The Teeter Times

The rest of the week.

2012-02-13T20:49:00.002-08:00

Remember that last post...the one where I rubbed laying around in my PJs all day for 3 days straight in your nose? Yeeeeahhhhh.... The funny thing about PJs is that they aren't quite so comfy after about the fourth day...and lucky us, the kids caught colds so we ended up staying home for the entire week. Ugh. I was able to get out once for a couple of hours to my crochet group, and we did venture out at one point for some groceries, but this momma is ready for some social interaction!!!

Anyways, we had a LOT of this...snuggling, watching home videos. It was pretty fun. I cannot believe how fast time flies. Oh, and no that is not a large, cancerous growth in Sam's shorts--it's a pink bear. Self-explanatory, right? Apparently he thought so.

There have also been a LOT of games. Bananagrams, which when played with those who aren't so keen on actually spelling is more like, "I have more E's than you do." Fun fun.

There were tempers flaring. It's not like I enjoy picking up my messes either...in all honesty though, he's gotten so much better about cleaning them up. The only rule about messes in this house is, "Messes are awesome...as long as they are picked up when they're complete." And I'm proud to say that I've been stunned into silence more than once this week when the kids, WITHOUT BEING ASKED, went and picked up a broom or a washrag to clean a mess they made from eating something. Alas, I'll also admit that there have been at least double the full out tantrums about said messes at other times, but things are improving!

More games--Jenga, Cuisinaire rods, wooden shape puzzles....and Sam trying to steal all of Brooklyn's thunder (note the blanket. I swear, this child did refused to wear clothes the ENTIRE WEEK. When I'd ask her to put a shirt on for 2 minutes while I get a photo, she'd just grab her blanket. Alas.).

She actually got 2 more stories on that thing before it crashed!

We were making music with wine glasses and loved the varying waves that the vibrating glass created.

More games. This girl is a Rock, Paper, Scissors whiz! Seriously, she's good.

Reader Rabbit goodness.

I'm learning (very slowly) to just back off on educating my kids. It's extremely obvious when they are eager to learn something and just as obvious when they have absolutely zero interest in another thing. We'll go for weeks without reading the masses of books in our house, and then all of a sudden the kids will binge on them, asking for book after book for days at a time. Or Brooklyn will hide herself away with an enormous pile and will be gone for hours.

Uno!!

At Costco, Brooklyn found this box laying in the parking lot. "GARBAGE!!" exclaimed Sam, "TREASURE!!" exclaimed Brooklyn. I mentioned something about already having a box just like that in the car. Right now at this very exact moment. And it's all yours...are you sure you need another?? Silly me, of course she did. And indeed...she did. They came in handy when both kids wanted to haul it around...although it was pretty devastating when Russ crunched one with his truck. Brooklyn wrote him a lovely little note and taped it to the front door. I should have got a photo, but it said something to the effect:

DaDDy you ar not aloud in this hows intil you muv that truk!!

And yes, he moved his truck.

She book-binged for 2 days and we haven't touched another book since.

This guy on the other hand... He may be busy, but at least he listens. Actually, is scary how attentive he can be when he's busy. For example, we all sing our own songs at bedtime. A few times Russ and I have sung The Star Spangled Banner. We were sitting at dinner tonight and Sam totally started belting it out! I was pretty impressed.

Sam and I made some gluten-free "goldfish" (I don't actually have a cookie cutter, so we just did squares, plus I can't eat cheddar cheese so we substituted with provolone). This is what I found after telling them, "Don't touch the crackers--they're cooling." No joke, they were gone in less than 10 minutes. Yum!

Go Fish!

This is not the best photo in the world, but I FINALLY got to leave the house. To run to the grocery store, with sickies in tow...but did you hear me?! I got to leave the house!! Anyways, this is titled Minivan Momma--Don't Mess With Me.

I've been obsessed with crocheting lately.

This kid not only amazes me at how attentive he can be, but he also observes and make connections that I don't expect him to. I was downloading photos and he walks in and says, "Hmm, I wonder what its like with no knees. And elbows." So we had a little conversation about it and he decided that he'd be pretty bummed and showed me what life would be like...not fun, I'm told.

"And this is how I feew with ew-bows and knees!!"

Brooklyn decided it was experiment time again. I wonder if maybe I should get her an actual experimentation kit?? Or just let her go at it and keep her favorite ingredients in stock (thankfully they mainly consist of water, ice, milk, food coloring, and salt!)?? This concoction had quite a few impressive ingredients including maple syrup, raspberry flavoring, dish soap, spearmint essential oils, lemons, and glitter. It actually turned out pretty neat and when you shake it, reminds me of some sort of lava-lamp thing.

Brooklyn whooped us all at Sorry!...again.

This photo KILLS me. He was outside helping Russ do some yard work. Sam went over to the tool storage, grabbed these and got to work. I looove how he stuck his little butt out--he was concentrating so hard!

Tough work, but we now have a garden!! Woo hoo!

I showed Brooklyn a "magic" way of adding big numbers. ...We're still working on it.

I killed it at Yahtzee Jr.

I've been on the lookout for a decent, used microscope for awhile and another homeschooler was getting rid of their Magiscope. It's pretty nifty. Not high tech at all--it's super sturdy, the kids are able to swap out the lenses on their own, focus on their own, it requires no electricity, and the scope comes out so you can walk around with it! And the best part? The warranty actually covers accidents! Russ and I are having as much fun with this as the kids are!

WARNING: the last photo is of one of Russ's magnified facial hairs...lol. Scroll down, if you dare!

Pretty crazy! We didn't try it with the closer lens.

Monday goodness.

2012-02-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

Even though Monday is our typical 'lounge around, catch up on chores, and snuggle' day, we needed OUT OF THE HOUSE.

So it started off with some Starfall.

And glitter glue...which Sam LOVED. He's not always crazy about art stuff, but dang.

Brooklyn's been asking to have her hair chopped for MONTHS. I'm a bit of a lazy chicken-heart when it comes to girls hair, so when a friend gave me a referral card worth $20 at a local salon, we set up the appointment for first thing Monday morning!! Here's her Before shot.

She was a bit nervous at the salon. She said it really creeped her out when they washed her hair, ha! We'd looked up hair styles though and she decided on a layered bob. So she walked right in and said, "I'm Brooklyn Teeter and I'd like a layered bob." The girls that worked there got a kick out of it.

Sam and I played in the chair next to Brook. He made the observation after the first snip, "Uh oh, Brooklyn's not Brooklyn anymore." After searching for clarification, I found what he meant was that she will never be the same--the same person, but never THE same. It was an odd conversation to have with a 3 1/2 year old, lol.

And the After (although also after an additional 5 hours of playing):

This morning Brook requested heading to a children's museum. The one we wanted to go to closed at noon though, and there was no way we'd make it. So we headed back to Lawrence Hall of Science where we have a membership.

They'd gotten new exhibits!! This was a paper airplane-throwing one. There was a bulls eye hung at the end of this tunnel.

Brook gave up nearly immediately, claiming that she "just can't do this." Sam and I got to work on a plane though.

Testing it out. He was pretty frustrated that it didn't go very far. As in, close to tears frustrated. So we had to have a little heart to heart about learning fine-motor skills, and that yeah, it's pretty frustrating! lol.

Of course they ran to the pin thing.

There's a large "DO NOT STICK YOUR FACE INTO THE PINS" sign right next to it, but hey, who looks at signs anyway? I think this was worth breaking the rules though! Pretty crazy.

She does love mirrors. A triangle of mirrors? Even better.

I love that none of the kids have any interest whatsoever in the "real" part of the machine.

Brook and Sam decided to build a catapult and see how far they could launch each other...until those two boys deconstructed it and hauled it away. There were tears. And tongues. And much, MUCH attitude. Sigh.

Of course I can't NOT get a photo of the view.

The outside back part of Lawrence Hall of Science.

Sam's been asking to come back to this place SPECIFICALLY for this fault-line "ride" since before we even left last time... And I must say, I'm surprised he didn't interact with it more--it was about a 5 minute thing (versus 10 times that last time!).

The pack horse.

I about died. I signed to Sam "I love you" and he gave me this...

...I'm watching you...

The new exhibit! It was sheer insanity. There were some really neat exhibits, but there were also many different schools there on field trips. Craziness.

Sam's favorite station--it's supposed to simulate those seeds that gently float down from the tree ("helicopter seeds" is what we call them). You'd insert pieces of paper in the bottom and the air would blow it out the top.

An artsy-fartsy center where they supplied lots of random objects for you to create a masterpiece. Brook worked on this for a good half hour.

A hat! She said that the plates hanging down were to balance it out and secure it to your head. "It's quite cushy."

Testing out that wind.

Sam wanted to build a fort "just wike dat guy" (the guy behind him in the photo). I showed him the basic concept behind it and watched him look at it and study it, then give it a shot, then study mine again, then look at the kid's structure, then at mine, then adjust his...it was amazing--I would be so frustrated if it were that difficult for me to process! After the third try he got the base, but then building up was tricky.

We had to head out to beat traffic, but we couldn't leave without a leap through the giant DNA.

I swung into Sprouts (the grocery store) and Brook asked to stay in the car and finish her orange. This is what I found when I opened her door up after Sam and I finished shopping...and then of course we had to wait for Sam to try it. Crazy kids.

We got home and it was time for some glowstick Hide and Go Seek for Sam and I!

And I introduced Brooklyn to Shirley Temple (AKA - Heidi in this shot), and the girl is hooked.

We were having leftover spaghetti for dinner and Sam went nuts. Dinner is SO hard with him. Why!? He eats ALL DAY LONG, why is dinner so different?? Anyways, I gave him the option of me fixing him dinner (spaghetti) or him cooking himself some eggs. He took the latter. So be it.

Brooklyn found Bubba's letter that she's been meaning to send for a week now. This is how she began addressing it...it's covered in curly letters and numbers and is quite beautiful. Something tells me the mailman won't appreciate it, so we'll have to put the mailing address on the back I think.

After a week full of games, I decided we needed something new. So I picked up Qwirkle at Lawrence Hall of Science. I enjoyed it and am excited to do some more "free playing" versus the strategy playing tomorrow.

Anyways, I'd better get to bed. Pediatric dentist, blood work, pharmacy trips tomorrow. Fun fun. And I feel a little tickle in my throat so...yeah, DEFINITELY heading to bed. Cannot take another week at home!!!!

P.S. Thanks for the challenge, Stephanie at Ordinary Life Mom! Mondays truly are completely opposite of what they USED to be!

Tuesday.

2012-02-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

Sam was up for the day at 6am. Therefore, so were we. It was cold, it was dreary, it was a snuggle day.

I groggily went and opened up the living room blinds and burst out laughing when I found this ingenious invention awaiting me. "It's so we always know where our tape is!" Brook tells me.

Sam loves collecting treasures to put in his backpack. Unfortunately, these collections generally consist of fruit. Today he found 3 Clementine oranges in there...we haven't had those for three weeks... Today he replaced them with kiwis. Remind me to check his bag in a couple of days...

There was a lot of Reader Rabbit today.

And lots of crocheting (unfortunately I ran out of yarn approximately 20 stitches from the end of this...sigh).

And of course a lot of books and snuggling. ...and yes, this is in fact Day 2 of being in pajamas. Jealous much?

After pointing out that it's been raining all morning and we have a big hole of dirt in the backyard, the kids quickly got dressed and prepped for MUD. And yes, she is attempting to surf down the hill...

Sam got bored (?!), so came in just as I was handing out muffin tins and utensils for mud cupcakes (which may or may not have later been used as propulsion devices against the side of our house. Sigh.).

Sam decided to take a different approach and suggested we make some actual muffins.

The window cleaner stopped by to take care of this pesky mud-splattered window problem we had...

I think this kid ate at least 3/4 of the muffins--I swear, I cannot feed him enough. He is an absolute bottomless pit...except at dinner-time, ironically. (He's chosen to go to bed early for the past TWO nights instead of facing the dreaded Dinner. Tonight we at least enticed him out of his bed with the promise of there being a cucumber and avocado being eaten for dinner, crazy kid...)

Add in some How It's Made, a bit of Shaun the Sheep, and an evening at a friend's house for Tuesday evening Crochet Group and it sums up a pretty fantastic day!

Monday.

2012-02-07T17:53:00.001-08:00

Ahhhh Mondays...

There was a lot of catching up on all of the wonderful things like...
-laundry
-dishes
-sweeping
-Cinderella-style mopping (Note to self: NEVER get tile floors. EVER.)
-vacuuming
-tidying

Also lots of...making masks...

And laminating creatures. We are doing the book The Mitten as our Five In A Row (although we use this site, as it's free...www.homeschoolshare.com/) book this week. I really like this idea as it's incredibly flexible and the kids love it.

Reading "The Mitten." I hope you enjoy me in all of my Pajamas-At-2pm glory.

Then we put on a skit using our masks. I was just going to have the kids run and hide behind the couch, but they insisted that we use the blanket as our mitten. Good call kids, good call.

You can't really see it here, but Brooklyn insisted I document the art she drew on this bucket.

As soon as they saw the neighbor kid out in the yard, they high-tailed it out there. This time they were fishing out of the back of the truck. At one point the neighbor kid even used Sam's stick and the rope to make an impressive bow (for a bow and arrow). I asked if they could use some sleeping bags on their adventure (they were just waiting in a pile to be washed). Silly me for even asking.

Eventually the kids brought their boxes out from the garage to play dogs in. Brooklyn mentioned that she wanted to put more windows in her box. I told her to go and grab the scissors. "No, with a knife." Can you hear my sharp inhale of breath from here?? My thoughts on "forbidden" things are that if they're asking you for them, there is definitely an interest in the item and they're going to seek out that interest at some point whether you're there with them or not. I mean come on, who wants to be told, "No, no, no. You're too little. You'll hurt yourself."...honestly, if it were me, it would make me want to do it by myself as well just to prove that I can.

So I went and got the knife... With a few ground rules, she was off and at 'em...with me hunkered over her shoulder saying every 2 seconds, "Hand... Watch... Good... Careful..." I was proud of her (and she was obviously proud of herself), but was definitely relieved when she declared herself done.

But of course then #2 wants a turn. Oy vey. It wouldn't be so bad if the neighbor kids weren't there. I can just imagine the conversations they have at the dinner table after visiting our house sometimes...

He did fairly well. He had a bit more trouble, and was done much sooner than Brook was, but asked me to cut out 7 more shapes for his windows.

Welcome to Occupy Swallow Drive...

Brooklyn thought that the laundry baskets could serve as a fence (oh, and the one on top is her air conditioner).

After the neighbor kids got called home (mysteriously directly after Seth said, "Hey Dad, they're playing with knives!"...), the kids decided to scooter, BMX racer style. Brooklyn would do tricks and say, "Did you get a picture of that?!"

Then we headed back inside where Brooklyn worked on typing a letter. She worked on that thing for well over an hour.

Another perfect* day in the Teeter house!

*The use of the word "perfect" is not used to insinuate that life here is perfect. Of course I'm going to document more of the best parts of our days, and not so much of the bad. Just know that we have our fair share of lovely times such as (including and not limited to):
-grumpy mornings (mainly me)
-"But I had that first"'s
-"CLEAN UP YOUR MESS!"'s
-"But I don't want to!"'s
-grumpy afternoons (ahem, me again)
-"She won't stop squishing me!"'s
-eye rolling
-humphing
-exaggerated sighing
-"But it's my turn!"'s
-grumpy evenings (need I say it?)

