Amanda Creates

A New Adventure

2012-01-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a while. I haven't had any desire to blog for quite a while, and honestly I still don't have much motivation to do so. But on the off chance that anyone reads this in order to keep up with our lives, I thought I'd give a quick run-down on events around here.

So ever since the kids were transferred from their good school to a not so good school back at the beginning of the year, I've been eyeing homeschooling, but just kind of slantwise out of the corner of my eye. But when Ella came home from school last week with lice, I decided I was done. (By the way, I think lice has to be the MOST expensive "sickness" I've ever had to get rid of. Electric bill was off the charts from all the laundry we had to do, plus all the special lice combs and shampoos, etc., are all crazy expensive!! We probably spent more than when Ella got her tonsils and adenoids out.)

So yesterday was the kids first official day being homeschooled. I've just been making things up as I go along for now since I'm trying to get them into a homeschool charter school that will buy all of our curriculum for us and pay for the kids to do an extracurricular activity as well. We've been talking about Chinese New Year and playing lots of math and reading computer games. I still have some kindergarten level stuff from when I was doing preschool with Alex, so we've been using that. Ella has a couple of those summer bridge type workbooks that we do some pages out of each day. And that's about it for now.

For some reason I expected home school to go something like this: Get up, eat breakfast, do school for a few hours until done, have lunch, play! But in reality it goes more like this: Get up, eat breakfast, do some school, change the laundry, do more school, take a shower, do more school, have lunch, do more school, change the laundry, do more school, run to the Dr., do more school, go to the library, etc., etc. Life sure does get in the way of doing school. But it is nice to have a couple slaves around all day. They folded laundry today, emptied the dishwasher yesterday. I'll have them fully chore trained in no time!

On the job front, Anton is still employed. That's about it. He failed his training here in Oakland, so he has to transfer somewhere else or be fired. He found a few places that will take him, but they can't hire him until he's a permanent employee. He won't be a permanent employee until next month sometime. So paperwork has been stalled until he hits the year mark, and then all will be well. It looks as though he will transfer over to Palo Alto, so we won't have to move. We've been really lucky with this whole thing, since a friend of his who failed out of training in Houston was escorted out of the building the afternoon he failed. So for Anton to still have a job over a month later is somewhat of a miracle.

So that's how things stand around here. No promises that you'll see an update from us anytime soon. I would love to say we'll document our homeschool adventures, but I've come to recognize my limits, and consistent blogging is one of them. :)

Harvest Festival: A Pictoral Memoir

2011-10-09T16:48:00.000-06:00

Ella's Hair! (And a Rennaisance Faire)

2011-09-17T21:35:00.001-06:00

So today we went to the Northern California Rennaisance Faire. Every time we go to one of these Ella begs to have her hair done by the braid artists. So to head that off, this time I did her hair before we went. I asked her what she wanted, and she said a flower braid. So that's what I did.

I am insanely proud of this. I made it up all by myself. It has petals, a stem, leaves, even roots!!

And butterflies nesting in the flower. I kept looking at her hair all day long because I couldn't believe I had managed something so cool!

Plus she's just pretty darn cute!

After that major accomplishment on my part, the Rennaisance Faire seemed like a footnote. :) But we did have fun.

Ella was so excited to see a princess, and all the people in costume did not disappoint. She didn't care whether they were dressed as a wench or a queen, they were all princesses to her. (Though I have to say, Ren Fairs seem to be just the excuse all the trashy women are looking for to bare all. Sheesh!)

We watched the horseman skills competition thing.

Where Ella was super excited to get to see the Queen.

We thought was going to be jousting.

We were bummed that that's not what it was. (And Alex is bummed because he wanted to go to a local carnival and ride the rides, not a silly Ren Fair.)

But he's got to put up with his nerdy family that loves this stuff!!

We did try and go see the real jousting later, but even with the kids up on Anton's shoulders, none of us could see a thing. Oh well.

We went to a bunch of different shows, comedy, magic, etc., and wandered around looking at all the different stalls and booths.

The kids played with toys.

And Alex let these nasty meal worms(?) crawl all over him. He's not afraid of anything. (Though his face would say otherwise.)

We've come to the conclusion that unless you have lots of money to blow, you just can't have as much fun at a fair. We had to tell the kids "no" a million times to all the fun stuff we really wanted to let them do. Maybe after the next pay raise.

And since Anton is a huge sucker to our kids' pouting, after we got home and had dinner, he took them over to the local carnival so Alex could ride the roller coaster.

I stayed home. I was all faired out.

But the kids loved it, and was the perfect end of the day for them. Hooray for fairs!!

This Week: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

2011-09-11T16:09:00.000-06:00

This week has been quite the roller coaster. I spent last weekend in Utah with my family for my littlest sister's wedding. I didn't take Anton or the kids, and I was there for less than 2 days. It was a whirlwind. I also didn't even take my camera out of my bag, so no pictures. It was a fun wedding with lots of quirky elements, like the bridal party wearing Converse and Vans and the bride's maids wearing their hair tied up in bandannas, etc. It was fun.

I came back and jumped right into our second week of school. I reactivated my membership to 24 Hour Fitness and was able to go swimming for the first time in forever. The kids always made it too hard to go, but with them both in school, I actually have time to exercise! It's so nice.

Then I got bad news. The schools here have no idea how to balance their student loads, so two weeks after my kids have been in school, they now have to move to a new school. I am so miffed about this whole thing, and there's nothing I can do about it. They're getting sent to a school that gets terrible ratings and I hear really bad things about, but I have not choice about where to send my kids in this district with "open enrollment." It's so messed up and backwards. I'm tempted to just pull them out and homeschool them until their spot opens back up in the school they've been at, but I'm loathe to give up my all alone exercise/housework/grocery shopping time. We'll give this new school a try, but I didn't get a whole lot of positive vibes when we visited on Friday. Definitely a different demographic from our current school. And now instead of walking to school everyday I'm going to have to drive back and forth 3 times a day. Blah. It's just a big mess.

So this week had it's highs, and it definitely had a super low. Hopefully this next week can just level out and be "normal."

First Day of School!

2011-08-31T15:29:00.000-06:00

School started really late here, it seems, compared to everyone else, but it finally did start! Ella is now in second grade, and Alex started Kindergarten. Both my kids are now in school! They grow up so fast.

Alex was up and dressed by the time I got out of the shower this morning. He wore his backpack all through breakfast, which he would hardly touch because he was so excited. Ella was just cool with it all. After all, she is a veteran at this.

We live in walking distance to the school, so I will definitely be getting my exercise this year. I get to walk back and forth three times a day.

Alex had his orientation yesterday, so after forcing a hug and kiss from him he was off. He hardly gave me a backward glance.

Ella hadn't gotten to meet her teacher yet, but everyone says she's a great one.

Ella was a little shy waiting in line, but when it was time to go in, she marched right in and was right at home.

The verdict at the end of the first day: Alex couldn't really tell me anything he did, but he seemed to have fun. Ella was in high heaven. She made "four new friends," and already has a playdate on Friday with the set of twins that are in her class. All the parents I met were super nice, and the PTA people seem to have it all together. I think this is going to be a really good year, and hopefully the first one we won't have to move in the middle of!

Jelly Belly Factory

2011-08-31T12:40:00.001-06:00

As a last hurrah to summer we went with some friends to visit the Jelly Belly Factory!

It has a free tour you can take to see how they make Jelly Bellies.

We got to wear goofy hats, which the kids loved, but mine just wouldn't stay on my head. We weren't allowed to take pictures during the tour, but it was really cool to see all the millions of jelly beans. Did you know it takes anywhere from 7 to 21 days to make a Jelly Belly? Now you do.

My favorite part of the tour was getting to see all the really cool Jelly Belly mosaics they have.

Ronald Reagan was a huge Jelly Belly fan. The blueberry Jelly Belly was invented just for his presidential campaign so he could pass out red, white, and blue Jelly Bellies. He would start all his meetings in the White House by passing around a bowl of Jelly Bellies, and there was a special spill-proof Jelly Belly container on Air Force One.

I totally want to make a jelly bean mosaic now.

You also get free samples at the end of your tour. I was brave and tried a moldy cheese one, and it actually wasn't too bad. They also now have candy corn flavored Jelly Bellies, which were pretty good, but I think I'll just stick with the real things.

We stopped at McDonald's for lunch afterward, because even though a jelly bean shaped hamburger sounds good in concept, paying $8 for a kid's meal is not. And that was our fun outing! We had a great time and it was a fun way to finish off our summer.

Next up, first day of school!!

Back to the Beginning

2011-08-28T17:39:00.000-06:00

Anton's and my anniversary is on Tuesday. It'll be eight years since we said our I do's. Unfortunately, our anniversary falls on a weekday, specifically the one right before school starts, so we knew a fun night out on the town was out of the picture. Instead, we decided to head back to the beginning this weekend and hang out in Monterey.

Eight years ago Anton and I were both in the military studying our different languages at DLI, the military language school in Monterey. I fell for the good looking guy in a Navy uniform, and I managed to convince him that I was a nice sweet girl. (Ha!) Five months after we met we were married. I don't feel the need to drag things out once I've made up my mind. :)

At first we were kind of planning on recreating some fun events from when we lived in Monterey, like eating at Bubba Gumps on our first date. But then I decided that we'd done all that stuff before and we needed to do some new fun things. So here's how our fun weekend went.

On Friday afternoon we picked Anton up from work and headed out for the 2 hour drive down there. We had decided to camp there on Friday night so we would have more time to play. The campground down there doesn't take reservations, so it's always nerve wracking planning to camp there because if it's full there are no other choices in the area. But we were lucky. After paying a pretty Monterey fee for a campground ($27!!) we set up camp.

It's a beautiful campground surrounded by trees.

Just be warned, if you ever stay there, it's right next to the Army base and you will be woken up at 7 a.m. by reveille.

It's been foggy and misty both times we've camped there, but I think it just adds to the charm.

We set up camp as fast as we could because the place we wanted to get dinner from closed at 6. We managed to get there about ten minutes before closing. Now, this restaurant, if you can call it that, is definitely not gourmet.

But it has the HUGEST sandwiches ever, and they are the best. You'll never want to eat at Subway again. You can get these beauties at Compagnos, a little convenience store right outside the base. But the real reason for eating there is not the sandwiches, it's the cake!

Anton and I spent many a date with a slice of their cake. Yum! We took our food out to Asilomar beach. It was cold and foggy, but a stop there is a must. This is the beach where Anton and I had our first awkward kiss and where he proposed to me.

Ella played in the sand and Alex wore himself out chasing the seagulls.

Then before it got too dark we headed over to the Dennis the Menace park. This park features nowhere in the dating history of Anton and I, it's just super fun for the kids.

They have all sorts of fun slides.

A real full-sized train you can climb all over.

And a maze and a swinging bridge and all sorts of fun things. Alex managed to convince me to climb through a big pipe with him, and Anton was so obliging as to take a lovely picture of my rear for you all.

We played until the city employee had to kick us out because he was closing the park.

Then back to the campground to go to sleep. Well, at least some of us slept. I sure didn't. Have I ever mentioned I hate camping? I do. Plus, I asked Anton multiple times if it was supposed to rain because we were taking our bigger tent that is not so waterproof any more. He assured me that rain was not in the forecast. But as soon as we all settled in to sleep, rain it did. All night long. We were all damp and fully wet around the edges in the morning. Not fun.

We needed a good wake up, so we headed over to First Awakenings for breakfast. We'd never eaten there before, and we regret that fully now. They have divine pancakes and crepes and eggs Benedict to die for! I was tempted to lick the Hollandaise sauce off my plate, but I refrained.

It was still somewhat drizzly when we finished eating, but we decided to press on with our plans. We drove over to Carmel where we told the kids we were going on a treasure hunt. All throughout the shopping district in Carmel are all sorts of little hidden alleyways and courtyards. We gave the kids a map and had them lead us through a bunch of them.

And these aren't normal back alleys, most of them are flowery and beautiful. The kids had lots of fun, and the treasure at the end was a candy shop. We let them each pick something out. Ella chose a giant peanut butter cup, and while she was eating it, I hear her say, "Uh oh." That never signifies something good. I look over, and sure enough, she has lost a tooth!

Yuck. Falling out teeth are so gross!

We took a break to eat our treats in a fun little park. The kids each made a wish in a little pond there.

Anton and I just sat and took a break.

After our treasure adventure we headed over to the Carmel Mission. Don't think less of me, but I wanted to see it after reading all about it in the Mediator series by Meg Cabot. I'd never even heard about it before reading those books.

It's one of the old Spanish missions that line the coast. We wandered around the grounds, and managed to get a quick peek inside the church since there were three weddings going on that day.

It was pretty cool to see, though Anton and I both agree it probably would have been cooler and made more sense to us if we were Catholic.

Next we headed back into Monterey to find a bench along the beach to sit and eat our leftovers from the night before.

I was pooped from my lack of sleep and all our exploring, so I sat and rested while the kids and Anton went scrambling over all the rocks.

They found a dead sea lion and a tide pool full of fun creatures, like this hermit crab:

And then we made one more spontaneous stop at the Point Pinos lighthouse.

It's the longest continuously running lighthouse on the west coast. It was a fun little place to see.

And that about does it. It was a full weekend, but I have to admit I was glad to head home. I have a one night limit on camping. Though Anton and I have both agreed that we'd be more than willing to retire to Monterey some day.

Birthday Recap

2011-08-24T14:26:00.000-06:00

I haven't blogged about the kids' or my birthdays this year, so I thought I'd do a quick overview of them all at once!

Ella's birthday was back in June. She turned 7! I can't believe how old my kids are getting. :(

Ella wanted a ballerina themed birthday and was very specific about how everything needed to be. First we had to play pin the tiara on the ballerina. I busted out my drawing skills (sure) and drew a giant ballerina on a leftover piece of packing paper. I left it empty and let the kids decorate it as part of the activities.

I think they did a pretty good job.

My ballerina with her ballerina. Isn't she just so cute?

Then on to the game! Not a single one of us managed to get our crown on the ballerina, not even the kids who cheated.

Next up was musical chairs. It's pretty hard to play when you only have 4 people and one has to start and stop the music. That leaves you with 3 people and 2 chairs. The game goes pretty fast. Anton took a video or two of the silliness, but I'm too lazy to hook it up right now to upload it.

Then it was present time! Ella's one and only request was for a Happy Napper.

