Mother Son Minute to Win it Party

Last Friday night, Michael and I went to a PTA fundraiser at his elementary school. It was a Mother Son Minute to Win it Party. 

We had a lot of fun :) There were games up on the stage that included things like eating a donut off a string, tossing ping pong balls out of a kleenex box with your hips and making "cheese heads. This was where the boys put shower caps on, then shaving cream was piled on their heads and the moms competed to see who could get the most cheese puffs to stick to their son's heads. 

Michael and I were sad that we didn't get lucky enough to go up on the stage, but they had games at the tables, too. They included things like moving marshmallows around with straws and picking pasta up with our teeth. Michael totally killed it with his mad skills when it came to putting a cookie in his mouth using only his facial muscles!

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I really miss this blog.

So, while Kelly and her sisters made dinner, I emptied the camera and curated, just for you, an exhibit of our lives from the last few weeks. 

Naomi had a birthday.

Michael raced in the pinewood derby. He came in 2nd for his age group and 3rd overall.

After all these years of taking kids on their turn for the homeschooling whale watching trip, I took my last two kids. It is hard to believe how everyone is growing up. This past week was Michael and Naomi's turn. It was a great trip. 

We saw a great blue heron looking for lunch...

...and lots of cormorants with a few pelicans mixed in...

...California sea lions lounging around...

...and from my view on the upper deck, a couple of cute kids.

Of course, what we were all most excited about was the opportunity to see some cetaceans!

The captain was able to find a bottlenose dolphin willing to surf the waves in front of the boat and we got a close up view. I learned something new on this trip. Bottlenose dolphin mothers name their offspring with a unique whistle that the dolphins then introduce themselves to other dolphins with for the rest of their lives.

We also saw more whales (all gray whales) on this trip than any other - seven in all! It was amazing :)

Here are two swimming together...

...and the tail of one diving.

The kids had some ocean science instruction on the trip back.

On to other exciting news - Naomi let her Dad pull a tooth.

Finally, some pretty pictures. I took the plunge and, in spite of my black thumb, bought some new house plants. I plan on hanging them in the window when I get around to it, but until then, they have a home on the kitchen counter. They are tillandsias, or air plants and they don't need dirt. I just soak them in a bowl of water every few days. Fun, huh?

I think they are really nifty...

...and was especially thrilled when one bloomed!

Naomi's Kindergarten Graduation Letter

Naomi had her kindergarten graduation a few weeks ago. Summer was home and able to go with me. For part of the graduation, the parents read a letter to their child and, of course, I had waited until the last minute to write it. I ended up dictating it to Summer, while I barreled down the freeway in the tail end of rush hour traffic. When someone wouldn't let me into the carpool lane, I uttered an exclamation of disgust, which Summer helpfully included in the letter. See if you can find it. Summer also had fun with spelling while she took down what I was saying and I have retained her creativity below.

 

 

Here it is -

Dear Naomi,

Daddy and I are so proud of you. You have worked so hard during your first year of school. You are reading wonderfully and it is fun for us to see you read so many books! We are especially grateful that you read your scriptures every night.

 Keep up the good work, keep doing your best in school and you will be able to go to kollege like your older seesters.

We love you so much! You are such a fun part of our family Ahhh, curses! Foiled again! We love your hugs, kisses and snuggles. It is great how you love to organize things, how you are good at HIKING, how you don't give up when things get hard, and your bubbbbly sense of humor.

Congratulations on graduating from kindergarten. You R a great girl.

Love,

Mom and Dad

Despite the lack of posts, we have not run off and joined the circus.

Some of us are working on our qualifications, though! More on that later...

So, yeah, life is passing us by and I feel bad that I haven't kept up. I have huge virtual piles of pictures to sort through and it is overwhelming, but (thanks to my friend Christine who gave me some good advice and encouragement) I will stop thinking I need to blog about EVERYTHING  I have missed and give you the Reader's Digest version. Short, sweet, and hopefully with a joke. (I love the jokes. They are the first sections I read when there is a RD in the doctor's office.)

Summer is home! Woohoo! She is just so wonderful to have around :)  She finished winter semester at the end of April. Rachel, Jillian, a friend from our ward, and I drove up to Provo, stayed a couple of nights and brought her home. It was so fun for me to see her apartment, meet her friends and go to church with her. Here she is at a birthday party for one of her roommates last fall.

Summer is doing well; getting good grades and happily changing her major on a regular basis. Her current thought is a major in wildlife biology, pending how she feels about doing field work with her dad while she is home. Sadly for me, but a good thing for her, she will be heading back to Provo at the end of June. She has a great job (the best job in the universe, really) working at the Harold B. Lee library in the Book Repair Unit. I worked there when I went to BYU and she even has the same boss. She doesn't have to take  classes and can work full time during summer term.

