chair, Molly's polka dot dress and the slipper boot things that come with the new Valentine PJs. More than we love clothes, we love shoes. Particularly boots!

Love,

Zipporah, Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee

Sora's New Dress

2010-12-13T20:06:00.002-06:00

Jillian has already started using her new sewing machine! She sewed something for Sophie, and she sewed something for Grammie's girls. Today she sewed something for one of us (finally!)

We were each going to get something different. That was her intention, anyway, but we all fell in love with the same dress and just had to have it! Actually, our inspiration was a long t-shirt by our favorite clothing company (for regular people) but Jillian made it into a dress.

Isn't it cute? Sora got hers first 'cause Jillie's going in birth order. Her goal is to make one a day. So hopefully by the end of the week we will all have one!
It's called a Kick Pleat Dress, because it has this cute kick pleat in the center. Jillie figured out how to make the pleat all on her own! She even figured out how to finish the back of it so that the front looked the way she wanted it. There's a flap in the back, and if it is just sewn to the side then the pleat is lopsided. It has to be evenly spaced to lay right.

The inspiration t-shirt had long sleeves, but Jillie (and us five) liked gathered sleeves better. We're a little obsessed with gathered sleeves. :) All right, a lot obsessed.

What do you think?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Jillie's Hanukkah Presents

2010-12-10T16:59:00.004-06:00

A bit late, but that's better than no gifts at all, right?
Our big gift to Jillie arrived today! We had a difficult time carrying it inside. Good thing we didn't have to worry about hiding it!

We gathered around while Jillian pondered what could be inside.

Then we whipped out a couple other surprises, to distract her. They were Dionne quintuplet collectibles. We got them off of eBay. We liked the top picture a lot, and the second picture we had never seen before. So we're hoping it's kind of rare.

And this also arrived today. It's one of Jillie's favorite advertisements featuring the Dionne quintuplets. When we saw it for sale on eBay, we just had to have it!

Back to the big box. It came by FedEx! Could that mean it's from American Girl?

Nope! It's a sewing machine from JoAnns.com! A Brother XL- 2610. We picked it out ourselves. It received a lot of good reviews online, and it was on sale. We saved $50! (Which we then spent on the Dionne stuff and several Liberty Jane patterns, lol!)

"Now you can sew this," said Zipporah.

We all had projects waiting for her to sew. :)

Isn't it the prettiest sewing machine ever? Look at the pink! Jillie says she's already impressed, just from one glimpse of the Owner's Manual. It's twice as big and several times thicker than the manual that came with her White. She lost it ages ago, though. This one has whole chapters devoted to things like how to sew buttonholes. The White barely had a few lines for each thing. You were pretty much having to guess how things worked.

We're so glad she likes it!

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Fave Outfit Answers

2010-12-05T01:50:00.002-06:00

First off, Sophie said she was surprised we each had a favorite. Here's the truth - Jill pressed us to pick only one outfit. And it had to be different from everyone else's. We're trying to develop our own individual styles. The idea being that someday, in the future, we'll dress differently from one another. Just because one outfit is our favorite, doesn't mean we don't love the others. It's just what we'd choose if we could. Does that make sense?

Plus, people have been saying they wished we dressed differently so they could tell us apart. Well, then they should be able to know what outfit we'd be most likely to wear, right?

The answers are:

Sora - Military Blues
She likes jackets. Lorikeet says the whole military theme is a good description of Sora. (Sora glared at her.)

Violet - Gelato at San Remo
She likes dresses.

Lorikeet - Summer In Paris
She says it is a fun looking outfit. She likes the drama of the black and white, the fun of the polka dots and checks and the whole style is cute.

Lyre Chickadee - U.K. Holiday
Stylish but comfy = perfection for her

Zipporah - Paris Daydream
It's "writerly", and again the black and white is dramatic and polka dots are fun. She loves the scarf, too.

So, you guys failed the test of our fashion styles. Boo. :( But that's okay. :)

We keep toying with the idea that we'd like to dress differently. But then when one of us finds something she'd like to have, 9 times out of 10 the rest of us want it too! And we all want it right now. Sharing isn't possible.

What do you think? Is dressing differently really worth the trouble? Would you really know our personalities better if we chose different outfits from one another? How do we decide who gets to wear what and when?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Favorite Liberty Jane Outfit?

2010-12-03T00:33:00.002-06:00

Just for fun, we wanted to know if you could guess our favorite Liberty Jane outfits. Here are our five picks, but you have to guess which of us chose which outfit. Okay?

And we'd like to know which outfit is your favorite? It doesn't have to be from these five.

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Penny's Perfect Party

2010-12-02T23:05:00.002-06:00

Be sure to check out the latest (and possibly last) issue of Simply AG magazine, Jillie wrote a story about Penny and us for the issue!

Hope you like it!

Love,
Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet and Sora

Happy Hanukkah!!!!!

2010-12-01T20:11:00.002-06:00

Tonight's the first night of Hanukkah! We're very happy that Jillie was able to get candles and onions for tonight. It's just not the same without our traditions. Jillie's favorite part is watching the candles flicker. They cast a warm, comfy glow about the place. And they are very strong. We were outside, because you're supposed to share the light with the world, and even when it got windy, the candles didn't go out. They just fought and fought. And later, when they did finally go out after the entire candle had burned the smoke went straight up for a ways. Then it swirled and danced. It was so pretty to watch!

We each got a Sparkle Princess Barbie doll from Jillie. And we got a Disney Princess matching game, too. Aren't the princesses beautiful?

Now we're eating latkes with sour cream. Yum!

What did you do today?

Love,

Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet and Sora

Ordered A Present For Jillie!

2010-12-01T13:38:00.002-06:00

We just ordered a Hanukkah present for Jillie! She's only getting one because it was so big and expensive. Unfortunately, we can't tell you what it is because she reads our blog and we want it to be a surprise. But she's gonna love it!

Are you getting anything for your parents/ teachers/ guardians?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

2010-11-30T18:13:00.002-06:00

Writing has become a big stress for Jillie. She wants to please everyone by writing what they want to read. But there's only one of her. She wants to only write one series, and have that be our storyline. It's less confusing that way, don't you think so?

The one closest to her heart was the one that started it all - us coming alive. So, that's what she's sticking with. She's going to submit it to an agent, and see what they say. If one shows an interest, great! But if not, then we'll go with the storyline of us as regular girls solving mysteries, okay?

This makes her very happy. She even felt good enough to do the dishes and clean up our bedroom! That's big for someone struggling with depression. Now she just has to clean up the livingroom, and we'll be able to get the heat fixed!

Jillie's check came yesterday, and Grammie's taking us to cash it tomorrow. So we'll be able to get candles and latke stuff in time for the first night of Hanukkah. Yay!

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

So What'd Ya Think?

2010-11-29T18:47:00.002-06:00

We'd really like to know what everyone thought of the excerpt we posted. Are you all remaining silent because it was awful? It's okay if you don't like it, but please let us know. We need your feedback in order to improve!

Love,
Zipporah, Sora, Violet, Lyre Chickadee and Lorikeet

Excerpt from Who Stole The Ruby Slippers?

