Snow Day

Monday morning we got a call from Christian's sister saying that they were on their way up from San Diego to go up to the mountains to play in the snow and they wanted us to join them. We didn't have our phone on that morning and by the time we got the message, we figured that they were already on their way. We couldn't get a hold of them but thought that we should throw some stuff together and join them. The girls were excited to play in the snow with their cousins. But they never called back and they didn't show up here so we guess they headed up without us when they couldn't get a hold of us.

The girls would have been too disappointed to not go up to the snow after we had gotten ready for it so we decided to take them up anyway and hoped that maybe they would call back and we could meet up there later.

We never did hear back from them and don't really know what happened but the girls had a blast. It was not too cold, especially once you got moving. Here is a picture of them sledding.

Here is one of Caitlyn attempting to make a snow angel.

They also had a little snowball fight with dad. But although I remembered to bring my camera, I did forget to bring my extra battery. My battery started getting low part way through the sledding pictures so I only took a few here and there hoping not to run out.

They also made their first snowman.
That really was Caitlyn pushing that huge snowball all by herself. She put her big sister to shame. Not one to be bested by her little four year old sister, she put a little more effort into hers and it got about as big as her sisters'...although, personally, I still think it was a little smaller.

We ended the day with a bit of hot cocoa.We did a little off-roading to get to a nice secluded place for the family to play and the girls got to take turns "driving" the truck.

Now, I have to say that after the initial excitement of getting my new DSLR, I have been increasingly disappointed with some of my pictures. I know that some of them were just due to my own faults (not focusing on the right subject, forgetting to reset some of the functions, etc.) But still, the pictures have been less than I would have hoped. So when presented with the opportunity to go up to the mountains to take pictures, I finally got a chance to try one my other lenses. I had not been using it and have not really bothered to take all my lenses with me when taking pictures. The one that came with the camera was a nice versatile lens and I didn't see the sense in dragging all my equipment along with me to take a few random shot now and then. But boy, was I happy I changed lenses because I see a dramatic difference in the quality of my pictures. I don't know if you can tell in these little web pictures but trust me, they are so much better. I need to do some more tests to be sure of the cause (especially since my camera was too low in battery to take too many) but right now, I think that the lens that comes with the cameras are crap.

Christmas Day

After Marian left, the kids got to play with the presents for a while while I cleaned up and started preparations for Christmas dinner with my family.

Here is a couple of pictures of the girls with their other cousins.

Not too bad considering how many kids were involved and what we usually end up with.

Even though the kids have been pretty good at taking their naps so that we can have all these late nights out, even they were pretty tired by the time we were all through. We all slept in the next day and got some much needed rest!

Christmas Eve

Even though I keep mentioning that I finished our Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, I keep having to run out into the crazy stores to get more stuff. The neighbor kids got our girls' Christmas presents, so after the exhausting parties, I had to venture out, yet again, to find gifts for the girl's friends.

Although Emily doesn't have school right now, they expect her to keep up on her reading log. We also think that it is a good thing so that she doesn't get too lazy while she is out of school. It becomes too much of a shock when she goes back to have homework again. Christian is also taking the opportunity to have her catch up on her piano lessons because she hasn't had time for so long because of the nightly fights over homework. She is doing pretty good and is getting back into it.

We don't make the girls' do too many chores except to keep their playroom relatively clean so that they have enough room to walk into it and play in it plus to make their beds. They have not been doing very well for either and so every weekend becomes a huge fight about cleaning up. So while they have been on break, we have taken the opportunity to get them into better habits of making their beds in the morning and keeping their playroom cleaner by putting things away along the way. It hasn't been fun.

All the while, Christian has been working on catching up on the maintenance and fixing some things on my car and the house. And so, we were extra grateful to have our friend Marian join us on Christmas Eve. We've been doing this for about 3 years now I think. Even though we are grateful to have Christmas Eve to ourselves instead of driving back and forth from families houses, I just don't know if Christmas would happen without her here with us.