...and so on and so forth. But such is life, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Weekend Goodness.

2012-02-06T21:25:00.001-08:00

Saturday morning, Russ and I were both up and at 'em earlier than normal, both feeling like we should "do" instead of "lounge" on this particular day. We'd thrown around the idea of going camping, but with not having registered the trailer in CA yet...eh. But the weather was supposed to be nice, and we wanted to hike and be outside and have a fire... I know, let's just chuck the tent and sleeping bags into the van and go. Okay.

2 1/2 hours later, we were loaded up and on our way to the grocery store for some grub, then headed up to Mount Diablo, the highest point in this area. It was about a half hour to the base of the mountain, then a little less than that to the ranger station part-way up the mountain. The biggest obstacle wasn't the windy, edge-of-the-cliff roads, it was the many MANY crazy bikers!! They were either riding up the mountain at an incredibly slow pace, or zipping down it at a way too fast pace (in fact, we were PASSED by bikers as we were leaving Mount Diablo!). It was just awful...you couldn't see around any of the turns, I can't believe more people haven't died there.

Anyway...once we checked in at the ranger station, it was another half-hour drive up to the Juniper Campground. It was a pretty decent campground. The views were amazing, the camping spots fairly secluded, clean restrooms and a shower.

We got to our site around 11:30am, and decided to explore.

Before we knew it, we started hiking along the Summit Trail, headed to the top of the mountain.

I realized that it was almost noon and we hadn't brought any food or water with us, so Russ turned back while the kids and I plodded on (very slowly...). This was Stop #1, "Take a picture of us with this tree, Mom."

This was a little ways up--that's the parking lot there at the bottom, and that's right at the entrance to the camp sites. We are around at around 2900' here.

We were headed up to the Summit Visitor's Center, which is located up past the big tower on the right, and up to the skinnier tower on the left. When we first set out, I didn't think we'd actually make it the entire way (round trip was just over 3.75 miles!).

Stop #2--Russ caught back up with us and we needed a snack. Here is where we observed the mass amounts of what we assumed to be bobcat scat. Awesome.

Stop #3--getting closer!! We're about maybe halfway there?

Stop #4.

Stop #5--the large, square tower is directly to our left in this photo. As in, I can reach my arm out and touch it. This was a pretty sweet place to eat a few bites of granola--felt like we were on top of the world!

Not too much further was the actual summit. I was impressed with the kids--2 hours, 1.75+ miles, ~1,000' elevation gain...and with minimal whining. Not bad.

The tall skinny tower is directly to the left of that van on the left. This is the Summit Visitor's Center.

Inside is the actual tip of the very very top of Mt. Diablo (which the kids are standing on).

The kids enjoyed the exhibits more than I thought they would. They learned about the tectonic plates, some of the animals in the area, the tarantulas that are around here, about tracks...not bad.

Then they went in and started watching this video.

We headed back to camp, which was all downhill, and made it in approximately a half hour. Awesome!

These two have literally never camped in a tent. Needless to say, they were excited.

Mr. Man in the Moon and I have not been on speaking terms since this evening...it was such a big, bright, gorgeous moon...that inhibited any chance of sleeping I would attempt that night. I eventually overcame it by pulling a hat over my eyes, but that didn't help with the rocks grinding into my back, as we don't have any padding to go under our sleeping bags...

I got some crocheting in while the kids ran amok.

The kids weren't the only thing running amok...this family of raccoons (SEVEN in total, that we could count) was not shy in the least. They are a bit intimidating when all seven of them walk right up to you to see what it is that you're holding in your hand.

This scene seemed inspirational to me.

Monkeys in the trees!

I've been wanting to give P90X another go for awhile, and when I saw this, it made me want to try more. Have I done it yet? Nope.

The kids made me a bit nervous by following the raccoons everywhere. "MOM! Come quick! They're getting into the garbage cans!" No joke, about 1.5 seconds after I took this shot, all 4 (there is one in the garbage can already) raccoons were in there.

Russ brought the remains of a stump he dug out of the backyard a few weeks ago to burn...it was a still a bit wet and we had more smoke than fire for awhile.

The day had started out really hazy, but cleared up towards the evening. You can see out to the bay there, in the top right.

And a little bit later.

The kids had the best time collecting these gigantic pine cones from the Coulter Pine trees.

Granola!! It made me a happy momma to hear, "Mmm, this is good granola, but I like yours better, Mom." Yeehaw!

I round this rouge pair of glasses in the brush the previous night and wondered if the raccoons had had anything to do with them...

We went hiking down a closer trail for a bit, but Russ and I were so exhausted from an incredibly restless night that we were ready to go. The kids wanted to see the Visitor's Center one last time. They meandered while Russ and I curled up in fetal positions in the corner and waited.

When we got home the kids and I went straight to our beds and passed out. After we woke up and showered, the kids got busy playing outside with the neighbor kids and Russ decided to dig the other stump out of the yard. That sucker is HUGE. He worked for hours on it--chopping with his axe, pushing it, pulling it with a rope...he barely got it out. You can see the hole that it was in to the right of Sam. Goodbye stumps, hello garden bed!

Another week down.

2012-02-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

I haven't been doing a very good job documenting this week. I've been having typical homeschooler/parent issues...namely not feeling like I'm "good enough," but particularly in the education arena. I should be doing more, I'm not attentive enough, my house isn't clean enough, I'm not happy enough, we don't DO enough. Gah, I can't tell you how good it would feel to not feel guilty about something every moment of every day. What would that even FEEL like?!

Anyways, I seem to get into this riff every so often (usually when we're in an educational lull, and there's nothing that I am excited to learn about) and it's generally solved by reading affirmations in books or on blogs that I'm doing all of the right things (the main thought amongst homeschoolers is that kids aren't ready for formal education until at least ages 8-10...so at this age it's lots of playing and loving and reading and playing and just being with them and learning about each other...but it's hard to remember sometimes when you feel like you should be doing SO much more, like you're always behind (even when you're not)). What helped especially this week was to talk to another homeschooling mom who has a 9, 11, and 14 year old. It was good to get some perspective from someone who's been at it for awhile. She mentioned how much she loved those years when her kids were young...lots of playing and reading and snuggling... Okay, so I AM on the right track...blah.

Long story short, I've been re-inspired and hope to be back at full-fledged documentation next week!!

So, this week...

Russ decided to ride his bike to Del Valle, a park that's about 15 (not so easy) miles away, then we'd meet him there and hike. Well, instead of hiking we meandered along the beach picking up garbage, watching a fish get caught, getting soaked, skipping rocks, and getting VERY muddy. It was pretty fun!

Brooklyn saw me editing photos and wanted to give it a shot. I love that nothing is intimidating to her. She's always willing to try something and work with it until she's satisfied. I edited the photo using my usual steps, and describing each step, and then she took the reigns. She would occasionally ask, "Where is the Curves again?" Made this photo-mama's heart sing!

These days the truck gets a LOT of use, and it's not even being driven! I love to listen to the kids as they're playing outside because they come up with the most imaginative situations when they're in the back of the truck.

I was inspired by a photography friend on Pinterest to set up a "ninja course," as I called it. I told the kids that there was something for them inside the house. They all stopped at the door and stared at the sign. After a minute Brook finally says, "Um, Mom...does that say...Ninjas Only??" "Yup." "Awesome."

This is what awaited them. Truth be told, I spent more time playing with it than they did! They went through once or twice and said, "Can we set one up now?"

And they set to work. They did the entire living room/kitchen/dining room areas and declared that if any parent touches a laser beam, they were immediately dead. I mentioned that this might cause problems in their peanut butter and jelly sandwich deliveries for lunch and they deemed me an exemption...for now.

There was more How It's Made, much better if it's in a hideout and you are naked...apparently.

There was a LOT of jumping.

There was sewing. Brooklyn was doing supermans onto the couch and whacked her head. She decided to sew herself a cushion hat (when I mentioned perhaps it might be easier to tie a pillow to her head you should have SEEN the eye roll...it was record breaking). After a few attempts she finally gave me instructions on exactly what she wanted and I whipped this one up.

There was building with Cuisinaire rods...Sam said, "Mom! Look at my medieval siege weapon!!" No joke. I was a proud momma.

Brooklyn watched the movie Dive! (on Netflix) with me and one morning woke up and said, "Let's see if our eggs are good or not!!" Um, okay.

"MOM! Come and take a picture of us in our snugglepods!!" I want a snugglepod...

I realized it had been awhile since I'd been in any photos, so decided to take a photo of myself. I had a tough time though...not only was the lighting not so great, the camera seemed to add 10 pounds every time I clicked it, I couldn't get the focus right, but I had THIS monster to contend with! Ain't he cute?? I was doing Brooklyn's hair the other day and he asked me to do his as well, "I want spikes" he said.

Halfway decent self-portrait? Check.

I haven't been drawing much lately, but got the urge to again the other day and there's something about Sam's eyes that inspire me. So, in trying to get a close-up of his eyes, we had a little mini-session. Gah, I love him.

Sam had started doing an experiment...the "go to" is to get a bowl of water and add salt. Sam said, "Hurry! Come wook Mom, it dissolv-ed!" Then I figured I'd get out the cornstarch and introduce him to oobleck. "It's a non-Newtonian fluid!" I gushed, thinking, 'like they'll ever remember that.' Again, I was one proud mama when Russ got home and Sam said, "Guess what! We made a Newtoninon Fwuid today!"

The afternoons have been soooo nice--mid-60s usually. The kids decided they were going to make their lunches and have a picnic. I love that they just sit out there and have their own conversations.

I've started crocheting with a vengeance again this week. I saw a pattern that resembled something like this and really liked the idea of the versitility it offered, so whipped it up.

Today we went to the theater in Danville where they have monthly children's theater stuffs. This month was a concert by the Brian Waite Band. It was fun--they had a whole story/skit and they have good music, but it was about a half hour too long for me. It could have been the screaming children surrounding me (my fault for sitting in the front row) or...who knows. By the time it was over, I was out of there before you could say "adios". Toooooo overwhelming for me. And apparently for Russ and Sam as well, who sat up in the back (where Sam asked to sit). Smart boys. Brooklyn had a BLAST though--singing, dancing, plus she got to be part of one of the songs...my little performer.

And here is actual proof of the insanity:

We also met up at the Exploratorium in San Francisco with some friends we met at the homeschoolers park day a few weeks ago. I met Lisa and we hit it off immediately--lots in common and the conversation is just easy. SO nice. She has a 5 1/2 year old, Landon and a almost-3 year old Brennan. The boys are a bit shy and hesitant, whereas my kids...aren't. But they slowly started playing together, especially after we walked around the park outside of the Exploratorium.

We also went to our weekly homeschooler park date, which was great. It's so nice to be able to recognize faces (and even know a few of their names!). Plus, it was so fun--all of the parks here have sand pits and water spigots. We all pitched in for the entire 2 1/2 hours and made some fantastic castles, moats, oceans, tunnels, etc. Lisa and her boys were there as well and by the time we had to leave, all were whining that they weren't ready yet. So we're making plans to meet up at the zoo next week.

That's about it for this week! Next week should be fun!!

This week in the Teeter house.

2012-01-28T16:47:00.000-08:00

So, this week we did some experimenting... Both kids had to try this (neither relying on the results form the other). Oranges are juicy right...why not use a straw?!

We went rappelling (with Mommy's scarf, now turned bungee cord/leash/rope).

We built a swing (this was taken after Sam was outside by himself swinging...stopped...pulled his pants down and sat down in his undies to swing. He then pulled his pants up after this and kept swinging. I asked him if he was testing the differences. "Yes. It's colder when you're only in your undies." Duly noted.).

Comics were read.

Sam is a huge fan of the show How It's Made and begs to watch it every day. Lucky us, Netflix has THIRTEEN SEASONS on Instant Watch. It's funny because he will often say randomly throughout the day, "Huh, I wonder how this is made." Everything from balloons to forks to bath toys...

It rained. It was cold, but Brooklyn braved it. I had to laugh because when I went out to check on her (doesn't she look lonely?! Turns out she was just having "quiet time".), my neighbor said as he's hoping in his truck to take his kids to school, "I told her to stay out of the water and stay clean for you." I thanked him and as he drove away I said, "Brooklyn, get as wet and dirty as you want, babe."

Brooklyn loves to make breakfast for us (lucky me!!). She truly is a master chef when it comes to eggs and toast! She can do 100% of it by herself. I love hearing her in the morning, "Mom, Sam, your breakfast is ready!" Ahhhh...

Darcy, this photo is for you! Here's our "train". It's quite awesome in fact...especially when it's Russ that's pulling it!

I put labels on the kids dresser drawers this week. Not sure what took me so long to do it because it helps SO much. The kids had a hay day grabbing all of their clothes out of the clean clothes piles and at first stuffed them in their drawers. But then Brooklyn says, "Hey, check out how I fold mine!" Then Sam said, "I can do that too!" And they spent a half hour folding and putting their clothes away!! I was wondering if I should pinch myself in case I was dreaming...

There was a tea party. But first, all of the tea party dishes had to be washed...of course. (Note the absence of a mirror above the sink...yeah, that's the one that I broke into a million pieces. Helloooooo 7 years of bad luck!)

Tea party! She even made me an invitation, made treats and filled up everyone's teacups.

Balloons!

Sam taught my couch cushions a lesson....again.

Goodbye you disgusting, non-functioning dishwasher...

Helloooooo shiny new one that works fantastically!!

Eggs were peeled...

...and sliced. (and eaten.)

More balloon fun!

More rainy days! ...complete with a floating boat.

This is one of those little moments that you want to fold up and put in your pocket to keep for forever. Sam and I were playing with his puzzles. He would make a pattern and I would say it. Soon enough he started trying to "trick" me by messing up the pattern. I would say it in an incredulous way and this kid was all but rolling on the floor in laughter. I haven't seen him in such gut-busting laughter in a long time. It was so freaking sweet.

There was mass construction going on.

Brooklyn's rope finally arrived!! I cannot tell you how many stinking hours she has spent with this thing this week. Directly after opening this, we went outside (approximately noon), and came back in at 5pm. It was the same for the next day. And the next.

Grrr, my pictures are out of order. This is what Brooklyn's cardboard house looked like--I love the colors!

Chore charts were picked out and printed, we brainstormed about what chores should be done before cartoons/game playing in the mornings.

We had LOTS of fun with the Cuisinaire rods I ordered.

Sam loves to show off how fast he can sprint.

One of Brooklyn's MANY inventions...a chair swing.

We made some delicious (and healthy!) cookies, which turned out a bit too crumbly, so we made them into granola! YUM.

There was finger painting. Both kids knew exactly what they wanted. Brook wanted to paint only her left hand herself, and wanted me to do her right hand--blue nail polish with another coat of sparkles on top. Sam wanted ONLY blue on his right hand and ONLY sparkles on his left hand. Funny kids.

There were word puzzles. I forgot I'd bookmarked this website where you can make a bunch of your own word puzzles. Brooklyn LOVED these this week!!

I love weekends. Lately we've done a lot of just chilling out. It seems we all run and run all week we just want to stick around the house and be lazy all weekend. The boys were watching How It's Made and after an episode or two, this is what I found. I love my boys!!