2010-11-27T21:10:00.002-06:00

In this excerpt, we're trying to find out where each of our suspects is at the moment. Please forgive the bit that hasn't been written yet, lol. Jill sometimes leaves notes to herself when she doesn't feel like writing a particular thing right then:

“What do we do now?” asked Violet, as we left the conference room.
“Now we track down our suspects,” I told her.
“Are you girls ready to go?” asked Mama, who had been looking in the gift shop again.
“Da,” said Sora, which is Romanian for “yes”.
We headed for the library again. The librarian was kind enough to let us use the computer again.
One by one we looked up our suspects. Frank Diedrich lived in Germany, Zac Harris was from New Hampshire, Gwen Iandanza was from Grand Rapids, Jeremy Wood was from Kentucky, Isabela Sanchez lived in New Mexico, Joshua Hendrix was from Florida and Ian Doyle lived in England.
“Look!” cried Violet, pointing to a link that said “Donall, Sanchez in Feud”. I clicked on it.

Insert article about Donall and Sanchez, former lovers now feuding after Donall goes out with another girl just after winning court case of the ruby slippers. Sanchez’s testimony was what had won the shoes for Donall, it is said.

We managed to find phone numbers for all of them, though some were their work numbers. Then we headed back to the hotel.
“If you girls run up a huge bill calling long distance,” warned Papa. “It’s coming out of your allowances.”
We smiled sweetly, and proceeded to dial the first number. Lyre Chickadee handled the call, since she has this amazing ability to imitate other people. We thought it’d be less suspicious if the voice on our end of the line didn’t sound like a child.
“Guten tag, Diedrich’s,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“Guten tag,” said Lyre Chickadee, in a grown woman’s voice. “I’m looking for Frank Diedrich. I’m writing an article about Hollywood memorabilia collecting, and would like to interview him, please.”
“Frank is not here,” said the person on the other end, in accented English.
“Do you know where I may reach him, please?”
“He is in America. For some Judy Garland Festival. Here’s his cell number-”
We raised our eyebrows at each other. So Mr. Diedrich was in town? Wonderful! Bunkumsquint! That meant we could investigate him.
Lyre Chickadee called for Zac Harris next.
“Hello?” said a man’s voice.
“Is this Zac Harris?” Lyre Chickadee asked, forgetting to disguise her voice.
“Yes?”
Lyre Chickadee stalled, using her eyes to plead for help.
“Harris Demolition Company?”
“Yes, can I help you?”
“How much do you charge for knocking a building down?”
“It depends on the size. What building do you want knocked down?”
“My school.”
“Your school?” Mr. Harris started to laugh. The rest of us were trying not to!
“Yeah, it’s old and ugly. And the teachers are mean. Could you make sure they’re in it when you knock it down?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“How do you knock it down? With a big ball?”
“We can use a big ball, or we can blow it up.”
“Can I swing on the big ball?”
“No, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Oh, then let’s just blow my school up. Will it be a big explosion?”
“It can be, but it’ll cost you more.”
“That’s fine. How soon can you do it?”
But Lyre Chickadee didn’t get a chance to find out. The man was laughing too hard to speak, so she just hung up and we burst into laughter. Mama and Papá laughed so hard they were crying.
“Don’t do that again, girls,” Papá said, through his laughter. “Prank calls aren’t very nice.”

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Our Hanukkah and Birthday Wishlists

2010-11-26T22:38:00.002-06:00

Remember last year when all we wanted was a bathtub? Well, this year we have more requests. The one thing we all wanted was new clothes. Particularly the Cozy Plaid outfit. But Jillie gave that to us early, minus the capelet. We're figuring the capelet is a Hanukkah present. Last year, Jillie took the Holiday Sweater set and split it up so that one day we got the headband, the next day mittens and finally the sweater on the third day. We also got some wonderful gifts from our Clandestine Coconut!

This year, we are asking for:

Sora-
1. New clothes
2. Rebecca
3. Princess stuff

Violet-
1. Peace on Earth
2. Food for All
3. Shelter for Homeless

Lorikeet-
1. Camper
2. Treehouse
3. Rebecca

Lyre Chickadee
1. Camper
2. Treehouse
3. Rebecca

Zipporah
1. Nancy Drew books
2. Rebecca
3. New Clothes

Jillie says not to expect any of it. So we're trying not to. We've kind of been all over the board on what we wanted this year. First we all wanted the Pretty & Plaid outfit, then we went through a phase where we thought we should each get a different outfit, so that was at the top of our lists. Then we thought it'd be good to get some stuff for Hunny.

Hanukkah starts pretty soon, but none of us are really into it yet. We're all a bit down in the dumps. Jillie's stressed out right now, and we're kind of stressing too. It's a money thing, again. We don't have money for Hanukkah candles or ingredients for latkes. And, like we've mentioned, we don't have any heat. The heat isn't a money issue, though. She's paid the bill. It's just not working right. But in order to have anyone come look at it or fix it, we need to clean the aparment because right now you can't get to the vents easily. But because of Jillie's mental stuff, she can't really clean. All she can do is sleep. Grammie's trying to help, but there's only so much she can do. And we're too little to really do anything. So we feel helpless.

As we made up our wishlists, we (except Violet) felt kind of silly asking for more material things. What we really want is Jillie to be feeling better, the apartment to be cleaned up and the heat to be working again.

What's on your wishlists?

Love,
Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet and Sora

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T19:57:00.002-06:00

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We did. Grammie came over on Wednesday, and stayed all day yesterday and today. We did lots of crocheting, and watched a Nancy Drew video and a Hardy Boys video. And we watched Hell's Kitchen, and an Olsen Twin video.

We also tried hard to stay warm. It's still freezing here, and we've figured out why. Our heat isn't working. None comes out of the vents. It'll be a few days before we can have anyone come look at it. So until then, we're just going to be quint icicles.

How was your Thanksgiving? What are you thankful for?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Brr!

2010-11-20T20:35:00.002-06:00

It is freezing here! We're all dressed in sweats, with socks, shoes and mittens on. And we're still freezing. We'll probably put our coats on soon. And we're drinking hot tea. Yummy Spiced Apple Cider tea.

Dinner's been delayed, so we're eating cookies to tide us over. Pumpkin cookies from Halloween.

How's everything where you are?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee, Zipporah

News About Our Books

2010-11-13T19:48:00.002-06:00

Hi Everyone!

Jillian's hard at work on two new books, and has thought up a way to please all our fans. Instead of just writing one series, she's going to write all of them! Then you guys can choose which you want to buy and read.

Also, because we don't think a traditional publisher would be interested in such a scheme she's decided to give up on the idea of pursuing an agent and publisher. Instead, our books will be published through CreateSpace. They'll be available directly from Jillian, and also through Amazon. Barnes and Noble will also be able to order them for you, if you request one of our books through them.

We're also going to be coming out with a calendar and a cookbook. We're very excited about all this and hope you'll all enjoy our hardwork!

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Not Going To Split Rock :(

2010-11-09T23:43:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow, the 10th, is the annual beacon lighting at Split Rock Lighthouse. And it's the year of the 100th anniversary of the lighthouse. So we badly wanted to go up there this year. And we were planning on it.

Then Jillie's dad's car died today. He doesn't think he'll have it fixed in time to head up there tomorrow. It's a few hours drive, so we'd need to leave in the morning. Chances are he won't be able to get out to where his car is (it died on the road, and he had to push it a block to a parking lot) to fix it until after noon tomorrow. :(

On the bright side, Grammie brought over Jillie's Disney movies. So after she does her writing, and we do our schooling, we're going to watch Beauty and the Beast. And then maybe Aladdin. Unfortunately, we can't find The Little Mermaid and don't own Sleeping Beauty.

Love,
Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet, and Sora

Pooh's Facebook Page

2010-11-08T21:21:00.002-06:00

Winnie the Pooh and friends have their own Facebook pages, and lately have been talking with one another on them.