I am enjoying her while I have her. We have been hanging out together, chatting all day, and have a couple of projects we are working on together to get ready for my sisters wedding later this month. Summer is a bridesmaid and we are making her dress together. I am making Sara's guest book, which Summer will help with. She has been helping with a LOT, actually, cooking dinners (she's cooking in the picture below), making lunches and helping herd kids.

Here is a picture of Rachel in the prom dress I sewed for her. She made the bow and sash. She wore turquoise high heels and her friend Lina's sister, Jen, made her a corsage. Sorry about having to look sideways!

Here she is with her friend Lily. They were both on the prom court because of their class rankings. Lily is ranked 4th and Rachel is 6th.

Rachel made it into every school she applied to, including BYU, UCLA, Berkeley, Penn State, UC Santa Barbara and University of the Pacific. The 1st three on that list were the ones she was seriously considering, so she toured each campus. I went with her to UCLA. The school spirit at that place was amazing. At least a third of the students had UCLA shirts on. We ate at the dorm cafeteria and the food was pretty good! After the tour, I asked Rachel what she thought and her comment was, "They all look so smart! I'm smart, but I try really hard not to look smart."

Berkeley flew her up to tour their campus. She came back sure she didn't want to go there, "The food in the cafeteria was horrible and everyone looked weird."

She, Jillian, and I toured BYU the weekend that we picked Summer up. By then, because she was offered a scholarship, she was pretty set on BYU and touring the campus was great. She left feeling excited for when she goes in the fall.

We looked at the different dorms and ate in the cafeteria. After the pronouncements about UCLA students all looking smart and Berkeley students all looking weird, I asked what BYU students looked like to her. She said, "Mormon."

One funny thing happened while we were there. I took Rachel and Jillian to see the apartment complex where I lived and where Stan and I met. No one was in the office, so I just knocked on the door of one of the apartments I lived in and asked if I could show my daughter what they looked like. Some nice coeds let us in and then one of them looked at me and said, "You're the pants lady!" She went to got get another girl from the back of the apartment and said, "It's the pants lady!"

I had some floral jeans on and they had seen me on campus that day and liked my pants so much they were tempted to yell at me out their car window. Instead, I made a personal visit to their apartment. What are the odds at school with 34, 000 students?!?

Heather is just finishing up her freshman year of high school and is getting straight A's. I went to her art class earlier in the year to teach bookbinding to 34 kids and have an even greater appreciation for teachers than ever. Part of Heather wishes she could quit going and home school, but I am glad she is sticking it out because her school has some really dedicated, excellent teachers. She did request online PE and French for next year, which would mean she could leave at noon, which I am hoping is the perfect balance of in and out of public school for her.

Heather amazes me constantly with her skill in everything creative. Her artwork is lovely. She has been getting into mail art and does especially delicate watercolors. She is daring and skilled at cooking (which we are all enjoying the fruits of) and regularly asks to use my sewing machine.

She loves animals with a passion and is happiest when she has a dog sitting job. We are hoping to have her take horseback riding lessons in the town next to us this summer.

Gwen is our daredevil and the child most likely to really join the circus. We have an old telephone pole in our back yard, which she climbs and which I am in denial about. I don't like to think about her climbing it because I always imagine her crumpled at the bottom, but Stan thinks letting her take controlled risks is good. I just asked him how tall it was and she yelled from the other room, "Twenty six feet and one inch! We measured it." Eek!

Gwen is in the middle school orchestra and plays the violin. She got straight A+'s on her last progress report. She is fascinated with skeleton keys and is planning on starting a collection.

She starts high school in the fall and has signed up for PE Tennis, which I think I am more excited about than she is, but I hope she will have fun with it. She and I went to a park with tennis courts yesterday and played for a while, then went to Dairy Queen to eat ice cream and cool off.

Kelly has a birthday this week.  She wants binoculars, books, an orange ball, a nerf gun, candy and fancy pens. For Christmas, she got some fine tip markers and a sketchbook and has been using them a lot. She is following in her mother's footsteps with an love for art supplies :)

She is doing well in school, plays the piano and the cello and always cheers us up with her big smile and infectious laugh.

Michael was baptized last fall. Now that he is eight years old, he is going to Cub Scouts and he loves it. He gets to spend time with boys, doing guy things. Pretty cool. The pinewood derby was a couple of months ago and he and Stan had fun getting his car ready. Stan pulled out his old pinewood derby car to brush up on how to do the wheels and stuff (don't you love my technical language?). Michael traced his design on his block of wood and Stan sawed off the big chunks, then showed Michael how to carve and sand the rest. Michael painted it his favorite color, stuck on his number 8 stickers and was ready to go.

While he didn't win the derby (complicated rules I don't remember), his was the fastest car that night. Let me tell you, it was thrilling!