Thank you television for introducing my children to such fantastic toys. She also got a ballet tutu (she wanted a whole ballet outfit and was totally bummed about the homemade tutu I gave her), clothes, art stuff, and a jump rope.

She's still working on the jump roping skills.

Then it was time for cake!

Ella requested a strawberry cake with white frosting.

I did all the pink decorations with chocolate. There were different ballerina silhouettes all around the cake. I wanted to cover the whole thing with the roses I did on top, but I ran out of frosting. Those things are frosting hogs!!

It was a tasty cake, but sadly Ella didn't like the strawberry filling I put in it.

The rest of us enjoyed it though.

So that was Ella's 7th birthday!

Next up was Alex's 5th birthday in July. Can you believe he's starting kindergarten in a week? Where did my baby go? We celebrated his birthday in parts since we were travelling and moving right around his birthday.

We gave him one present early so he could have it in the car.

Yes, another Happy Napper. He loves it.

When we were in Utah we had a whole big family party for everyone, so he got celebrated some more, and then it was off to California. We actually celebrated his real birthday in the hotel.

I had tried to get all his gifts ahead of time, but ended up having to make a last minute Target run to round out the gifts.

But he was thrilled with his goggles and floaties since we had a pool there at the hotel to swim in.

I didn't want to try and bake a cake in the little hotel kitchen, so I let Alex pick his cake at the grocery store. And no matter how much I tried to convince him that a nice plain white cake with Happy Birthday on top would be perfect, he insisted in this one:

Yeah. The kids were pooping green for days. I couldn't eat it. But he loved it, and that's what matters, right? I need to send a picture of it to Cake Wrecks.

And then last, but not least, was my birthday. We pretty much didn't do anything. Actually, that's not true. we house hunted on my birthday. We went to the open house of the house we're currently living in, and all I wanted for my birthday was this house. And I got it so all is good. We also went out for dinner at a super good sushi place, and on my birthday itself went up to see the Oakland temple.

And that about does it for birthdays this year. I'll probably do a couple other catch-up posts, and one of these days I actually post about our new house! I was hoping to wait until we are all unpacked, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

Ella Update

2011-08-19T17:37:00.000-06:00

Ella is doing great! The girl who ran into my bedroom Thursday morning was so not the girl I left at the hospital Wednesday night. She gets sleepy now and then from her medicine, and she says her throat hurts, but other than that she seems to be doing fine. She eats regular food (soft food), though she does take advantage of the pudding and Popsicles we stocked up on before the surgery. She is definitely milking the invalid status for all its worth. She's watched LOTS of movies and just lays around on the couch all day, which is what she would do on any regular day if I would let her. So besides a little throat pain, she's in heaven. So that's the update for now!

Adenoids and Tonsils and Tubes, Oh My!

2011-08-17T15:48:00.000-06:00

So I'm hanging out in the hospital with Ella today. She had her tonsils and adenoids out this morning and tubes put in her ears. She's been a total trooper about it.

The first thing she said was to ask for the stuffed bear they gave her before she went into surgery. Then while she was half asleep she was signing "I love you" to me. It was so cute.

She threw up a couple times and hasn't said much, but she also says that she's not in any pain, so that's good.

Anton and Alex came and visited her after lunch and brought our little DVD player. I told her she could watch her movie after Daddy and Alex left, and she started waving goodbye to them. What a nut!

So now this is how she's been sitting for over an hour:

Puke bowl under the chin, and Barbie on the DVD player. All is good with the world.

They're keeping her overnight since she had such an obstructed airway from her adenoids, but I'm going to switch off with Anton for that. There's no way I'm going to play nursemaid all day tomorrow after having to sleep in a hospital recliner. No thanks!

So that's the excitement in our little neck of the woods. We'll keep you all posted on how she's doing!

The Weekend Tourist - San Francisco Edition

2011-08-14T00:09:00.001-06:00

Living as "close" as we do to San Francisco (about an hour drive and a $5 bridge toll) and after listening to the kids beg to see the Golden Gate Bridge since they originally heard about it, we decided today to head to the city. We couldn't just drive in and see the bridge and go home, though, so we planned a couple other stops and made a couple unplanned ones.

First stop, Lombard Street!

Lombard Street is supposedly the windiest street in some geographic region, be it city, state, country, world, etc. From the top you can see all the way to Coit Tower there in the distance and across to the other side of the bay. You have to run over a few tourists to be able to actually drive down Lombard Street. They just stand in the middle of the road snapping pictures, neveryoumind the million cars headed your way.

Looking back up the street you just see lots of pretty flowers.

The kids were in roller coaster heaven! Alex always begs us to put the car in neutral so we can fly down the hills (what he imagines would happen if we actually did that), so cruising Lombard Street was right up his alley. We actually went around the block and did it again because it was so much fun.

Next stop: the Palace of Fine Arts. I actually took a History of San Francisco class when I was in college, and it was one of my favoritest classes ever! (How do you like that great grammar?) Ever since then I have wanted to see the Palace of Fine Arts in person. I never imagined it was so HUGE!

Most tourist attractions leave you thinking, "That's it?" But this place was waaaaay bigger than I ever imagined. It's beautiful there!

To give you a sense of scale, that's Alex standing in the middle of the dome area where the red arrow is pointing. So cool! There's actually a science museum right there too, but we decided to save it for another day.

Next stop: Golden Gate Bridge!

Alex declared after the fact that he didn't like it because it wasn't gold and because we had to walk on it. We didn't want to pay another bridge toll, and I though it would give us a better sense of the size to walk out on it instead of driving.

It was fairly foggy most of the time we were there so we only caught glimpses of the top of the bridge.

It took me forever to get this picture set up with me all sprawled out on the ground and in everyone's way, only to have the kids making goofy faces! Argh.

Let me tell you, though, you want to see an interesting cross-section of humanity, go walk the Golden Gate Bridge on a Saturday afternoon. Wow. And I just have to say, there have been so many times that I just want to scream out loud: "This is America, people! We walk on the right side of the street/sidewalk!" And those particular people won't get out of your way for anything. They'll plow you over if you don't step to the left. Grrr. But regardless, the bridge was fun, but I would suggest going on a cold weekday when it's not quite so busy.

After grabbing a quick and expensive lunch at the cafe in the parking lot (note to self, don't be so lazy next time and actually pack a lunch) we drove around the point of the peninsula and down to Ocean Beach.

We only walked out to the water and back since it was chilly and we hadn't planned on making a beach stop. But the beach was nice and empty, and the sand was really nice.

From there we drove down the Great Highway for a short ways to see the sights, then back over and through the city. We passed some of the Russian places we had visited when we lived in Monterey and made a note to come back that way again some time. And then it was back home for naps and recuperation. Big cities take it out of me. But then again, I've already made an enormous list of places I want to see next time we go back. We're kind of thinking about making this a monthly thing. We'll see!

What We've Been Up To

2011-08-06T22:58:00.000-06:00

I've been a bad blogger. I know. I'll give a quick rundown of what we've been up to, but the details and photos will have to come later!

In June we moved from Oklahoma to California with a short stop in Utah to see family. Once in California we spent almost 3 weeks living in 3 different hotels while trying to find a place to live. The cost of living out here is insane, and a lot of the rental places want to see that you have three times the monthly rent in income, which we don't have at this time. I finally found the perfect house for us and had to convince the landlady that we were the perfect tenants regardless of our income. We managed to convince her and got the house.

We moved in two weeks ago and I've been working at unpacking and organizing and getting rid of all the junk that's been sitting in storage for 2 years that I can't believe I packed in the first place. It's been busy. So once I have the house looking like I want, I'll post pictures of it. If you really want to see it in all its messy glory, Anton posted pictures on his facebook.

My brain is not working right now, so I really can't think of anything else to say. I'm know, I'm boring. I'll try and be better about posting and even using pictures! If anyone is out in the Bay Area anytime, drop me a line and we'll get together and play!

Our Weekend

2011-05-08T19:25:00.000-06:00

Fun weekend! Friday night we went and tried a new sushi place. It was okay. Not the best we've tried here. It was pricey too for the quality. But it was my Mother's Day dinner out, and I'm worth splurging on. :)

On Saturday we went and visited the Museum of Osteology, or in other words, a bone museum. It was pretty cool.

There were skeletons of all shapes and sizes.

The biggest was a whale.

There were rhinos and hippos and even human ones!

There was also a scavenger hunt for both the kids and the adults. I learned all sorts of things. Did you know the myth of the cyclops originated from the unique shape of elephant skulls?

Look at its one eye!

The kids loved it there, and it was just big enough/small enough to keep their interest. You could even pick up your own bones in the gift shop. Want a human skull? It'll only set you back $1650. Maybe I'll donate my body for display.

We went to a BBQ that night with the guys from Anton's class. It's weird to hang out with a bunch of young single guys. I don't have much to say to them about anything. Oh well, it was still nice to be out with adults.

This morning for Mother's Day Anton made me Creme Brulee French Toast for breakfast. It. was. so. good. Make it. You can even sub out the whipping cream for fat free half and half and it'll even be almost good for you. Anton topped it with fresh strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. You won't need syrup for this. It's good all on its own.

Then in a mad rush as we were running out the door for church the kids gave me all their cute homemade gifts and flowers from Anton.

Alex even still has breakfast in his mouth, that's how rushed we were.

Then after church I spent the rest of the day doing whatever I pleased, from reading to playing on the computer. I wish it could be Mother's Day every day!

Vote for me!

2011-05-06T07:51:00.000-06:00

I've entered a contest to win 100,000 SkyMiles and I need your votes to win!!

Go here and just click the red "VOTE" button.

(My sister and I enjoying a free hotel night before going on our cruise!)

And if you can get lots and lots of people to vote for me, maybe I'll take you on a trip with me! :)

Success!

2011-05-03T19:58:00.000-06:00

After almost a year of "practice," Alex finally rode his bike alone for the first time today! Thanks Grandpa for the training wheel and pedal removal that made this so much easier!

He's such a big boy now!

Get Your Kicks...

2011-04-17T11:25:00.001-06:00

We had a crazy fun day yesterday! This post is going to be heavy on pictures, light on text, so settle on in and get ready!

First, we went to an Easter egg hunt put on by the city. It was insane. Here's a rundown of how it all went:

Visit Easter bunny:

Do first egg hunt for 5 and 6 year olds:

The field was empty of eggs in under 2 minutes.

Play on the bounce houses while mommy waits in line for face painting:

Pet the animals at the petting zoo while mommy waits in line for face painting.

Do the egg hunt for the 3 and 4 year olds while daddy waits in line for face painting.

This hunt was much calmer than the previous one.

The haul!

Finally, get faces painted!

The snow cat cub.

Spiderman!

Then we hopped in the car and headed out to Route 66! It runs right through town here. Our first stop wasn't historic, but it was pretty cool.

We went to Pops.

It's a gas station that also happens to have hundreds of flavors of bottled pop for sale! The whole front of the store is glass, and the windows are lined in pop bottles.

Look at them all!!

They have shelves and fridges lined with all different flavors of pop arranged by color and flavor.

We picked out two six-packs.

We ended up with: Fizzy Lizzy Pineapple (super good!), Boylan's Creamy Red Birch Beer (bleh, Anton liked it though), Round Barn Root Beer (the local brew), Leninade (had to get since it was in Russian), Maine Root Sarsaparilla, Gale's Root Beer, Dog n Suds Root Beer (notice the root beer trend?), Cool Mountain Black Cherry, Carousel Green Apple, Capt'n Eli's Blueberry Pop (okay), Gardena Grape, Americana Orange Creme (can't wait to try!). It was tough to choose what flavors to get, and I'm sure Anton would have walked out with all the root beers they had if I'd let him.

They also had a burger grill, so we had lunch there, and it was pretty good too. We ended with a giant ice cream sandwich sundae that about busted our guts. Yum.

Then we headed slightly down the road to visit the famous Arcadia Round Barn:

It's 113 years old and completely round. Fancy that.

It's been refurbished, so it's not original materials, but that's how it would have looked. Up inside the top of the barn it had really cool acoustics.

Alex loves to hear his echo, so he could have played in there all day. But we were pooped and needed to get home.

We drove a little bit farther down Route 66 before turning around and heading home. Here we crashed on the couch and watched Tangled and called it a good day.

Random Funny

2011-04-16T20:00:00.000-06:00

(Random picture of Ella.)

While talking with Ella about what Easter means, I was describing why we have Easter eggs:

Me: What comes out of an egg?

Ella: A yolk?

Me: No, what does an egg make?

Ella: Cookies!!

The Goings On

2011-04-07T16:43:00.000-06:00

Just a random catch-up post of things that don't necessarily deserve a post of their own.

The other day Alex wanted to do my hair, and was quite adamant about how he wanted it to look.

He was sure that two ponytails were not enough.

So I got three. I had to help do the ponytail holders, but he divided it all up and told me where to put them. He's a nut.

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There's a place here in town that has a bunch of bounce houses and swingsets inside. I had a 2 for 1 coupon so I took the kids last week when Ella didn't have school.

My camera was not cooperating, so most of my pictures ended up looking like this:

See Ella slide!

Still not good, but that's as good as I got. But when attempting to get a cute one of the kids, they were losing their patience waiting for me to get the camera functioning right and I ended up with this:

My vampire babies are too cute! I had to leave the red eyes just to make it more authentic.

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And in light of the recent scandal with the air traffic controller falling asleep on the job, I just had to post this.

Anton went to an informational meeting for NATCA, the union for air traffic controllers. They gave out a bunch of free stuff, including tickets for two free alcoholic drinks at the get-together. Anton also came home with this:

Note the bottle cozy and the bottle opener key chain sitting on top of the folder with the big word "Safety." Do you sense a theme here? From conversations I've overheard and people I've met in the ATC world, it would seem that drinking is a major life theme for a lot of these guys. Someone in Anton's class even asked the instructor what the legal blood alcohol limit was for coming in to work. Now won't you feel safe next time you hop on a plane? :)

Princess Ella

2011-04-06T09:04:00.001-06:00

At the Medieval Fair this last weekend Ella saw the stand where they will braid your hair for only three monthly payments of $19.99! I'm way to cheap to pay someone to do what I can in theory do myself, so I told Ella I would do her hair in braids later. Well, I lived up to my word, and while we were watching General Conference, I braided away.

I've never been good at French braiding, and Ella has fine, wavy hair, which makes it that much harder to do, but an hour or so later, and I had success!

I got this cute idea from the Princess and Her Hair blog. Lots of fun stuff there, but it will make you feel like a bad mom for not making your kid's hair cute everyday.