She usually comes out on Christmas Eve and we have a really nice dinner. She would then spend the night (and we usually stay up way too late talking or something). Then we would wake up to Christmas morning with her and we get to stay home and open presents with her. With trying so hard to teach the kids good habits and proper behavior and most things not working, whether incentives or punishments, I think at some point, the threat of canceling Christmas (especially for Emily) would have become rather real (to some degree). Anyway, I don't know if we would do everything we planned and prepared for if she wasn't here. No, I know that we would not do everything we wanted to do for the kids if she was not here to help us. So, thank you Marian, we really appreciate it!!! And the kids appreciate it even more than they realize!

Here is a picture of the girls before the crazy Christmas present opening melee began...

...more pictures...

Christmas parties

On the evening of the kids' last day of school, we had a dinner party to prepare for and attend. Our good friends, the Jorgensons, watched our girls as a special Christmas gift to us (Thank you so much Kristi). We had a nice evening away from the kids and boy did we need it. Unfortunately, it never lasts long enough! I forgot my camera though so I don't have any pictures.

The next evening, Saturday, we had a birthday party to attend. So I had to make some food for it. Plus I had to make desert for Sunday as we would be going to San Diego after church. And again, I forgot my camera.

We stayed too late and had to get up early for church the next morning. Plus Christian is teaching Sunday school right now and I have to teach in Primary. After church, we got back, fed the kids lunch and threw them in bed for a quick nap while I finished getting all the presents together. Plus I printed out a bunch of things for the kids to do in the car ride and loaded up the car. So in my mad dash for packing and last minute preparations...I forgot my camera, yet again. Now I'm just getting pissed off. We were off to San Diego to celebrate Christmas with Christian's family and I didn't have my camera! I missed it all!

The kids were really good in the car ride but didn't really do much of the activities I prepared for them (instead of getting my camera ready). But I couldn't complain too much as the kids were pretty quiet. Unfortunately, the reason they were so quite was that Emily was feeling kind of car sick most of the way there. Fortunately, she told us about it and we were able to give her a quick rest and a bag ready for her. I changed places in the car with her and she made it within site of her aunt's house before losing it. Luckily, the mess was contained in the bag. We pulled over and when she was done, her dad walked her the rest of the way to the house while I drove her sister the rest of the way to the house. By the time Emily got to the end of the long drive and saw her cousin, she felt good enough to run the rest of the way!

The girls had a lot of fun with their cousins...too bad I don't have any pictures.

Christian's sister decided to try a new tradition of going around and telling everyone about someone in the party that we really appreciate before we opened presents. It got a bit emotional but it seemed like a really nice way to begin. I hope we continue that tradition, it was really nice.

We left later than we intended (as usual) and were utterly exhausted by the time we got back after three nights of parties!

Busy

I've been so busy with the kids and with the holidays that I have not been able to keep up on my posts. It got really crazy the week before the kids got out of school. Although I had finished shopping, I had to run out and pick up little things for the kids school parties. Plus I volunteered in Caitlyn's class at the beginning of the week but I ended up doing it again two more times that week because the teacher got sick and then one of the aide's threw out her back and they were making all these neat crafts and thing for the kids to take home in time for Christmas. We also had to fight with Emily throughout the week still about her homework. She has improved a little from the past two weeks but not enough to make much of a difference. We were getting so sick of this routine that she has set up that I even threatened to take back all her presents. The threat did not improve her behavior...it just made her even whinier for a few moments. She is so stubborn that no amount of incentives or punishments will get her to change her behavior.

Anyway, we survived the week and on their last day of school, I was helping out in Caitlyn's class in the morning and left for a while because Emily had her award ceremony that morning as well. So obviously, she has no real trouble with school. It is quite easy for her but her problem is that she is too lazy and stubborn.

After her award ceremony, I ran back over to Caitlyn's class. The parents came to have "lunch" with their kids (yes, it is at 10:10am). The class put on a little musical number for the parents and then we passed out goodie bags for all the kids (no candy, as usual...whoo hoo! It makes it a bit more difficult to find goodies to share with the kids but it is so much better in the end).

