My Children are Turning into Legomaniacs! Kaleigh collects the "City/Town" series and the Spongebob legos. As you can see the latest addition to her collection is the Spongebob Emergency Room. They are enjoying that one quite a bit!

Cole's latest collection of Lego "Agents" series is almost complete already! He has 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the 6 "missions". Now he is also collecting the Power Mining series too!

There is another photo of the Agents somewhere, don't know where it ended up on my page as I downloaded it after writing everything!

As you can see by the photos, they have quite a few and this is not all of them. Our livingroom is sometimes not passable unless you have shoes on...otherwise it is quite painful! So for those of you who know what a legomaniac is....um Tina? Heehee. I don't know if my kids will every have as much as Trevor but it will be fun trying to! The kids love playing playstation lego games too, but you can't be as creative with that stuff. Oh and by the way, Cole seems to have a knack for building new and creative designs ... Trevor would be proud!

Merry Christmas Eve! Our wonderful tradition of Aebelskivers and sausage didn't change a bit this year, other than knowing we need to make more next year! Carl and his mom hang in the kitchen making the round pancakes (found in Solvang, mostly) and heating up the sausage. I get the house ready and make the mulled cider. We have a great dinner with Carl's Mom and Dad, his sister and her family, Great Uncle Kenton (to the kids) and of course, Us. This year was really nice and we all had a great evening. After dinner the guys and kids pack themselves into a couple of cars and drive around looking at Christmas lights. In our town there is one neighborhood who really does it full on! So they drive over there until we call them and let them know that the Christmas room is ready. When the troops are back home the bell rings signifying that the Kristkind has left the building! German tradition for those who don't know about the Kristkind. Different than Santa, of course, and a little closer to the real meaning of Christmas. Directly translated, Kristkind means Christchild, although I am a little fuzzy on the way a baby is supposed to do things on Christmas Eve. Anyway, Carl and his mom did another great job, making these tasty treats!

Cole and Grandpa had matching hats this year! Although, I think Grandpa just wanted to keep his head warm!

The Christmas room.... The tree, and the main present area.

The nice and warm fireplace (you can see that we don't put the "teller" too close to the fire! For those of you who don't know it...there is a doll house that was made by my dad for Kaleigh on the right side of the photo.

Kaleigh and Cole with the Christmas tree!

So to all of you from all of us! I hope you had a great Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas Day tomorrow! More photos coming later!

Holiday at the Park Well, we have a good friend who still works for Disney and she doesn't mind signing us in occasionally and we appreciate it! So, for a little treat, we decided to let the kids play hookie from school and I took a day off of teaching to take the kids to the park. We had to pay for one ticket as sign ins are only for 3 people at a time. I know when Carl and I worked there, the park was pretty much a ghost town from about the first of December through about the 10th. There are many little pockets of time that were totally slow in the park! By that I mean about 15, 000 people would visit on those days verses the oh...60,000-70,000 that you find on a typical summer day! In otherwords no lines anywhere! Unfortunately, I don't think those days exist anymore! The Annual Pass has brought those days to an end. There are so many out there these days that any day can be crowded just by the sheer numbers of Annual Passholder that go every other day! We found that the crowds mainly consisted of adults, young children (under school age), and twenty somethings. So there were very few school kids there unless they were on vacation, a few of those too. But all in all it was a fine day! We got to spend time with our family and see some things we haven't seen, like the Nemo sub ride. The kids tried Space Mountain and LOVED it! Went on Indiana Jones too, but were a little scared of what was in the ride verses the ride itself. It was a good day, but I do miss the emptiness of early december like it used to me....ah being nostalgic for the olden days...never thought that would happen!

The Big 1-0! Ok, so Kaleigh will be 10 on Sunday. She has already had one birthday party, with family because December tends to book up a little fast with Christmas and all. She doesn't mind a bit having her birthday near Christmas, and we have a nice family gathering come to the house and celebrate with her. This year since it was right after Thanksgiving, we decided to just make it really easy and get pizza and have salad and cheesy bread! The guests all appreciated not having to bring something (usually the ladies in the family contribute to the meal in some way) and Carl's mom just had to make the cake. As you can see, Kaleigh liked the cake. Right now she is in pre-competition swimming and truly enjoys it! So Grandma made her a swimming cake. Kaleigh had a hard time deciding what kind of cake to have until while in Julien, McKenna came up with the swimming idea! Thanks again, McKenna! Look how good it turned out!

Acorns!! For you, Annamarie!

We had such a great time in Julien, the kids wanted a souvenier! So rather than spend money, they gathered Acorns! Just the bottoms mind you, there were tops but they were not as nice as the bottoms! The kids literally polished them until they shone! So for our dining room table I made a candle arrangement with the acorns the kids gathered and polished. Annamarie has such neat ideas for seasonal decorations! Steve does too! They decorate their house so beautifully! I am inspired! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Let's all do the Cockatoo!