Sadly, we own no hairspray, so by the end of the day her braids were all fuzzy and flyawayie (sp?) and she needed a bath, so she only got to be a princess for half a day. But I've promised to braid her hair for school tomorrow, just not so fancy.

UPDATE: So doing fancy hair in the morning before school is not the best idea. Ella was almost late, but that was partially my fault for messing up her hair and having to start over. But it came out cute in the end.

A little French twist action. She wouldn't let me put a flower in it to hide the tacky hair thing. Oh well.

She's cute either way. :)

Medieval Fair!

2011-04-05T17:55:00.000-06:00

We love medieval and renaissance fairs. We found out about one this last weekend and dropped all our plans to go. It was a pretty big one as far as these things go, but definitely not the best we've ever been to.

Our first stop was the jousting field, where the kids had horse stick races while we were waiting for the main event. Alex decided he wanted to race.

He regretted his decision pretty quickly after volunteering, but he went through with it anyway. He doesn't like to be the center of attention at all, so when he heard us yelling for him while he was racing, he got really embarrassed:

He cracks me up. My sister says he's a cartoon character with all the funny faces he makes.

Our knight ended up losing the jousting after getting into a sissy fight at the end.

Plus, what kind of knight takes tips from the audience? I've never seen that happen before. But we took a picture with him without leaving a tip. We're terrible.

After a little bit of wandering we went and waited in line to get some food.

Normally I love fair food, but this was not very good and seemed more expensive than usual. $8 for a gyro? That's insane.

Then we went and waited in line for the kids to ride....

... a camel! They loved it.

By this point I was all tired out and had a raging headache. All that line waiting wore me out. So after a quick browse through the artists' stalls, and two magic wands purchased for the kids, we headed home. I was the big party pooper. But we're already looking at which fair we can go to next!

He's An Old Man!

2011-04-04T20:32:00.001-06:00

We celebrated Anton's 30th birthday a couple weeks ago. He told me he could feel himself getting old, which I guess just makes me geriatric. :)

There wasn't anything in particular he wanted for his birthday, so he opted for a nice dinner out. We went to a sushi place and had some really good sushi. The restaurant was all feng shui, which was pretty cool.

Then we came home and had some cake.

His cake was the lazy version of this one that I made a few years ago. I wasn't in the mood for fancy this year. But it still tasted good!

So besides the kids giving him a bag of Reese's Pieces, that's about all we did. But a birthday with sushi and cake is always a good one in my book!

The Answer Revealed!

2011-04-03T20:31:00.000-06:00

So the reason for my previous post/poll is because of a disturbing trend I've been noticing here in OK. Since moving here I've had two people tell me that I don't look old enough to have a six year old. So that would make me, what, about 24 at the oldest? I had to bite my tongue to keep from reply something along the lines of how hard a decision it was to keep my baby when I was only 16, but it was totally worth it in the end.

But the one that got me was the lady who asked if I was my kids' babysitter. Really? I look like a teenager? I don't think so. I may look young, but not THAT young.

It really bugs me that people assume that I'm young because they then treat me that way. Someone five years younger than me will talk to me like I'm new to life and the great big world, and someone my age will say something like "When you get to be my age..." I don't know why it bugs me so much, but it does. Can't people just treat me like a person? I know ten or more years from now I'll be glad that I look younger than I really am, but for now, I'm just going to stew.

And as for the poll, most of you were right. I'm 32.

How Old Am I?

2011-03-31T14:26:00.000-06:00

Based on the following image, and disregarding everything you may know about me and my family, etc., I'd like you to answer a simple question for me:

(Not the best picture of me. :P )

How old do I look?

Spring Break, The Southern Way

2011-03-29T11:25:00.000-06:00

For Ella's spring break we decided to head down to my sister's house in Louisiana since this is the closest we'll ever live to her ever again. It was a 10 hour drive that I got to do by myself since we left Anton at home to work and earn money. On the way there we broke the drive up and spent the night in the booming town of Buffalo, TX. Then from the minute we got to LA, it was nonstop fun, fun, fun!

We had to visit our favorite alligator friends at the alligator park. The adults here are named Boudreaux and Clotile:

And one of the kids' favorite moments from the whole trip, getting to hold the baby alligator, Bubba:

That moment was talked about for days before and now days after. We also let the kids play on the super-fun playground they have there.

(Ella showing her bravery and lack of fear of heights.)

I think if I gave my kids the choice, they would both willing move in with Aunt Andrea. And do you want to know why? They have a barn and a field FULL of horses. The kids spent hours playing in the hay.

(Ella on top of the haystack peeking out of the barn.)

And I spent hours picking hay out of a certain little girl's long blond hair. :(

But the definite favorite even over the alligators was getting to ride horses.

They both were riding by themselves and directing the horse where they wanted her to go, and Ella even learned to trot. They got to ride on two different days and probably would have ridden more if it weren't for all the work you have to do in order to ride. Ella even said at one point, "Why are horses such hard work?" It was cute. I would actually love to put Ella in riding lessons, but I fear they will break the bank.

The kids also got to go on a horse-drawn wagon ride.

This wagon was built entirely by Andrea's father-in-law, and they use it on trail rides. The kids each got a turn to drive.

And then they just took over the driving seat from Pawpaw, as the cousins call him.

We dragged Ella out for a photoshoot with Aunt Andrea. (She has her own photography business.)

First Andrea did her hair all pretty. Ella insisted on a side ponytail, and I'm glad Andrea knew how to do it without it looking all '80s. Then we headed out into the bayou for photos!

(Yes, you can find abandoned bathtubs in the fields of LA.)

By the time we were getting close to being finished, Ella was really done cooperating.

We were lucky to get the good ones we did. She is just not naturally photogenic. She makes lots of goofy faces.

We watched copious amounts of movies while we were there. We went to a rabbit festival where I was able to eat the requisite boiled crawfish. You can't visit LA and not eat crawfish! And I even managed to just relax and read. The kids loved being able to run around outside and ride bikes and play with their cousins. But my favorite thing was sitting on the back porch in the mornings and listening to the birds and other sounds of nature and basking in the sun. I'm starting to think that I may need to find myself a nice country home to live in someday.

Then after a looooong 10 hour drive home (which was made much easier by listening to an audiobook), we came back to reality. We're hoping Andrea and family can come visit us before we move to the other side of the country and don't get to see them for ages. We have so much fun playing with them!

Yuck.

2011-03-22T18:24:00.001-06:00

I think losing teeth is one of the grossest things ever, but Ella gets really excited. She's one of the younger ones in her class so is also one of the last to lose her teeth. But Top Tooth #1 has fallen out and left a nasty tooth shaped hole in its place. Top Tooth #2 is already loose. Soon Ella won't be able to eat a thing. You can also see where she lost her bottom teeth and the new ones have had to grow in behind the baby ones and almost next to each other because her mouth is soooo small. I'm predicting large orthodontic bills in my future!

Boredom Musings

2011-03-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

I've gone and done it again. This is going to become a very bad thing for my already bulging waistline. But it sure is tasty.

Our house rental comes with DirecTV, which is a very good babysitter. However, after hours of Disney Junior and Nick Jr., I've decided that all these kid shows are detrimental to my healthy relationship with my children. All the mom's in those shows are perfect. They never lose their tempers. They talk calmly and sweetly. No matter what bad things their kids do, they always know the perfect thing to say to make their kids eternally sorry and never do it again. My kids are going to come to expect this level of perfection from me, and they're just not going to get it. But since the alternative is turning off the shows and actually having to deal with my kids and proving to them how bad of a mother I am, I think I'll just let them rot their brains in the fantasy worlds of perfect, happy families. Thank you DirecTV.

I'm Allergic to Oklahoma.

2011-03-08T07:52:00.000-07:00

I think I've used more allergy medicine in the last couple weeks than I have the last few years of my life. Ugh. It's the kind of allergies where everything itches: my nose, my eyes, my throat, even the roof of my mouth! It's driving me crazy. Anton feels the same way. It's miserable. I hope this is just a spring thing and not how it'll be the whole time we're here.

Other than that things have been pretty dull around here. Ella likes her school. We've made friends with other families in the neighborhood. Anton's classes are going fine, though they bore him to death. Every time I go grocery shopping it makes me want to cry. Things are so expensive here! I want my WinCo back. :( But I guess I better get used to it since it won't be any better in California.

So there's a short and sweet update for those who care. I wish I had something more exciting to say, but I guess dull is better than dramatic.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

2011-02-24T13:35:00.000-07:00

(The view out my back door.)

No one told me I needed to bring my ark to Oklahoma.

The House Tour

2011-02-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our home!

It is a lovely brown brick color with a vibrant brown lawn. It's also very unique in the neighborhood.

It stands on a curve rather than a straight section of road! Ahh, the serenity of a street full of brown.

Come on in the front door and have a seat on our lovely brown couches.

Don't miss the beautiful brown artwork hanging on the wall. If you look closely you will see a book in the picture named "Is Sex Necessary?" Perfect for sparking conversation.

Say hello to Anton. He's modeling our lovely brown kitchen:

Don't be deceived by the colorful placemats on the table. Those are just to distract you. In the corner behind the table I've assembled my own little sanctuary:

Of course the only unpacked boxes happen to be enjoying my sanctuary too.

If you turn to the right you get another view of the living room from the other side.

For variety we have a light brown dresser with a bamboo style holding up the Dish TV box. (Way too many channels for non-TV watchers like us!!) Now turn around and take a gander down the hallway:

The brown walls and brown tile coordinate with the brown house just perfectly, don't you think? But before you go farther, we need to look to the left into Alex's bedroom that opens right off the kitchen/living room junction. Perfect for peaceful, quiet sleep.

Yes, there is some yellow and blue in this room, but we bring all back down to ground level with the brown bed skirt. We don't let the color go to our heads, we promise. But please don't tell the authorities about this:

Pink! Ella tries to bar Alex from the room because she is convinced it is for her and her alone. See the problems color injects into our peaceful society? Next up is the very serviceable laundry nook:

The shelf is far to high to reach. It's there merely for looks. But doesn't it look lovely? Turning to the right we see Ella's room:

Again, those brown bed skirts keep everything in line. Thank goodness for the efficient brown dresser.

And finally, at the end of the hall, we come to the master bedroom.

See the door in the wall? Easy access to the backyard! (And the only access.) But the plus of the room? The closet:

If we had another child, they could sleep here comfortably. And here's the room from the back door:

The previous occupant was so kind as to leave his own wall art: airport charts! I love them so much I may build a frame around them. Before we step outside let's peek in the bathroom which is behind the door on the left:

The lovely color combo of blue and orange is just the jolt I need each morning before going out and facing another brown day.

And finally the backyard:

A lovely combination of brown grass, brown fence, brown cement, and a hill that makes the entire thing somewhat unusable. Fabulous!

But all funny quirks and joking aside, I really do love being in my own house. I'm a little concerned about being too noisy for our duplex neighbors, but such is life. Ella's school is less than half a mile away, and most everything is fairly nearby. We're outside of the city amongst all the horse fields, so country living for us! I hope you enjoyed your little tour. Feel free to come visit sometime!

Catch-up Post

2011-02-21T08:30:00.001-07:00

I've been storing a few things in my brain to blog about, so I figured I'd get them all out at once.

Random 1: On our way to Oklahoma we stopped and visited friends in Kansas. While there we played at a really cool children's museum. It was in an old school, and each classroom was a different theme. There was a room full of ramps of different shapes and sizes that you could roll buckets of golf balls down:

There was a space themed room, a hospital room, a lego room, an art room.

(Sharing love in the space room!)

I think the kids' favorite was the farm/garden/market room:

Alex gardened for a looooong time. I was super cute with him in those rubber boots that came up to his thighs.

We went to lunch afterwards at a place where a train brings you your food!

We ordered our food in two separate orders so we could have the train come twice.

The food gets lowered down to you on a little elevator. It was really neat. Too bad the food was just mediocre.

Random 2: Can you believe that during our whole 22 hours' drive on three different days that the kids only fell asleep once!?! It was trying to my patience.

And when they did fall asleep, we were about half an hour out from our hotel in Oklahoma. Sheesh.

Random 3: Before we left Utah, Ella had built a really cool tower out of blocks and called me over to look at it. She wanted me to take a picture of it, but I didn't have a camera, so she knocked it over. Just then I turned around and there was a camera on the counter, so I told her to rebuild it and I'd take a picture. So she rebuilt it, then it fell over. She rebuilt it again, and it fell over. She had to rebuild it FIVE times before she was able to finish it and keep it up. I went to take a picture of her and her tower......and the camera battery was dead. So after a rush to find a camera that works, I finally got a picture of her and her tower!

She looks crazed! Her hair is actually in a ponytail there, but it's such a mess you can't tell.

Random 4: I took the kids to the park the first day we were here in OK while Anton was at work, and guess what I saw? People painting the grass!! All the grass here is completely dry brown. But in some special areas it looks like this:

That green is fake. Nice, right? I had a good laugh about silly Oklahomans who paint their grass. Then of course I asked someone about it and they reassured me it's just fertilizer and weed control. But then again, they didn't have to tint it green, did they?

So that's all the randomness for now. Once I get a couple more boxes unpacked I'll take some pictures of our house and environs. Just prepare yourselves for brown, brown, and more brown!

We've arrived...

2011-02-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

...and I'm not impressed. Well, the town itself seems fine, what we've seen of it, but we went to register Ella for school and I felt like I was in a juvenile detention center. Everyone has to come in a log onto a computer before they can get through the locked door into the school. The parents have to have a card with their kid's name on it to pick them up from school. Ella's classroom has a bare white floor and white cinderblock walls. It's very institutional. There are 8 first grade classes in the school, two they've made since the school year began. Ella's teacher was pulled out of retirement to teach her class and she seemed a bit scatterbrained. Maybe I'm just tired and cranky from being in the car for days, but I didn't like it at all. Plus we're stuck in a hotel for a couple days instead of in our house, and that has me cranky too. And can you believe I'm about to complain about being hot? It's hot! It's 77 degrees out and muggy. Blah. And yesterday when we were at a children's museum (which I'll blog about once I'm done complaining) I wacked my head super hard and my brain has been throbbing since.

Okay. I feel a little better now that I've vented. We'll return to our regularly scheduled happiness and fun in a moment.

The Employment Adventure Begins!