They're so cute! Tigger said that a trailer was coming soon. Pooh asked him what a trailer was. Tigger answered that it was a house on wheels. Pooh asked who would get to live in the house on wheels, and would it have hunny? Eeyore is smart though. He knows what trailer really means. At least, we hope he's right.

Oh, and it looks like the new Pooh movie will be out July 15th, 2011. It'd have been better if it had been sooner. Like, say, April 23rd. But, oh well.

http://www.facebook.com/WinniethePooh

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

For Sophie

2010-11-06T00:52:00.002-05:00

One of our favorite Disney songs.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

2010-11-01T23:44:00.002-05:00

Our favorite WWII song is Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (Of Company B). A few days ago we came across this group of girls tap dancing to it in a county fair competition. They ended up winning first place! We just love this routine, and have been trying to copy it ourselves.

We LOVE tap dancing. Maybe even more than gymnastics! We're asking for tap shoes for Hanukkah. White ones, like what Shirley Temple had. In the mean time, we're practicing by watching how-to videos on Youtube.

Do you like to dance?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Judy Garland

2010-10-27T21:49:00.002-05:00

We have been discussing this whole hero thing. We don't want to make everyone we like/ love our hero, because that wouldn't make it special then. Heros are the tops of our favorites. They're people we like as people, not just in what they do for a living. People we look up to.

So far, only Shirley Temple and Nancy Drew make the cut. But Sophie asked us about Judy Garland. We didn't think she made the cut, though we do love her movies. But, she had a tough life and we didn't want to be like her and have tough lives too. So we said she couldn't be our hero.

But then we were talking with Grammie, and she said we could admire how she kept going. And we do admire her singing and acting talents. So we've been talking about it, and decided she does make the cut. While we don't want to exactly have the life she had, we do admire her in other ways. Besides, she's just too amazing not to be our hero.

Here's one of our favorite songs she sings:

Love,
Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet, and Sora

Ready To Party!

2010-10-25T22:00:00.002-05:00

We're having a NaNoWriMo Eve Party on October 31st! NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It starts November 1st and the challenge is to write a 50, 000 word novel during the month. Not all of us are going to do it - just Zipporah and Jill - but we'll all be partying.

We're going to stay up all night by watching movies and eating lots of candy. Then at midnight Jill and Zippy are going to start writing. They'll race each other to see who can meet the daily goal first. The rest of us will be cheering them on and eating more candy.

What are your plans for October 31st? What's your favorite candy?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet. Lyre Chickadee, and Zipporah

Our Other Hero

2010-10-21T01:37:00.003-05:00

We have two heros (we don't idolize anyone, it's against our religion). I'm sure you can guess who our first hero is as we just did a post about her. And we've only mentioned about a bazillion times that we want the Cozy Plaid because it looks like something Nancy Drew would wear.

So, can you guess who our other hero is? We'll give you some hints.

1 - She is a real person.

2 - Her middle name is Jane.

3 - She's also from the 1930s.

4 - She appeared in musicals.

5 - She has a spot on the Walk of Fame.

Do you know yet?

Here's the answer:

Who are your heros?

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

The Original Nancy Drews!

2010-10-18T20:03:00.006-05:00

We were at the library today, and decided to check out the original editions of the Nancy Drew books. We'd read before that they were different, newer editions had been revised in 1959 to remove racial stereotypes and condense the books. But we'd always assumed that the changes had been minor. Even when we read that some volumes had been substatially changed, we thought it was only a handful. Not worth collecting the whole series of originals just for those few that were significantly different.

Boy were we wrong! The original Nancy Drews are so much more exciting and interesting to read. And we hadn't reached any of the "significant" changes before we had to leave! In the originals, Nancy is sixteen. She's impetuous, and opinionated and not afraid of arguing with people. Sounds like Wren to us! But Nancy is also very kind and considerate. She doesn't gossip. In short - she's more real! There's good and bad to her. In the revised version, she's all good. She's not even shy, which would give her one fault at least.

Lots of descriptive text had been left out too, which really helped make the story more enjoyable. Some of the events had changed. For example, Chapter 1 of the revised The Secret of the Old Clock has Nancy Drew driving down the road in her convertible, thinking how nice it was for her father to give her the car for her birthday. Kind of boring, right? In the original version, she starts out right away with discussing with her father the unfairness of the Tophams getting all that money in a will when they aren't nice people. She's drawn into the mystery right away, and drew us in right along with her.

We highly recommend reading the original versions if you can, they're so much better!

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

P.S. Now we all want Nancy Drew dolls! The original Nancy with curly blonde hair and blue eyes.

Sextuplets

2010-10-17T22:24:00.003-05:00

Just having fun with our friend, Vienna. :)

Love,

The Quints

Which Storyline Should We Have?

2010-10-15T17:57:00.002-05:00

If you've been following us for a while, you know we've gone through several different storylines. Now we're uncertain again, and would appreciate your input. Which storyline idea do you like best?

Dolls Come To Life - Jillian's dreams come true when her favorite dolls suddenly come to life. But caring for five children isn't all she thought it would be. Then the quints are taken away, can she deal with her anxiety disorder to win them back? (Other books in the series would probably have us solving mysteries)

Talented - Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah Valdez have dreamt all their short lives about being stars. Finally they get their chance to tryout for Talented, the top talent search show. Do they have what it takes to be the best?

1814 Girls - No real storyline, but we'd be from 1814/ Regency Era.

Regency House - Modern girls who, with their family, are transported back to 1814 as part of a living history experiment. But then they get stuck there. Can they survive living in the past?

Dream Come True? - Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah Valdez are five talented gymnasts. Now they have the chance to make their dreams come true by testing Elite. But is it really all of their dream? Or does Lyre Chickadee just want to be a normal girl?

Mystery series - A series of books like Nancy Drew, where we're just average girls who love to solve mysteries. The first would be The Ghosts of Atchison, about our traveling to Atchison, Kansas to solve the mystery of our Tia Idoya's haunted house. In the process we also locate some missing kids.

In all the series, we probably would end up solving mysteries at some point. We really love mysteries! Do you think that should be our main focus, then? Or should our focus be something else, and we just solve mysteries on the side?

Thanks so much for your help!

Love,
Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet and Sora

Great Writing Blog

2010-10-14T20:51:00.002-05:00

This blog with tips about improving your writing so that it is more marketable was recently recommended to Jillian, who shared it with me. I really like it! It's easy to understand and actually talks about children's books, which is what I want to write.

http://chriseboch.blogspot.com/

I just thought I'd pass the link along to all of you, incase you're interested in writing better fiction, too!

Love,
Zipporah

Online Again, And We Have News!

2010-10-09T22:44:00.003-05:00

We're back online! Jill discovered she couldn't do without the internet. But she did get a nice amount of writing done, too. 13 whole pages. Which is, like, a fourth of a book.

And then she decides that having us be elite gymnasts and quintuplets felt too "gimick-y". Like there was too much going on. She feels that being quintuplets is a story in itself, and adding the big storyline of trying to become elites, which is a big storyline, is just a bit over the top. Plus, she liked it better when our Mama was "just" a seamstress, not our coach.

So, that brings us to our news. We're switching storylines, again. But we think some of you will be pleased to know that Jill's decided to go back to the mystery series idea. When she was taking a shower on Friday she got a good idea (she gets lots of ideas when she's showering and can't write them down) for the Ghosts of Atchison storyline. So she's writing that, and is about 3 pages into it. Her goal is to have 25 chapters, because she read that Nancy Drew books originally had 25 chapters. That's a bit more than any of the books she's written so far, the most being about 18.