Ok, maybe not. But Kaleigh sure had fun!
This bird sure liked Kaleigh! The owner of the bird said that Cockatoos rarely speak unless they are with someone they are truly comfortable with or just plain like A LOT! He said this is the first time he has seen this bird talk to a person other than himself! The bird really just said "Hello" but we all heard it and it was pretty cool! Usually they just squawk like this!

A Wonderful Weekend!

Ok, I never quite know where the photos will fall on my blog, so I will try to go in order. We went down to visit with Steve and Annamarie and family down south and had a relaxing, fun, wonderful time! The adults got along, the kids got along and the visit (in my humble opinion) was a huge success! The top photo is our time at the park with the cockateels and the parrot.

More on that later, video to follow... Then the next photo down would be the last day when Carl was able to go with Steve on a cool helicopter ride and training session! I think he had a blast!

The kids and I got to see the helicopter too (before we left for home). The next photo down was the delicious meal that Annamarie prepared for us, that we all enjoyed! It was heaven having someone cook, who does it so well and enjoys it! I truly enjoyed doing nothing but enjoy! Oh wait I did "chop" some lettuce...heehee. Then the last photo is of all of our kids at Vieja Mall. It was fun and they just got up on the rock like that! Gee you think these kids have their photos taken much? All around good time! Thank you so much Annamarie and Steve! And thank you Mckenna for watching the kids and letting the grown ups visit a while!

Ashes, Ashes, we're all OK!

Ok, so there is a fire near us...kind of. I mean if you are looking at a map of the Yorba Linda/Brea area, yes, we are pretty close to the Brea fire. It would take us all of 5 minutes to drive up into the fire. However, that is up on the hill where all the brush is and we are a bunch of houses, businesses and a large Hwy away from it. So we are all ok, no sign of any evacuation orders and mostly everything has been north of us moving east and north. Yes, the 57 fwy is closed as is the 91 fwy. Things are looking worse for our school then our residence. We are waiting to see if anyone from the school will be calling to say not to come to work or the kids to school. There is an area about a mile from the school that has been evacuated so.... who knows.

Kaleigh did get home safely from her camp out at Lake Arrowhead so that is all good. The air quality is something different. It is smokey and stinky and we are not thrilled with all the ash that has fallen on our cars, and everything else! As you can see by the photos there was a lot of ash that blew our way. The last photo was of the Yorba Linda fire when I was on my way home from our Silent Auction at our Church. Needless to say our Auction was not too well attended because of the fires. We still did pretty good though. So no worries, at least so far.

Kaleigh's first "Real" Girl Scout Outing...
Well, it has happened, Girl Scouts has dealt a blow we weren't prepared for. The first camp out with her troop is this weekend, today, tomorrow and coming home on Sunday. Not real close by either. Lake Arrowhead. I was going to go until I found out when it was! The same weekend as my Silent Auction at our Church! Well, as some of you know (mainly Tina), I started this Annual Silent Auction about 12 years ago, it was my baby and it has done really well in the years past. I Emcee it, I run it and it would most likely not go as well without me. It is tomorrow. Well, I know that Girl Scout stuff like this doesn't come about every month, so I really wanted Kaleigh to make her own mind up about it. She didn't really want to go without me, but she knew if she didn't go, she would hear about how fun it was from all her friends! Plus her best friend would have been upset. Well, I left it up to her and she had a few tears over it, since she was truly undecided for a long while! She finally decided it was better to try and possibly get a little homesick then to not go and be horribly disappointed because how fun everyone will make it out to be (even if it isn't that great, her friends will make her think it was, don't ask me why, must be a 9-10yr old thing). So she is at this moment up at Lake Arrowhead, in most likely a gorgeous cabin, having a great ol time. I told her she was more than welcome to call me and talk to me if she missed me but so far everything is good. We will see a little closer to bed time whether or not she is handling it well. More on this later.... I miss her though....sniff.

Pumpkins-Real vs. Fake

For the last couple of years I have carved fake pumpkins that I purchased very cheaply at Michael's. They are a resin or plastic of some sort and last forever! The only problem is that they are so hard to carve that you cannot do a lot of detail work unless you have wood carving tools! The normal pumpkin carving tools are too wimpy and will break if you are not careful. So the kids do not carve any part of the pumpkin, but they do design them. Last year, Kaleigh drew her face on and I carved it, and Cole basically just told me how to make the face. Then this year they just told me what they wanted.

The photo with the three pumpkins are the ones from last year. You have the cute surprised face, the cute baby face and the mean ol' face.