2011-02-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

Well, it's official, our "temporary" stay in Utah is over. We drove out today. I had a small moment of panic when we were sitting in McDonald's for lunch and Anton's phone rang and the guy on the other end said he was from the FAA. I knew he was going to say, "Oh, your class has been cancelled. Sorry. You'll have to wait another six months." But all was well. He just wanted to know how much Anton weighed and what color his eyes were for some reason.

So now I'm chilling in an awesome town in Nebraska. Yeehaw! We ate at the nicest, and only, Mexican restaurant in town. It was a small step up from Taco Bell. A very romantic way to spend Valentine's Day. We also played in the pool and melted in the lava pot they call a hot tub. It was HOT!

You know what I hate about staying in hotels? Well, one of many things. I hate that my kids won't sleep while any lights are on and Anton and I are still up. I don't want to go to bed at 8, which is when I would like them to be asleep. Now it's after 9 and they're still wiggling around over there. I'll have to give up soon and go lay in bed in the dark being bored. If the battery hadn't died in my mp3 player, I could at least entertain myself by listening to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but alas, the new batteries and the charger are in the suitcase on the bottom of the pile in the back of the car. :(

And so begins our new adventure, and hopefully some more blogging on my part. Since we will now be away from all family, it's only fair to try and keep them up to date with what we're doing.

Look out Ohhhhhhh-klahoma, here we come!!

Alex Strikes Again

2011-02-05T19:54:00.001-07:00

This morning I woke up and walked out of my room to find a large egg outside my door. It was about the size of Alex wrapped up in a blanket. I picked it up and took it into my room and laid it on my bed until it hatched. I named it Chip. Alex loves to pretend he's a little chick in an egg. It's so cute.

Alex also believes he has the power to control automatic doors with his voice. When we go to the library he walks up to the doors and yells, "OPEN!" and is then so pleased when they obey. Today when we were leaving the library we were halfway across the parking lot and he was yelling, "STAY OPEN!" and when they didn't, he was really upset. We had to convince him the door just couldn't hear him. We wouldn't want him losing his superpowers this early in life.

On the way home from the library we passed a neighborhood watch sign and he asked what the man on the sign was for. I explained that it mean that if we saw bad people in the neighborhood we would call the police who would come get the bad guys.

After a short pause he asked, "Do policemen have swords?"

I answered, "No."

Another pause. "Then how do they get the bad guys?"

I explained to him about guns, and he replied, "So the police will come and shoot all the bad guys!!"

Alex couldn't leave well-enough alone today with all the cuteness. He had to balance it out with some uber-naughtiness. I needed a red crayon I had been using to cross off lines on a pattern I am crocheting and asked Alex to go get it for me. He nicely went and did so, and that was that. Or so I thought.

We were getting ready to go to the park later and Ella said, "Why is there a red line on the stairs?" Sure enough, he had dragged the red crayon all the way up the carpeted stairs and left a red line all the way up. ARGH! I got out the carpet cleaner and made him scrub it all off and then made him sit in his room for two hours until dinner. He kept complaining about how boring it was in his room. I had to keep telling him that was the point. Sheesh.

So three cutes and one naughty isn't too bad for one day, right?

Milk and Cookies

2011-02-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

So I know why all kids in the '40s and '50s came home to plates of fresh cookies and tall glasses of milk. Their mothers were bored out of their minds. It dawned on me today when I was floundering for something to do and the only think I could think of was bake. Admit it, you've all hit that point in the afternoon when a large dose of sugar is just what you need and there's nothing in the house to satisfy, so you bake yourself some cookies. You wouldn't be baking those cookies if you had something better to do with your time. So just imagine a world without cable TV and the internet and cell phones and malls, and you can see why so many mothers perfected the art of milk and cookies.

It didn't help that our internet was out all morning, so I had to play cave man. It was pure torture!!! How was I going to survive not knowing if I got an important email or if someone posted something really good on their blog! How was I supposed to sufficiently waste my time without my internet!! It was hard, but I persevered. And look what it got us, fresh, hot, ginger cookies. They're my favorites. I'll will freely admit to having eaten at least eight so far today, and I promise I will eat more before bed. I will also be paying for it later. But it's so worth it.

So the next time you're so bored you feel the urge to play Betty Crocker, here's a recipe for you to try. These are unbelievably good. I've been trying to figure out how to give them a hint of lemon, but I haven't perfected that yet, so here's the basic recipe:

Soft Ginger Roo's

Ingredients:

1 cup  Pure or Light Olive Oil
2 cups brown sugar packed
2 large eggs
½ cup  molasses
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons softened butter
4½ cups  flour
4 teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons powdered ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoons ground cloves

Preheat oven to 375F°.
In mixing bowl combine Olive Oil, brown sugar, eggs, molasses vanilla and butter extracts. Blend until creamy.
Add flour, soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. Blend until smooth.
Roll dough into small tablespoon-sized balls, or use large cookie scoop.
Roll in sugar and place on prepared cookie sheets.
Bake for 7 - 10 minutes. Remove and let cool on cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes.

Bored

2011-02-03T22:47:00.000-07:00

I'm actually far enough ahead in organizing and packing that I find myself with nothing to do. I've been so bored the last couple of days. I haven't felt like reading. (Shock, I know!!) I manage to finish my to-do lists (albeit, very short ones) before lunch. I even sat down to do my taxes the other day just to give me something to do, only to discover we don't have all the paperwork yet that we need to do them. Sigh. What's a girl to do when she can't even do her taxes for fun? I'm sure next week when the move is impending I'll feel a little more pressure, but for now I just whine and make life miserable for my family. :(

I'm Going to Disneyland

2011-01-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

(Okay, so we already went to Disneyland, but I couldn't resist the line.)

Against all rational thinking and timing and money in the bank, somehow we convinced ourselves that we needed to go to Disneyland this last weekend. So we did. I guess we could call it a celebration of finally being able to move on with our lives, but whatever excuse we use, it was just plain fun.

We left on Thursday right after Ella got out of school and drove down to my grandma's house in SoCal. We got in late and were pooped! But that didn't stop us from getting up bright and early and heading out.

Everyone knows how Disney is, so there's no need for a running commentary, and we took lots of nonsense pictures, so I'll spare you the full brunt of them, but here are my favorites in no particular order with pertinent commentary. Enjoy!

The necessary castle picture. I forget how small it is in real life, but I like that you can go inside of it unlike the one at DW.

We rode lots of rides. Some were immensely enjoyed.

Some were nice breaks.

And some were a mite terrifying to the young ones.

(I love Alex's face there!) As a side note, both kids proclaimed their dislike of Space Mountain after riding it, but the next day, all Alex could talk about was riding it again. He's an adrenaline junkie!

We saw princess...

... after princess ...

... after character ...

... after character.

Phew!! One of the longest lines we waited in was for Rapunzel, and then the actress was totally out of character and kind of rushed us through the room right after a couple of employees cut in line in front of us just to say hi to their buddy was was playing the princess. Thankfully that was our only negative experience on the trip.

At the start of day two at California Adventure, my feet already hurt. By the end of the day I would have a blister on the bottom of one. Ouch!

Ella really wanted to have a picture of herself alone in front of the Ariel's Grotto restaurant (which we didn't eat at with its extortion-like prices) and she was determined to get Alex out of the way. We have three very classic pictures of them pushing and shoving each other while we stood to the side laughing and snapping pictures. Aren't we great parents?

There was some really cool TRON stuff as part of the night scene at CA. They had a whole arcade called Flynn's full of '80s arcade games. It was pretty cool.

My favorite parts were getting to eat at the Blue Bayou (the restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride) and getting to eat their famous Monte Cristo sandwhich (which was different than the last time I ate it, not sure if I'm a fan of the new one) and the World of Color show at CA. Least favorite parts, the aforementioned blister and the leakage of leftover jambalaya all over the backpack. In case you were wondering, apples do not taste good with an essence of jambalaya on them.

It was a super fun, spontaneous vacation!

And now in two weeks we get to join the real world of people with full-time jobs and responsibilites. It's been kind of fun to be a bit irresponsible for the last year or so, but I'm ready to move on!

My sweet baby.

2011-01-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

I wasn't feeling so hot today after my dinner last night decided to fight back. So tonight while the kids were getting ready for bed I was laying in my bed. Alex brought me in a book to read to him and then left again. When he came back he said, "Mommy, guess what I'm going to do while you're reading to me?"

He climbed up on my bed holding my brush in his hand and then proceeded to brush my hair while I read him a story. He's the sweetest little thing EVER! His wife better thank me some day for her wonderful husband that is willing to brush her hair.

Self-portrait by Alex.

I think having my hair brushed is one of the best things in the world. Too bad Alex is the only one besides myself who ever does it. He's even learning how to put it in a ponytail.

Now if only I could teach Ella to brush her own hair!

About That Oklahoma Thing...

2011-01-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

So I guess I should expound on the whole moving to Oklahoma thing in my last post. It goes something like this:

Two-and-a-half years ago, after having to drop out of pilot training due to excessive pukage at high altitudes, Anton applied to be an air traffic controller, the best way to stay in aviation without have to puke his guts out. Since that time, he's managed to finish both an associate's degree and a bachelor's degree, have three jobs, live in three states, and we've all gotten a few years older. We knew the military was slow about getting things done, it only took them a year to separate us from the military, so I guess we should have expected this from another government entity.

We moved to Utah thinking we'd only be here three to six months and that we'd end up in Seattle once Anton's job started, since that's where the FAA hired him for. We were just trying to save a few months' rent. Now we've been here over a year and we're going to end up in Oakland, CA. The surprises life has in store for us!

Oklahoma comes into play since that's where the FAA air traffic control academy is. We were told that his class was going to start in the end of March, so we were all going to stay here so Ella could finish school while he went to OK. Well, they called two days ago and told him his class is now mid-February. I wasn't willing to be a single parent that much longer, so we're all packing up a moving to OK for 4 1/2 months, after which we'll be heading to CA.

And that's the story of how we'll be adding one more state to the seven places we've already lived in in the seven years we've been married. It'll be nine places by the time we hit eight years!

Preschool - The Lazy Way

2011-01-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I have to admit that by the time Christmas rolled around, I was pretty burnt out on doing preschool. We actually did do some Christmas themed preschools after the ones I posted about, but they were pretty laid back. We talked about Christmas symbols and why we celebrate Christmas and read corresponding books, but we didn't do any activities or crafts. We were lucky to get that much done, and I sure wasn't in the mood to blog.

I was hoping by taking a break and getting through the holidays that I would be back in the mood to do preschool. Guess what? It didn't work. All the planning, book finding, organizing, etc. has pooped me right out.

So right now we're in preschool lite mode. We are still doing school three times a week, but we are just doing the basics. We do a lesson from Saxon K, a few pages in Alex's workbooks, and if we have the time and energy we also do a little science experiment. And that's it. We also read a lot of books, but that doesn't feel like school. I like this so far because I don't feel guilt about not doing anything with him, but I'm also not killing myself planning. Plus, we just found out that we're moving in a month and I need to focus on that and not on complicated curriculum. I might pick back up with more involved lessons once we get to Oklahoma (bleh), but no guarantees!

So sorry if I'm disappointing my millions (haha) of readers, but my mental sanity is important to me. :) But on the other hand, I have been feeling like blogging more about regular life the way I used to. We'll see what happens!

Further Evidence of My Loserhood

2011-01-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

Books read in 2010: 125

Pages read in 2010: 45,090

Average 1 book every 2.92 days

Average 123.5 pages per day

Bathrooms cleaned in 2010: 2.7 total

(If you like to read, you can come be my friend on Goodreads.)

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Preschool - December Holidays

2010-12-06T20:40:00.001-07:00

(Because December is such a crazy month, I've only planned two days' worth of lessons for the next couple weeks. Enjoy!)

Day 1: Kwanzaa and Africa

To start our month of holiday festivities, we started out talking about Kwanzaa. I actually knew nothing about this holiday before this, so I was learning right along with Alex.

We started by looking at the book The Story of Kwanzaa.

This book was too wordy, but I summarized the beginning of the book that tells about how Africans came to be in America while showing Alex the pictures. We read it sitting in front of the map so I could show him where Africa is and where the people come from who celebrate Kwanzaa.

Then we looked through the book A is for Africa.

It gives a good basic overview of African culture from a Nigerian perspective with one item per letter of the alphabet.

Then we read My First Kwanzaa.

This book tells about the festivities of Kwanzaa from a child's perspective.

We finished up our school-time activities with a coloring page of the kinara (the Kwanzaa version of a menorah) found here.

While we were doing all of this we were listening to the CD African Playground. It has music from groups all over Africa and was nice background music while we were reading and coloring.

And later on for dinner we made this African stew. It was really good and a great way to finish up our Africa and Kwanzaa day.

Day 2: Hanukkah

Our second December holiday was Hanukkah. We learned about Hanukkah by reading the book Celebrate Hanukkah.

This book gave a GREAT overview of all the different aspects of Hanukkah and had pictures of people all over the world celebrating. The back of the book has instructions of how to play dreidel and how to make potato latkes. An excellent all-around view of Hanukkah.

We listened to the dreidel song while we made ourselves a homemade dreidel from a square piece of cardboard with a pencil stuck through the middle, then we played! We used chocolate chips instead of money. The game lasted longer than I thought it would, but in the end, daddy won. But he shared the goods with us.

We also made potato latkes, which were really good. We topped them with applesauce and sour cream, an odd combination, but really tasty!

Then we ended the day by reading Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins.

Happy December holidays everyone!

Preschool - Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

Day 1: Turkeys

We started out with the book All About Turkeys.

There were parts I had to skim over because they were too long and too detailed, but we learned some fun things, like some male turkeys have a long hairy beard hanging off their chests, and that turkeys change colors when they get angry. Who knew turkeys were so interesting?

Next we read the section from the book Turkeys, Pilgrims, and Indian Corn that talked about turkeys and why we eat them for Thanksgiving.

This was too much for Alex. It was just two pages, but he was lost. Too many words and descriptions of things we haven't talked about yet, like Pilgrims and Native Americans. This would all probably have made more sense at the end of the week after we've talked about it all. But for older kids, this book has lots of good info about Thanksgiving symbols.

Next we read Sometimes It's Turkey, Sometimes It's Feathers.

I have no idea why the book is called that. It's a terrible title that does nothing to tell you what the book's about. But it's a cute story about a little old lady who raises a turkey from an egg for Thanksgiving dinner, but then instead of eating him, she invites him to dinner. It's a bit pointless, but the kids liked it enough to have me read it a few times.