There was some serious fashion going on...inside-out sweater, inside-out jeans, and rain boots (on a sunny day). I love my oh-so-fashionable kiddos!!

Other adventures this week:

-playing outside with the neighbor kids ALL.DAY.LONG.
-a visit to the Toyota dealership
-lots more experiments
-lots of games
-ninja fighting, arm wrestling, tree climbing, sprinting, scootering, biking, etc.
-sun prints
-holding breath under water
-plotting the path Brooklyn's rope took to get to her
-way more than I can actually write here, lol.

Noteable quotes this week:

Sam (overheard him talking to himself in the bathroom): "Fart, pee, fart, pee...hey, I MADE A PATTERN. MOM, COME LISTEN TO MY PATTERN!!!"

Brooklyn: “I have pretty good inventions don’t I?? I just squish my brain together and they pop out.”

The One Where There Was A Wedding.

2012-01-22T14:31:00.000-08:00

THERE WAS A BACHELORETTE PARTY.

There was Charlie Sheen kissing. (Yes, I said Charlie Sheen. Apparently the selection was slim pickin's--Charlie Sheen or Justin Beiber. I'm not sure whether this selection speaks to the tastes of Wal-Mart or of the locals of Ephrata...)

There were fantastic hairdo's and mugshots.

There was a party in the hot tub. And that is all I am further allowed to speak of this event or I will be breaking some serious pinky swear oaths.

THERE WAS A CEREMONY.

There was one happy bride and one happy groom.

There was a lot of hand holding and stolen kisses.

There was one happy boy (and said happy boy's parents--he will no longer be a bachelor forever!).

There was one hot couple!!

THERE WAS A DINNER.

There were stories about the bride and groom.

There was laughter and tears from all.

There were gifts.

There were photos.

There was mingling.

And there was a piggy-back ride out to the car.

THERE WAS A RECEPTION.

There was a beautiful home.

There was some fantastic decor.

There were candles and lights.

There were photos telling of a story about a boy and a girl that fell in love.

There was a dress.

There was a homemade paper bouquet.

There were goofy boys...ahem, men.

There was a cake cutting.

There was a vengeful wife...and luckily for Chris, a forgiving one.

There was a lot of family and friends.

There was a surprise dance.

There were stolen moments.

There were goodies for guests.

There were belly laughs with good friends.

There were rings.

And of course, there was a car.

Chris and Audrey, you guys are perfect not only together but also as a part of our family. Thank you for letting me be at your elbow through all of this to document those few wonderful days. I hope I can be there to document many more important days in your lives! I love you both so much!!!

Christmas, Part III.

2012-01-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, last Christmas, I promise! This one was with just Russ's parents and us. Very low-key (apparent by The Heathens lack of clothing).

First things first...tattooing each child with their own Spirograph tattoo.

On to the presents!

It's a NEW SCOOTER!!!

Brooklyn: "Mom, we live by a skate park now--can we use these at the skate park??"
Me: lots of nervous laughter before asking what we'd all like for breakfast...

I'd been waiting for FOREVER to give Russ his gift. And I was so proud of myself for keeping it an actual secret!! For those of you who don't know Russ, he REALLY wants to get his pilot's license someday. Well, I found a Groupon for an hour of flight school and another hour of actual flying time. The catch was that we (it's for both him and I to go, although only he gets to fly...which is fine with me. I plan on sitting in the back with a barfbag the size of Europe in my lap) are 5 pounds over the combined flight weight. So I kept telling him that I got him a Spandex santa suit for Christmas and although he is doing FANTASTIC at exercising and eating well, keep at it!!

The best part? Verna had a Santa suit!! So I wrapped it up and put the Groupon receipt in the pocket of the pants. You should have seen his face when he opened the gift up to find an freaking real Santa suit. I told him he had to put it on so we could all see how it fit. He eventually found the Groupon. Anyways...it was pretty fun, and I'm really excited to go with him to use it one of these days.

In the last post, I mentioned how The Heathens love to slide down the roof of Auntie Suzy's pump house. It's a good thing Sam wore his crappy pants as they'll never be the same again. And I was floored to find that it even put holes in his underwear. Almost had to check his butt to see if there was damage there too! lol. Next time I think we'll put on 2 pairs of trash pants...

Brooklyn had been telling me all about this big blowup ball that she wanted for Christmas. Lo and behold, look what she got...

After awhile, we got an air compressor.

Gotta love static electricity! AND SHE HADN'T EVEN GOTTEN IN THE BALL YET!

It's finally pumped up and they're trying to figure out who is first. While they were busy figuring it out, I jumped in. Bwahahahah.

Sam received another stomp rocket (after destroying the one he got for his last birthday) and enjoys it to no end.

Racing scooters with Corinne.

Watch out world, here she comes!!

Christmas, Part II.

2012-01-22T12:17:00.000-08:00

FINALLY! Time for Christmas #2 (of 3...)!! After celebrating with the Lybbert Clan on Christmas morning, we hopped into the van and sped over the mountains to Olympia and celebrate with the Teeter Clan (actually the Stitt Clan, since it's Verna's side of the family) at Auntie Suzy and Uncle Mike's farm!

As soon as we walked into the door, there were many squeezes and gifts and food being pushed into my childrens' outstretched hands. Of course my kids graciously accepted, "No Sam, THIS ONE IS MINE. BACK OFF." You know. Either way, they loved their light-up snowmen.

And check out those sweaters. Those are heirloom sweaters right there. Verna dug them out of a box--Russ and Corinne and their cousins wore them when they were Brook and Sam's age!! Love it. They wear them nearly every day.

See what I mean about the food? Overflowing. And what's pictured isn't even what I'd call a sample of what is available...I mean seriously, it takes us DAYS to become hungry again after visiting Suzy's. Mmmm...blueberry muffins....

The other attraction for the kids is of course the animals! If they couldn't be found indoors stuffing their faces and snuggling with various family members, they were outside chucking food at the chickens and cows, chasing the chickens and/or climbing (and sliding down) the well-house roof (and therefore destroying any pants they are wearing).

Breakfast!

I believe the direct quote from Russ here is, "I poop in your eye." Sam's response? "Hehehe. Do it again."

Brooklyn and Sam finally got to meet Ryder, who is one fun little dude! My kids knew they were in good company when Ryder literally tackled them and wrestled them to the ground to say hello. He is two. After realizing that it was okay to wrestle this two-year old, they had much fun in being tackled. Every time.

Waiting for the present-opening to begin!

Sam got a marshmallow shooter (and a bag of marshmallows...yes, they were ALL used within approximately 15 minutes).

Sam and Ryder had a great time together.

As always, it's so good to have the whole family together...

...especially if it involves a White Elephant gift exchange.

Haha, I love Corinne's expression and being the proud new owner of 100 plastic hangers.

Somebody was getting a little worn out during all of the adult fun...

Someone's White Elephant gift was a tool and a set of mustaches. It was the coveted gift. That Corinne ended up getting, much to these girls' chagrin.

"Dude, check out my new laptop."

Brooklyn found herself someone to snuggle with--Russ's cousin Klint. And she refused to let him out of her sight until they pulled out of the driveway to go home.

And of course it wouldn't be a proper get-together without a group photo.

Until the next great gathering of Stitts!

Just a normal Tuesday.

2012-01-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

A chilly morning met with chores to get the blood pumping!
Toilets.
Counters.
Dishes.
Bed making.
Getting dressed.
Teeth brushing.
Laundry. (the favorite of the Heathens)

Even though they asked and begged all morning to watch their movies from the library, they ended up playing "dogs" for hours. I was elected to be "the owner" and was requested to tie them both up with scarves and serve them sloppy eggs and toast on the floor. Done and done.

I was then instructed that Brooklyn needed to be taken outside on her leash. It was 26* out. Sure, fine. She made it to the van before deciding she'd taken a long enough "walk".

The dogs (known as "Sammy" and "Christmas Paws" (aka "Paws")) then decided to go camping in their tent in the middle of the living room and requested books.

45 minutes later, my butt was completely numb from sitting on the tile floor.

We've been talking a lot about roller coasters...we read a couple of books, watched some YouTube videos about them, talked about gravity, friction and energy, and played some games online about constructing them. I've hinted that there will be a field trip tomorrow, but haven't told them they are going to get to actually ride a roller coaster tomorrow. They're going to pee their pants with excitement when they find out. Neither have ever ridden one before, to my knowledge.

Got the mail. A Zootles magazine came. Brook and I snuggled up on the couch and read the Dolphins issue from cover to cover in about 10 minutes and decided that next time we'll get the actual Zoobooks magazine since it was way too easy/boring for her.

Sam declared Mommy kisses "yucky". Wah. :(

Wall-walkers.

I was assaulted by two puppies, wrestled to the ground and licked all over my face. I'm sure they had good intentions, but their breath smelled like literal dog breath. Cough cough, gag gag. I love being covered in my childrens' spit. GAG GAG.

Brooklyn then decided to train for the Iditarod.

Brooklyn decides she wants to learn to sew (she BEGGED for her own sewing machine for Christmas, but was denied due to me thinking she was too young...yet again I was proven wrong). We spent the next hour and a half designing flags that we're going to string across the dining room. The first half hour wasn't bad--I was controlling the pedal, but then she requested to take the reigns completely and the half hour after that consisted of me turning blue from holding my breath... She quickly proved that she knew what she was doing though.

Sam took a break from his game to check out Brooklyn's progress and decided he wanted to give it a try as well. I underestimated how good of a learning tool a sewing machine can be. In choosing which design he wanted, he had to figure out the numbers and then press the button and find the numbers. Then he had to find the foot that that number required. And then there's the whole learning orders of operations and fine motor skills. He lasted for about a half hour, and by the end even he was doing it completely by himself (with me sitting approximately 6" from him, of course).

Brooklyn asked (for the millionth time) if she could borrow Russ's rope. He is adamant that they NOT use his rope. For anything. Ever. Don't ask me why, but it just makes Brooklyn want it more, of course. So I suggested that perhaps she should look into purchasing her own rope. We didn't find much looking online at Walmart, Target, or Ace Hardware. But we did find a 50' one on Amazon for $6.50 that the kids decided to cut in half so they can both have a 25' rope (which we measured out and the kids deemed the "perfect length"). Take THAT Daddy, I didn't really want your rope anyways.

Played a game of "Can You Copy My Funny Face" in which both children ended up rolling on the floor in fits of laughter.

Sam requested to be rolled up in a ball of tape...this is Stage 1.

We played Superman, running through the kitchen and flying onto the couch.

Potato soup for dinner. Brooklyn says, "YUM! My favorite soup!!" Sam about dies from hyperventilating from the fit he throws. "I DON'T WIKE POTATOES!!!" Seriously? Where is this kid even from??

To distract him from the horrible impending doom of dinner, Brooklyn got some ice balls the put in the freezer a few days ago (the original intention was to go bowling with them...). We busted out the salt and food coloring and they made their own ice sculptures.

After dinner I grabbed my crochet bag and zoomed out the door to my weekly crochet group at the local coffee joint for some much needed momma camaraderie! Phew! BRING ON TOMORROW!!

Quote of the day: "Sam, let's tie this around your waist instead of your neck. I don't want to kill you today."

The Current Obsession.

2012-01-16T20:12:00.001-08:00

I have obsessions. And I'll fully admit it. For those of you who have known me for awhile have seen some of these obsessions...
-photography
-couponing
-healthy living
-chickens
-gardening
-budgeting
-crocheting
-homeschooling

Russ and I always call them obsessions because I completely immerse myself into that topic and don't emerge until I have exhausted my resources and myself. It wasn't until I started obsessing over homeschooling and reading books like they were tall glasses of water that I realized that guess what...IT'S COMPLETELY NORMAL. And...it has a name.

LEARNING.

Silly me. Thinking I was so weird going through these shifts of crazy, life-consuming interests. I think what was amazing to me was that I don't ever remember being like this before I had the time to be like this. I had studies and sports to worry about! And can't forget about socializing with my friends, checking my email and instant messaging my high school sweetheart!

I didn't have the time. When I became a stay at home mom, lo and behold I actually had to find something that I was interested in TO KEEP ME SANE.

This is yet another reason I decided that homeschooling was right for us--I can SEE these "obsessions" happening in my children NOW. I want them to have the time, without worrying about homework and sitting in a desk for 6 hours a day, that they need to devote themselves to each interest and get that fulfillment that comes with feeling like you've achieved a new level of understanding. Because honestly, every one of these interests I've had has changed my life in some way because of the information and skills I have gleaned.

Anyways...it's funny because I can feel when these periods of interest begin. Something will pique my interest and it gets the ball rolling. I just never know how long it will last--sometimes a day, sometimes years.

The current thing to pique my interest? Art.

For those of you that know Brooklyn, you'll know that she is a self-proclaimed artist. And it's a fact. I'm usually more than happy to let her go about her projects, at times biting my tongue (which I don't do enough). After being around Russ's cousin Katy, who is also a factual artist (we've been learning about facts versus opinions lately...), and then reading the book Young At Art by Susan Striker (highly recommend it, especially for little ones. Dene', I will be bringing Jackson a slew of art goodies the next time I come, so check this book out at the library.). And that was it...I could feel something coming on...

It's a bit frustrating though as with other subjects I've been able to immerse myself in books, and then a lot of times, just apply things I learn...well, there's a bit more of a learning curve with art. Especially when you have no idea what kind of art you want to do you justneedtodoitNOW.

Anyways...before I get into all of the things I have done in the last 7 days, I'd like to point out that I'm not posting these because I think they are complete and utter works of art and should be framed and put into the Museum of Modern Art. It is purely to demonstrate the insane drive I have to create and to document the variety of things I have tried thus far.

We tried immersing ourselves in nature. We went hiking in Muir Woods and spent hours flipping rocks at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I took the kids to MOCHA this week. There are big open rooms with all SORTS of art projects available. They have stations with examples of how to do certain things. I couldn't pass up the straw blowing paint cherry blossom trees! I love blowing paint with a straw!!!

I also thoroughly enjoyed the play dough. Ironically, I had to drag Sam out of there (who is usually done with art after 10-15 minutes), and Brooklyn was the one asking to go home (even though she made a whole bucket load of stuff)!!! So yet another frustrating thing--Brooklyn is apparently NOT in her art phase at this moment. Go figure. Sam does seem a bit more perceptive than normal, but come on, he's literally got the attention span of a 3 1/2 year old...alas.

Then we decided to do papel picados for math (LOVE the Family Math books!! They make math fun, even for me!). They are now hanging across the garage/playroom/school area.

Then with the scraps from the papel picados I thought it would be fun to make a stained glass window (which we've been talking about doing since we randomly visited that Catholic church for Mass a few weeks back). Note: If it looks like the majority of this was done by an adult...you get a cookie. All me, baby. Ahhh, art.

And then of course, you cannot forget the photography version of art (although I'm not usually much for scenic stuff)...these were all taken at the Ardenwood Historic Farm in Fremont, where monarchs come to rest in the eucalyptus groves for the winter. The monarchs were cool--not super impressive as there weren't a ton...a few hundred at least. I was too busy searching for something to fill this need to create...

And of course the art of crochet.