The party lasted a bit longer than her normal class time because they combined the party in the end with the afternoon students (so it was extra crazy!). I thought about going to Emily's class to check on her when I get a strange phone call from her saying that her shoes were hurting her. Apparently she was in the office and since I was just outside, I walked in to find out what the matter was. Apparently she was wearing these ridiculous glittery shoes and it started hurting after she ran around in the playground. I asked her how much it hurt and she just said, "a little." And since you can't find parking anywhere near the school due to all the parents coming for award ceremonies and lunch with their kids, I asked her if she could make it through the day with them. She said that she could. So I asked why she called me and she just replied that she didn't know. I was annoyed and walked back to her back to her class and spoke to her teacher. Apparently, all they had left was lunch and their year end party which included a movie so I left her to her fate of bad footwear choices for school. When she got off the bus, she was skipping along and I asked if her feet hurt. She says, "no, they're fine." What a nuisance.

Anyway, I appreciate the no candy policy in preschool even more (even though it seems a little extreme on special occasions) when Emily comes up totally hyped up on sugar and bouncing off the walls.

Oh, and I have one last picture to post only because it is so cute and reveals Caitlyn's true character so much. You can totally see the subtle mischievous look on her face. It is definitely a classic Caitlyn picture.

Christmas

Merry Christmas everybody...

Ward Christmas Party

On Saturday, we had our Ward Christmas party. The kids got to visit with Santa. I finally got some decent pictures of the kids with Santa. I might have gotten a passable one of Emily before, but Caitlyn never wanted to cooperate. She still wasn't too sure what to make of Santa yet. But she finally gets it now. They even got to sit and talk with Santa a bit. I meant to go back and find out what Santa talked to them about but I never got the chance.


After dinner, they got the primary children together to sing us a few songs. I got a couple of pictures and a few video clips but I was having trouble for some reason with my camera and some of them didn't quite come out as well as I would have hoped. Plus there were a bunch of people in front of me so I ended up getting their heads and stuff. But the kids looked really cute.

Christmas pictures

Taking Christmas pictures of the kids is a nightmare. You would think that because the girls are older, we would be able to control them more...which is somewhat true since I don't have to bribe them to stand or sit still now. And I don't have to jump up and down trying to get them to smile.

You would also think that with the digital age where you can snap as many pictures as you can stand that you would get a variety of your favorite pictures to choose from. But after a hundred photos, I can honestly say, that I did not get a single shot that I am happy with.

I thought that it would be easier to get a really nice shot with my new fancy camera too...but alas, I must admit that I wussed out and quit. I thought about getting the girls dressed up again the next day to try again but I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to do it. I've been fighting a cold for a week now and I've spent more than my share of energy fighting with Emily over homework since she returned to school and after all that, I just don't have it in me to care that much.

I finally picked a picture that the girls both look pretty good in, but is slightly out of focus. The camera is focused on the tree behind them I think. Oh well, it will have to do. I am out of time and had to send the pictures out to be printed.

My revenge is to post some of the rejected pictures!

*Note to my girls: let this be a lesson to you...don't drive mommy crazy...

Deck the Halls...

...well, the tree anyway.

I wanted to get the tree decorated early this year so that I would be able to take the girls' annual Christmas picture. I never get it done in time so I am rushing to get them printed and stuff. It didn't quite work out.

The kids were off of school for almost a week and a half. It wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be. Christian helped me by taking one of the girls with him to work on a couple of the days for a few hours. They are always begging to go in with him. On one of the days we met up with them at the Botanic Gardens for a picnic and then took both the girls home. They even napped several of the days. When Christian was home, he worked to patch the huge gaping holes left from the plumbing fiasco when we moved in. It's pretty complicated and has taken some time. We hope to get it done by the end of the year.

We spent Thanksgiving with my family this year. Nothing really big. We had lunch because my sister had other engagements with her in-laws that evening. The girls had a lot of fun playing with their cousins though.

Anyway, on Sunday, we finally dragged out the fake tree and our old ornaments and got to work. I used to really enjoy decorating the tree but I remember that last year was a bit of a nightmare because the girls were so excited to help decorated that they nearly trampled all the ornaments into the ground trying to get their sticky little fingers on all of them. It went a bit better this year though. The girls are learning a bit of self control.

We have our work cut out for us but they are learning.

We also decided to decorate a bit on the outside of the house this year. We never did it at the old house because there are no outdoor outlets there. Well, we still don't exactly have outdoor outlets here either but it's on the list! But we managed to work something out. Unfortunately, our longest string of lights was a bit temperamental. It worked and once it was all hung up, it stopped working. We took it down to check it and it started working again. Needless to say, I chucked it into the garbage after messing with it for some time. The rest of the lights can not be attached end to end so I had to go out and get new lighting. So, right now, we only have one little strip of light over the garage. It looks super pathetic...especially since our direct neighbor is one of those people that goes crazy with the Christmas decorations every year. His mother happens to live directly across from us and he did their house too!