But talking about reading things a few times, our next activity has been repeated over and over and over and over again. In our preschool book there is a story about a turkey who can't keep his temper and is constantly causing himself to change a rainbow of different colors (which makes a whole lot more sense once you know turkeys change colors when they get mad!!). I printed out a bunch of turkeys and colored them the different colors from the story and then had a bunch of colored feathers to stick on the tail of the brown turkey since every time the turkey changes back to brown he keeps a tail feather of the color he turned. So while reading the story I held up the appropriately colored turkey and let Alex tape on the colored feathers onto the brown turkey. I thought the story was a bit goofy, but the kids love it. Now I just read the story and they hold up the turkeys and act out the story.

But after doing it twice during school, I put a stop to it so we could do art. We made hand print turkeys. I used a paintbrush to put tempera paint on Alex's hand in the shape of a turkey. Fingers are feathers and palm is body and thumb is head.

Then he used his fingers again to add more feathers and a waddle and a beard (he loves turkey beards now!) and legs and so on. This was super fun and not too messy and didn't take too long.

And best of all, Alex loved it.

There were a bunch of other books I tried to get from the library, but I guess three weeks before Thanksgiving isn't early enough to get the good books. But it you search "turkey" on Amazon, you'll find a bunch of really popular ones that we weren't able to use. We did get A Plump and Perky Turkey after the fact and the kids have enjoyed it.

Day 2: Native Americans

I had a really hard time finding books at the library for today's topic. There were plenty of books on specific Native American tribes, but they were far above preschool level. I just wanted a basic, easy book that was an intro to Native Americans, but I couldn't find one. So we were a little short on resources.

We started by reading the intro to the book More Than Moccasins.

It was the shortest, kid-friendly description I could find in the books I had. We talked about who the Native Americans are and where they came from, etc.

Then we read the book Giving Thanks.

This was the perfect book for talking about Native Americans and Thanksgiving. It's a traditional Iroquois prayer of thanks, written and illustrated by Native Americans. The pictures are beautiful.

Then we looked through More Than Moccasins and I let Alex pick a few crafts he wanted to make. We decided on a headband, vest, and drum. We used stuff we had around the house, and Alex colored and decorated to his heart's content. The finished product:

I even put corn in the drum to make it a shaker drum.

Later for a snack we made Native American corn cakes. We got the recipe from our preschool book. They weren't sweet like corn bread, just corn meal, flour, egg, milk, etc. We cooked them like pancakes and spread butter and jam on them. Pretty tasty!

Day 3: Pilgrims and Thanksgiving

Again I had a hard time finding good preschool level books that talked about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower and all that. We ended up slogging our way through The Thanksgiving Story.

This was way too much for a preschooler, but we had Ella with us, so we made it work. When the book talked about where the Mayflower left from (England) and where they landed (Massachusetts) we moved over to the map and found the locations on there. Then we stuck up a string leading from one to the other and a little picture of a boat that I drew so we could see on the map where they had gone.

Then we sang the song "For Health and Strength" in a round. Alex wanted to listen to it over and over again.

Next the kids helped the Mayflower find its way to America in this maze.

Then to finish off we read the book Thanks For Thanksgiving.

After reading it we talked about things we are thankful for. The kids have been really thankful for unicorns the last few days. They're crazy. :)

And that ends our Thanksgiving week. Sorry I didn't get it up sooner so it could be of more use this year.

Preschool - Dinosaurs

2010-11-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

Day 1: Dinosaurs!

Today was kind of just an intro to dinosaurs. We looked through the book My Big Dinosaur World.

This wasn't my first choice of dinosaur overview book, but it was all the library had. We looked through it at the pictures and did our best to say all the crazy names.

Then we read a few of the poems from Dinothesaurus. We're going to use it all week.

The poems are fun and teach facts at the same time. Like, "Stegasaurus, Herbivorous, Dined on plants inside the forest." And cute pictures too, like the T-rex listening to an iPod.

Then we read Dinosaur Roar, which is really similar to Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs (which is one of our favorites, but it's in storage).

We also read Danny and the Dinosaur.

I know we'll be reading this one again. He really liked it.

Then it was art time! I got a couple of how to draw dinosaur books and we drew our favorite dinosaurs! I won't link to the books we had since they weren't the best, but libraries usually have a ton of them, though they are usually not at the preschool level. Luckily I found an easier one.

He did pretty good!

Then we needed some movement, so we put on this YouTube video of Walk the Dinosaur and rocked out! Again, he was a bit timid to dance and be crazy, but he loosened up.

Then to calm him down again I gave him this dinosaur maze. The only problem with it is there is only one way through the maze with no options to go any other directions. So if your kid isn't used to doing mazes, this is a good starter, I guess. But Alex was less than impressed with it. Oh well.

The last activity I was going to do was to cut out dinosaur footprint shapes and tie them to his feet and then have him step in water and make footprints outside on the ground. But it's raining, so no footprints today!

Day 2: Paleontologists and Fossils

Today we talked about how we know about dinosaurs and how people find them. We read the books Digging Up Dinosaurs and Dinosaur Dig.

Then a couple more poems from Dinothesaraus. And then we read Monster Bones.

That was a pretty fun, entertaining book.

Then it was time to make dino fossils! We got some plaster of Paris from the craft store. Then we found different items/toys that we wanted to make fossils out of and made little mounds of playdoh/clay to press them into.

Then we made a little paper wall on each one to pour the plaster of Paris into.

Make sure you mix the plaster in something you can throw away and don't wash it down the sink! We used a plastic cup.

We let them sit for about and hour or so?? Then we peeled off the paper and pulled back the playdoh to reveal our fossils! Just so you know, homemade playdoh peeled off much better than store bought. There were still bits of playdoh stick in the fossils, so we gave Alex a toothpick to get them out.

He didn't finish them all, but he definitely had fun doing this! Here's the final fossils:

A few race cars, a dinosaur, a fireman, and a dolphin. This was lots of fun!

Day 3: Dinosaurs are Different

We started today by looking through My Big Dinosaur World from day one. We talked about the difference between meat-eating dinosaurs and plant-eating dinosaurs. To demonstrate how the plant eaters' teeth worked, we got a baggie and put some small rocks and leaves in it then rubbed it between our hands. This broke up the leaves the same way the dino teeth would have.

We talked about their different sizes and different body features, like claws, clubs, scales, plates, spikes, etc., and what they are all used for.

Then we read Dinosaurs are Different.

This was WAY over his head, and kind of over mine too. Way too technical and way too many impossible to pronounce classes of dinosaurs. Oh well.

Then we hopped on the computer and played the dinosaur hunter game found here. It's a puzzle putting together dino bones. There are three different levels. Alex started with level one and ended up doing all three levels. He would have played on the website longer, but I made him get off so we could finish school.

We read How Big Were The Dinosaurs.

Alex really liked this one too. It was a good visual of how big all the different dinos were.

At the back of the book it has a list of all the different dinosaurs and how long they were, so we grabbed a tape measure and some chalk and headed outside. We picked a point on the sidewalk and measured from there for a few different kinds of dinosaurs. We marked their length with chalk and wrote their names. It was surprising how small some were, like stegasaurus, and how big others were, like seismasaurus. Alex really liked doing this too.

And that ends our dino week!

Preschool - Safety

2010-11-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

Day 1: Safety At Home

I started out our theme by reading the book I Can Be Safe.

It was a pretty good overview of all things safety, and we talked about how we need to be safe at home and when we're away from home.

To focus in on safety at home we followed that with reading Watch Out At Home.

This book talks about safety with sharp things, hot things, electricity, fire, chemicals, medicine, and emergencies. We stopped after each section and talked about what the characters were doing wrong in each picture.

I had printed out page 47 of this book on poisonous substances with the idea of going on a danger symbol scavenger hunt (it's a picture with different symbols for poison, corrosive, explosive, and flammable). Well, we went on the scavenger hunt, but we couldn't find a single dangerous chemical bottle in our house with a single warning symbol on them. They all said DANGER or something like that in words, but no symbols. I was pretty disappointed, especially the one that had the warning, "May be fatal if swallowed." Nice.

So back to the books instead. We read No Dragons For Tea.

It's a book about fire safety, and it was pretty good, but I felt that the fire safety elements were sometimes subverted in favor of the rhyme of the story. But we discussed it afterwards in order to bring out the fire safety tips.

Then we role played a fire in the house. We pretended that the smoke detector went off. Then on the way out, the door was too hot, so we crawled along the floor to find a window. But the Alex's clothes caught on fire and he had to stop, drop, and roll. Then we pretended to crawl out the window and meet by the mailbox. (Though we had a pretty heated discussion about needing to meet by a tree since that's what they did in the book, but my superior adult logic prevailed when pointing out that there were no trees to meet by and the mailbox was a much better option.) We had talked about all this stuff just a week or two ago when Ella did fire safety week at her school, so a lot of this we were just reviewing instead of learning from scratch.

Then we finished off the day by playing the fire safety games over at the Fire Safety website.

Day 2: Safety Around Town

We started out by reading Watch Out Around Town.

It's similar to Day 1's book Around the House. It covers what to do if you get lost, what adults are safe to ask for help, stay away from dogs you don't know, that you need to know your name, address, and phone number, don't talk to strangers, don't play in dangerous places, and so on. Lots of good info I would never have thought to bring up. We discussed all of it one topic at a time.

Then I wrote down our address and phone number and had Alex say them three times each. I've also been quizzing him on them all day long.

Then we read The Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers.

It goes into more detail about strangers, and how though not everyone would want to hurt you, there's always a bad apple so we have to be careful of everyone. It does a really good job of making a somewhat scary topic much easier to explain. I would be more like papa bear who scares the kids by showing them all the newspaper articles about missing kids and such. Thank goodness for authors who can explain it better than me!

Then we headed to the computer and watched all the catchy little safety videos found here. They're all about how to safely cross the street and such. There's a bunch of other fun stuff on that website too.

Then we finished off with a street sign quiz found here. I didn't expect him to know all of them, but he did pretty good. We briefly talked about wearing seat belts in the car and helmets on bikes, and that was it!

Day 3: Emergencies

We started today by talking about what an emergency is. I gave examples like getting a cut on your finger, the house being on fire, mommy falling down and not talking after. They (Ella was with us today) had to say whether it was a real emergency or not.

Then we read Impatient Pamela Calls 9-1-1.

Then I busted out a cell phone that we don't use and I had them both practice how to dial 9-1-1. It has been shown that if you don't practice dialing it before an emergency you could freeze up and not be able to dial it when you really need to. I showed them how to dial and then push the green button, or if they messed up, to push the red button then start over. I also showed them how to do it on my parents' land line.

Then it was role play time! I pretended to fall down and get hurt and the kids had to get my phone from my pocket and call 9-1-1. I pretended to be the operator. They had fun with this. We also pretended like I was having to help one of the kids and couldn't call 9-1-1 and the other one had to call them. Good fun!

Preschool - Halloween

2010-10-31T10:26:00.000-06:00

Day 1: What is Halloween?

We started out our day by reading Halloween.

I think that's the one we read. I already returned it to the library and you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find one book out of the hundreds called "Halloween"! But regardless of which one it was, I liked the simple text and photographs. I also had Halloween Is...

and we ended up reading this one too. They both covered the same information, but one with photos, which are always good, and one with a little more detail. So you might not need both. Either one by itself would be fine.

Then we read the books Scary, Scary Halloween and In The Haunted House.

Both Halloween themed without the scary part.

Them we put on the song Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens and did our best scary Halloween dancing. Alex was a little reluctant at first, but the crazier I got the more comfortable he felt and we had fun in the end.

Then we cut Halloween shapes out of construction paper and decorated them to hang in the window.

Pumpkin and cat by Alex, ghost and bat by me.

Day 2: Pumpkins

We had a special sick visitor today who couldn't go to school thanks to a nasty sinus infection, so twice the fun!

We started our day with pumpkin toad-in-the-hole!

This was not planned. We just decided to have this for breakfast and ended up finding a pumpkin cookie cutter in the drawer. They didn't look anything like pumpkins when they finished cooking, but they were tasty!

We started our official school day with the book Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin, Pie.

This was a great book with photos and easy to understand text that talks all about how pumpkins grow and what they're used for. I was just going to read this book and leave it at that, but the kids saw that I also had From Seed to Pumpkin and insisted I read it too.

The reason I chose the first one is From Seed to Pumpkin had just a bit too much info and the pictures felt too fiction story to me and I wanted the kids to get that what I was reading to them was fact, not story. But they ended up with a double dose and all was well.

We were going to read Big Pumpkin, but the copy we got from the library had double pages of the second half of the book and no first half! So we skipped that one and moved on to Pumpkin Soup and The Biggest Pumpkin Ever.

Both fun stories.

Then it was time for pumpkin science! We made a pumpkin report. Each kid got a piece of construction paper folded into a book. We labeled the front and they drew a picture of their pumpkin. We measured the circumference of a mini pumpkin with a string and glued the string on the inside and labeled it "My pumpkin is this fat." We measured the height of the pumpkin with a strip of paper and glued that down and labeled it "My pumpkin is this tall." Then we pulled out the balance and found out our pumpkin weighed 107 pennies and 114 Bananagram tiles. Alex used the pennies and Ella the letter tiles.

Then we glued that down and labeled it "My pumpkin weighs this much." And that completed the report.

And then we had to take a pumpkin field trip! But we're cheap. We didn't head to a quaint pumpkin patch. Nope. We headed off to the grocery store. But where else can you buy 70 pounds of pumpkin for $5.50? Alex was very particular about his pumpkin. He took twice as long to find one as the rest of us.

Because we ran out of time we continued our activities the next day by making pumpkin whoopie pies. These are dangerous. If you make them, be warned, you will eat more than one, and possibly more than two, and just maybe you will eat them for breakfast claiming that they are made from pumpkin so they can't be that bad. Just saying.

There are no longer this many in the container. There may be significantly less than one. :(

Day 3: Carving Pumpkins!

I didn't plan anything for this day so we'd have time to carve our pumpkins before daddy had to go to work. Last year we swore we wouldn't buy four pumpkins to carve until the kids were old enough to carve theirs themselves. Somehow we forgot about that and got four pumpkins again this year.

So after I had scraped out three pumpkins and helped Ella carve hers, I was pooped.

I had a super cool pumpkin too, and it ended up with the lamest face ever.