Then on a whim I bought a 12-pack of colored Sharpie pens that I love doodling with. I've always had a fascination with caricatures. In fact, if I am making art via putting my hand to a piece of paper in some way, generally the only logical thing to draw is people. It's actually quite irritating, as it's difficult for anything else to inspire me. And frustrating because let's face it, people can be HARD to put onto a piece of paper...

And then came more doodling, inspired by Vi Hart on YouTube, who I owe thanks to as my kids now know how Fibonacci numbers relate to nature (as we watched this clip at least 10 times). This was so therapeutic that I wanted to do another right after finishing it.

And so I went out and bought some new brushes, some more acrylic paint (as I seemed to have this drive to put paint on canvas) and got to work! This took much longer than I was anticipating and after finishing just this much, am a bit intimidated at finishing it!

I also had this crazy desire to draw with pencils, which I have never done before, short of that one assignment in my high school art class. So I had to buy pencils. I wish I'd had my brother, Chris there to tell me what to buy! I had no clue and had to restrain myself from wiping the shelf clean. As I walked out of the art store, I was literally skipping...I could not get home fast enough. What the heck has got into me?! (On another note--Shelan, do you recognize the drawing in the top part of the photo? Thanks for the inspiration! Unfortunately, I have a long way to go before I'm ready to un-blur it, lol. Oh, and the mirror looks fantastic on my hearth, as you can see at the bottom of the photo, lol.)

I've tried re-decorating...these walls were bare and Brooklyn's art drawer was overflowing yesterday... Oh, and I've tried painting the house some more (which is usually very therapeutic for me), but I got so incredibly frustrated! I can usually do it for hours and hours but after an hour I was so mad and frustrated that I gave up. So weird.

In the Young At Art book, the author recommends taking all of the paper off your Crayons so that the child can actually feel what a crayon feels like. At first I thought, 'huh, okay I will try it.' I really did like the feel of just the crayon itself--it felt more like a tool than a little kid's scribble thing. Plus, don't you think these papers will make a fantastic collage of some sort?? The kids thought we should use them for confetti, which I agree--what great confetti, right?! But then I think I will ferret them away, hehe.

The art of laminating. Ahhh...so therapeutic! Are you laughing?? You must not have tried laminating anything before. Go ahead, try it. I dare you.

Heck, I even busted out my sewing machine for the second time since we've moved to make Sam his PJ pants from the material he picked out last month (not that he will wear these...sigh. This was literally the only photo I got of him wearing them--I bribed him in the first place to put them on for "just one picture" and after that snap, the next 3 snaps are all blurs of him disrobing and streaking off...).

On the Play At Home Mom blog, some of the moms have this Plexiglas board that is mounted in a stand so kids can paint on it. I decided we didn't need a stand--we'd just prop it up against something. Not as fun. The kids agreed as Sam was done after his normal 10 minutes, and Brook gave up, stormed inside and locked the door on me shortly after because "I just can't do it!!!" No bueno. While Hurrican Brooklyn raged inside, I kept at it, trying to get SOME sort of inspiration. When I asked Katy how she knows what to paint, she said sometimes she just paints. No thinking involved. Just paint. So I tried it and lo and behold, 45 minutes later I can't feel my hands and feet from the cold and I've been inspired.

So I went inside and did this. Is it creepy? For some reason, I'm not just enthralled with people, but especially eyes. I cannot draw/paint/etc. them enough. I don't feel like this painting is finished yet though, but am not sure what to add...I guess I'll just wait and see.

Along with all of this, I've been doing some journaling and of course Blogging, both of which are therapeutic in one way or another. And I cannot get off of the Discount School Supply website...SO MANY GOODIES!!!!

Okay, time to end this rambling mess. It's been another attempt to satiate the need to create. And now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go sketch by the fire.
Goodnight!

Christmas #1.

2012-01-11T21:01:00.000-08:00

Christmas morning!

It was decided (not by me, I might add! lol) that Christmas must take place at 5am. We got up at 4:45am, got the kids up, and drove across town to my parents' house. The kids walked in the door shaking the jingle bells and singing "Jingle Bells." They went from door to door, excitedly singing. It was pretty cute to watch.

IT'S FINALLY HERE!!! CHRISTMAS AT LAST!!!

The vultures go in for the stocking kill.

Santa left Russ some aviators...hmmm...interesting.

Russ convinced Brooklyn that she needed to pick up her ringing banana and talk into it...that's what 5am does to people.

Sam loves Audrey. He wanted to show her all of the stuff in his stocking, and share his crackers and cheese with her. I find it funny that Chris stole Sam's Sesame Street coloring book to page through...

Brooklyn was declared this year's honorary Santa's Helper and got to help dole out the gifts.

Dene's awesome gift to the newest branch of Lybberts.

My dad can be a dork. But he can be pretty funny too. (I love you, Dad!!) He wrapped up a gift "To my new son, Kenny" or something like that. Kenny unwrapped it...and it was a gift for Russ ("to my other son"). Russ unwrapped it, and it was for Chris. Chris unwrapped it and it was a gift for Alifaio. I honestly can't remember what was in the gift in the end, but it was pretty funny!

So, Santa has put these hard candies in our stockings since before I can even remember. And the only one of us in our family that likes them? My dad. We would forfeit all of our hard candy to him in the past (or save it to the very last thing in our stocking...besides the nuts...). Go figure, Sam is a hard candy FIEND! So the tradition lives on...

Haha, I love his reaction! Good job, Grammie and G-pa! He always says, "I going go in duh garage and pway wif my tools."

Kenny bought Brook and Sam both a 6-pack of the good soda! I was curious to see what my kids did since they seem to covet soda, but they've had it only a handful of times, and only in sips (to my knowledge anyway...). Grammie wrapped up only ONE of the sodas for each of them, and this was Brooklyn's reaction in the photo below. I was really surprised when BOTH of my kids took no more than a few sips of each of their sodas! Funny kids.

Pwaying wif his tools again.

Jackson has the Christmas Coma going on.

"Vroom, vroom Daddy-o."

Awww, I love him!!

Chris and Audrey got Brook and Sam a neat book about bugs and I can't tell you how many times we've snuggled in bed and read it. Pretty sweet book, actually. It holds my attention! HA!

This is Chris's gift to Audrey. He started making this (a super duper breakfast tray, complete with warming bags, removable pouches, an area to slip photos in, a storage area...the works!) less than a WEEK before Christmas!! INCLUDING learning to sew! I was way impressed.

Sam loves his sensory bin, so he wanted Jackson to bust his out too!

I found this idea on Pinterest and thought how long it'd been since my parents had photos of ALL of their kids (and grandkids!). So my siblings were awesome and were all able to get photos of themselves and their families with the letters L O V E ! I am SO bummed I didn't get a photo of the end result! My parents put them vertical along their brick wall and it looks really, really neat. Anyways, with West being on a mission, it has been over a year since any of us have seen him, and this is my parents opening up his photo.

Shelan had me for Christmas this year and she went over the top! She found this awesome mirror at an antique store and covered it in lace. It is HUGE! It's currently taken up residence over my fireplace and it fits in wonderfully!

Okay, so I made this hat for a friend of mine...to fit her FOUR YEAR OLD'S head...yeeeeah, going to have to re-work that pattern, I think.

Hot stuff.

Hot Stuff, Part Deux.

Who doesn't love squishing Styrofoam peanuts??

This about sums up Christmas.

Alifaio is a Tongan guy who lived with my parents for a couple of months and has become a good friend of the family. He was telling me about HIS traditional Christmases...they would get a small Ziploc bag of goodies (chips, etc.), and when he was young then he got the same gift every year. Literally. It was a toy gun. He would get to play with it for a few hours and then it would get put away until the following Christmas. He talked about how excited he was on Christmas Eve, thinking about getting to play with it again. It definitely put things in perspective.

He was incredibly appreciative for the goodies he got on Christmas. Especially after my dad showed him how to put his toaster and egg pan to work to make a homemade Egg McMuffin!

Weeeeeee!!!!

The boys, working on their Christmas project.

Another good choice in gifts, Grammie and Gpa...I mean Santa.

And the Spirograph? Goodness, she hasn't even put it down yet!!!

One Christmas down, 2 more to go!

Christmas Pre-Gaming

2012-01-11T20:21:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Eve, we decided to do an impromptu Christmas Eve breakfast with all of the family we could scrounge up. Luckily, everyone (minus West, of course, who is still serving his mission in Minnesota) was able to make it!

The kids had fun jumping on the iced-over trampoline for about 3.2 seconds.

I taught Brooklyn the art of sorting presents--by name, by height, be weight...she caught on real quick.

Chris and his (at the time) fiancee Audrey made most of the breakfast.

Okay, well...Chris was doing other things while cooking...like teaching Brooklyn how to box. With a full bag of garbage.

Geez, this family is getting big!

Sam thought Jackson was fun to play with...until he realized that Jackson just wanted to look at him, crawl on him and stick his fingers in his mouth.

'Mom, come on, help a guy out here...'

Luckily, Sam really did like Jackson--he thought he was "so cute!" Dang right.

Of course we had to play games. Apparently Dene' plays Apples to Apples like there is no tomorrow...

Jackson's trying to get his head in the game, 'but I just can't keep these women off of me!'

Mom was getting a bit overwhelmed with 16 (right?) stockings to fill!

White Elephant time!!

West got the sister missionaries' white elephant gift!

(And for those of you wondering, yes that is in fact a cardboard cutout of West. Sort of. It's actually a cardboard cutout of George Bush...with West's head stuck on it...but that's another story.)

We all seemed to get gifts that suited us well--I got a key finder (you whistle and it makes noise and lights up...so I can find where those rascals his my keys this time!), Russ got a pot and a limb of my parents' gigantic house plant that they've had since they got married (he thought it was so cool that he asked HIS parents for a clipping from their plants that they've had for forever!), Kenny got the edible body paint, Dad got the Trans-Siberian Orchestra CD, Audrey got the pantry organizer, and Chris...oh Chris. He got the nearly-all-eaten boxes of chocolates...complete with photo of Shelan actually eating the chocolates. Freaking awesome.

Then it was hurry-up-and-make-sure-you-have-everything-ready-for-Christmas-morning time, complete with background music from my talented sissy's.

Voila! Complete!

San Jose Children's Museum

2012-01-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

ACK! I am officially over a MONTH behind on blogging! I'm sorry, I really despise when people get behind and then try and catch up...but you're just going to have to deal with it. Bwahahahah.

Last month we decided to check out the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

It takes about 45 minutes to get there, and we find all ways of occupying our time while driving, including with dry-erase markers. These things get a ton of use in the car! For example, keeping count of how many blue and/or red cars you see, making tables and graphs of how many green/red lights you go through (or hopefully NOT go through in the case of red ones...but not unheard of at times...), writing down a forgotten grocery list, playing Pictionary On The Go, aaaaaaand according to Brooklyn, disguising yourself...not only did she give herself glasses and a goatee, but she "tatooed" her legs with wind turbines. I kid you not. Wind turbines. What 5 year old "tattoos" herself with wind turbines!? I (and every other person she was in contact with that day, I'm sure) got a good giggle.

This very cool firetruck was right at the entrance and the kids wasted no time pushing past me and sprinting to the glorious shiny red truck.

Sam could sit and play with this thing for hours. Seriously.

Brooklyn's turn to drive!

They have a neat little bubble room with a bunch of different bubble centers.

If it were up to the kids, we could have stayed here all.day.long. Every time we walked by it we had to stop and play for another 10 minutes.

This was by far the kids (and probably mine) favorite area--the water area! They had a bunch of tubes and stuff set up for these little plastic balls to do all sorts of neat things. Like here, Sam rolled it down the ramp and it was shot up into the clear plastic box, then it was washed down into another contraption.

Here, the ball is shot out and lands into the tornado, sucked down, and sent down a series of stairs to a pool.

Then there's this fountain that emits "fog", but you are able to mess with some knobs to determine how much fog is being put out, and how big you want the water fountain. It was awesome to watch because the more fog that was produced, the bigger the fountain grew until you put your finger in to disrupt the flow and let the fog escape.

The whole setup.

They also had a bit area on mammoths. Apparently one (or a few?) were found quite some time ago when excavating around San Jose. So they have lots of neat, interactive exhibits about mammoths.

They also have not one, but TWO art rooms! One for children under age 5 (along with a huge play area filled with all sorts of stations for younger kids), and then one for older kids. This is where we first learned about the ice sculptures, food coloring, salt, and flashlights.

Sam had fun running from station to station and was excited to see this awesome building area with giant blocks. His problem was that this little boy wanted so badly to build WITH Sam, but Sam wasn't too excited about that... Eventually he realized that 4 hands are better than 2 and they had a lot of fun constructing (but mostly destroying) together.

Brooklyn would have spent the entire time in this mirror contraption. She would spin and jump and make faces and who knows what all else.

This is the area for "crawling children only". There wasn't a crawler in sight, so I told Sam to go ahead, "But don't forget to crawl!" haha. One of the employees did come over and mention that he's not supposed to be in there, but no one else was using it, so why not. Besides, it was so neat I wanted to go crawl in there!...but restrained myself. Barely.

Sam decided to give the ice a try.

This was up on an upper level of the small children's area. Brooklyn came and hung over the rail, "MOM! You have GOT to see this! I am going to die of cuteness in here!" Well then, by golly I'd better check it out. In complete honesty...I'm surprised no one's brain dropped out of their ears from the insanity of carousel horses dancing around the room with different colors and some creepy nursery music being played softly in the background...needless to say, I ducked out of there quite quickly before I lost my cookies.

Then came the "big kid" art area. We were painting still life--these gourds and corn. Sam was done in record time, and quickly rushed off to the next area, but Brooklyn stayed so long she closed the art exhibit down.

Okay, so this photo puts me into fits of laughter as I look at it and can see a 16 year old Sam...bear with me here...can you see it? The same skater shirt (a few sizes bigger), same shaggy haircut, same "Dude, why are you taking a photo of me?" expression, and working at a pizza joint. Awesome. The funniest part? He absolutely loved it. He made me at least 10 different pizzas, and happily refilled my drink...excuse me while I relapse...hehehahaha!!

I had to drag them out of there shortly after in hopes of getting on the road before rush hour traffic (silly me, waiting until 4pm...). 2 hours later, we had to pick Russ up (who had started walking home in the dark) alongside the road. Awesome. Note to self: RUSH HOUR SUCKS. Drag your butt out of the house BEFORE noon next time...

If I were to give this museum a review though, I'd probably go with an 8.5/10. We really liked it and it had a lot to offer--it was clean and bright, the exhibits were exciting, all of the employees were happy and helpful. The exhibits were entertaining for the kids, but could also keep an adults attention. It was a bit far for us, and normally it's a tad spendy--$10 per person (including children, but free for those under age 1). With our ACM membership though, it's only $5 per person, which makes it do-able.

A Frustrating Day.

2012-01-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

Geez, do you ever have those days where EVERYONE in the entire house woke up on the wrong side of the bed?? Be glad you weren't in the Teeter house today...sheesh.

It was a good day, full of lots of fun things...like math games. There is a book called Family Math with all sorts of fun math games that we like to play. I knew I should have stopped before we even started when everyone glared at me when I asked them for their estimates on how many tablespoons of garbanzo beans it would take to fill up a small cup.