One thing Jill loves about writing is that she can write in things she wishes she could have. For example, we all love the Cozy Plaid outfit but can't afford to get it yet. So she's written it into our story so that at least in the story we can wear what we want.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Going to be Offline

2010-10-04T15:56:00.002-05:00

Heya,

We're going to be offline for a while. Jillie wants to get some writing done, and she does better if she's not constantly checking stuff online. And since she can't seem to keep herself offline, she's not going to buy a card (we have pay as you go internet, kind of like those pay as you go cell phones) until she gets a lot done. Or November, whichever comes first. So we won't have the internet at all.

We'll pop on from time to time when we're at the library or Borders (they have a coffee shop, and free Wi-Fi).

See ya,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee, and Zipporah

Gymnastics Pictures!

2010-09-29T18:40:00.003-05:00

Jillie took pictures of us at afternoon practice today!

Here we are stretching and warming up (yes, we are supposed to tie our hair back. Hehe, oops!)

Here's Lyre Chickadee on the beam, about to do her tumbling series.

And here we are posing on the beam! Of all the leos we own, not one is yellow! So Sora's wearing red with white hearts. It's actually our favorite, because it has the best type of sparkly fabric. We don't have matching leos, except the purple one from AG. But we actually like having different leos.

Love,

The Quints

Updates To Our Website

2010-09-28T21:04:00.002-05:00

Hey Everyone!

If you haven't checked out our website in a while, please do! We have a new layout and our profile pages were completely rewritten. You can also see our routines, and listen to our floor music.

Http://www.valdezquints.com

Some of the pages aren't ready yet, but let us know what you think, please. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. We're trying to make our site the best it can be!

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Regency Quintuplets

2010-09-27T17:57:00.003-05:00

Here, finally, is a picture of us in our Regency dresses.

We didn't have proper Regency period shoes, so we're just barefoot. Aren't the dresses beautiful? They are a creamy white with a white floral print. We chose it because we had read that white on white was popular back then. In the picture, it's Violet, Lyre Chickadee, Zipporah, Sora and Lorikeet. Sora and Lorikeet's ribbons don't show up too well, but they're their favorite colors. Lyre Chickadee's is a bit thicker than the rest of ours, because Jillie accidentally bought the wrong width.

To go with our new dresses, Jillie got us Felicity's Cardinal Cloak. It reminds us of the cloaks worn by Lydia and Kitty in Pride & Prejudice, and we read that red was popular for cloaks back then. So we begged to have them. So much so, that we let Jillie take back some other things she'd bought for us just so we could get them. Now that we aren't going to be Regency girls, we kind of regret doing that. But we do love the cloaks!

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Spoiled Surprise

2010-09-26T20:35:00.002-05:00

Grammie was over today. She worked on beading, making some earrings, while Jillie worked on creating our routines. We were just sitting around, waiting for the camera's batteries to be reloaded so Jillie could take our picture. Our Regency dresses are finally finished and look beautiful!

While she's waiting for Jillie to serve her ice cream, Grammie starts digging through a bag of stuff behind her. She pulls something out.

"Have you opened the princess games yet?" Grammie asks Jillie.

"Shh!" says Jillie.

Then Grammie tries to pretend she didn't say anything. But we know better. We know Jillie's been being sneaky lately. She got something decent sized in the mail the other day from AG, but when we asked her what it was she claimed it was a dress for one of Grammie's girls. But it was too big to have been only one dress.

And she's had whispered conversations with Grammie. Once in a while she looks over her shoulders at us. So we're sure she's talking about us, but we haven't been able to hear what she's saying.

Our hunch, though, is that she's been hiding our Hanukkah and birthday presents. And that she and Grammie whisper about them sometimes.

We think we're going to be getting princess games for one of those occasions. We're hoping for Disney Princess games, but they could also be generic princesses.

Have you found out anything about what you're getting for the holidays, yet?

Love,
Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet, Sora

Our Storyline

2010-09-25T15:46:00.005-05:00

We've got a new storyline, and it's different than what we mentioned the other day. Want to hear it?

We're going to be gymnasts. High level gymnasts. The first book will be about us trying for Junior Elite (the highest level for our age group) but not all of us making it. How will we handle being separated? Will those that don't make it, ever make it?

Our gym's name is Rosette Gymnastics, and we're known as the Rosettes. It's located in Roseville, Minnesota. Minnesota doesn't normally have elite level gymnasts, so we're kind of big news locally. We're also big news in the gymnastics community because we're better than people expect for our age.

Because 'Rose' is in our name, our competition leos are red and white. Here are pictures:

This one is made of red velvet and white mesh. There are rhinestones on the sleeves, and in a design on the chest and back.

This is one of our team workout leos. It is made of white velvest with red mesh. There are rhinestones on the chest and back, in the same design as above.

This is made of white velvet and red mesh, with red velvet trimming the neck, and white velvet cuffs. Rhinestones on the sleeves, and five rhinestone stars on the chest.

This is our other team workout leo. It is made of sparkly red velvet and trimmed with white velvet.

And this is our warmup suit. It is made of smooth, slightly shiny black fabric with a hood and dart inserts in our signature colors. The rhinestones on the sleeve and darts are also in our signature colors. The rest of our gym has red inserts, hoods and rhinestones.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Loving Our New Storyline!

2010-09-23T22:31:00.002-05:00

Jillie just told us her new idea for our storyline and it's ever so clever! I can't tell you what it is, because she wants to test it out before truly deciding on it. But if we go with it, it'll be combining modern day with 1814 and some fantasy elements.

In other news, Jillie is hoping to go to her grandma's tomorrow to finish sewing our dresses. We can't wait to wear them! We also can't wait to get our tea sets. Jillie's thinking she might be able to get them next month. We have a storyline for a photo story all ready, we just need tea sets.

We read some interesting things about keeping clean in 1814. Soap was around, but shampoo wasn't. So hair was washed with soap. That made the hair feel like straw, apparently. We heard that they used vinegar rinse to help the hair, but aren't sure of the time on that. And ladies brushed their hair one hundred times, to distribute natural oils. There weren't any bathrooms back then. Instead, the hip-bath was brought into your room in front of the fire. Servants carried up hot water to pour in the tub. Screens surrounded the bath, to keep drafts out and to allow more privacy. In between baths, you could have a sponge bath with the help of a pitcher and basin on a washstand in your room.

Love,
Zipporah, Lyre Chickadee, Lorikeet, Violet, and Sora

Our House

2010-09-21T00:43:00.005-05:00

Ever wonder what our house looks like? The one we live in with our sisters and Mama and Papa? Well, here you go:

It's a Victorian style home that was specially built for our family just before we were born. A home makeover show organized the whole thing, and then people kept donating things. The house is fully paid for, which is a big relief to Mama and Papa. It was a huge surprise to them too. They were worrying about where they'd put all of us once the five of us came, and then about a month before we arrived - DING DONG! We've got a surprise for you! Mama, of course, wasn't able to help move in but she's sure made it cozy as soon as she could.

Our friends and family were in on the surprise, and they helped pick a design based on our parents love of old fashioned houses. It's a wonderful old-fashioned house. Our favorite part is the turret, which is in our room on the second floor. There's also a verandah, which is probably Mama's favorite part. And there's a servants' staircase! We don't have servants, of course, but it's really neat anyway. It starts in the kitchen and goes up near Wren and Raven's rooms.

We have the largest bedroom, because there are five of us sharing a room. We also get a balcony! When we were younger it was locked, so we weren't able to go out on it without our parents' permission. But now that we're older they trust us with going out when we want. In the summer we like to sleep on the balcony. It's also a nice place to do homework, except during the winter.