Holidays

The holidays are fast approaching and I always like to try to finish my Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving. I can't enjoy the holidays if I have to go out in the pre-Christmas and post-Thanksgiving shopping melee. This year, I am happy and relieved to say that I am done with my Christmas shopping with one day to spare...whoo hoo!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Anniversary

This past weekend was the 12th anniversary of the day we got married. What's more, tomorrow marks twenty years that we've been together. It sounds weird. We shouldn't be that old yet..and yet we are. And I guess physically I feel it...but mentally, I can't wrap my head around it. It seems like only a few years ago that we were still a couple of carefree college students. But in actuality, a few years ago, we already had two kids!

What did we do to mark this momentous occasion you ask? Um...well, not that much. Christian's Dad and his wife came up for lunch on Saturday because they could not make it before for Christian's birthday. So we had a nice visit with them. They brought up a couple of the girls' younger cousins and they had a blast playing in the treehouse together.

When they left, the neighbor kids saw the opportunity to come over and play but we told the girls that they had to clean up some of the mess they made with toys and stuff all over the yard. The girls are so stubborn and lazy that they just wanted to play and not do what we asked. Caitlyn was the only one that put in half an effort to begin cleaning and since the neighbor kids sensed that we would most likely send them away and force the girls to clean up, they rallied our girls and helped clean up some of the mess that they didn't even make! In the end, they got it to a more reasonable mess and we let the kids play for a little while while we finished up with other stuff.

We exchanged a couple of token gifts and had left overs for dinner! We couldn't spend any more money for anything else as we unexpected got new dining furniture for our family for our anniversary (and it will have to do for Christmas too). But we happened upon it and we could not pass up the seriously good deal we would be able to get on it. We ended up getting in for over 50% off! We love it...except now we aren't able to do anything except um, enjoy it! But it works out pretty good, since we love to cook (and unfortunately, we love to eat even more). Now we don't have to worry about the kids leaning on the old table or guests leaning back in the old chairs and having the whole thing fall apart.

We got it as an "antique" and it seemed sturdy enough for our needs but then we had kids (enough said). We considered refinishing the old furniture but we found that the veneer was awefully thin already and the stain on the furniture ended up to be just a paint "stain" and was starting to come off and then we put some deep dents and scratches in it. The kids ground in playdough and other muck into the seat covers then a couple of guests broke a piece here and there on the chairs and it didn't seem like it would be worth while to put any work into trying to restore it.

Then we found this and had to have it. It was solid and kid friendly and versatile enough for our needs...plus it carried the right price.

After the kids went to bed, we did, however, get to build our first fire of the season in our fireplace. It was finally cold enough...well, okay, we opened some of the windows and stuff to make sure it was cold enough. Marian had gotten us this awesome fire screen for a house warming gift. And Christian's dad got him this really nice grate to go in the fireplace for his birthday.

And so, we sat and reminisced of all the by gone years. Here is a picture of us on our honeymoon, twelve years ago, up in our cabin in June Lake.

What a difference twelve years, two kids and I won't mention how many pounds later makes.

On Sunday, we had church and the responsibility of our callings. We are usually exhausted with a long Saturday and we try to take a nap Sunday afternoons after we get back from church. And with that, the end of another day disappears. We set the kids up at least to watch a movie and we manage to steal a few hours alone together preparing a nice meal. Exciting, huh?

These are the days we really wished we had family a little closer that could give us a bit of a break. But now we are back to our schedule of the kids being in and out of school all day. We manage to steal some time together now and then over late night movies and lazy mornings pittering around the house and working in the garden after the kids have gone to school. Tomorrow is the last day of school for the month. They will only be attending school about half of November because of Veteran's day, parent teacher conferences and a whole week off for Thanksgiving. Wish me luck.