But the kids made cute ones. They designed them themselves. A washable marker is perfect for letting your kids draw on the face they want, and then once you're done cutting you just wipe off any marker that's left. Here they are in all their glory:

(Grandma's, Alex's, Mine)

(Cowgirl Ella, Ella's witch, Anton's, skeleton Alex)

Trick-or-Treating was Saturday and was tons of fun. The kids filled their buckets to the top. Though it was marred with a trip to the urgent care for what appears to be the second case of pink eye in a week. Sigh. Such is life!

Happy Halloween!

Mirena IUD and Depression

2010-10-24T23:04:00.000-06:00

I'm writing this post in the the hopes that I can help even just one person out there who may be having the same problems I suffered through for four years.

Right after I had my second child I knew I wanted some sort of birth control, however, anything hormonal was not an option. I had tried the mini pill after my first kid and spent three months on the couch thinking that was normal after having a baby. Thankfully I talked to a friend who had suffered through depression and she suggested I stop taking the pill. I did the next day and fell 100% better.

So fast forward 2 years to after the birth of kid number two and I was very clear with my doctor that I couldn't have anything hormonal. I had heard about Mirena and liked what I heard - five years without having to think about birth control, no periods, no pills to take, etc. - but I was definitely concerned about the small amount of hormones that are in the IUD. My doctored assured me over and over that since the IUD is in your uterus, none of the hormones ever travel through your blood stream and it would not affect me whatsoever. I read through all the information I could on it at the time, which pretty much consisted of a three-fold flyer, and didn't see anything to make me concerned, so I went ahead and got a Mirena IUD.

When child two was about 8 months old we moved to the back waters of Florida and I started feeling depressed again. Over the next few months it got to the point where I was angry about everything and couldn't get off the couch and so on. Classic clinical depression. I went to therapists who told me it was situational. I tried three different medications that all made me worse than before.

We moved again, and I hoped this would remove the "situation" and I would feel better. It didn't. I saw more therapists.

All this time my relationship with my husband was pretty much nonexistant. We were glorified roommates. Physical relationships were a joke. I didn't want it, and so it was always a fight. Nothing was fun to me. I wanted to stay home and do nothing. Most everyday about midafternoon I would have to go lay in my bed and cover up my head because my anxiety levels had risen too high for me to cope anymore. I was living in a dark box that I just couldn't get out of.

Then we moved again. More therapy. I didn't bother trying new medications because we didn't have insurance and I knew the side effects would be awful. This is now four years after I had gotten the Mirena put in. Over this time my depression symptoms had gradually lessened, but they were definitely still there.

Then one day a light bulb went on. I realized that I had been feeling depressed since I got the Mirena put in. The fact that my symptoms were slowly lessening made me think that it might be because the dosage of hormone in the IUD was slowly wearing out, which makes sense since I was about a year away from needing it removed and replaced.

So I went to Google. The magic search terms "Mirena depression" brought up nightmare story after nightmare story. I was not alone! There were so many stories of people who had been suffering just like me. There were marriages ruined, relationships on the brink, lives practically destroyed. It was so sad to read, but also so wonderfully hopeful at the same time. Maybe I wasn't broken! Maybe this was something that could be fixed!

The next day I called around to all the doctors in the area to find someone who would take my Mirena out without charging me $300 dollars. I found a place, made an appointment, and three days later it was gone.

I knew I wouldn't have a miracle turnaround like after the mini pill. But let me tell you, seven months later my life is where I never thought I would be able to have it again. I'm happy. I am able to enjoy things. I leave the house willingly and sometimes have to drag my family because they don't want to go. I've only had to crawl into my bed because of anxiety two or three times compared to the daily occurrence before.

I look back on those four years and all I see is fog. I can't remember a lot of what went on. I feel like they've been stolen from me, but I can't tell you how glad I am to be able to take the rest of my life for myself and not live under that cloud.

So please, if you have a Mirena and you've not felt like yourself, think about having it taken out. Read the information that comes up when you Google "Mirena depression."

I've since found this quote in the Mirena product monograph:

"Patients with a history of emotional disturbances, especially the depressive type, may be more
prone to have a recurrence of depression while using MIRENA. In cases of a serious recurrence,
consideration should be given to removing MIRENA since the depression may be drug-related."

Nowhere in the information I was given when considering this product did it ever say that depression was a possible side effect. But trust me, it definitely is. And while I'm a little bit bummed that I now have to suffer through my period again, a week's worth of inconvenience is far better than a life of nothing.

Please pass this on to any friends or family you think it might help. Please don't suffer needlessly!!

Preschool - Birds, Week 2

2010-10-22T19:01:00.000-06:00

Day 1: Birds of North America

Today was supposed to be about birds in our area, but somehow it ended up being more about the bird songs of North America. We first looked at a little fold-out bird guide specifically for Utah called Utah Birds.

Who knew there were so many! We picked out the ones we had seen before outside.

Then we read The BLUES Go Birding Across America.

It was kind of long and involved, but having Ella help keep Alex focused allowed us to get through it all.

Then we read the book Birdsongs.

Then we went to the computer, and using the Web site What Bird, we listened to the bird calls of the birds mentioned in the book and ones we have around here. Then the kids picked their favorite bird of the ones we've talked about and I printed out that page from a bird coloring book you can find here. Alex picked the crow and Ella picked the Bluejay.

After they finished coloring we read the book How Robin Saved Spring.

Ella is in love with this book. She's crying right now because I won't read it to her. (She's being punished. I promise I'm not just ignoring her for the computer.)

Then we gathered up paper and pencil and took our bird guide and headed outside. We walked around the neighborhood trying to find as many different kinds of birds as we could. We had to be really quiet to find them. Ella kept telling me to make my flip flops be quiet. We found a magpie, robin, chickadee, sparrow, and quails. It was a bad time of day to do this. The next morning on the way to the bus stop we saw that many birds in one minute. Oh well.

Field trip time! We went to the Tracy Aviary. Most of the birds there are from around the world and not just North America, but since everyone in the family was home today, this is the day we decided to go.

The kids loved the condor. Ella declared it her favorite. Alex first loved the pelicans, and then changed his mind to the peapock, as he calls it.

There were actually really attentive and interested in all the shows and talks we went to. It was a lot of fun, especially watching Anton get whacked in the head by the great horned owl in the birds in flight show.

When we got back the kids helped Grandma fill the birdfeeder in the hopes of seeing some birds in our backyard!

Day 2: Birds Around the World

Since we saw a lot of different birds from around the world on our field trip the other day, I didn't spend a whole lot of time introducing them. We went straight over to the map with our hefty Complete Birds of the World.

I printed out little discs with a different bird on each one, and we looked the bird up in our book. Each bird showed a map of where the birds live, and we would stick the disc up on our map wherever it belonged. Some birds lived in more than one region, so we would pick the biggest one.

After we'd stuck up all the birds I'd printed out, we played a game where I'd flip the pages of the book and Alex would stick his hand in to stop me. We would look and see what bird it was and where it lived. We are really familiar with Madagascar and Australia now. Who knew they had so many unique bird species!

Here's the bird discs if you want them:

I've labeled their names and where we stuck them on our map.

After that we read the book The Emperor's Egg.

Which was written at the perfect level for Alex. Then we read Mud City: A Flamingo Story.

This one was a little above his level.

And that's all we did today. A nice laid back day.

You want to know what makes me super happy? Alex was "reading" the book The Lion and The Mouse (I say "reading" because it has no words), when all of a sudden he screamed, "LOOK!" I jumped out of my skin and turned to see what the matter was. He pointed to a picture on the page and said, "It's a great horned owl!" And sure enough, it was. So he must be learning something!

Day 3: Birds of Prey

The end of bird week! I actually liked spending this much time on one topic. My kids have really absorbed it.

We started today with the book Amazing Birds of Prey.

We just looked at the pictures and talked about the different birds that are considered birds of prey and how they eat other animals and have special claws and so on.

Then we read Good-night Owl.

And talked about owls sleeping at night.

Then Hawk, I'm Your Brother.

A bit above Alex's story level. I think if I'd spent some time talking about Native Americans and their culture and such and the desert, this would have meant more, but it wasn't really about how birds of prey act or anything like that. Oh well.

Then we waited for Ella to come home to finish up our school day. I had ordered some owl pellets from Home Science Tools, and we dissected them!

The kids lasted about one minute doing this.

Ella was disappointed that my big end of week surprise wasn't coloring. Alex started doing his, but as soon as Ella abandoned, he did too. He probably would have sat longer otherwise. So I ended up doing all the dissecting of one pellet, and I left the other one for Anton to do when he gets home from work. It was pretty tedious, so I would leave an activity like this for older kids. Though maybe my kids' little hands would have been an advantage!

There's all the bones I found in my pellet, and you can see all the fur in the bag above the plate. I would never have guessed this much stuff would have come from a pellet smaller than a golf ball.

Look at the teeth on that thing! Speaking of teeth, Ella lost her first tooth today!!

(Excellent photography by Alex)

Here's all the bones laid out in their skeleton shape:

It's either a mouse or a vole. The only way to tell the different is from it's teeth, and they're so small I couldn't tell whether they had roots or not. Plus, I think this guy had at least 6 hands and feet from the number of minuscule bones I pulled out of the pellet.

So I thought this was pretty cool, but probably not for preschool!

And that ends our bird weeks!

Preschool - Birds, Week 1

2010-10-16T21:51:00.000-06:00

Day 1: What is a bird?

We started out with the book Bird.

It's not very young child friendly as far as the text goes, but I just used the pictures and talked about them in words Alex would understand.

We talked about bird feathers and how they help a bird fly and keep them warm in the winter and keep some birds dry. We talked about different beaks and how they are used to eat the different foods birds eat. We talked about different feet - webbed, claws - and what they're used for. We talked about their tails and how they are used. We talked about some of their habits - migrating, changing colors, eating.

Then we read the book Birds.

This one was more on Alex's level.

Then we did a fingerplay that goes like this:

Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill,
One named Jack and one named Jill.
Fly away Jack. Fly away Jill.
Come back Jack. Come back Jill.

You pretend your two index fingers are the birds and put them behind your back when they fly away and bring them back out when they come back. Simple, but Alex thought it was fun

Then we read the book Flap Your Wings.

This book would have been better on the day we talked about eggs, but I didn't realize that until after I read it. And since Alex is right now sitting on the floor behind me reading it himself, I'm not going to complain.

Then we made a bird book. I copied it out of our science book. Each page has different birds on it. Some needed beaks added, some needed branches to sit on, and some needed their wings glued on. We looked up each bird and made sure they were all colored correctly. It took a while, but Alex stuck with it. Then we stapled it all together.

This would also have probably been better next week when we talk about the birds of North America, but oh well. Everything bird kind of all melds together.

And last but not least, we played a migration game online. Find it here. It goes pretty quick so we played it a few times. I also kept winning so we had to play until Alex won.

Another thing I would have had us do if I didn't think grandpa would freak out about it, we would have spread peanut butter on rice cakes and hung them in the trees outside. But it would have been messy and attracted animals, and we wouldn't want that. :)

Day 2: Nests

We started out today with the book Bird again, but this time we looked at the pages about nests. We followed that up with the book Birds, Nests, and Eggs.

We focused just on the nests on each page today. We talked about how different birds build different kinds of nests, some out of mud, some out of sticks, some by water, and some up in trees. Then we used the duvet off my bed and built a nest for Alex.

While he was all curled up and cozy we read the book The Perfect Nest.

Fabulously funny book. The kids have had me read it to them over and over again.

The we read the book The Magpies' Nest.

It's a story about after the creation of the world the magpies try to teach all the birds how to build a nest, but they don't all listen to all the instructions so they end up making nests all different ways. It's a cute story and it describes how to build a nest. So that's what we did next. We headed outside with the book and followed the instructions on how to build a nest.

We started with a base of a rolled down paper bag and went from there. We lined it with mud, then sticks, then grass (we used pine needles so as to not pull out the lawn), and then we put some acorn "eggs" in it. Alex loved this.

Though he was pretty disappointed that we weren't going to build a mud nest on the side of the house like a swallow does. He was pretty hooked on that idea and it took grandpa telling him he would lose a limb if he built a nest on the side of the house to get him to drop it. :) If the weather had been inclement, we would have made rice krispy nests instead. And that's it for nests!

Day 3: Eggs

We had big sister in tow for school today thanks to UEA, but we had fun anyway! We started by talking about where birds come from (eggs), and we looked at pictures of bird eggs in the Bird book. There are some pretty cool eggs out there in the world. Did you know there was a bird that lived on Madagascar 700 years ago that laid eggs bigger than any dinosaur egg? They held over 2 gallons of fluid!! That'd make quite the omlette!

We talked about how eggs must be kept warm if you want them to hatch. Then we pulled out the same book again, Birds, and looked at the pages showing baby birds hatching. It shows step by step how a baby bird hatches out of an egg. It's pretty cool.

Then we looked through the book Eggs.

The actual text of the book would have been way over the kids' heads, so I just summarized each page for them. This book talks about other animals that come from eggs too, not just birds.

Then it was science time! I had a hardboiled egg for each kid and we performed a few different tests on them. First, we put them in a glass of water to see how much water they would displace. Ella impressed me by being able to say that the reason the water level rises is because the egg pushes the water out of the way. Then we used our balance to see how many Unifix cubes our eggs weighed. I purposely picked different sized eggs for the kids so we would have different answers. Alex's was 17 cubes and Ella's 15. Then they had to guess how many squares on a grid their egg would cover when traced, then trace their egg and see if they were right. All of these experiments were recorded on a sheet from our science book.

And then the final test was the taste test, of course. Perfect snack.

And then since I hadn't showered yet, I sent the kids to watch the Reading Rainbow episode of Rechenka's Eggs.

Later on after lunch (which was supposed to be egg sandwiches but the eggs were consumed after science instead) we went outside and had an egg hunt. We had a bunch of plastic eggs from Easter so we used those. We did a couple of rounds and then the kids took over and hid them for each other. They have been hiding eggs around the house ever since.

And then after that we took the sidewalk chalk outside and drew pretty eggs all over the driveway. I was going to draw all the different eggs to size so they could see how they compared, but the Bird book did a really good job of that so I just let the kids draw and have fun.

And that's the end of our first week of birds. More next week!

Preschool - Book List

2010-10-12T22:10:00.000-06:00

I compiled this list from a variety of sources. My goal is to get a few of these from the library each week and try to get at least one from each topic (math, art, etc.). It's amazing to me how entranced my kids are by these classic read-aloud kids' books. I'll continue to edit this list as I find more or find I don't like one on the list. Feel free to suggest any I don't have on here!