It does have some problems. The biggest is the lack of bathrooms. One full bathroom for eleven people - four of whom are teenaged girls!

What does your home look like?

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Why We Won't Be Historicals

2010-09-20T02:06:00.002-05:00

It's now official. We definitely won't be historical dolls. Not far back anyway.

Jillie happened across this tonight while searching for images of identical quintuplets: http://www.triggcunninghamfamily.com/lyonquintuplets.html

It's about the Lyon quintuplets of 1896. We haven't read the whole article, but we're pretty disgusted with how they were treated. The babies died from starvation, and the parents tried to bury them but people were talking about robbing the graves to get the bodies, so the family exhumed the graves. Isn't that awful?

If that's how they'd treat the dead, what would they have done to the babies had they lived? Would they have been able to have a normal life at all? Jillie's afraid they wouldn't have, and that's why she now doesn't want us to be historicals. She wants us to live in a time where we are allowed to be normal children, for the most part, instead of being seen as curiosities.

We are a little bummed, but also thankful. While it is fun to dress up in old fashioned clothes and pretend to be from a different time, we wouldn't have wanted to be treated as nothing but interesting objects. We like being a little famous, but not so much so that we are stalked or lose our privacy or personal space or anything. And as far as we know there is no danger of our being kidnapped.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Winnie The Pooh's Comeback!!!!!

2010-09-19T23:30:00.002-05:00

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jillie was just on Facebook, and happened across the Winnie The Pooh fan page and saw this article linked: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/10/winnie-the-pooh-disney-film

It is from last year, but it's news to us. Disney is producing a new Winnie The Pooh feature film! They're taking five stories from A. A. Milne's books that haven't yet been movie-ized, and are making them into a new movie! YAY!!!!!

We are HUGE Winnie The Pooh fans here. He's been Jillie's best friend since she got him from Santa when she was two years old. That was 23 years ago. She's already planning on taking him to see it in the theater. It's supposed to come out Spring 2011. Wouldn't that be awesome if it came out on her birthday? Aw phooey. April 23rd is a Saturday. Movies aren't released on Saturdays. Oh well, she can at least have a Pooh Party!

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee, Zipporah

Double Act

2010-09-19T22:47:00.002-05:00

Last night we finished listening to Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson. Jillie's read it two times before, but we've never read it. It's so sad, we were all crying at the end.

It's about identical twins named Ruby and Garnet. Ruby is outspoken, energetic and restless. Garnet is shy, and sensitive. They dress alike and do everything together. But it isn't exactly a great partnership, because Ruby is very bossy (worse than Sora!) and Garnet always does what her sister wants, even if she doesn't really want to.

Their mother died before the story begins. At the beginning they are living with their dad and their grandma. Then their dad gets a girlfriend, Rose. Then the twins, Rose and their dad move to a house in the country (in England, the author is English and the whole story is set in England). Their grandma moves into an apartment, for seniors we think.

Ruby doesn't like Rose or their new school. Garnet doesn't think Rose is too bad, but is mean to her because Ruby is mean and she doesn't want to upset Ruby. They both act up in school and at home. They do things in unison, such as standing up at the exact same time to ask to go to the bathroom. It's unnerving to Rose and their teacher.

Then they find out about auditions for the tv series of one of their favorite book series - The Twins At St. Clare's. Ruby is sure they'll get the parts, but Garnet doesn't want to act. Their dad refuses to let them audition, but Ruby won't take no for an answer from either of them. She figures out a way for them to get to London to audition. And she does great, but they don't get the parts.

So then Ruby wants them to attend the boarding school that the movie will be filmed at. Again, Garnet doesn't want to but follows Ruby's lead. Their dad doesn't like the idea, but he lets them apply anyway. After an interview and a test, Garnet is offered a scholarship but Ruby isn't. Ruby is furious and jealous. She breaks up their twinship. She stops dressing like Garnet and changes her hair. When Garnet tries to copy her new hairdo, Ruby cuts all her hair off. Garnet almost does the same thing to her hair, but Ruby threatens to cut off Garnet's head if she does.

That's the part that got us all crying, when Ruby and Garnet are split up and Ruby tries to make believe she's a singleton. And even after Ruby realizes her mistake and makes up with Garnet right before she leaves for boarding school, it's still really sad.

Jillie says it's one of the best books she's ever read, but at the same time one of her least favorites. It's the second book to ever make her cry (Meet Kirsten being the only other one). She doesn't like that Ruby is so mean, and that she barely makes up with Garnet at the end before they're split up again. It seems a bit cut short at the end. Like Ms. Wilson forgot to finish writing the ending. It doesn't quite leave us with the feeling that everything will be okay. Yet, there doesn't appear to be a sequel.

We don't want to have what happened to Ruby and Garnet, happen to us. We don't ever want to feel that way about each other. It's scary to think it could happen. (We're all purposely trying to forget something similar did happen not too long ago.) We love being sisters and quintuplets, and don't ever want that to change.

Love,
Lorikeet

P.S. Did I just do a book report without being assigned one? YUCK!

Favorite Pastime?

2010-09-18T19:28:00.002-05:00

We've discovered a new favorite pastime. Remember how we said we wanted to have our own clothing line someday? Well, we find it so much fun to browse around the web for clothes we like in regular girls' sizes. Sometimes we even look at women's clothing. When we see something we like, we save a picture of it to our "Clothing Inspirations" folder.

Currently we only have 29 images saved. Some are the same thing but in different colors or with different images, so it isn't like we're wanting 29 different things. But still Jillie doesn't think she'll be able to make all those. Her sewing machine is being ornery and she doesn't have the money for material right now. Boo.

It's hard being patient when you're super excited. Every night we've been dreaming about our new clothes, and being models. We can't wait until our dreams come true. But, of course, we have to wait.

Are you waiting for anything?

Love,
Violet

Feeling Left Out

2010-09-16T17:40:00.002-05:00

Do you ever feel left out? We do. It seems like everyone has lots of friends and is doing fun things. Sophie's traveling. She got to be in a video! We're so jealous.

We were watching videos on YouTube last night, and decided to make our own video. It wasn't anything great, just us talking about ourselves, what we were hoping to get for Hanukkah and offering suggestions on how to convince your person/ human/ owner to get you presents.

It wasn't much, but we were excited to finally be on YouTube with our own show. But, when we went to download the clips from our video camera onto our computer we couldn't figure out how to do it. It seems the camera has it's own software, and it makes it's own movies. But we couldn't even get that to work. :( So, there won't be any videos from us. Not those kind anyway.

Do you have any ideas of things we could do? We've been feeling a bit bored lately.

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Sora's Regency Gown

2010-09-15T20:35:00.004-05:00

Jillie managed to finish one of our dresses before her sewing machine before it decided not to work. It's jam happy. If we had some bread and peanut butter, we could have sandwiches!

Being the oldest, I got the first dress. Well, alright. It was just luck. I was the first one Jillie saw when she needed someone to try it on.

Is it not the most gorgeous dress ever? I admit I think it is. We all are surprised with just how fancy it looks, because the fabric seemed so plain.

The dresses for the others are the same, but each will have a different colored ribbon. And we have flowers for our hair, too.

The pattern was a modified version of Josefina's Christmas Dress.

As much as we're enjoying being Regency girls, were not so sure we really belong in this era. We're having trouble getting a feel for the language, and we're dreaming about modern clothes. Don't misunderstand. We are thrilled with Regency fashions. And we appreciate Jillie making us dresses. But, we still want to wear the new releases from AG.