Veteran's Day

We celebrated Veteran's Day, yesterday, with a trip to the March Air Field Museum. Every time we've passed it, we'd been meaning to go and take the kids but never made the time for it. Emily had gotten a coupon to go from her summer reading program at the public library and really wanted to go. So we decided that since Christian and the girls had the day off, what better day to go than Veteran's Day?It was still a little warm out but overall a pretty nice day when the cloud cover was thick enough. We got to see somebody in a C-17 cargo plane practicing taking off and landing a few times at March Air Force Reserve Base next door.The kids were pretty excited. They always loved running outside to see the planes at the local air show from our old house. This was a little closer than they've had opportunity to see so far. I think they are definitely ready to go see an airshow. We took Emily to the air show at March when she was really young but I don't think she really remembers it. We managed to get to the airshow at Edwards once but we left the kids with grandma. It was a bit disappointing anyway. They supposedly kept setting these records but you didn't really notice anything.

Here are a few more of the shots we took yesterday.Oh, and leave it up to Emily to find an airplane named "Princess."

Our favorite part though was when an F-16 started flying next door. They made a few passes around us before landing. It was pretty awesome. I wished that I had brought my longer zoom lens. Caitlyn thought it was a little loud at first but really got into it after. They also got to see several propeller planes. We think that they must have done a fly by over the cemetery.
And since Christian was home, he wanted to at least get some work done around the house so we managed to get our hot water heater flushed. It's fairly new and we want to keep it nice. We live in fear of getting sediment buildup in it like in the other house. Every time the water heat up, it was like popcorn popping in a tin can. It was awful!

Christian's Birthday

We celebrated Christian's birthday on Saturday when Marian and Christian's brother Mark and his wife, Danielle came up for a bbq. Christian wanted his favorite dessert, a tarte tatin. Unfortunately, I overcooked the caramel a bit and it came out a bit bitter.

I got him a nice reading light that he has been wanting for a while now.

But since yesterday was his actual birthday, we had a little dinner with just our family and I made him a little carrot cake since he didn't have a proper birthday cake on Saturday.

Blurb Book

My Blurb book has arrived! I was a little worried about it because the package looked so very thin for an 80 page book. I was kicking myself a little for not paying the extra $3 for getting it with the premium paper which is a bit heavier and supposedly better quality.

But I am totally satisfied with it. Especially for the price I paid. I wouldn't use Blurb instead of Shutterfly for my Photo books and stuff, but for just a journal it came out pretty darn nice.

p.s. If any of you have started your blurb books or plan to do one. The deal I got is still good:

Take 20% off the books you make, and get free shipping on your order up to five books, through November 24. Just enter BLURBTREAT at checkout and you're good to go.

Get working...normally shipping is $7.99 (which is a rip off).

Halloween

We planted pumpkins this year for the girls. The only problem was that we started about a month late. We kind of tossed the idea around for a bit and missed our chance to get some already started seedlings then decided that we would go ahead after all and went out and got seeds. By the way, what a complete rip off that business is. We paid $2.50 and got exactly 8 seeds. Do you know how many pumpkin seeds you can get from one pumpkin?! Never again.

So we had to let the pumpkins ripen on the vine as long as possible so that we can be sure to get some developed seeds to use for next year.

In fact, we waited until Halloween morning. Incidentally, do you know how different it is to cut up a fresh pumpkin? First it smells, great! The walls of the pumpkin are a lot thicker too which made it a little harder to carve. But it's not slimy inside at all. It is thick, soft and fleshy. We come to find out that the reason that it is usually slimy when you clean out a store bought pumpkin is because it is already starting to rot from the inside out! Gross, huh? That's why they mold so fast after carving it up. I think our pumpkins only lasted a couple of days last year before beginning to mold.Caitlyn got to do some real pumpkin carving this year. She's been too young before to do too much. But we ended up having to finish their pumpkins for them because they spent all day cleaning up 10 minutes worth of toys in the backyard so that we would have room to work.

There were a lot of underdeveloped seeds in the pumpkin still but there is still enough good ones to work with and enough for a small batch of roasted pumpkin seeds to boot!

We had the kids take a little nap before the festivities because we knew it would be a long night.

First we went to the Dean's party where we got to catch up with a few old friends.

I was a bit upset though because I took a bunch more pictures especially as some of the other kids arrived but I had forgotten to change the mode on my camera and most of these shots came out somewhat blurry!