We all made our estimates, and then took turns rolling the die to see how many scoops we got to put in on our turn. Then we'd re-evaluate our estimates. In concept, we all should have really enjoyed it. Alas, when I broke out the 1/2 tablespoon and the 1/4 cup and Russ started explaining the intricacies of formulating an educated guess based on the data we had gathered from the first time around...there was nothing but glassy eyes. Actually, Sam was eager to do the experiment again...but it was more of a "how many garbanzo beans do you estimate I can stick up my nose?" sort of experiment. We're not going there again...

After everyone went their separate ways for a bit, we came back for breakfast. And paper airplanes. Paper airplanes make everyone happy, right??

They do Sam!

Doing experiments with the planes' stability. It was hypothesized that the plane would fly better without the ribbon--the ribbon would just weigh it down. The kids were less than impressed that it was actually the opposite effect, and Sam crumpled up Russ's airplane. And Russ was grumpy. We again all went our separate ways to cool off.

Finally, it was time for the Polar Bear Slide!! Brooklyn decided she wanted to be a polar bear, so we did her hair with bear ears and put a nose and whiskers on her. She was so excited!! Sam was still pretty bummed that he didn't get to go though...he is too short.

Yes, she talked me into doing it with her. It looks sunny and warm, and it wasn't bad...55 or so, but it was windy. Brr! And the water...BRRRRRR!! Unfortunately, I should have measured Brooklyn better though--you had to be at least 48" tall, and when I measured her, the only thing I had on hand was a piece of paper. Soooo...apparently my paper-measuring system wasn't perfect as she was a half-inch too short. She was devastated.

So we tried to cheer her up by doing something else cold--frozen yogurt!

The kids both got blueberry and Russ got mocha, vanilla and chocolate. Silly me, I agreed to share Russ's with him and I don't even like mocha. Blah. I ate more of the kids' than I did his, hehe.

We walked down and hung out by the water fountain, in case Brooklyn wanted to put her swimming suit to use and play in the water. Everybody was chilled though, and we headed home.

Russ decided to enlist the kids to help washing the car and truck. Of course this ended in tears and screams, as it seems impossible for Russ to keep from spraying the kids with ice cold water, even if they are fully clothed. Sigh.

Then we found out why our seeds are disappearing so fast out of our "squirrel-proof" bird feeder. Geez. The nerve of that guy.

Then the kids decided they wanted to play with the fake snow that they got for Christmas. It was pretty neat!Add a little water...

...and it explodes!

After the snow started getting flung all over my freshly-swept kitchen, I directed the kids outside. They requested some colors...sure! I just have to find the bottles, the food coloring, rinse out the bottles, mix the colors up and ohlookatthat YOU DUMPED THEM ALL OUT. Onto the pavement. That is now stained green. Awesome.

At this point we deemed it Quiet Time. We set the kids up with a movie, Russ went to the back room to search YouTube for how to plant pomegranate seeds, and I went to bed. Ahhh, it's been forever since I've taken that great of a nap!!

Russ made everyone dinner and then gathered up flashlights and we headed to the park for some night-time play.

Unfortunately, there was much screaming and whining and crying even while at the playground! At night! Nobody wanted to go searching in crevasses with their flashlights or do hand puppets in the tunnel slide or ANYTHING. So I took this creepy photo and then we went home where there was much whining, crying, ear-splitting shrieking, and all-out madness when bedtime was declared.

Sigh...let's hope everyone got the Grumpies out of their systems today. I'm ready to start over! Tomorrow I'm hoping we can head to Muir Woods again and maybe hit Point Reyes--the gray whales are migrating past there! At this rate though, I'll be impressed if anyone drags their carcasses out of bed before 8am...we'll see!

Projectors and Rock Climbing.

2012-01-06T19:52:00.000-08:00

What a fun day! It started out a bit rocky as Sam is still on Bubba Standard Time (aka - getting up at 6am to watch cartoons and snuggle on the couch...Momma isn't that nice.). After everyone woke up and had breakfast, we were off to a great start.

First up, the overhead projector that we got from Russ's Aunt Suzy. I knew this sucker would get some major use! It was used for HOURS today.

Introducing it to Brooklyn, as Sam was occupied with Starfall on the computer. We decided to try out the dry erase markers first.

Ignore the pile of dirty laundry and the gigantic dehumidifier in the back there...ugh. (For those of you who aren't aware, we came home from Christmas (a 12 day adventure) to find our house flooded. A hot water pipe had broken early on and it was so humid there was water dripping from the ceiling and mold growing on many things...rice cooker, cell phone charger...GROSS! We have to have the dehumidifiers for a week, according to our awesome neighbors (one is a plumber, the other a contractor).).We decided to move it to a bigger wall. We had so much fun! While they played with markers, I laminated some colored tissue paper shapes so they could build images with those and use them on the lightbox we got for Christmas as well. Then we played lots of games--spelling games, letter hunting games, number games, shapes, reading...lots of fun. After Sam took the scissors to many of the shapes I'd spent a good chunk of time making, claiming he was making puzzles...sigh...we decided to take a break and read some books.
The kids love snuggling in my bed, so I set up one of their bookshelves in my room, packed with their books in hopes that they'd be more apt to ask to be read to. Sam chose a book on spiders and another on Venus Flytraps. They were enthralled at the old, stale book! They got too sidetracked pretending to be flytraps that we had to put the book away.

I love it when they recite through play things that we discuss. Here, Brooklyn was saying, "Okay Sam, come fly into my pods and step on my hairs so I can start digesting you." Then Sam would say, "I smell that sweet smell...bzz bzz...step step. Oops, I'm gone." Brooklyn, "Yum! See you in 8 to 10 days!"
And then of course it turns into Full-Body Flytraps..."The more you struggle, the harder I squeeze and more digestive juices I have, Sam!" Goofballs.
Today was rock climbing day!! We've missed it for several weeks, and we were all excited to get back to the gym. Turns out, the kids weren't quite as excited as they'd THOUGHT they were...Sam climbed the easiest one once, and Brooklyn climbed a couple of times but was SO cranky! She's usually climbing the entire time, but she plopped her butt on the couch, crossed her arms and pouted for probably a good 45 minutes. Sheesh. Oh well, at least Russ and I had fun!! I got to climb more than I have in the past probably 7 years combined!! And I rocked it!!

Here's Brooklyn on her incredibly frustrating climb...

If she thinks it's too hard, she will pout and whine and cry...but if you say, "Okay, ready to get down?" "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Stubborn little...I have NO idea where she got THAT from...lol.

But give her lots of patience and a little help and she'll do it nearly every time. And then after that first painful time, she'll sail right on up every time after that.

After Brook and Sam decided they were done climbing (which was about a half hour after we got there...it's a 2 hour session), Sam entertained himself for the rest of the time by throwing his socks up and down the stairs. No joke. An hour and a half of it...sigh, boys. And Brook sulked for awhile, then made a friend with another homeschool girl, and then decided she was going to be a photographer for awhile.

I have about 50 photos of nothing but either black or white, lol, and when she took my camera into Trader Joe's, the cashier literally looked at me like I was insane when I brushed her off after she warned me against letting my daughter play with it. Meanwhile, I got this cute shot of Sam that Brook took while I was inside the store running errands.

After Trader Joe's, the weather was so nice...and it's only a mile or so from the house, so I asked Russ if he minded if I jogged home since I was already in my sweaty workout gear from being at the rock climbing gym. At first it felt really good--it's been months since I've done any sort of exercise by myself. And it felt DOUBLY good when I got not one, but TWO people honking before even getting 2 blocks. One guy even strained his neck to look back at me as he drove by! Although I have a feeling his double-take and increase in speed had nothing to do with the fact that I looked something akin to this...

photo credit: reneemynette.wordpress.com
A bit older, a bit more female, a bit more gaspy, a bit greasy from a lack of a shower in 3 days, and boy did I have to pee. I'm sure I looked quite the hot mess. But hey, I got those honks!! ...at least I know my backside looks decent.

Anyways, we got all the fixins for Russ to make some homemade pizza (garlic free...sad, so so sad). While waiting, we called our Bubba and wished her a happy 9th birthday. Yes, 9th. Real birth years don't apply to Bubbas. And then some much-needed bath time.

I'm ecstatic that Sam is finally showing some interest in letters and their sounds. Brook was SO vocal and interested in reading and letters at an early age that I feel like Sam is so behind. ...even though he can do other things that Brooklyn can't do. Anyways, so I guess I'm just a bit relieved now that he's starting to at least show SOME sort of interest in it.

"S-A-M, Sam! That's me!"

Coming up tomorrow...Brooklyn got wind of Livermore's Polar Bear Splash. Apparently they turn on the waterslide at the Livermore water park and whoever wants can take the plunge into the cold water. At least it's supposed to be in the low 60s, but still... Russ and I are still trying to decide on whether or not to support her from the stands or by joining her...eek!

A Resolution.

2012-01-05T23:50:00.000-08:00

First off, I need to apologize for the dismal amount of photos in this post. After the past couple of weeks, I'm a bit photo-ed out.

But that's where my resolution comes in. Now I'm not big on resolutions...we all know the majority of us have a snowball's chance in H-E-double hockey sticks of keeping those. But as I sat snuggled up with Russ and watched the kids snuggled up to their Bubba, watching the ball drop at 9pm on New Year's Eve, I thought of a resolution I could handle.

Live in the Now.

I really struggle with this. There are always dishes that need to be washed, laundry that needs put away, bills that need payed, groceries that need bought...and I am a BIG list maker. I have lists for the day, the week, the month, the year. Lists for groceries and reminders and ideas and inspirations. And I have such a tough time letting go and just being.

So along with living in the now, I'm going to try and do my best at chronicling our daily lives. I've gotten out of the habit, and while I welcome the reprieve of not feeling like I need to document every little thing, I find myself incredibly sad when I go back in my journal to read about certain instances...and they aren't there.

I only have so much time with my kiddos, and then I have to grow up. Sigh.

Anyways...so let's get on with it, shall we?

The entire morning was taken up with a visit to the doctor. Fun times. After dropping Russ off at work (he had the kids while I met the new doc), we hit up Les Schwab to get the danged tire with nail in it taken care of. Bonus: That cute guy behind the counter must have caught my wink as the fix was on the house. Woot! ...although it could also have something to do with the suggested purchase of 4 new shocks and struts for the low, low price of only $650..."And we can fit you in now if you'd like!" I prefer to believe someone just thought I was one hot mama.

So with the tire finally taken care of, we ran back home for some lunch and read a handful of our new library books (we're researching cow birthings and the sphinx...completely unrelated to me, but apparently they go hand in hand to a 5 year old). We found out there is an Egyptian museum around here, so we're hoping to check it out and see if they have any good sphinx stuffs.

Finally, the time arrived...the time that Brooklyn has been bugging me about every 5 minutes for. Our first meetup with locals from our homeschool group. She was so excited, she could hardly contain herself! We pull up and she is out the car door, sprinting across the grass before I could even get my keys out of the ignition.

3 and a half hours later... Lets just say that we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I was extremely impressed--there were a good 15 parents there, and at least 30 kids ages from newborn to probably 13 or so. It was so much fun to watch them all--they would run off into some bushes and were pretending to be spies, and then they ran races across the field, then it was tree climbing and Hide And Go Seek and Tag and whatever other pretend games they made up. I pretty much showed up and didn't see my kids again until we had to go (which was when I was shivering so bad, my teeth chattered). And the moms (and dad) were all so nice. I'm excited to try and make it each week.

After we left (the kids dragging their feet behind them, pouting that I was making them leave), I realized it was 4pm and we had to pick Russ up from work at 5, so we'd might as well stay out and about since we were close to Sandia, where he works. So we went to another park down the road. It happened to be an elementary school. There were some fun toys and lots of kids...but once we got there, wow. The differences between the group of kids at the first park and the group of kids at the second park were like night and day. Granted, the ones at the second park are kids who have to stay at school all day, waiting for their parents to get off work....I might be a bit crazy as well if I had to be at school from 8am-5pm. But the screaming and yelling and throwing things and more screaming and yelling...kids who were being called names and being pressured to call other kids names. I was just in awe. I think my kids were too, as they just sat and watched them like they watch the monkeys at the zoo. Ha!

5pm finally came. We picked Russ up (and a bag of tortilla chips at the store, since it's Russ's Friday night and all), and I got to work on assembling the chili for dinner. I had a glass of wine while I was cooking and was a bit unnerved when Brooklyn walked up to me and asked for some. Of course I thought, "What in the world..." but believing that she is a fairly intelligent child and that there was a method to her madness, I asked her "How much?" "A half cup, please."

So she rummaged through the drawer with the measuring utensils and finally brought out her half cup. Then she went out and got another cup and looked at me expectantly. I followed through and poured that half a cup. Of course you can imagine Russ's reaction as he walks into the kitchen and sees me pouring my 5 1/2 year old some wine...but I shushed him and he watched. She poured that half cup of wine into her cup. And then added water. Then a splash of Russ's beer. And the rest of our dish soap. Then some salt. And pepper, of course. And then olive oil. I think she threw in a kitchen sink...

Each time she would tell us the reason she chose that item, and what she thought would happen.

We were all pretty impressed with the results, actually...it was really very pretty. There were 5 different layers, all different colors and textures. Of course Brooklyn declares that it's what she was aiming to do all along, and it turned out perfectly and exactly as she had imagined...

This Week's Exciting Adventures.

2011-12-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

So the funny thing with homeschooling, especially since I tend to follow more of the "unschooling" approach, is knowing what you're teaching/learning throughout the day. For example, Russ will come home and say, "What did you learn today kids??" And he is met with blank stares. And in all truthfulness, I also have a blank stare on my face. What DID we do today?? It's funny because throughout the day I am so proud of myself and my kids because we are doing SO many different things and learning so much, but come the end of the day, I can't remember diddly.

One day I did write down everything Sam and I did...it filled an ENTIRE PAGE before noon! I will spare you the entire list, but some excerpts include:

-discussing melting points (thank you for sacrificing yourselves, little chocolate chips)

-units of measurement ("Wow Sam, I think 5 cups of granola might be enough...")

-conducting experiments with bubbles and discussing their properties ("How about we take the bubble bottle OUTSIDE before we shake it and open it...just in case...")

-number recognition and writing (with the PLU numbers on the bulk bins at the grocery store)

-money management (the $5 1-pound chocolate bar is a better value than the $1.50 4-ounce one! And the kids love giving the cashiers the money to pay for the groceries.)

-life skills (I'm sure the 10 people waiting behind me to fill their cars up with gas at Costco appreciated me teaching my 3 year old the concepts of pumping gas.)

-physical education (the skate park is fantastic for running those kids ragged!)

-fine motor skills (scissors + scrap paper = at least a half hour of blissfully quiet time!)

The majority of our "lessons" come from, "Mom, ((insert one of a million different questions here))" or "Hey! I have an idea!" And it drives me crazy that there are SO many, I cannot possibly get to them all. I'm always amazed how fast each and every day flies by.

I've been trying to document more of the stuff that we've been doing, but I let Brooklyn use my camera one day and let's just say...she found the delete button. Whoops, guess I should have pointed that out BEFORE setting her loose with it. Alas.

The kids love making wrapping paper. This day they decided they needed hand and footprints on it.

Then they brainstormed on how to get their paint-covered feet to the bathroom to take a bath, and this is what the came up with.

We are at the library a LOT. We went to the family pajama storytime one evening and lo and behold, look who showed up. And I have to confess...this is the one and only photo that I have of either of my kids with Santa. True story.