Michael and Naomi are homeschooled, which means I can take them to Coach Nash's classes. He is a great guy :) Michael took baseball a few months ago and he and Naomi just finished track and field.

Speaking of track and field class, here is Naomi throwing the javelin with excellent form. The younger kids in the class used these foam javelins, but the teenagers used the real, Olympic sized sharp ones, which meant each class got a lecture on safety with a couple of stories about athletes (not in Coach Nash's class) being impaled and having to pull their own javelin out and call 911. Coach says it is pretty fun to search "javelin mishaps" on youtube and watch all the violence. I skipped that bit of entertainment.

Naomi is fun, affectionate and, as we are trying to remember to call it, has leadership potential. She also loves to organize things, which is great. I feel like I won the lottery - my last child loves to organize? That means she can clean out all the stuff I have hoarded over the years when I get to old to use it. Woohoo!

While I am covering everyone, I should mention that we are all enamored of our little budgie, Montague Bodkin. He is talking more and more and now says, "What's cookin'?" in addition to "Pretty boy," and "I love you, Monty."

Stan and I are great, just truckin' along, raising kids and paying bills. Stan's book is selling, slowly but surely. I am looking forward to going to my sister's wedding in a week and a half. This picture is from a week ago, when the family went hiking for FHE.

Well, if you have made it all the way down to the bottom of this post, you deserve a joke, so here you go -

Q: What do you call two blondes in a closet?

A: Last year's hide-and-seek winners.

Gingerbread House Contest

UPDATE:We have a winner!

We made gingerbread houses for FHE a couple of weeks ago. I don't recommend using nerds. They kept hitting the floor like hail. We will probably be finding them for months. 

Do you think you can guess who made which gingerbread house? The first person who guesses them all correctly will get some candy from us in the mail. Something yummier than nerds. Leave a comment to enter.

#1

#2

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#4

#5

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#8

Here's a hint. The following people  made houses - Stan, Amy, Rachel, Heather, Gwen Kelly, Michael and Naomi.

 None of them were made by Summer, who is away at BYU trying to decide what to do with her life. Over Thanksgiving, she tried out a few roles, but decided she isn't ready to get married and doesn't want to get involved in any drug wars. (She was dressing up in her Aunt Marcia's wedding dress, using Uncle Ed's knife and wearing a poncho from her Uncle Randall's mission.)

Just a little bragging...

Gwen, Heather and Rachel all got progress reports recently. Woo-hoo!

December Catchup

Here's a bunch of stuff that went on last month. Stan took most of the kids to a grand reopening of a park near his office. They had a free pancake breakfast, balloon animals, cookie decorating and standing in line waiting to ride the trains. This park has miniature (but still large enough to ride on) steam powered trains.

I didn't go because it was my first time teaching bookbinding at our local art museum. I stressed and worried and had so much fun when I finally got to teach :)

Heather and Gwen took part in their piano teacher's annual Christmas recital.

Here are snatches of each of the pieces they played.

I took Michael to the Kindergarten/First Grade Christmas Party at school. Each kid made about eight different projects. This is a wreath made out of smashed Shredded Wheat cereal, Elmer's glue, green food coloring and beads.

Later in the month, Michael, Naomi and I went on a field trip to the International Printing Museum. It was fascinating.

This is their replica of the press that printed the Gutenberg Bible.

The linotype was amazing. I loved the clacketty sound it made.

I got a kick out of the juxtaposition of technologies we saw in the break room on the way to the restroom.

One of the best parts of last month was getting to spend time with Summer (who, of course, I don't have pictures of). She caught a ride home from the Y with one of her roommates and her friends. They stayed a couple nights while they went to some tourist attractions. they were all so nice and a delight to have as guests. I thought this was a fun pictures of the three girls, Veronica, Christina and Maggie with their Macs.

Henry favors Apple products, too :) I probably got to spend the most time talking to Henry for two reasons. One, he slept in the living room on the couch and got woken up earlier than anyone else by kids running around and, two, he spent awhile each day waiting for three females to finish getting ready. He is a great guy.

I went to Stan's company Christmas party with him. His coworkers are all so nice. This picture was during the white elephant gift exchange which I counted as a rousing success because the gift we brought was taken from one person by someone else and because Stan got the books he wanted. Can you tell I am a dyed in the wool introvert? Even though I was having fun, enjoying conversations, relishing the food, my hands are still twisted in a knot trying to survive being around all those people :)

Last month, we made 50+ treat plates. It is a good thing I have so many capable people working in the kitchen. This is definitely a group effort each year.

Heather wrapped her Christmas gifts beautifully.

For New's Year Eve, we ate fun food and played board games. Here is Naomi poking some caviar to see what she thinks of it.

Happy 2012!