The Cozy Plaid outfit is near perfection (the boots are weird). The Sweet Sugar outfit looks so comfy. We'll definitely miss wearing sweaters come winter. But the Snowflake Ballgown is just amazing. We want it so bad!

And we still like the idea of designing our own modern clothes, and having our own fashion line. It just seems ridiculous for historical girls to spend so much time time traveling to the future. But we really do love 1814. We're excited about working on our samplers (well, maybe not Lyre Chickadee). I'm excited about exploring the culinary traditions. Lorikeet is over the moon about living in a time where artisitic ability is so highly prized. Violet is so agreeable she finds enjoyment whatever time she lives in. Zipporah's a little sad to not have gymnastics, but has contented herself with spending the extra free time looking for a mystery.

So, we're thinking that instead of being from 1814 we will be modern day girls who, along with their family, participate in a living history experiment. Remember the show 1900 House? We're in something like that. For a few months we pretend to be from 1814, to see if we can do it authentically. What do you think?

Love,

Sora

Changing Times

2010-09-10T19:19:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone, guess what?

We got to thinking, and have decided we're really from 1814. Our Papa owns a China trade business. Our Mama is busy trying to get our older sisters all married off, having just finished marrying off our brothers. We're a few years too young to be worried about any of that stuff.

Most of the time we are supposed to be asleep while they're at or are hosting a dance or ball. But sometimes we sneak down and watch. Occasionally we get to attend parties, and then we get to wear really pretty clothes!

We're the first and only set of quintuplets in the world. Mama had an early and long confinement, and we came a couple months early. It was frightfully cold and keeping us warm was one of their biggest concerns. One of the midwives emptied a drawer, stuffed it full of wool and snuggled us inside. We were placed in front of the fire. Blankets were put up against the windows.

If Papa hadn't been as well off as he was, we most likely wouldn't have survived. He was able to afford a doctor, who was better educated than the midwives. He also could afford nurses for us. They fed us round the clock. Each day was trying. No one expected us to live, but they figured they'd care for us properly for as long as we would live.

We're getting new dresses soon. They're matching, because that's very stylish. We were hoping to find cloth in Turkey Red, which also was very popular, but we couldn't find any we liked.

Jillie's excited about this. She loves Pride & Prejudice. Also, she's always felt kind of bad that she wasn't too into the Historical girls even though that's what AG was known for and what had introduced her to the company. Now she can have fun with her own historicals - us! (But if you liked us as moderns, don't worry. We plan on time traveling!)

Love,
Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

High Scorer!

2010-09-05T20:32:00.003-05:00

We really enjoy playing on Innerstar U. We share one screenname, Hope99.

Zipporah's favorite game is Pom Pom Power, or something like that. You have to direct the doll through cheer routines. It gets very challenging! The cheers are so fun. "Look around and what do you find? You can change the world by being kind!" "Be loyal to your team. Reach high, catch a dream!"

Lyre Chickadee's favorite game is Melody Maker. That's where the doll plays an imstrument, and works her way through progressively harder songs.

Our least favorite game is Bright Kites, because it's the most difficult for us. You have to trace lines in the sky with your kite. The kite is very difficult to control! But Violet managed to get the high score of the day!

Cupcake Crazy is Sora's favorite, though it makes us all crave cupcakes! You have to make and decorate different kinds of cupcakes. Lyre Chickadee wants to start a petition for a cupcake tasting game.

They don't yet have any dance or art related games, those would probably be Violet and Lorikeet's favorites.

What kinds of games do you like to play?

Love,

Sora, Violet, Lorikeet, Lyre Chickadee and Zipporah

Designing Our Own Clothes!

2010-09-04T16:06:00.003-05:00

We've recently become more interested in what clothes we wear. And what we would like isn't always available. Mama is a great seamstress, but Jillie is less experienced. Still, she suggested we draw pictures of what we'd like to wear and she'll try to make it. Bunkumsquint!

Mary- Kate Olsen said that the clothes she and her sister Ashley make usually start with the fabric. Once they find fabric they love, that's when they decide what to make. So we decided to try that approach.

We went online to Fabric.com, and looked over their selections. The first thing that excited us was the polka dot fabric. It came in several different colors of backgrounds all with white dots.

"What could we do with that?" asked Sora.

We all thought hard. Suddenly an image popped into my head.

"How about a white tunic top, with polka dot leggings in our signature colors?" I suggested.

"Bunkumsquint!" my sisters said.

Lorikeet got out Jillie's drawing pad and colored pencils, and drew an example of our idea. It looked good, but not complete.

"It needs something," said Violet.

"Yeah, maybe something around the waist?" suggested Lyre Chickadee.

"Or a filmy scarf?" suggested Sora.

"What about a filmy thing around the waist?" suggested Lorikeet.

"Bows seem to be popular, what about a filmy thing in a bow around the waist?" I suggested.

Were not sure what it needs. But we're excited to become fashion designers. We'd love to have our own shop, too! Would you be interested in something we made?

Love,
Zipporah

My Horrible Mistake

2010-09-04T01:04:00.003-05:00

Hi, it's Zipporah again.

I promised I was going to tell you about the horrible thing I did when Jillie and I returned home, so here it is.

Being alone with Jillie for the whole day felt wonderful. We didn't have to wait for Lyre Chickadee to catch up or waste time running after Lorikeet. Or hear either of them whine about being bored. Not once did I hear Sora criticize me for slouching on the bus or drinking my Dr. Pepper too fast. And I didn't have to worry about something upsetting Violet. It was a very free day. I loved it, and I didn't want it to end.

When we got home, it did end. Everything went back to normal. Sora grilled me about how I behaved and criticized me for what I wore (which was TOTALLY unfair - Jillie picked it out!). Lorikeet and Lyre Chickadee were upset that they couldn't go with, because they wanted to ride rides too. Violet was glad she hadn't gone because the rides sounded scary to her.

I started to cry.

"What's wrong, Zippy?" Jillie asked.

"I don't want to be a quint anymore!" I cried.

"What? Why not?"

"I'm tired of always having to wear blue just because people can't tell us apart. I'm tired of always having to share you. I'm just tired of it all. I want to be the favorite! I want to be the only one! I want to wear the latest fashions as soon as they come out. I want to own something by Liberty Jane or some other top designer. I want to snuggle with you like we used to. I just want things to be how they used to be, when it was all about me."

Jillie was crying too by then. But she said okay. And suddenly my sisters were gone. Suddenly she was making plans to box up all her other dolls. Suddenly she let me dig through the huge bin with clothes there are only one set of to find something I really wanted to wear.

It was very quiet. At first it was weird, but I got used to it. I enjoyed having dinner with Jillie, getting to eat what I wanted. We stayed up late and played on Innerstar U. I imitated the cheerleaders on the cheer game. Jillie told me she was going to return what she bought, except for my glasses, and get me the cheerleaning outfit I wanted. It was wonderful!

But that night, when I was alone in my bed, the quietness became eerie. Normally I fall asleep chatting with my sisters or listening to their rhythmic breathing. Not that night. I wanted to discuss the fun cheers on the cheer game, but Jill was sound asleep. My sisters weren't around. There wasn't anyone to be excited with me for the upcoming new releases.

The next day, I wanted to listen to some music. I played our favorite song, "Side by Side", and started to cry. That song was our theme song, pretty much. But with it being just me, I didn't have anyone to be Side by Side with. I mean, yeah, I had Jillie. But she's not the same as a sister.

Suddenly I really missed my sisters. I missed our discussion of what to wear. I missed doing each others' hair. I missed us working together to make Jillie breakfast in bed. I missed having friends to dance to music with. I missed being able to talk with someone about my day. I really missed being a quint.