Uno is fantastic for number and color recognition!

One huge thing I love about homeschooling is the amount of free time my kids have to persue whatever ideas pop into their head. I can't tell you how amazing it is to hear, "Mom! I have an idea!" and watch how they put their idea into action. I try really hard not to make any suggestions or anything unless they ask...not always easy, but it's so worth it watching the gears in their head and then seeing the final outcome.

For example, the other day Brooklyn wandered outside and decided she wanted to catch a bird with her bare hands so she can take a photo of it. She said she tried and tried, but couldn't. Instead of telling her that it was a crazy idea, I just asked what she planned to do next. Make a birdbath! So she got some water and put it in a bowl out next to her homemade bird feeder. She came in about 20 minutes later to report that that hadn't worked either and she'd decided to just take photos from far off. Off she went with her camera. 20 minutes later she comes back to report that her camera sucks. "Can I use yours?" Uhhhh.... I'm working really hard on trying to say "Yes" before automatically saying "No". So we decided it would be best if I set the camera up and let her use the remote.

I have approximately 150 photos exactly like this. Approximately 10 have birds in them. But she was SO proud of those 10 photos! "Now we can identify them!" Sure!

Do you see the two birds?

A Mourning Dove and a White-Crowned Sparrow.

Then she decided she needed to take photos of everything else under the sun. She got some pretty neat abstract ones.

Russ and Sam were wrestling and Sam decided he needed a photo of this pose.

Brooklyn still had bird-capturing on the brain, so decided to make a trap instead. Here's her setup. Then she sat inside eating her lunch, and waited. No birds showed up, but the neighbor's cat did! She waited as long as she could before yanking the string. That cat jumped a good 3 feet straight up into the air before sprinting out of the yard. You should have heard the hysterical laughter coming from my kids. It was awesome.

The kids love playing in our front yard. There are three small trees, and that is all they need for toys. They get swung on, climbed on, and jumped out of for hours each day. Sam loves to climb the pineapple guava trees, trying to get guavas, and has become quite good at it. Can you spot him in the photo below?

I was sick for a couple of days this week and wanted nothing more than to stay in bed. We didn't have anywhere to be, so we got some more pillows, a bag of books, my crochet stuff, the laptop...and set up camp. We snuggled in my bed until 1 o'clock in the afternoon! It was fantastic.

While snuggling, we decided we needed some gingerbread cookies, so we got to work!

Can't forget the frosting!

Yesterday, we braved the San Jose Children's Museum (and rush hour traffic...). It was worth it though! More on that later!

Never A Dull Moment.

2011-12-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving was different this year...no family, no friends...just us. And it was good! We really enjoy our family time, so a 4-day weekend with Russ (and a full 9 days with Brooklyn!) was awesome. We ended up coloring some rocks while waiting for our turkey roast to cook. It was more fun than Russ OR I gave it credit!

We put the rocks in a 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes, then took crayons without paper on them and put them on the hot rocks to melt. It was really neat! There were only a couple of minor burns, but we got some pretty sweet rocks in the end.

Our Thanksgiving feast--turkey roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, olives...I think there was a real vegetable in there somewhere. Oh, do you like my hair? Brooklyn, my personal hairstylist spent quite a bit of time on it...and this is minus about 3 additional bows...

Over Thanksiving weekend, Russ decided that he and the kids needed to build a "medieval siege weapon"...in other words a trebuchet to launch pineapple guavas into the fence. Awesome? I think so.

"Look Mom, BUBBLE HANDS!!" Life doesn't get much better than this...

Last weekend they were having the Fungus Fair at the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley. One very cool thing about this place...it's on top of everything. Here's Alcatraz and Golden Gate.

And the Bay Bridge.

Aaaaaaaand who could forget balancing on top of a baleen whale??

HAHA, do you see the amazement on that kid's face?! "You mean you can make a mushroom....WITH A POTATO?!" Just astounding.

I didn't get many other photos of the Fungus Fair, but it was neat. Everything from identification booths to vendors selling mushrooms, mushroom kumbacha, felt mushrooms, paper made from mushrooms, hand-dyed clothing and yarns from mushrooms...and of course a grow-your-own-mushroom kit for $5!! SWEET! A little hydrogen peroxide, some straw, some some oyster mushroom innoculant...put in cool, dark spot for 1 month and check for small mushrooms. WOOT!

Sam loved riding the example of the Hayward fault line (which the Berkeley stadium sits on...who was the genius that thought THAT was a good idea?! Needless to say, it is under construction...), and has MANY TIMES asked to go back to "the earthquake riding place."

I've learned that before I put anything in the recycling bin to always ask Brooklyn if she needs it first...9 times out of 10 I get a, "You were going to throw this away?!" Then she snags it out of my hands and shuffles off to her art kit and with a threat, "Don't look, OR ELSE." Today she turned a Costco milk carton box into a portable art kit!

While Brooklyn was working on her portable art kit, Sam decided to make smoothies. And eggs. And re-heated pancakes. With peanut butter, chocolate chips, and honey. Mmmm, can you say Breakfast of Champions??

We also started tracking the weather. Brooklyn came up with her own symbols for sunny, cloudy, windy, rainy, snowy, frosty, partly cloudy...and a couple of other things that I'm not sure of. The morning after we put this up, Brook was up bright and early, "I NEED TO SEE WHAT THE WEATHER IS LIKE TODAY!!!" Oh-kaaaay.

It's also led to discussions on temperature scales. So now we've started adding the low temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius to each day as well (which is fun because if she sees frost outside she automatically knows we've hit the freezing point). Sigh, this kid now knows more about the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales than I knew in 6th grade...

It's time to replace all of our fall decor with snowflakes! I did my big one, and Brooklyn did about ten million smaller ones and taped them up all over the house, and Sam just practiced cutting his pieces of paper into a thousand little pieces.

The other night, Russ and Sam ran to Costco for me. So I told Brooklyn that the evening was ours--GIRLS ONLY. Let's go crazy! Do whatever we want!!! What did she choose to do?? Snuggle on the couch and write out a book. I would read a page, then she would write all of the words in her notebook. Then she wanted to watch me do it.

That was fun and all, and I was very proud she wanted to do that, AND her writing is getting better...but after the first book, I vetoed the second and declared it time for Chocolate No Bake Cookies instead.

I recently showed Brooklyn how to use tracing paper. My "kid's artwork drawer" that I use to store all of their creations to scan them at a later date is reaching Full capacity extremely quick.

Tracing things (dinosaur and frog) and creating patterns with different art mediums...none of which was my idea. This girl is SO art-minded...while I like art, I do not live and breathe it and look for it in every.single.thing. like she does. I'm grateful to have her by my side, pointing out many things that I miss from my point of view.

We got some dinosaur rubbings that the kids both enjoy doing. Sam was the first to want to turn his into a book, then Brook mentioned maybe they should paint their rubbings. I was surprised that this all kept Sam's attention for as long as it did--a record 30 minutes between the rubbings, book making and painting. Brook sat there for over an hour from start to finish, and then told me the story of her dinosaur: the volcano erupted, and the dinosaur was so afraid because his nest was next to the volcano, so he's running to rescue the eggs.

These are just some of the examples of the many things we do each day...for those of you who aren't aware, we made the decision to pull Brooklyn out of public school and homeschool. I cannot tell you how amazing this has been. Yes, some days are harder than others. Yes, I get completely and utterly burnt out. But I am SO happy with it. I really enjoy my kids and their perspectives on life, and it's not just them learning, I am learning so much right along with them. I may not be the world's best teacher, but I firmly believe that Russ and I are hands down THE best teachers for our kids.

Anyway, enough with the PSA. If homeschooling is even an inkling of appealing to you, a couple of books that helped me figure out what I wanted to do include: The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore, Deschooling Our Lives by Matt Hern, and Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto.

Keeping Busy!

2011-11-27T21:14:00.000-08:00

The kids and I have been having a great time this past week or so--Brooklyn had all of last week off of school, which I was so excited for!! Some days we did a ton, and others we did absolutely nothing. So in other words, it was fantastic! Here are some of the things we've been up to...

Bubba brought the kids some finger lights and I showed them how to take long exposure photos in our pitch black bathroom. I showed Brooklyn how to press the button to snap the photo...
...and let her at it...

...until the kids couldn't decide who was going to push the button and I was afraid my camera would end up in the toilet...so Momma had to intervene. Done for today, kiddos!

Brooklyn saw a magic show at her school last month, and she LOVED it. She was SO excited to come home and show me how to bend a spoon...I had an inkling she thought she truly possessed the magic to do it, so hinted that magic isn't entirely real...but she HAD to show me how it was done.

The look of excitement on her face was heartbreaking as I knew it wouldn't last long. She waved her hand magically above the spoon and said proudly, "ABRACADABRA!!" First came the look of confusion, and then the heartbreaking, alligator tears streaming down her face. At that moment, I wanted to punch that magician in the face, lol. But she got over it and despite the trauma, she is still intrigued by magic.

There was a children's magician performing a couple of towns over this past week and both kids were SO excited to go! This theater was PACKED with kids under the age of 6 and their parents. Fun fun.

Here is the fantastic Zappo himself. I personally wasn't extremely impressed, but the kids adored him. I'll give him credit though--he did squeeze in all sorts of educational stuff: numbers, letters, colors, animals, countries, etc.

And he was really good with the audience--lots of participants...one of which was Brooklyn. And her mom... I KNEW I should have changed out of my breakfast stained shirt that morning. Sigh.

He had her draw a picture of what her mom looks like first thing in the morning on a piece of fabric. He then cored an apple, and wrapped the apple in a paper napkin. I was given the apple to hold on my head ala William Tell, while the magician made Brooklyn's picture turn invisible. She then took the invisible picture, and threw it at the apple on my head. The magician then pulled the picture out of the apple. Voila! Brooklyn was in seventh heaven, especially since she got to keep her picture. Then we got to go sit back down with Sam, who was expecting to be able to go up next...whoops, sorry dude.

The kids have been interested in video recording things lately. Well actually, Sam likes to record lots of things, but Brooklyn doesn't care to--she just likes to look at how things look in the camera screen. So be it. So we've been taking the camcorder to all sorts of things lately.

We made a trip to the Oakland zoo, which was great! Not too big, not too small, lots of big spaces for animals to move around, no crowd, perfect weather...plus we got in for free instead of the 50% discount I was expecting. We had a BLAST running around, each of us taking turns choosing which way to turn and which animal to see next. It was actually really amazing--nearly all of the animals were out and about. The elephants were AMAZING. And the giraffes were RIGHT THERE. And there was this crazy monkey who was swinging all around the trees in his exhibit. And the bats! Wow! Way fun.

The local rock climbing gym was having a special for kids--$10 for 3 hours of climbing. And I've been wanting to let both kids try it out as I figured they would love it, with the way they whip across the monkey bars and shimmy up poles at the playground.

I assumed Sam would walk right up the wall to the top first thing, as Brooklyn is usually a bit more reserved about heading into something like this head on. This girl just WENT FOR IT. It took a time or two to get the feel for it...

And then there's this monkey who wasn't as crazy about shimmying up the wall as I thought he would be. He had a tough time figuring out that he needs to climb with his feet as well...he uses mostly upper-body strength, and then started using his KNEES to climb with, lol. Anyways, he spent the majority of the time scaling the smaller wall and dropping to the mat below. ...and playing with all of the other kids there.

Brooklyn went up this wall and run the bell at least 7 times before the volunteer told her she could probably do the next harder one now...it took her a time or two, and a little encouragement from the volunteer who was belaying her, but she did it! And again. And again...

Sam would occasionally decide to give the big wall another try, and each time he would make it a LITTLE farther. Well finally, with a bit of help and encouragement from the girl belaying him, he made it!!! He got down and said, "I do it again?" Both kids closed the place down wanting to go again and again. And they have been begging to go back again...I would LOVE to get a family membership...if they offered one, and it wasn't a kazillion dollars. Alas, once or twice a month will have to suffice.

After rock climbing, we headed over to the library where Brooklyn was signed up with the Paws to Read program. Turns out it was Crafting Friday too! So my two turkeys got to make some turkeys. Aww...

Here's Brooklyn when she went to her first Paws to Read. It's neat--they have a large room int he back of the library and they bring in 6 dogs and their owners and the kids get to pick out 3 books to read to the dog. It's so sweet! And then at the end, they are given bookmarks with a photo and info about they dog they read to so that they can collect all of the bookmarks. She absolutely loves it.

I am an avid reader of the Play At Home Mom blog, and they are big on sensory development stuff. Although both of my kids are a bit older than theirs, I thought I'd try a few ideas, just to see what kind of curiosity it piqued in both of them...

The first thing we tried was shaving gel. I just squirted a bunch in the bottom of this bucket and let them do whatever. I thought it interesting that neither ever even touched the gel, or even wanted to after suggesting it. Sam quickly decided it needed ice and water. Brooklyn decided a bit later that it needed paint. Lots of paint. So they mixed colors and whisked and scooped and had fun.
After a break, I thought it would be fun to see how they reacted to vinegar and baking soda. Of course Sam loved it. I noticed that Brooklyn would get intrigued for a bit, and once she'd seen something, she was pretty much done. Occasionally she'll later suggest adding something else--usually paint.

I loved all of the bubbles that it made!! Russ and I had fun doing it as well--we got out funnels, vases, marbles, rubber bands...just for fun. We actually ended up using 2/3 a gallon of vinegar...hehe.

Sam had had so much fun that day doing the sensory stuff, Brooklyn and I took a trip to The Dollar Store to see what sorts of stuff we could find there. I was so excited to find water beads there! And food coloring! So we added the water beads to the bucket and I made some "spray paints" for Sam to experiment with. Russ soon suggested the garlic press...

SQUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISHHHH............ The end result of the garlic press-ing was a sloppy mess of gloop. Blech. But seriously, if you have the opportunity to play with water beads, do it! They are so much fun!

Haha, just had to show Russ's...invention, I guess? It worked pretty well, actually, lol.

"Mom, I need my OWN avocado."

More Dollar Store crafts...give the kids some popsicle sticks, some googly eyes, and some glue and you're good to go for a good while.

Of course you are required to see each and every creation...fortunately, when googly eyes are involved, they are quite hilarious at times.

Well, today was officially the last day of Brooklyn's Thanksgiving break, and I'm really bummed about it. We've been enjoying having her back at home with us SO much...15 more days of school and she's all mine! Yippee!!

Halloween.

2011-11-24T12:22:00.000-08:00

While my parents were visiting, Brooklyn drew my mom's portrait. Very impressive.

We had a fire one night, and the kids wanted to read books by the fire...except that it wasn't a very bright fire, so Grammie had to don the headlamp. Stylish, no?

Another reason we wanted Grammie and Grandpa Scott to come down this particular weekend was to go trick or treating with us! Unfortunately, the last flight out of Oakland was at 6:30pm, so neighborhood stuff wasn't an option. Instead, I figured there would be plenty of places to trick or treat in downtown business areas. As I started searching for a place, I quickly realized that they just don't do it anymore!! Apparently our city decided to nix it in favor of a Halloween Carnival--and they charge $5 a head. Grumble grumble.

We did find a nice little area near the airport though and the kids had a BLAST. They both filled up their buckets just by going down one side of the block and up the other.