Picture Books:
Winnie the Pooh Series
Beatrix Potter (Benjamin Bunny, Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, etc.)
The Little House
The Story About Ping
The Little Engine That Could
Blueberries For Sal
Make Way For Ducklings
One Morning In Maine
Ferdinand
Ox-cart Man
Stone Soup
Miss Rumphius and other Barbara Cooney
The Story of Little Babaji
Brer Rabbit
Aesop's Fables
Caps For Sale
Roxaboxen
Books by Elsa Beskow (Pelle's New Suit)
One Grain of Rice
Millions of Cats
Carl the dog books
Stranger in the Woods
Lost in the Woods
Eric Carle Books
The Very Best Home For Me
Corduroy
A Pocket For Corduroy
Swimmy
Harry the Dirty Dog
Harry By the Sea
No Roses For Harry
Billy's Picture
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Home For a Bunny
McDuff books
Pretzel
The Poky Little Puppy
Polite Elephant
The Saggy, Baggy Elephant
The Shy Little Kitten
Whistle For Willie (Ezra Jack Keat's Books)
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Norman the Doorman
Pet of the Met
Burt Down
Time of Wonder
Lentil
A New Coat for Anna
Jeremy, The Tale of an Honest Bunny
Bearymore
Chester the Worldly Pig
The Giving Tree
Gregory's Shadow
Little Toot
Raggedy Ann and Andy stories
The Ugly Duckling
The Taxi That Hurried
Tootle
James Herriot's Treasury for Children
The Biggest Bear
Thy Friend, Obadiah
Imogene's Antlers
The Magic Hill
The Little House series
Borrequita and the Coyote
Alejandro's Gift
We're Going on a Lion Hunt, David Axtell
Madeleine
Juan Bobo
Goodnight Moon
The Runaway Bunny
Strega Nona
Are You My Mother?
Go, Dog, Go
Ask Mr. Bear
The Bossy Gallito
The Lion and the Mouse
A House is a House For Me
I know an Old Lady by Mary Ann Hoberman
Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
Swamp Angel
The Tale of Rabbit and Coyote
The Carrot Seed
The Red Balloon
Sam and the Tigers
Kite Flying
Frederick
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
A Boy, A Dog and a Frog
Uncle Jed's Barbershop
Tikki Tikki Tembo
Good Night Gorilla
Who Is in the Garden?
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs
Where the Wild Things Are
Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
My Father's Dragon
The Cat in the Hat
The Park Bench
The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig
Round is a Mooncake
The Kite Festival
Quick as a Cricket

Art Books:
Katie Meets the Impressionists
Katie and the Mona Lisa
Katie and the Sunflowers
Degas and the Little Dancer
Camille and the Sunflowers
Leonoard and the Flying Boy
The Magical Garden of Claude Monet
Picasso and the Girl With the Pony Tail
Baby Loves
Marie in Fourth Position
In the Garden With Van Gogh
A Magical Day With Matisse
Dancing With Degas
Sharing With Renoir
Sunday with Seurat
A Child's Book of Art
Colors: A First Art Book
I Spy: An Alphabet in Art
I Spy: Shapes In Art
I Spy Two Eyes: Numbers in Art
Can You Find It Inside
Can You Find It Outside
Vincent's Colors
You Can't Take a Balloon Into The Metropolitan Museum (and others in series)
Rockwell: A Boy and His Dog
Lawrence Anholt books
I Spy a Freight Train

Math Books:
Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar, Anno
Pigs Will Be Pigs, Axelrod
Greedy Triangle, Burns
Spaghetti and Meatballs For All, Burns
Splash!, Jonas
One Hundred Hungry Ants, MacKain
Monster Math, Miranda
Gobble Up Math, Mogard
Divide and Ride, Murphy (and other MathStart books)
How Big is a Foot?, Myllar
Sir Cumference and the First Round Table, Neuschwander
How Much is a Million?, Schwartz (and others)
Math Curse, Scieska
Math For All Seasons, Tang
Bunny Money, Wells
Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday, Viorst
The Doorbell Rang, Hutchins
One Grain of Rice

Poetry Books:
A Child's Garden of Verses
The Real Mother Goose
When We Were Very Young
Now We Are Six
Favorite Poems Old and New
Poems For Young Children
The Oxford Book of Children's Verse

Character Building Books:
God's Wisdom For Little Boys
The 7 Habits of Happy Kids
Child's Book of Character Building
Polite Moments
The Book of Virtues

Preschool - Fall Theme

2010-10-08T19:40:00.000-06:00

I scheduled this week in the hopes that it would actually look like fall outside. No such luck. So we're going to have to make do!

Day 1: What is Fall?

First we talked about Fall also being called Autumn, and then why we call it Fall (because the leaves fall off the trees). We talked about ways you can tell it's fall: cooler weather, leaves falling, birds flying south, animals gathering food, etc.

We read the book I Know It's Autumn.

And then sang the song It's Autumn Time.

Then read the book Fall Is Not Easy.

I also wanted to read the book Count Down to Fall, but it didn't come in in time.

Then it was science experiment time. We had a collection of acorns, and I had him sort them into piles of caps and no caps. We had a little worksheet from our science book that he marked them on and drew how many in each group. Then we put them in water to see how many would sink or float and marked and drew them on the worksheet too. You're also supposed to plant them afterwards, but I didn't think my parents would want random tree sprouts in their front yard.

And then time for failed art projects! The idea is to melt fall-colored crayon shavings between two pieces of wax paper and then cut leaf shapes out of it. Like so. But come to find out that different brands of crayons have different melting points, some which appear to be above the boiling point. So we ended up with lumpy, not very well stuck together wax paper with crayon bits inside. I salvaged what I could from it and cut out some leaves to hang in the window.

(Do you like our lovely cement window-well view?)

But this really ended up being a mom project that Alex just watched. If it had gone well I would probably have let him trace the leaves and cut them out, but there were too many crayon bits going everywhere. Oh well.

We were also going to go on a fall walk to gather leaves for our next day of school, but the weather outside was frightful, so we scratched that. That is why I always plan more than I think I'll need because something always goes wrong!

Day 2: Trees and Leaves

We started today with the book Fletcher and The Falling Leaves.

Then we sang "The leaves on the trees turn orange and brown," to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus." The other verses are "The leaves on the trees come tumbling down," and "The leaves on the ground go swish, swish, swish, all through the Fall."

While I was walking this morning I gathered up a big pile of fall leaves off the ground. I tried to get as many different kinds and colors as I could because our next activity was leaf sorting. I cut out four different colored leaves out of construction paper - red, yellow, green, and orange (though brown would have been better, I didn't have that color) - and four different shapes - smooth edged, toothed, lobed, and toothed and lobed together (like a maple leaf). I put the shapes below a whiteboard and we sorted and counted by color first.

We used tally marks so he could learn a new way of counting.

Then we sorted them by shape.

This activity actually spanned over the morning and then after lunch because someone had a breakdown during the middle of it all, and it wasn't me.

Then we took a closer look at one of the leaves to see its veins. We talked about what they were for and how they bring food to the leaf.

Then to better learn the parts of a leaf we made a leaf book (pattern from our science book). It's made with a pocket in the back and see-through pages in the middle. You trace a different part of the leaf on each page so that as you turn the pages each part shows up and is labeled and at the end the whole leaf is put together. Then you keep the real leaf that you traced in the pocket in the back. It's kind of hard to explain, but here's some pictures:

Then we read the book Leaf Man.

This book is full of beautiful pictures all made from leaves.

We waited for Ella to come home so the kids could make their own leaf men together. Alex didn't want to glue anything down so he could try all different combinations, but Ella got right down to business. Here's hers:

Fun stuff!

(On the day in between school days I gave Alex this fall color by number to do.)

Day 3: What Do Animals and People Do In The Fall?

I'm going to rearrange the order of things we did when telling it here on the blog because after we'd finished our school for the day I wish I had done things in a slightly different order. So this is how our day would have looked if perfect:

We started by looking at pictures of bears, squirrels, birds, and rabbits and talking about the different things they do to get ready for winter (eat a lot, hoard food, fly south, change fur color, etc.). Then we talked about the different things people do to get ready for winter (harvest crops, clean out gardens, get out winter clothes, rake leaves, etc.)

Then in my imaginary perfect world we read the book It's Fall!

This book does a great job of cover all the things everyone, both animal and human, do in the fall. And the pictures are all cut paper and look pretty cool.

Then we read the book Leaves.

It kind of had a similar idea of the book above, Fletcher and the Falling Leaves, where an animal is confused when the leaves start falling from the trees, but this one describes the bear finding a den and hibernating, so I went with it anyways.

Next we talked about what might happen if you didn't prepare for the winter, and we followed that up by reading The Ant and The Grasshopper.

It's based on an Aesop fable, but it's been redone and set in China. We found China on the map before reading it, and afterwards talked about what happened to the grasshopper after the story ends, since it ends kind of abruptly before you really witness the consequences of not preparing (aka, he dies).

Then we finished up by doing a migration maze. I just found a freebie maze online and added some geese up top and the compass points at the bottom. Here it is if you'd like it:

And that finished our day and our week. It was kind of a quickie school day, but by Friday those are the kind I need. Have a great weekend!

Preschool - Piano Lessons!

2010-10-05T21:14:00.000-06:00

So Ella has been wanting to learn to play the piano for a while, and I just haven't gotten around to doing anything about it. But I finally got my lazy duff off my computer chair long enough to go to the store and get a beginning piano book. And of course Ella can't do anything without Alex wanting to do it too, so I'm letting him start too. I'm going to teach them for at least the first year since I know enough piano to get that far.

We are using the book 67 Easy Songs Primer by Jon Schmidt.

I love his method of teaching note reading, and this book is specifically written for the 4-8 age group. It gives me all the text I need to say and has pretty good instructions along the way. His method gets kids sight reading music really quickly so that they can then go on and play any music they want. It leads into his book 67 Fun Songs which starts the first three chapters with the same info as the primer then moves on to more methodology and such.

Somewhere in there I will probably put them in real lessons, but until we are moved and settled, it's just going to have to be mom.

Another program I looked at and that a lot of people seem to like is Simply Music because it gets kids playing real music at the get-go, but I figured I'd try the cheaper piano book first and see how it goes.

So that's the plan. I'll keep you updated on how it goes!

Preschool - Food and Harvest, Week 2

2010-10-01T17:27:00.000-06:00

Day 1: Meat

I don't know if it was just my teaching abilities today or what, but Alex was just not getting this. I started out by showing him pictures of a cow, pig, chicken, turkey, and the ocean and we talked about what kinds of meat came from which place. Here are the animals I used if you want it:

Then we read the book Meat and Protein.

It talks about all different kinds of meat and proteins and has all the pictures labeled. It was a pretty good overview. (I actually had a REALLY hard time finding books about meat for today.)

Then we played fishing for food. I printed out a bunch of different meats and cut them apart and put paperclips on them.

Then we rigged up our fishing pole with a magnet on the end. I put the foods in a box and let Alex fish for them.

Daddy ended up having to help a bit because Alex just couldn't get the paperclips to stick to his magnet. When he would catch one I would have him tell me what animal (or ocean) it came from and then he put it in a baggie with that animal's picture on the front (the same animals I showed him at the beginning).

He had fun with this, but I had to tell him what animal every piece of meat came from. He just doesn't get the different between beef and pork and cows and pigs. It's not sticking in his little head.

We read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs next, the original one.

Then since I had to go to the grocery store anyway we piled in the car and went to check out the meat at the store. He was able to tell me what most of the seafoods were, but packaged meats were beyond him. I was going to let him pick one for us to buy and take home and cook, but he was being a brat so he lost his meat privileges.

So I'm not sure what I could have done differently, but this just wasn't the best subject. Maybe if we keep playing the fishing game over and over again he'll finally get it!

Day 2: Grains

I got four small bowls and filled them each with rice, oats, wheat, and popcorn. I showed them each to Alex and let him feel them and we talked about the kinds of foods we make with each one. We read the book The Grain Group to back this all up.

Next we did our science project. We got a quart baggie, a paper towel, and a stapler. We put the paper towel into the baggie then stapled it across the middle to make it stay put.

(My awesome staple helper.) Then we put enough water in the bag to soak the paper towel and leave about half an inch of water in the bottom. The we lined up a row of popcorn kernels along the staple line.

And then we hung it in the window.

The idea here is that they are supposed to grow. We live in a basement, so hopefully it will work!

Next we read the book One Grain of Rice.

It's about rice and math, so two birds with one stone! I really liked the illustrations in it. Every page has gold on it.

Then it was craft time. We used craft glue and our four bowls of grains to make grain "collages." I guess that's what you'd call it.

Just put down the glue, dump on the grains, then pour off the extras. The kids have been doing this for a few days now. It was a big hit.

Putting the paper and bowls in an edged tray kept the mess contained.

We had to take a break for lunch and to run errands, but when we got back we listened to the story of The Little Red Hen.

The book we got had a CD, otherwise we would have just read it.

And then what does one do when discussing grains and you've just read The Little Red Hen? Why make bread of course! We ground the wheat and everything. The kids love helping me make bread. My dad calls it wheat cake because he likes it so much. A tasty way to end the grain day!

Day 3: Water

So water isn't really a food group, but this is where is got stuck anyways. I had high hopes for all the fun water experiments there are out there, but Alex just wasn't into our activities today.

I gave him a glass of water to start with and had him smell it and feel it and drink it. Then I gave him a glass of ice and we talked about how ice is solid water. Then we put the ice into a pan and melted it on the stove until we could see the steam and talked about evaporation and water vapor.

We read the book The Magic School Bus Wet All Over about the water cycle.

We sang Give Said the Little Stream and It's Raining, It's Pouring. Then we looked at the pictures in the book A Drop of Water.

It talks about a bunch of different experiments you can do, but most of them were over Alex's head. But the pictures are good for discussing the properties of water.

Next we played sink or float. I filled a big bowl with water and got a bunch of stuff that was similar (like a plastic spoon and a metal spoon or a foam ball and a marble) but one would float and one would sink. We tested them all, guessing ahead of time whether they would float or sink. In case you were wondering, tomatoes sink. Who'd have thought?

Then for a final water experiment we got a clear 2-liter bottle and filled it with water. Then we dropped red, yellow, and blue food coloring into it and watched it swirl around. This shows how water molecules are constantly moving. By using the three colors you end up with a rainbow swirl. Alex didn't care about molecules, he just wanted to dump it out at the end. Oh well. Anton and I thought it was cool.