I wish we had been able to just end the night here but alas, the girls would have had a fit if we didn't score them some candy on Halloween of all nights. We left here and Christian dropped us off to the Halloween party at church. I always like this better than going door to door if I can help it because I don't have to worry about what the kids are getting. I was a little late dropping off some treats I had brought to the party but apparently they would not have missed it since there was a whole room with the floor almost completely filled with other treats.

We didn't miss any of the trick or treating yet though because there was a chili cook off as well and people were still eating. Caitlyn and I ate at the previous party so I had to get Emily to eat some stuff before the sugar fest started.

Christian went back to the house to prepare for trick or treaters that we thought might be going into our neighborhood. He hastily decorated the front and put up some red lights in the front and it came out amazing. Too bad he ended up wasting most of his time and we are stuck with even more treats as only a few people came by. I think we got more trick or treaters in our old neighborhood.

At church they had a bunch of games and decorated some of the smaller classrooms to trick or treat in. The girls had a blast but it was crowded and crazy.

I was exhausted before we left and felt like another wave of sickness was starting to take hold. It nearly put me over when Caitlyn fell down and I had to carry her halfway home from church. But she calmed down and we still went trick or treating at a couple of our immediate neighbors houses for good measure! They wanted to do more, but I just didn't have it in me plus it was starting to get late.

The girls got to choose a piece of candy from their stash to eat and they spread them out on the floor to survey. This is only part of their stuff as their pumpkin buckets was nearly full. Don't let the pictures fool you. They just spread them out too much to fit in the picture. Plus Emily had more that she didn't even get a chance to sort.By the time I got the girls washed up and ready for bed, I had about had it, the virus or whatever I was fighting was starting to really kick my butt.

It didn't help that we didn't know about the time change and ended up dragging our butts to church an hour early the next day despite feeling sick and having to come back home again only to do it again an hour later when we realized what had happened. But we survived long enough to teach our classes and drag our butts home for a nap afterwards. We are still working on recovering.

Pre-Halloween Festivities

As tomorrow is Halloween, the girls' got to dress up at school today. We pulled Caitlyn's costume from last year out since they wanted to make sure that her costume had easy access to use the restroom if it was needed. Here is Caitlyn in our humble little pumpkin patch.

I went back to have lunch with her near the end of her day...which incidentally is around 10:am! Ever have lunch at 10:am? I had to make myself eat and then I was starving before dinner.

Anyway, I got there a little early and they just finished their own little parade around the school grounds and through the offices so that they can see the cute little preschoolers.

It was great timing because I got to help them take a picture her class and teachers.

Then they got to take home goody bags which they got to decorate. In preschool, there is a no candy policy, so she got fruit, juice, fruit snacks and a Halloween pencil...oh, and sugar free cookies.

Emily had a big costume parade with the rest of the school. Caitlyn and I went back to take pictures.

No such luck with a no candy policy for the rest of the school. She got cupcake, cookies, chips, juice and two bags of candy!

I stuck around to take Emily home afterwards and watched her with her little friends. I know she just had a huge sugar rush in her classroom but I've come to realize that she must be the silliest and giggliest girl alive. It was almost embarrassing. Is that really my daughter?

Blog Printing

After a month of working away at my blog book, it is finally finished. I sent it in today for printing. We'll see how it comes out.

I decided to stick with Blurb.com. It seemed like the most used and is fairly priced. They seem to give you some measure of control over the final product. You download the software that they provide to you. Then you put in your blog information and the software automatically "slurps" up all the data and pictures from your blog into a book. Now, you could just submit the book to be published at that point, after finalizing the cover and title page but I didn't care for the results. Basically, they will put each post on a different page (as long as it fits, otherwise it will be printed on more). So even if you only have a sentence or two in your post, it will take up the whole page. Plus, all the pictures are placed in their pre-formatted layouts. Basically, if you have more than a couple of pictures, they end up in little squares on the top or side. So a lot of my pictures got cropped.

I ended up customizing my layout pages quite a bit. So it took me most of this month to complete it while working away at it a little at a time each day. It's a little more work than I expected to put into it but I wanted to be happy with the end product.