Oh, and Brooklyn decided that morning that she wanted to be a reindeer (she even did her own makeup), and Sam decided he wanted to be a gymnast! HA! People would say, "Oh what a cute reindeer and....uh...uh..." "I a bim-nast!!" he'd say. Hehe.

After trick or treating and some lunch, we headed to a park that was close by and happened to be on the waterfront. What was I thinking??? Kids + water = no good. See...SOAKED.

Of course Grandpa had NOTHING to do with it, I'm sure.... "Here Sam, take my hand..."

"SURE I'll swing you over the water..."

"Oh look at that...my hands were slippery..."

"Gwampa Scott, I SAID NO WET GO!"

After dropping the grandparents off at the airport, we zoomed back home to hit the Dollar Store for some glowsticks to give out to the neighborhood kids while the kids decided what they wanted to be this go-around....Brooklyn settled on a princess and Sam went for Super Mustachio. Love it.

We ended up scarfing down some dinner and as we were headed out, our neighbors were walking by and invited us to join them. SO much fun!! The kids got to run from house to house with their buddies and we got to get to know our neighbors some more.

We didn't even make it the entire way around our small block and the kids' buckets were full AGAIN. They were handing out full-size candy bars!! Crazy. The even crazier part was that I told the kids I'd pay them a quarter for each piece of candy they "donated" to me...I had to re-think my strategy as I was going to be out $70!!!! So we did a dime per piece. I was impressed...Sam wanted to shove all of the candy in his face, so I put the money in his hand first and then he had to give it back if he wanted to keep some of his money. He still opted for more candy than money though, lol. Brooklyn though ate maybe 8 pieces of candy TOTAL. Unfortunately, Russ and I had no one paying US not to eat it...alas.

Alcatraz and Muir Woods.

2011-11-23T06:26:00.000-08:00

My mom had a "big" birthday this year. I probably shouldn't tell you which one...oh well, she's hundreds of miles away, she can't throw anything at my head from that far away...

My mom turned 30 this year. Yup, the big 3-0. Can you believe it?! Where have the years gone...

Anyways, we've missed out on many a birthday since we've been in North Carolina, so we decided to do something fun. My dad and I started scheming in early September for her end-of-October birthday. Flights were SO much less from WA to CA than they were to NC!! We thought it would be fun to surprise her with a trip to visit us.

My dad was amazing. He called her boss and arranged for her to take a couple of days off, explaining the circumstances. And then on the big day, he picked her up for "lunch". Her friends at work knew about it and were so excited for her, they could barely restrain themselves. Apparently my mom's boss told her that she (her boss) would be going out of town this weekend, so my mom needed to get some extra work done. My mom wasn't aware that her boss was fibbing, and was just helping my mom get caught up on everything before she had to leave town so she wouldn't have a pile of things to do the size of Mt. Everest when she got back.

Anyways...so my dad shows up to pick up Mom and she's hurrying to finish everything and her co-workers are hurrying her out the door. They get in the car and he says, "Where do you want to go?" Thinking she's being a smart-alec she says, "North Bend!" (North Bend has a large outlet mall, and is conveniently 2/3 of the way to the airport they were flying out of.) So Dad says, "OKAY!"

So they pull into the outlet mall, drive around, and Dad says, "You know what? This is NOT good enough for this milestone birthday." And he leaves. Of course Mom is thinking, "What the heck does he have up his sleeve...?" Over the course of the afternoon, he takes her to various restaurants, etc. saying, "How about this? ...No, not good enough."

They finally end up at the Mall in Tacoma (I think that's the one, anyway) where he drives around seemingly aimlessly, looking for "the perfect parking spot" (which was directly in front of my grandma's pickup truck...but Mom didn't notice). So they head inside the mall, meandering...they end up in the men's boots section (I believe it was), and "randomly" run into my grandma and aunt!

So they all head out to the car and my aunt proceeds with the, "Hey let's go in here...nope, not good enough" act. Finally she starts driving in the direction of the airport. When it becomes obvious that that's where they're headed, my aunt says, "Hope you brought your passport!" HA!

They finally get to the airport and Dad opens Mom's door, "Do I need my purse?" is her reaction. Um, yes, you need your purse. Then he unloaded all of the luggage--Dad had been keeping a notepad of information over the previous week about all of his favorite things she wore so he'd know what to pack. He also packed an ENTIRE SUITCASE with everything "beauty" from her makeup box to nail polish and remover to hair stuff that hadn't been used in years. Unfortunately, he was so busy trying to get everything right in that bag that he forgot to pack more than 2 shirts for her...whoops! So he got to take her shopping.

Anyways...once they got to the airport they called me and I told her she was coming to visit. Goodness...that story should have been a post all in itself!

Okay...on to the photos...

So Mom and Dad got in late Thursday night and we had to be up and out of the house by 8:30am to get to Alcatraz. Everyone was excited!

Checking out all of the different piers--SO much to do and see in San Francisco!

We got there just in time to take a potty break and then get on the ferry.

It's not hard to be silly when Grandpa Scott is around...

View of San Francisco as we pull out of the dock.

Can you tell we're excited?? We've been talking and reading about this trip all week!

Alcatraz with the Golden Gate bridge on the far left.

Did you know that Alcatraz wasn't just a prison? It was first a desolate rock that served as a military outpost as it was the first thing intruders would see as they came into the bay by ship. Then after it closed, the native americans claimed it as their land and took over for awhile--there is graffiti randomly painted around the grounds as evidence of them. Then it soon after turned into the oh-so-famous prison.

Another thing that I didn't realize is that the majority of the people that worked at Alcatraz lived there. Families and everything. They had houses and gardens and everything. The only actual prison area is that building on the top of the hill (above photo).

Listening to the speaker tell us where to find everything. Brooklyn didn't want to let go of her Grammie and Grampa Scott.

We were much happier hanging back out of the crowd while Sam was more than content looking in and poking his fingers into holes in the cement. Fun.

We watched the movie that they recommend you start off with and by that time, everyone needed a snack before we went off exploring.

I love the architecture here. This would be perfect for some wedding portraits, don't you think??

The men fell in with a tour-guided group, but we didn't have attention spans big enough for that...so we did this instead.

This used to be the officer's barracks or something I think? Where they had all of their entertainment...I believe they used to have some sort of bowling in here...I'm fuzzy on the facts. My reading of information boards was severely punctuated with "Be Careful's!" and "Stay Where I Can See You's!" and "Watch Out For The Tourists!!"

The water tower. Very cool architecture.

Not sure this girl's feet ever touch the ground...

Sam was hungry and tired and had a full-blown face-to-the-pavement meltdown. Grandpa picked him up and sack-o-potatoes carried him up the hill.

We got inside the prison and decided to attempt the audio tour. Of COURSE you have to go through the showers to get your audio tour. It was pretty crazy.

I highly recommend doing the audio tour--it's absolutely captivating. It's like a book on tape--you get to hear from the prisoner's and guard's point of views and stories and...it's just amazing listening as you walk through there, imagining what it was like.

The D-Block...apparently awful as it was always either sweltering or freezing. And then there's the whole solitary confinement thing on the bottom that puts a damper on one's afternoon, I would imagine.

Checking out solitary confinement. One of the prisoners stories on the audio tour was that the first thing he'd do when he was in confinement was rip a button off his clothes and toss it (keep in mind that it's pitch black when the door is closed) and spend hours trying to find it to keep himself sane.

Our Alcatraz tour got cut short as some of us didn't have the attention spans required to keep going. And it was lunch time. And nap time.

We drove around San Fran and stopped at a Safeway for some lunch supplies. Had lunch in the car with all of the doors and windows open, basking in the glorious sunlight. Then we headed out for the Muir Woods, where all of the redwood trees live. Of course nearly the entire car passed out from exhaustion while driving there, and nearly missed driving over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Everyone was all rested up by the time we got to Muir Woods. Unfortunately, we only had an hour to hike, but we ended up getting a family pass as it was cheaper than paying for the one-time entrance fee. Woot! Can't wait to go back and do the 5 mile hike.

The kids love looking at tree rings. This was neat--each of those dots corresponded to certain things in history...like Columbus arriving in the America's. Crazy.

It was absolutely gorgeous here and we were all so excited to finally see the redwoods. Next on the list, the giant sequoias in Yosemite. We were hoping to spend Thanksgiving there, but given the fact that they recommend having a 4x4 vehicle while visiting there in the winter...I think we'll wait until spring...

As we were leaving, Brooklyn had to use the restroom. When she came out, she had this big wad of toilet paper. "What is that for??" I asked. "In case anybody has to go potty on the side of the road!" Duh, Mom.

On the drive home, everyone promptly fell asleep...minus the children in the very back yelling, "MORE WATER PLEASE!" and other lovely things. It was good though--the sunset over San Francisco was nothing short of absolutely breath taking. Can't wait to go back again!

Hotel living.

2011-11-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

For the 2 weeks that we lived at the hotel, every morning was the same. I was usually up around 4am, Sam would arouse around 6:30am and we'd all eventually head down to the lobby for breakfast. Let me tell you, after those two weeks, not only was I ready to have my own room (walking around at 4am in a pitch dark room, trying not to disturb anybody is enough to make anyone lose their mind!), but my own kitchen as well....not that I don't love sugary yogurt, wet scrambled eggs and whiter than white waffles every day, but, ya know... The kids sure didn't complain though! HA!

Here's the race to the dining room that took place each morning. At one point during our stay, the kids were taking naps and I was out in the hall, searching online for housing and a neighbor came out and said hello. I asked the normal, "How's it going?" and she said, "Great! I slept in!" (it was 1pm), to which I replied, "Wow! I wish I could do that, my kids are up at the crack of dawn!" to which she replied, "I know." and walked down the hall. Awesome. Did I mention how much I LOVE living in a hotel?!

And of course there was the fact that we had to drag nearly EVERYTHING from the camper and van into our hotel room. And of course we'd forget random things, and have to go "diving" for them...fun times.

We would try to get out and explore new parks each day...found the skate park!

Here was our "roomy" home. (I shudder every time I look at this photo...)

It was definitely an experience...sometimes good, sometimes not-so-good. But I learned that I will never take having more than one room for granted again! lol.

Here are the two little monkeys--Russ and I would have to switch each night with which one we slept with, and then there were the fun nights when Sam would have an "accident" and both the kids and I were in one bed and Russ usually moved to the couch. Fun, fun times, I tell you. I'm surprised I came away from those nights without any black eyes or welts with the way these two thrash!!

Road Trip - Day 25

2011-10-24T21:18:00.000-07:00

This is officially the last day of our road trip. Looking back now, I'm a bit sad. It all went SO quickly! We were actually supposed to stay at the Grand Canyon for another 2 days, and then stop and camp at a couple of more places in California before we got to Livermore. But, um, yeah. We were tired. We wanted real beds. And a real toilet.

So, the night before, Russ had planned to take the bus down to the bottom of the furthest trail and then hike back up to camp. I figured the kids and I could ride down with him and hike a bit of the way up and take another bus back up to camp. Well, it was rainy and icky when we left camp, but when we got a bit closer to the canyon, this is what we found...

the fog was SO thick. The kids kept wanting to wander, but if they'd get more than 5-8 feet from us, we couldn't see them... That's when Russ and I looked at each other and said, "I'm Done." HAHA.

We took the bus back to camp where the kids played Condors in the tree while Russ and I packed up. We had everything ready to go in record time.

The drive from the Grand Canyon to Livermore was 13 hours. The only official stop (other than quick potty breaks) we made where here, in Barstow, CA to let the kids out to eat dinner and play for a grand total of 30 minutes before hopping back into the car.

The kids watched as many movies in that day than they did the entire trip combined, I think! Sam passed out for about an hour, but Brooklyn (who has never slept well in the car) didn't sleep a WINK. Come 2am, she was at her wits end. Poor kid. She would be thrashing in the back, "I...WANT...OUT!!...AUUGHHHH!!!" It wasn't stressful at all, lol.

Russ and I had started reading A Game of Thrones (out loud) at some point in our road trip, and I read for nearly 10 HOURS on the drive to Livermore. The closer we got, the faster I read...trying to see if I could finish it before we got to the hotel. Keep in mind, it is 835 PAGES LONG! You will be happy to know that I finished it as we pulled off onto our exit. Oh yeah, that's how I roll.

We pulled into the hotel at 3:15am, where they informed us that all they had was a queen-sized bed. We'll take it.

Road Trip - Day 24

2011-10-24T21:10:00.001-07:00

Around the Grand Canyon campground there are signs informing you that you should put all of your food away as the ravens enjoy feasting on your goods. Well, we were short on refrigerated space and we knew it would be cool (okay, COLD) enough that the eggs would be fine outside. Besides, ravens won't know that there are eggs in an egg carton...pfft. They aren't THAT smart....right? (I'd forgotten that they are often smarter than chimps...whoops)

So we woke up to some cawing and wing-flapping and I thought, 'Oh man, some poor sucker left their food out, I'll bet.' Guess what we opened our door to? Yup, ravens flying away with WHOLE EGGS in their mouths...who's the sucker now?

We got bundled up, made some food (while the kids took turns trying to wrestle each other into the dirt), and assembled our things to get going so we could go hike around the canyon.

Waiting for the bus, we are excited!!

So excited to ride a bus for the first time! We could have stayed on all day and they would have been just as happy.

Then to the visitor center to see a video about the Grand Canyon. The kids loved the movie! Brooklyn especially loved the parts showing the white water rafting, "Mom, can we do that?!" Uhhh....

Then up to the Rim Trail for some absolutely breath-taking views. Pictures will never do it justice.

She thought all of the carved initials of people that had been there before were pretty cool.

After a couple of miles, we were all getting a bit grumpy.

We got to the lodge area just as the hail started and the deafening thunder claps started. So we ducked into the store where Russ and Brook decided on matching hats.

Grr, this photo is out of order, but it shows half of our journey along the rim trail...Sam in time out. The first one started when we forgot to set the "boundaries," literally. For those of you who have hiked the Rim Trail, you know there are parts along it that go right next to the edge. Add a 3 year old, energetic little boy and you get some very scary experiences... Thankfully, he only tried that once. He realized how close he was to the edge (close enough to where I saw what was happening and I was literally paralyzed--I remember thinking, "GO! MOVE! GRAB HIM!!!" and I just stood watching in horror...talk about a nightmare!) and didn't do it any more. ...that didn't keep him from sprinting at 100 mph around corners though. UGH. So yes, lots of time outs.

We went back to camp and ate some grilled turkey and mozzarella sandwiches for lunch and then Russ and the kids took a snooze while I went to the Canyon Headquarters to attempt to use the barely-there wi-fi. I soon gave up and went to join everybody for a nap, except that the kids woke up about 2 minutes after I lay down. I was feeling lazy though and told the kids to get their boots on and go play outside. Brooklyn had rain boots on, but Sam didn't...at first I tried to hold him back, but it was worthless. These kids played HARD for THREE HOURS straight.

Lots of biking through puddles (LOVE how he always has his tongue out when he's concentrating--he's done it since he was born! And this kid is a little BMX biker, he's crazy!)...

...a bit of jumping...

...and finally it was time to clean up. Good thing she had rain boots on, huh?