So I started crying again.

"Now what's wrong?" Jillie asked.

"I miss being a quint!" I cried.

Suddenly, my sister were back. We changed our clothes so we were matching again. Jillie still returned the new girl, but not the glasses. She did buy me the cheerleading outfit, but she also bought Skate & Safety sets for my sisters. Now we all have rollerblades!

I haven't tried on the cheerleading outfit yet. I wanted it so much earlier, but now I want to be with my sisters more. I think I'll wait until they have cheer outfits, too.

Love,

Zipporah the Quintuplet

Zipporah's Day Out

2010-09-02T20:36:00.019-05:00

I went on an adventure today! Jillie woke me very early. "Put on your island t-shirt and pink skort," she said. "And wear comfortable shoes."
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"You'll see," she said.
I dressed quickly, and gobbled up my breakfast. I tried to think about where we would be going. It was too early to be going to Gammie's, because Grammie never wakes up before noon. It was 7:30 when Jillie woke me. Maybe we were going to go fishing! But, neither of us like to eat fish. Hmm...

I brushed my teeth and hair, and we headed for the bus. We waited and waited and waited. Turns out, we were an hour early! Jillie didn't know that the bus didn't come until 9. By the time we figured that out, it was 8:30. So we went to the bathroom, and then waited some more.
Finally the bus came. I sat up front. It took about five minutes to get to our stop. But we weren't at our destination yet. Jillie said we'd only just begun.

We got off the bus at the Transit Center at Rosedale Mall, and caught another bus to 46th Street Station. That wasn't our destination either. From there, we hopped on (yes, I really hopped) the lightrail! That's Minnesota's new transportation system. It's sort of like a train or subway, I think. It's really neat! We went through two tunnels and two covered places. During the first tunnel, my ears almost popped. I think we were under the airport!

Guess where we were then? At Mall of America! That was our destination! The lightrail and bus station is underneath the parking ramp. Or a parking ramp, anyway. It was really cool. Kind of like being in a tunnel or cave!

When we finally got inside the mall, we were very thirsty. Jillie's always very thirsty. So we hit the food court and got Dr. Peppers. Yum!

While we were on the third floor, we visited Beadniks. That's Grammie's favorite store. Well, at MOA anyway. It has tons of beads and jewelry making supplies. We didn't buy anything though. Neither of us is as into jewelry making as Grammie is.

Then we visited our favorite store - American Girl! I really wanted the white sunglasses, and Jillie really wanted a new doll. Last time she was there, they were out of the sunglasses. This time they had plenty. But they were out of #47s, which is the doll she really wanted. Then she found a pretty #33, and decided that's the doll she'd get. So we searched the whole store, and couldn't find any for sale. Turns out, they were out of stock too! So then we gave up on dolls, and decide to look for clothes for me.

I really wanted the Pretty & Plaid outfit, even though Jillie didn't like it too well in person the last time she was there. Apparently the fabric is thicker than she expected, and it has fake buttons in the front. They velcro instead of actually buttoning. Yuck! But, still, I was in love. And out of luck - it was sold out, too! So then we go looking for my second choice - the Honey PJs. Wanna guess what their status was? Sold out. Boo. So we just gave up and decided to do something else.

Nickelodeon Universe is a theme park inside the mall. It's right in front of American Girl. Or, I guess American Girl was built in it. Anyway. Jillie isn't much of a roller coaster person, but she did like a few of the rides there. Or at least, she did the times she went back when the amusement park was called Camp Snoopy. But maybe things had changed?

We found a listing of all the rides, and looked it over. They still had the roller coaster, the ghost hunting ride and the Paul Bunyan log chute ride that Jillie liked before. They were missing the ride (I guess it's a ride) where you sit in a chair and watch a movie, and as you watch the chair moves along with the action in the movie. I was bummed, that sounded fun!

There was just one itty bitty problem. All the rides had a minimum height and I was just a tad too short. So not fair! Honestly, there needs to be a more doll friendly amusement park here.

But, we bought passes and decided to try riding something anyway. Maybe the workers wouldn't notice I wasn't quite tall enough.

We headed for the ghost ride first. It had a spooky entrance with gravestones. The line was short, and in no time at all we were in! We just walked up, took our seats and waited for it to start, as if nothing was amiss. The lady didn't say anything! She just closed the lap bar and off we were!

The picture on the left is me in the seat. The ride was tame but fun. It doesn't go up or down or sideways or anything. It stays on the ground and just goes through a haunted house. The object is to shoot the ghosts with a laser gun. Two players can compete to get the highest total.

Neither of us were too good at aiming, and I'm certain my gun was broken for the last half of the ride. Jillie ended up winning. By a long shot.

Afterwards we went on the rollercoaster. The line was surprisingly short. We didn't have to wait at all! Jillie said it was probably because everyone was at the State Fair instead.

The rollercoaster didn't allow pictures. Boo. It was scary, but fun! Jillie's least favorite part is when you are going up and up and up. Heights scare her. She has to focus on the seat in front of her to not start panicking. She has to do something like that just to go up an escalator, even just to the second floor. She can't just walk up, either. Her legs shake too much to move.

Anyway. My favorite part of the ride is when you WHOOSH around a turn. The first couple times it felt like I was going to fly right out of the car! At one point your picture is taken. Then it is customary to rush down to see the photos afterwards, even if you don't intend to buy. The one with us in the center of it looked pretty good. Jillie was thinking of buying it for our scrapbook, but it cost a ton of money. I can't remember for sure, but I'm thinking something like $15. For a small picture! Eek!

After that ride, we decided to return to American Girl. I can't remember why exactly. I think the plan was to use the restrooms, but we got distracted. We looked through the Bitty Baby and Bitty Twins section. Jillie and I admired the denim dress the girls came in.

"Would you and your sisters like that?" asked Jillie.

"I think so," I said. "It's pretty."

But we didn't get it. Which, now that I'm thinking about it more, was probably good. Sora might have thought it looked too babyish. She's very concerned about that. In modern fashions, anyway.

We looked at the Bitty Twins, and Jillie contemplated getting Bitty Quintuplets. She does that a lot. But usually thinking about having to collect toddler outfits for them puts her off the idea. She has enough to do just collecting clothes for us!

Then we looked around the Historicals section some. We saw a cute display of Molly falling down and Emily catching her. I thought we took a picture of it, but I couldn't find it when I went through the images. Bummer.

Then we went upstairs to the My American Girl section. We met a very beautiful model, and I got my picture taken with her. Aren't we cute?

I fell in love with the cheerleading outfit. It's so pretty, and a nice heavy fabric. But my favorite part was the fluffy pom poms. I just wanted to shake them so much! But they were behind a case, so I couldn't try them on. Boo.

Then we overheard a lady talking to another person. She was saying something about having made a reservation for lunch in the cafe at 12:15. Jillie and I raised our eyebrows and looked at each other. We both were thinking it would be nice to have lunch in the cafe. So we went over to the counter, and asked if they had any openings. They had several! So Jillie made a reservation for 12:15. I did a little happy dance. Jillie and Grammie have had pink lemonade in the cafe, but not anything to eat before. And I wasn't with them for the pink lemonade breaks. So this would be my first time for anything in the cafe!
The waitress served us pink lemonade. She even brought a pitcher for me, so I could pour myself some more when I wanted. Isn't that great?

Our first course was Pretzel Bits. They were three HUGE pretzel balls, that we pulled apart and dipped in either cheddar cheese or honey mustard. Mmm! My favorite dip was the honey mustard.