We'll see how it comes out when I receive the published book. So I just ordered a soft cover 8x10 book. It came out to 80 pages which costs around $25. But before I finished working on the book, they sent me a coupon for 20% off plus free shipping (which is normally $7 and a bit on the steep side if you ask me). I ended up paying only $21.70 for it. Not too bad.

Playing Catch-up

Just when I think I get the hang of writing regularly on my blog, three weeks go by and I haven't done a thing. At least one of us has been sick on and off since school started back up. Caitlyn has been the healthiest one of us. It's been pretty miserable.

And included in our daily routine is the daily afternoon fight with Emily to get her homework and reading done for the day.

Besides that, we've been working on more unpacking again. I know, 9 months later and we are still at it.

Will it ever be done? I have my doubts. These boxes and actually a bunch more that you can't see were all filled with books and National Geographic Magazines. We ended up sorting through most of them and we forced ourselves to thin out our collection a bit. We gave a few boxes of books away and we took several more boxes to DI. It was quite a stressful experience.

In between spurts of nearly 100 degree weather (in October!), I managed to clean and weed parts of my summer garden to get it ready for fall planting. We already have a bunch of seeds that have germinated. I need to get the rest done hopefully this week before it gets hot again!

More School Rants

So I got this letter from the girls' school telling us how their school has once again been marked as a Program Improvement (PI) school because the kids API test scores did not attain an adequate level. Because of this, they have to hand out applications for us to transfer our kids out to a non PI district school should we wish it. The district will provide transportation as well.

However, if a lot of people apply to transfer their kids out of the district PI schools to non-PI district schools, then the students with the lowest scores and lowest income will get priority. So, in other words, what they would really like is to transport the "problem" children out so that they can raise their overall test scores and put the problem onto one of the other schools to bring down their average.

Does this not disturb anybody else?

And then, at the bottom of the school letterhead, it has a seal declaring that it is "A California Distinguished School." Now, I ask you, distinguished in what?! Certainly not for it's academics...I mean, clearly.

I'm not sure that it is worthwhile to bus my kids out to some other school since most of the objections I have with Emily's school and homework has to do with the Houghton Mifflin workbooks that the district forces all the schools and teachers to use.

I don't even know how to begin to explain some of the moronic and just grammatically incorrect statements and instructions they have on those worksheets. And you just sit there staring at it in horror thinking, these people are supposed to "teach" my kids? What I need to do is to probably scan one of those worksheets next time to illustrate my point.

Emily was always so eager to start school. She loved learning. Her favorite things to do were all those educational workbooks. But once she got into school, I've had to fight with her a lot to do homework. It is just too easy and boring for her (or really frustrating for us). Her first kindergarten teacher at her previous school, got her advanced work to do that was more of her level and she had a lot more fun with it. But when we transferred to this school, her teacher wasn't really willing to do any extra work to teach her anything. So far as I can tell, her new first grade teacher is of the same mind.

The most unfortunate side effect of the No Child Left Behind Act is this: if you are doing well, they don't bother with you. So as they are working to make it so that no one will fail, at the same time, it ends up that no one will excel either.

So, the question is, is it worth while to transfer the kids out of a PI school and doom my kids to long commutes and over crowded schools that work and dooming them to becoming a PI school a few years down the line? Probably not.

My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Okay, it wasn't THAT bad but it felt like it for a while. Yesterday started out pretty well. We got the kids off to school without too much trouble. I went to yoga class. And then I went back to pick up Caitlyn from preschool.

She seemed her usual self when I picked her up but complained of some red stuff on her hands. She said she doesn't know where she got it from. I assured her that she can wash her hands when we got home. We got back and I ran to water the pumpkin as it was wilting under the heat. The hose wasn't quite long enough and the crappy plastic reel that the hose is coiled on tipped over and cut off a branch from our newly planted orange tree...along with one of three remaining oranges which was getting really nice and big. I was so upset.

Then I went in to check on Caitlyn and she was complaining that the red stuff wasn't coming off her hands even though she washed with soap and everything. I went to check her out and found she had some kind of rash all over her arms...and legs! I freaked out. I checked the lunch menu to see what they fed the kids and did not find anything unusual on there. I thought maybe she might have a mild case of chicken pox even though she's been vaccinated but she didn't have a fever and she didn't have any on her face. Plus they were not really blisters. Roseola seemed more possible but still no fever or anything. I thought maybe she had a heat rash but they didn't even let the kids out to the playground that day because of the heat. The rash was only mildly itchy so I put her in an oatmeal bath to make her feel better.