Then we ate some dinner and afterwards the kids were playing a game of Turtles and Condors, haha! After the day that we had, we all passed out come sundown

Road Trip - Day 23

2011-10-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the HUGE gap in posts everyone! But I'm making the attempt to get back on the bandwagon. I believe we left off leaving Tucson, AZ...

We hurried and got everything all packed up and piled in the car--we wanted to hit the Science Museum in Phoenix. We'd been telling the kids for a day or two about how fun it'll be....yeah, can you guess how this is going to turn out?? I'll give you a hint, the museum is downtown and it would cost us nearly $24 PER HOUR to park in the parking garage with the trailer. Needless to say, our kids were NOT happy.

They were however slightly appeased with the promise of stopping at a Redbox. We finally found one in the most ghetto part of the city. It was a 7-11...without any gas pumps. I wasn't aware that those actually existed. And even worse? Both Russ and I needed to use the restrooms ASAP. The restroom was, how shall we say...horridly disgusting. I loved the ambiance that the clogged up sink full of beard hair added. Yeah.

Anyways...back into the car on our way to Tuzigoot National Monument. It was neat--a pretty short walk, and it would have been awesome to have gone in it, but they've had all sorts of vandalism and stuff. It's pretty neat though.

We hopped back into the car, grabbed some lunch and headed to Flagstaff for some groceries before moving on to the Grand Canyon. The problem was that we forgot to get gas before leaving Tuzigoot! So Russ and I were holding our breath as we pulled into a random gas station on the way there. Phew!

Anyways, we stocked up on groceries and made the trek to the giant hole in the Earth. We got there and were all set up and ready to go by 7:30pm. One thing that struck us as odd was the amount of people there! And that it was so COLD! Thankfully, I'd stopped at Goodwill and picked at least sweatshirts up for everyone.

We ended the day by taking the kids to the laundromat and eating a mish-mash of things for dinner. Russ and I were pooped, lol. These two, on the other hand, don't seem to tire out!!!

Next Up: The Grand Canyon Itself!

UPDATE

2011-10-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to announce that after a month of living in our house, WE NOW HAVE THE INTERNET!!!!! WOOT!!!

Yes, it's double the price than we wanted, but at least we are not digging a trench.

Sorry, no pictures. STILL don't have my camera's battery charger out of the camper...sigh.

...but at least I can finish posting the last 4 days of our road trip...that was THIRTY FIVE DAYS AGO.

Sorry guys, will get back on the horse soon.

Road Trip - Day 22

2011-09-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

We woke up to slightly menacing looking clouds. It was neat watching those white ones at the tips of the mountain--they slowly poured over the top, it was really neat to see. It was eggs and pancakes for breakfast today--has anyone ever tried Pamela's gluten free pancake mix?? UH-mazing! I'll be getting the giant bag when we get settled in. That stuff rivals even the best buttermilk mixes out there.

There were tons of these guys all over. Russ quickly identified them all so that the kids would know which kinds bite and which don't. These are Black Harvester ants and they don't bite. There, you learned something today!

There was a lot of this...hemming and hawing about what to do for the day. We're finding that we can only stay in a place for a maximum of 3 nights and then we get bored with the area. This is day 2 and we were already getting a bit antsy.

Mama 'nuggles.

Russ had to get some paperwork printed, signed, and faxed for his new job, so we headed to the nearest library where I was amused to find this sign hanging in the bathroom. Poor toilets, I get a bit sensitive when I get crapped on all day as well.

What we thought was going to be a quick in and out thing turned out to be not so quick...

We finally finished up at the library and headed back to camp for some lunch and naps. I got lots of book reading in. I'm on to The Girl Who Played With Fire. Then after everyone woke up they were ready for some hiking. Me...not so much. So I dropped them off at the trailhead, a bit nervous as it was a 2+ mile hike and Russ was by himself with both kids in cacti country. Someone was bound to be wounded. ...oh well. I headed off to replenish our grocery supplies.

When they got back, everyone was alive and even un-maimed. They were all very excited to hear we were having hot dogs and s'mores for dinner. Mmm, yummy and oh-so-nutritious. Anyways, it started raining while we were getting dinner ready, so the kids took up residence in this special spot and it became just that for the rest of the trip...their special spot to sit together and giggle and eat. It was pretty cute.

After dinner, the kids asked to do their workbooks. Um, YES, PLEASE. And...that was about it for the day. A pretty boring one in our books, but we needed it.

Road Trip - Day 21

2011-09-16T14:25:00.001-07:00

The plan this morning was to get up and head to the museum in Las Cruces, NM. Except that it was Sunday, and the museum didn't open until 1pm. Sorry museum, but we're getting a bit weary and will leave you in the dust. So we set out for our next stop--Tucson, AZ.

Of course what is a long drive without a stop for ice cream on the way?

There wasn't a real Arizona sign, so this would have to do. 9 states down, 1 to go!

After making a quick stop at Costco (where I thought the world was coming to an end with the chaos that we found there. Come to find out, that's just how it is at that particular store. Wow, I realized how spoiled I'd been at my NC store!), we headed to Catalina State Park just outside of Tucson. Do you see that...TREES! MOUNTAINS!!

We actually really enjoyed this site. It was pretty gloomy the majority of the time we were there, which made it nice and cool out (when the wind wasn't trying to blow us away), but there was just a lot of cool things to see here--long trails with indian relics and all sorts of wildlife, especially jackrabbits, which the kids were amazed by. And the other thing they were amazed by? Ants, of course.

Starting our first day off with a quick hike.

Can you believe these cacti?? Russ loves teaching the kids names of things, so they could tell you the names of half of the cacti on this trail. Even which ones are okay to eat.

After we finished up our short hike and some dinner, we decided it was time for a phone call to Bubba and Grandpa who were ironically in Florida!

The first night we were at this campground, the sunset was amazing. This is just the setting sun glaring off of the craggly mountains behind us. The sunset itself was utterly amazing. Aside for the visual beauty, coyotes began howling for a good 15 minutes at sundown. It was just spectacular.

Road Trip - Day 20

2011-09-16T14:19:00.001-07:00

The next morning looked a lot like this. Russ sitting in a tiny chair in the corner, with his kids crawling all over him. Nevermind they had an entire room to themselves, including a king-sized bed...they just wanted their dad. Funny kids.

There was much squabbling over who got the prime spot on Dad's lap, and it all turned into this...

We got into the local Space Center for free with our passes, and Sam would not STOP talking about it all morning. So we went.

They had lots of interesting things to look at. Quite a lot, in fact.

Do you know how long it took us to go through this 5 story museum???

APPROXIMATELY 15 MINUTES!!!! All of that belly aching all morning long to come and see it and....we didn't get to see much more than a flash of everything going by. Sigh.

So we headed over to the dilapidated IMAX that was across the parking lot for a movie about the planets, hoping the kids would sit still. They did, for at least half of the half hour movie. Double sigh.

By the time the film was over, it was lunch time. We decided we'd head to the next closest state park and check in, eat lunch, nap, and stay there that night. Well, Russ's GPS wasn't working so well and the signs were awful, so we ended up having to do a U-turn in the middle of nowhere (but on our way to Mexico, ha!).

We decided to just forget this campground and keep driving (although I was super nervous...things didn't turn out so well the last time we'd tried that! lol) to our next scheduled stop. On the way we had to swing into White Sands National Park though. Sam was asleep, so we didn't get to explore but for a few minutes. But isn't it awesome?? It seemed like we should be slipping and sliding all over the road, because it looked so much like snow and ice. Was really quite amazing.

Then we got back on the road and headed to the South Llano River State Park in New Mexico. We weren't too impressed with this place at first, but it grew on us (even though we only stayed one night, lol).

The view from our campsite.

Had to include a photo of my new favorite shoes. I feel so fast in them and love that socks are not a requirement.

"I hungwy."

The kids were having a great time balancing on these posts and having dance contests.

After dinner we decided we needed to do some hiking. I was a bit nervous as the smell of rain was on the air, and these clouds were in the distance...

After their Uncle Chris took them hiking, these kids think that hiking can only be done in the desert on a dirt trail. We were hiking along the Grand Canyon on the paved trail and they refused to believe that it was "real hiking". So they were in heaven with these trails.

This is the Rio Grande. And a storm that was about to electrocute us...we got bookin' real quick after this and even got stopped by a ranger to make sure that we were getting back to camp. It's not good to be the tallest think on the landscape when lightening storms come around...

It was a pretty good day...

Road Trip - Day 19

2011-09-10T08:08:00.001-07:00

It was a bit chilly when we woke up...

The original plan was to hit the Living Desert Museum and Zoo, the come back and stay another night here, then head to Carlsbad Caverns the next morning. However, we weren't huge fans of this campground, particularly the little scorpions that Brooklyn found... So we decided to pack up that morning and do both the Zoo and Carlsbad in the same day, PLUS drive to our next campsite. A little daunting? Yes. But after the previous boring day, we were up for the challenge!

Russ has slowly been teaching the kids how to help set up and put away the camper, and we've got it down to a science at this rate. Sam does the big crank, Brooklyn takes care of all of the little cranks, putting the little pieces of wood away, and closing up the latches. Makes it much easier for Russ and I to run around and tuck everything in. Both Russ and I were surprised at how much help they turned out to be! Ha!

First stop, the Living Desert Museum and Zoo in Carlsbad, NM.

It was kind of a neat little zoo. I'm glad we went first thing in the morning...by the time we left it was sweltering! And it was only 10:30am!

Anyways...when we first started going through the zoo part, I was a bit nervous as there were these birds and animals in very small cages, and not seeming quite so happy. However, I finally realized that each of these animals has been injured and were in rehabilitation. For example, this bald eagle could not fly. Brooklyn was ecstatic that she was able to see both the bald and the golden eagle so close.

Favorite parts of the zoo:
Brooklyn: "All of the big birds, especially the golden and bald eagle. And the big elk with the huge antlers and the bison and snakes."
Sam: "My part was looking at lizards and sideeeeers." (Not sure what sideeeers is...)
Russ: The crystallized gypsum.

Trista: The Mexican Wolves and the cougar that was pacing and got real close.

Then we started out for the Caverns. Along the way, Brooklyn decided she was in quite the talkative mood...at first I think she was thinking out loud, but then I started asking questions, and then she realized I was typing what she said, and then it turned into quite the dialog about what she thinks about her future...here are a few experts:

"I think I’m going to be a cowgirl….don’t type cow woman…cowgirl."
"I think I’ll go to college in 6 years. I don’t know where yet though, maybe in the wild wild west. I think I’m going to study maybe inside a horse maybe..."
"Maybe I can be an explorer or anything. Yeah. Maybe I can just be a gypsy."
"Oh yeah! And I think I’m gonna have some a lot and a lot of chickens and I think I’m going to sell eggs. And eat eggs. And that’ll be my job. And I’ll make $65 in one year. And I think I have a gate there and when the gate is open I’ll have a sign there too. And the sign will say EGGS FREE FOR SALE!"

Brooklyn's thoughts entertained us all the way to the Caverns. The craziest part about visiting the park was that Russ and I were just there 8 years ago. And things were SO different--no jobs, no kids, not married...just crazy how much things have changed in such a short amount of time!

And of course we had to do the face-in-the-hole photo.

The first thing we did was go up on the observation deck of the museum. You got sweeping 360 degree views of the entire desert. And I didn't take a photo because it was pretty much exactly what you imagine...a giant desert. One unique thing was that there had recently been an large fire--it burned up thousands of acres. You could look out and see how close it had come to the little village that is near the caverns. Our ranger said that it came within 3 feet of her house, and at one point the thermometer in her kitchen window that read the outside temperature read over 230 degrees. Crazy.

Anyways, then it was time for the caverns. We'd been psyching the kids up for weeks, and they had been TALKING about it for weeks...so the big moment where here and Brooklyn didn't really seemed all that impressed. Yup, I see the giant hole. Yup, thousands of bats inside. Pitch darkness, no problem. Cool as a cucumber (not that she looks it in this photo, lol).

It took Brook a good 20 minutes of walking to finally become immersed in it as she tends to do.

It was at this point where she said, "Hey look, that looks like a whale's head!" that she was totally into it. And can you guess what this structure was named?? ...Whale's Head. No joke. (Ugh...dumb Blogger isn't letting me put the photo in. GRRR.)

I was grateful for the rangers posted every so often, awaiting questions, as I couldn't answer most of the ones she had. I was a pretty proud mama though when the ranger was answering her, "So...how did all of this happen?!" question and the woman said something to the effect of, "well these rocks are all made up of sea stuff like sponges, you know, like Spongebob Squarepants." Brooklyn looked at her like she had a third eye. I said, "You know, like coral...that kind of sponge." "OHHHH!!!" That's my girl.

I was impressed with how well the kids did. I didn't get much complaining from Brooklyn about the 2+ miles they'd walked until the very end. Poor Sam though, Russ and I took turns carrying him for the last quarter of the trek. I'm sure it had nothing to do with skipping his nap, seeing a zoo AND the Caverns...

I couldn't resist a photo of "the twins". Hehe. Oh come on, you know you would have taken a picture too.

We were about to the end and a few of us were running out of gas...

So. I have become very anal about having a Plan over the past few years. I planned out this entire trip from how long we'd be eating at certain restaurants to what exhibits to see when at the zoo. No, we didn't always stick exactly to everything, but it was good to have the guideline. Well. This was my first time deviating from the Plan. (Insert nervous gasp here.)

Like I mentioned earlier, the plan had been to camp at the previous camp site for two nights instead of one. Well, my first problem lay in the fact that I never wrote down the exact name of our next campground we were going to. I just thought I'd figure it out on the 3 1/2 hour drive to the area where it would be. Ugh. What a nightmare. I couldn't figure anything out on Russ's dinky little phone.

So it's dark out. We've gone up to some 6000' in elevation into the mountains. It's cold. We follow the winding, narrow forest road, wondering if we're going to be able to get back out when we finally find the first campground. Closed. Closed?? Huh?? Let's keep driving...and it dead ends into another closed campground. I hop out to go look at the information board that is absolutely bare.

Someone comes out of the camper that is parked in the Camp Host's spot, asking if I needed help. Go figure, ALL camps in the area had closed for the season just two days ago. Sigh. He gave us directions back the way we came to another individually owned campground that might be open.

Did I mention that it was cold and dark? And that I forgot to pack anyone more than a thin, long-sleeved shirt? Ahem.

So we decided that we don't want to backtrack and it's only a half hour to the nearest campground in the direction we'd go tomorrow anyways...let's try that. Back DOWN the mountain, into the desert again...into the city...and hey, lookie there. The GPS routed to the Camp Headquarters where THERE IS NO LIVING SOUL AT 8PM. Doh.

Russ and I give up. We haven't felt the need to find a hotel (even though Sandia will reimburse us some of the cost) thus far, but at this point we FELT THE NEED. So we headed to the nearest Super 8...which was right next to some very exciting rodeo grounds...go figure, nothing available.

Okay, let's check out this Holiday Inn. Nope, some military reunion. You're kidding. Both the kids and adults are so tired we're ready to cry at this point.

Fine. WHAT ABOUT THE BLOODY HAMPTON INN...do YOU have anything available??? I said, "We'd like a room with double beds." And she says, "We don't have any queen doubles available, but I do have a King." Fantastic--two king beds? WE'LL TAKE IT.

We get to the room....oh....she meant one king bed.

So yes, I shared the bed with two sick kids while Russ slept like a baby on the floor. Good times.