We had spaghetti for our lunch. Mainly because it was the first thing our eyes landed on when we were giving our orders. We'd been so busy picking out a starter and looking over the desserts that we'd forgotten to settle on a main course. It was delicious though!

After the main course, the waitress brought the dessert menu. And she brought a dessert for me! Yay! Jillie ordered the special Lanie dessert trio. It consisted of a mini cupcake, a mini brownie and a chocolate chip cookie. We could smell the chocolate chip cookies being baked, so I was glad she'd ordered it.

After eating, Jillie bought what she'd decided on and we went back to ride more rides. We'd planned on going back to the ghost ride, and riding it until our stomachs weren't so full, but we kinda forgot. The rollercoaster was on the way, so we hurried down the line and got on. It was more enjoyable this time, not as scary. Thrilling but not terrifying. But Jillie almost threw up as we were leaving. That wasn't so good.

Next we rode the ghost ride again. This time I won. Then I got to ride the carousel! I got on a beautiful horse the went up and down as the ride went round and round. It was fun, though Jillie got dizzy. It's funny. She can spin herself around till her heart's content, without getting too dizzy. But just watching the crowd go by for a second makes her dizzy. Weird.

Then we decided to do some browsing and shopping in other stores. But on our way out of Nickelodeon Universe, we passed a giant pink ant! Apparently it was famous, because kids were going up to it and hugging it. I had to have my picture taken with a famous person. Even if that person was a bug. And even if I had never seen nor heard of them before. So I begged Jillie to take me back there. And she did!

The giant pink ant was too busy striking a pose to bother to help me face the camera. Celebrities! They only think of themselves. Humph!

We went back to the QVC store at the mall, and Jillie bought herself a necklace that matches mine! The lady gave her a free tape measure. Jillie thought that'd be great, because she's lost hers. But the lady said she wasn't supposed to measure her waist with it. We're not sure why not. It looks just like an ordinary sewing tape measure.

Build A Bear had a really great Disney Princess t-shirt that sparkled. Sigh. It would have been enormous on me though, so we didn't get it. My sisters and I LOVE the princesses and hope to some day have Princess clothing. We like our hair long because many Princesses have long hair. We say our hair is "Princess Hair".

We didn't buy anything at Build A Bear. Jillie was looking for an outfit for her bunny named Flopsy (we both love that name for bunnies), but nothing seemed right. Flopsy wants a feminine, light sundress. White with soft ruffles. Out of chiffon or something that kind of floats. There wasn't anything like that there.

We checked out Glamour Shots, but they're very pricey. They session was on sale for $7.95, but picture packages were over a hundred dollars. Jillie didn't have that much left. So we took a flyer and are hoping to someday go back and do that. It seems like a fun thing to do, even if it is costly. It's not just getting your picture taken. They let you borrow an outfit, have your hair and makeup done, and then have a portrait session. It's kind of like being a model. Jillie did it for her 16th birthday. She'd like to do it again, this time with us five included.

We returned to Beadniks, and picked out some flower petal beads for Grammie. The neat thing about Beadniks is that thay have lots of bins with different beads in them and you can buy just the number you need for a project. They also have lots of beads that Michaels and JoAnn's don't have.

After all that we were thirsty again. So we headed to Arby's and got more pop. Jillie got Mountain Dew this time, but I stuck with Dr. Pepper. I put on my new sunglasses and pretended I was a celebrity. Jillie thinks they're adorable on me. What do you think?

Before we left, we found a photo booth. We had seen one on our way in, and thought it'd be a great souvenir of our day. We're going to put it in our scrapbook.

The ride home was tons of fun. We got to ride sideways! I had a great day out with Jillie, and hope to get to do it again sometime.

Something bad happened that night, though. I'll tell you about that next time.

Love,

Zipporah

New Clothes!

2010-08-23T13:09:00.002-05:00

Mama is sewing us some new clothes! The first is a jumpsuit made of green gingham with different colored butterflies. We saw it back in the spring a fell in love with it. Mama put off sewing it because she was busy. Now she needs more pins.

The next thing she's making us is a button down dress, in a 1930's style. The fabric has a beige background with small pink flowers all over it. It's very beautiful. We saw it at Jo-Ann's when the new and improved one opened up this summer. But we passed it up at first, because we wanted to see what other fabrics there were. Then wouldn't ya know it - it was gone! Zipporah spotted it in the cart of another shopper. So we stalked her for an hour before finally getting the fabric. Mama nearly passed out when she saw how much it cost - $9 a yard! Luckily she had a coupon for 50% off any single cut of fabric.

We're planning on wearing it to school on the first day. We like dressing up for the first day. Do you have any back to school traditions?

Love,
Lorikeet

Hi Everyone!

2010-08-20T18:01:00.002-05:00

Since our normal blog is down, we've decided to take over this one.

How is everyone? We've been having a fun summer. I can't believe school starts soon!

Sora's been drilling us on our basic facts and multiplication tables. She's determined that we'll be ahead of the rest of our classmates. Lorikeet hates this, and has been trying to hide. Yesterday she threw water balloons at Sora, when Sora found her. Violet has been crocheting a blanket. It's so soft and warm! I've just been reading a lot. I discovered a mystery series about cats and antiques. It's really neat.

We've already made up our wishlists for Hanukkah. Have you already made your wishlists for the holidays?

Love,
Zipporah

Sweater Dresses

2009-10-12T19:34:00.003-05:00

We've received many requests for sweater dresses, so I hope you all like our latest addition to our shop!

Our first sweater dress offering is a sleeveless number that looks great over a turtleneck or long sleeved shirt. It is made with two different yarns. The multicolor part is actually a specially dyed yarn that is made to look patterened when knitted up. The green is a solid color called Fresh Green. The sweater dress is lovely and makes dolls ever so cuddly!

Just in Time For Chilly Weather

2009-09-28T17:34:00.003-05:00

Sweaters are wonderful things to wear to keep warm, and this one in beautiful turquoise is now available in our shop!

If you would like the sweater in a different color, just ask! Want one with long sleeves, we can do that too!

Bocce Ball

2009-09-24T15:43:00.003-05:00

We love playing games, and one of our favorites is a game called "Bocce Ball". It requires two players, or two teams of players. We split into teams of two, with the fifth girl being the referee/ score keeper for the game. It's such a fun and quick game that we usually play more than once, and rotate positions so that everyone gets to play.

How does one play Bocce Ball? Well, one player tosses a small ball a few feet in front of the throwing line. Then, players take turns throwing their larger balls. The object is to get the larger balls as close to the small ball as possible. The player or team with their closest ball furthest from the small ball gets to throw. Once all of the balls have been thrown, points are awarded to the player or team with the closest ball. They get one point for each ball they have closer to the small ball than the other team's closest ball. So, if the Pink Team had balls 2, 3, 4 and 5 inches from the white ball, and the Orange Team had balls 3, 6, 7, and 9 inches away, the Pink Team would win 1 point. Play continues until one team had won 13 points. A shorter version of the game could have the players playing until a team has earned 7 points.

Would you like to play Bocce Ball? See our Etsy shop for a set!

Our Shop Is Stocked!

2009-09-23T02:47:00.002-05:00

Hey Everyone,

We've finally stocked a few items in our Etsy shop! One is a Sandwich Lunch for Two Set, which looks quite yummy. The second is a set of five flavorful lollipops. We had fun creating the sets and posing for the pictures. Hopefully you'll like what we've done.

Next up is a set of sweets that will include brownies and cupcakes. We have huge sweet tooths, so it is a very good thing dolls can't gain wait!