The house was covered in balloons and stuff from my birthday which had a really strong latex odor and I wondered if she was having an allergic reaction to them....not that she has ever had a problem with balloons before. But just in case, I gathered up all the balloons and had to dispose of them to be on the safe side.

And then while I was scouring the Internet on what might be affecting Caitlyn, the power went out throughout the house and I heard a bit of a boom in the distance like a car backfiring. It was getting a bit much and had to call Christian at work but the power returned within 5 minutes or so. I never did figure out what happened.

Luckily, that was all that went horribly wrong because I don't think I could have taken more if it was to continue. Caitlyn's rashes seemed less pronounced so I thought there was a chance she would even be better by morning. But when she went to bed she had a few more around her jaw line and cheeks.

I kept her home this morning. She still has the rash but it isn't any worse and she still has no other signs of sickness like fatigue or fever. Christian volunteered to stay with her this morning while my lovely visiting teachers took me out to breakfast for my birthday.

She spent the day doing puzzles...can you tell?

Birthday

Yesterday was my actual birthday. We didn't really have any big plans. The kids had school and the weather was supposed to be scorching hot (kind of like it is so far today). But the weather wasn't that bad.

Over the weekend, Emily started coughing and the night before last, complained of stomach pains. We were not even sure she would end up going to school yesterday but she seemed to feel much better by the morning and went off anyway.

After getting the kids off to school, Christian took me to the nursery to pick out a couple of flowers for my garden. He said the 'girls' wanted to get me a flower each for my birthday.

Shortly after we got back, my best friend Marian surprised me by coming by. Apparently, she and Christian had been making plans. She took the day off from work and drove out from the Pasadena area. We went to pick up Caitlyn from preschool together and she sent us out of the house by ourselves. Christian took us to the movies. I can't remember when the last time was that we went out to a theatre. Mostly because there aren't that many great movies to see.

We went to see Ponyo which is the new animated film by Miyazaki. We wanted to check it out and see if it was any good. We expected to buy it for the girls when it got released to video but it just wasn't as good as his other films. We were a bit disappointed. If we get it, I think we would have to edit out one particular scene. Even the animation was not up to his usual standard though.

After the movie, we went to the Botanic Gardens for a picnic. Marian secretly packed us up a lunch to take with us and everything. It's sad but it's the most time we've had away from the kids for a while where we were able to just spend time together. When we got back, we found that Marian and Caitlyn had decorated the house with balloons and stuff. I actually felt kind of guilty going off by ourselves to go to an animated movie and the botanic gardens without the kids!

Emily got back right after that and Christian had to try to make Emily take a nap so that she can recover from her illness. Marian and Caitlyn and I took off shopping. Unfortunately, Emily wouldn't nap but they got her homework done at least.

We had a little bbq together for dinner and Marian brought this tasty little Mango cake for my birthday. As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to go have the last piece of it right now!

Thanks so much Marian and Christian for making my birthday extra special!

Pictures!

Apparently, it's going to take some time and practice to relearn how to use my new camera. It's nothing like the previous point and shoot I'd been using for so many years now. It's been a long time since I've used my 35mm SLR and yet, its not exactly like using one of those either.

Meanwhile, I've been been harassing the girls with my camera in their faces whenever I can. For fun, I'd thought I would post a few of my results.

Caitlyn getting up from her nap to the sound of my camera. I need to remember to turn down some of the beeps and noises on the camera:

Here is Emily jumping rope in the driveway:

Some miscellaneous nature pictures:

Sky scenes:

This past weekend, we picked up my parents and went for a walk at the Fullerton Arboretum. The girls spent most of the time attempting to climb all the big and neat trees that were there. I don't think we dressed them appropriately (well, actually, they dressed themselves but I should have told them to put on something else)!

Here's a picture that Christian took of us.

I had my mom attempt to take one of us with Christian but she couldn't really hold the camera steady enough and they came out kind of blurred.

And lastly, here is the picture that I thought turned out the best so far. I don't know why I like it, I just do. There's a quality about it that I don't think that a point and shoot can produce.