After Ella got home from school I sent the kids outside with a bucket of water and paintbrushes and let them paint the sidewalk. The kids have loved doing this for a long time. It keeps them busy forever. They try to paint the whole sidewalk but the sun keeps drying the water so they never finish! Good stuff.

And that ends our Food unit!

Preschool - Food and Harvest, Week 1

2010-09-24T19:33:00.000-06:00

Another two week subject. We'll be talking about a different food group each day.

Day 1: Fruit

I gathered up a bunch of different fruit that we had around the house and put them all in a small bag. Alex would stick his hand in and try to guess what the fruit was by feel. He got them all except the citrus ones that all felt the same. We used a banana, orange, grapefruit, lime, kiwi, apple, peach, and grapes. I would have liked to have a strawberry and maybe blueberries or raspberries, but they are too expensive to buy for just one piece of fruit. I used the books we had that had a picture of a strawberry and a blueberry on them instead.

Then we lined up all the fruit on the table and I printed out and cut apart pictures of a tree, a vine, and a bush. Here's it is in all its glory if you want it. It's sideways.

Alex sorted the fruit according to what type of plant they grow on. I had to help with the citrus again, but he got it right that a kiwi grows on a vine. It must have been a good guess because I had to look it up before we started school.

Then we talked about how fruits are all different. We looked at the little banana seeds, the orange peel, and we cut open an apple to look at the star in the middle.

Next we read the book How Do Apples Grow?

It goes into a bit of detail about stamens and pistils and ovaries and pollen and needing bees, etc, but each little section was short enough that Alex didn't lose interest. I was honestly surprised. I thought it would be over his head. But it had good pictures, and that counts for a lot.

Then on to The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear.

This book made me laugh out loud. It's totally cute. It written as though the reader is talking to the mouse, and the mouse's facial expressions are a hoot. Good fun.

The we read the classic Blueberries For Sal.

We've gotten this book from the library at least four times over the lifetime of my kids and they will still sit entranced while I read it. Though they also think the main character is a boy. This kind of book makes me nostalgic for the past.

But enough books. It was time for fun. We took our apple that was cut in half and we used it to make apple prints. The goal was to try and get the star in the middle to show up, but no such luck.

I gave him red, yellow, and green paint in a paper plate, and he smeared them all around to make fun colored prints. When he ran out of room on the small paper I gave him a piece of packing paper my mom found and let him go to town. I wish I could have thought up a creative thing for him to do with the prints, but nothing came to mind.

While he was printing I read to him the story of Johnny Appleseed.

It was not a very kid friendly version of the story in my opinion. It was in poem form and Alex just doesn't get the obscure descriptions and wordings sometimes used. I had to stop after each page and describe what was going on, and then stop and make sure he wasn't getting paint where he shouldn't and then clean up the paint off the floor, and... So maybe it wasn't the best time to read a book.

But the most exciting part of the day was yet to come. We had our first field trip today! There's an apple orchard and cider mill here in town and they do school tours. If you live in the Salt Lake valley, check out Farnsworth Cider Mill. They also do a Great Pumpkin Halloween festival that's fun and free.

We tagged along with a preschool group for our tour since our little school of one doesn't qualify for a personal tour.

There's Farmer Eric telling the kids the rules. Their new apple orchard is in the background. He showed the kids the vegetable garden and talked about different kinds of vegetables. He showed the kids how to tell the difference between apple tree leaves, pear leaves, peach leaves, and nectarine leaves.

He told them the story of Johnny Appleseed and showed them their own 52 year old apple tree.

They got to see where they make the apple cider and how they do it. Alex would have really liked to see them making it right then, but no such luck.

Then we all got a free cider sample to taste. Good stuff.

And the kids got a hay ride! It just drives a lap around one of the orchards and you could see the peach trees on one side and the construction on the other. I think Alex liked watching the construction trucks the best.

At the end we got to go into the orchard and pick and apple.

There's the chosen tree.

And the lucky apple. It was eaten before we got home. The kids also got a little coloring book about all the things they saw on the farm. It was a good tour and only cost us $3.50. Adults are free!

Fruit day was a success!

Day 2: Milk and Dairy

This was supposed to be Friday's school topic but Anton had to work Friday afternoon and wanted to go on our field trip with us, so just pretend like we talked about vegetables today and dairy on Friday, okay? Okay.

We mixed things up today and started out by watching a movie. Yes, a movie. But it was a Reading Rainbow episode where they read the book The Milk Makers and talked all about where milk comes from and what it gets made into.

I had actually planned to just read the book but it wasn't available at the library, and I'm glad, because watching the movie of it was more fun. A lot more info than just the book alone.

We sang the song "This is the way we milk the cows," then we went over to the fridge and I had Alex pick out all the things that were made with milk.

We found milk, yogurt, sour cream, half and half, cheese, cream cheese, and more. And of course we opened the freezer to find the ice cream.

Then we read The Old Man Who Loved Cheese.

And Curious George Goes to An Ice Cream Shop.

This book reminded me how much I hate Curious George. He is always doing naughty things and never gets in trouble for them. Everyone laughs them off and blames it on him being a curious monkey. There is no accountability and it makes me mad. In this book he messes up the ice cream man's big order that he was making and then in the end it was all okay because he brought in other customers. Not okay in my book. oh well.

Now time for fun! I bought a pint of whipping cream and we tossed it into the blender according to the instructions found here and we made butter!

Here we're washing the butter to get all the excess buttermilk out of it. This was so fun. I'd only ever made butter in a baby food jar before, the labor intensive shaking kind, so this was a new experience for me too! Alex drank up the leftover buttermilk and we ate some bread with butter on it. Yum!

And today we had a science experiment. We poured some milk into a pie pan and dropped food coloring around the edges. It stays put until you drip a drop of liquid soap into the middle and then the colors swirl all over the place.

He also dipped a toothpick into some soap and dipped it into the milk to make the colors swirl more. Then we dumped it all out and tried it in reverse. We put the soap in the milk first and then the colors. The colors swirled slower but still made neat patters. This all has to do with surface tension and the explanation was way over Alex's head, but it was fun to do!

And then it was field trip time, again. We went out to Wheeler Farm where everyday at 5 pm you can help them milk the cows! It's only 50 cents per person. And I'm so mad that I forgot the camera, but I did. No pictures. :( Alex jumped right up to be the first volunteer to milk the cow. His hands weren't big enough so I had to help him, but he got it right away. Ella was able to do it by herself and Anton and I both took turns. It was easier than I thought it would be, but not something I would want to do everyday of my life! None of us had ever milked a cow before. I thought it was great fun. We also walked around the farm to look at the different animals before having to make a mad dash to the car because of the rain. Dairy day = FUN!!

Day 3: Vegetables

We played another guessing game today. Alex likes them so I'll just keep right on doing them. We played guess the vegetable. I cut up a bunch of different kinds of vegetables and put them on a plate.

(Carrot, peas, green beans, potato, green pepper, tomato, cauliflower, onion, broccoli, spinach, yellow squash.)

Then I fed them to Alex while he closed his eyes.

He got about half of them right. Not bad since some of them he's only had mixed into other things.

We read the book Growing Vegetable Soup.

It talks about planting vegetables in the garden, so we headed on out to the garden to check things out.

He's actually out in the garden a lot so there really wasn't anything new to see out there. But we needed a couple of carrots for the experiment we were going to do, so we picked a few.

This one was out-of-control HUGE! Our experiment was to see if we can make carrot tops grow. We cut off the leaves and the carrot below them step then put them in a pie pan with dirt in it. We watered it and now we have to wait a few days to see if they'll grow.

Alex keeps checking on them to see if they've started growing yet. (UPDATE: A week later they were all showing new growth and some growth showed up just a couple days after planting. Experiment=success!)

Next we read The Carrot Seed to follow up on the carrot theme.

Then we read Tops and Bottoms.

And that finished off our day. We were going to make vegetable soup using the recipe in the back of the Growing Vegetable Soup book, but we didn't get around to school until after lunch, so maybe another time!

Preschool - Houses

2010-09-18T21:28:00.000-06:00

This week's theme was supposed to be spread over two weeks, but I didn't think we needed to spend that much time talking about houses. However, there were four distinct themes I did want to cover, so this week has four days of school rather than three.

Day 1: Parts of a House

We started out the day with a basic line drawing of a house. I asked him to name the different parts (walls, floor, ceiling, roof, windows, door, chimney, etc.) while I pointed at them. This lasted about two seconds since he knew them all. I was going to show him pictures of different kinds of houses that people live in around here (apartments, trailer, house) but I was too lazy to pull them up on the internet. Yeah, it was one of those days.

Then we played a little game where I would describe a room in the house and he had to guess what it was. I had to be pretty obscure so he didn't guess them right away. Like for a bedroom I said that the room had blankets rather than saying it had a bed, and so on.

Next I had put different pieces of doll house furniture into a bag. He had to reach in a pick one up and guess what it was by feel. Then he had to tell me what room in the house that piece of furniture would go. With a girl I probably would have spent time putting the furniture into a doll house, but Alex isn't a girl, and we don't have a good doll house.

Next we read In A People House.

Followed by A House is A House For Me.

This book is fantastic! The illustrations make me want to look at them for hours. The story covers different houses people live in and animal houses and nonsense houses too, like a glove is a house for a hand. This book actually would have made a good summary book at the end of the week since we'll be talking about all these different houses throughout the week, but I didn't want to wait. Maybe we'll read it again at the end.

I was going to read Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but I'm beginning to learn that Alex has a two book at a time limit, so we skipped it. He knows the story so it was no big deal.

Next we played a game where we pretended to be furniture. I had to show him an example or two before he really got into it, but he really enjoyed this. We used our bodies to make chairs and tables and beds and couches and lamps and more! A good moving game for a crazy little boy.

And then to finish up our day, I made a little house book ahead of time and had a page for each room of the house where Alex drew in the furniture for the room. I gave him the option to cut the furniture out of an IKEA catalog, but he chose to draw. When Ella got home from school and insisted on doing one too, she chose to use the magazine. Here's what they looked like:

It's just three pieces of computer paper folded in half with a house drawn on the front and then cut to shape. I poked two holes in the fold with a screw (because that's what I had on hand) and then threaded a string through the holes and tied it on top. I labeled each page with a different room, and that's it.

Day 2: How a House is Built

We started by talking about all the different things houses can be built with--wood, brick, rock, cement. If I was supermom I would have pieces of each of them for him to feel and see, but see above excuse about being lazy.

Instead of trying to explain myself how to build a house, I chose two books to do it for me. We read At a Construction Site:

And Building a House:

If your kid is really into trucks and construction, than the top book is excellent. Lots of detail and all the trucks are named and labeled. It talks about building a community center, not a house, but the idea is the same.

If your kid is fine with a general overview, the second book is fine. We didn't need to read both, and I think Building a House would have been plenty. He liked the pictures in it better because they were simpler. He could tell easier what was going on in the pictures.

Then we sang The Wise Man and The Foolish Man. Since we had just talked about what a foundation was from the book and pointed it out on our house, he totally got what the song was about.

Then for fun we read This Is The House That Jack Built:

It has nothing to do with building a house, but it was a fun read.

I had really looked forward to our activity for the day. I thought Alex would love it. I got a cardboard box and a box of nails and screws and gave him a screwdriver and a play hammer (I didn't trust him with a real one and the play one was plenty sturdy to hammer into a box) and showed him how to hammer and screw.

He basically was like, This is it mom? We're not building a house?

He was disappointed that there was no purpose to his hammering and screwing. He was more concerned with what was inside the box (nothing) than hammering. I finally relented and untaped the box which I had taped shut to keep the flaps out of the way. Once he could see the nails and screws sticking out inside the box he had a bit more fun, but my guess is he only stuck with this for ten minutes maybe. I think Ella would have had a blast with this and I'm sure other kids will too. I think maybe I'll try it again another day and see if it interests him more.

I had thought about building graham cracker houses, but since we would be building a food based house the next day, I decided not to. But once I saw how disappointed he was with the box, I wish I had made up some frosting and let him build a "real" house. Oh well.

Day 3: Other Kinds of Houses

We started our discussion today by reading Houses And Homes.

This book does a good job of showing different types of houses that people live in and discussing the different materials they are built with. Alex was entranced by the idea of people living in a house made of mud. The book only shows houses that people live in currently, so tipis and igloos aren't covered. We talked about how it would be hard to not have the money to live in a house like ours and to have to like in a hut made of scraps. And we talked about how we would dress different depending on the type of house we lived in.

Next we read the book Storm Maker's Tipi.

It talks in detail about how to build a tipi, and then it talks about a legend behind why the Blackfoot Nation paints their tipi's a certain way. So it's both a nonfiction type book with a story, a nice blend. And in the back of the book is a page you can copy to make your own paper tipi. So we did just that.

Alex colored the tipi the way he wanted it to look, then I cut it all out and he helped glue it together.

It also fits perfectly on your head like a party hat. Not that we know or anything.

Then on to more building fun. I got the book Building an Igloo.

It goes through step by step with pictures on how to build an igloo. We got sugar cubes and followed each step to build our own igloo. Alex loved this.

We glued it all together with royal icing like you'd use for gingerbread houses. I helped with the icing, but he did most of the rest.

He ate far too many sugar cubes while building. And of course Ella had to come home from school and build one too. And then she took the box and nails from yesterday outside and nailed away forever, just like I said she would.

Day 4: Animal Homes

Ella was home to play with us today. We started by reading the book Animal Homes.

It's a great overview of different animals and their homes. I think there could have been a little more variety in the types of homes, there were a lot of dens and burrows and not so many caves or other such things, but the information given is good and the kids liked lifting the flaps. We talked about what it would be like to be the different animals and live in the different types of homes. We spread a sheet over the space between the couch and the coffee table and all crawled underneath and talked about living in a den or a burrow. While we were under there we looked at the book My First Book of Animal Homes.

It's a toddler board book, but each page is divided in half with an animal home on top and and animal on the bottom and you have to match them up. We used it sort of like a game. There were a lot more different types of animal homes in this book than the previous one, like caves, water, tree, dog house, barn, etc.

Then for fun we read The Biggest House in the World.

The snail dies in the end of the book, which the kids had to stop and ask about, but it has a good moral of not wanting more than you need.

Then it was art time! I made homemade playdough, with a recipe I found online and didn't save the link to, and then I helped the kids build animal homes.

We built birds' nests with lots of eggs, snail shells, beehives, ice burgs, and more!

And that brings our Homes week to an end!