In the other photo are the pumpkins from this year. Kaleigh's butler-faced pumpkin (on the body of the skeleton) and Cole's Spongebob teethed pumpkin. They had fun coming up with the designs and we get a lot of compliments. Next year I may have to get at least one real one that Kaleigh can try carving!
Oh and sorry it is daylight, this was taken Nov 1st before they were put away!

From a friend in Washington....State that is...
(She sent this via email and I choose to pass it along...it made me smile : )

A creative approach to redistribution of wealth as offered in a local newspaper .....

Today on my way to lunch, I passed a homelss guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama,I need the money," I laughed.
Once in the restaurant, my waiter had on an "Obama 08" tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference.
Just imagine that when the bill came, I decided not to tip the waiter and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need, the homeless guy outside. The waiter angily stormed from my sight in a huff.
I went outside, gave the homeless guy the $10 tip, and told him to thank the waiter inside as I had decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was really grateful.
At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment, I realized the homelss guy was grateful for the money he did NOT earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money that he DID earn even though I decided the homeless guy needed it more.
I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

Fun with Fog and an "Airzooka"!

So this years Cookie Dough and Magazine drive was not as successful as past years, at least not for my kids. They didn't work as hard and so their prizes were not as huge. A few years ago, Kaleigh received a fog machine as one of her prizes and we have had a lot of fun using it each year at Halloween! Well, this year both kids earned various prizes, the best (in all of our opinions) was the Airzooka! So tonight Carl and I went out in the backyard with the kids and played. It was fun! Carl made fog rings as you can see in the photos! The kids did too, but I wasn't able to catch one of theirs since they move too fast! Carl did it a little slower so I was able to catch them! Cool, huh?

Mickey's Trick or Treat at California Adventure!
A fun time was had by all! Wow, this night was crowded! We have gone in the past and usually on a Thursday night (Fridays were always sold out), so it wasn't usually too crowded, but that was not the case this night! Whew! We were fighting crowds a lot of the time! We still had a really good time though and would do it again! As you can see, Kaleigh was a Mime and Cole was a dalmation "Lucky" from 101 Dalmations. Joshua is their friend, who was a storm trooper. I had some fun marking up his costume. Mom didn't want to buy the costume, (he is a big boy and would need an adult small, which was really hard to find, much less expensive!) so she asked me if I could draw something on a shirt to look somewhat like a storm trooper. I said I could try. You can't see it much in the photo but it turned out ok. There were even some people that asked my friend where she got the costume! They were impressed! Yay! Made me feel good when he got a compliment! Kaleigh acted her part swimmingly! She barely said 3 words all night! It was fun and they enjoyed trick or treating as well as going on some of the rides. We even got to go on the new one, "Midway Toy Story Mania", it was fun! Now onto Halloween!

Sink and "F"loat - Science for 4 year olds.

So our science in my class tends to be simple enough for four year olds, for obvious reasons! We do science once a week and it coincides with the letter of the alphabet for that week. Yesterday was the letter "F". We had a lot of fun with finding out what things sink and what things float! I am amazed at the difference in children and their methods of deduction. I tried to start out by saying that if something has no air in it and is heavy it will sink, but there are things that look solid that have tiny air pockets in them etc etc. So, they knew that the sponge would float, but they had to be convinced that a rock (porous) would float. First we had a regular rock then I passed out the porous rock. It was very light, but some still were sure it would sink. It was a rock after all! We also had fun with a little boat (all believed it would float), then we added little plastic piggies into the boat. The question being, "how many piggies will fit in the boat, and how many will it take to sink the boat?" There were quite a few piggies in the boat before the weight of one side made it tip over and sink. It was a fun time!

Things are going better! Yay!

We are now a month into school and things in my class have calmed down quite a bit. I think my one ADHD child is figuring out that school time is a bit quieter than home time and that there will be things expected of him. He had a great day on Monday and Mom (and I was hoping she would) got him a special toy as a reward! So far the trend has continued. We are hoping it was a permanent turn and not just a couple of good days. He is by no means an exemplary student, he still talks out of turn and sometimes has trouble listening and doing, but nothing as disruptive as before. So at the end of the morning when all the children have gone, I don't feel like falling down and sleeping for the rest of the day! It is good.

Today we shared puzzles and they worked really nicely together!

So life at school is good!

My Class - September 2008 Well, here are my kids! There are 6 boys and 4 girls and they are a handful! I should have been more thankful of my class last year! Compared to these guys, last year was a dream class! Now don't get me wrong, they aren't bad kids, just really loud and active! I would say there is the one who is ADHD and is really giving me a hard time during certain parts of our day, and there are a couple that just don' t like to listen. We are working on it but man, what a group! I have a few, however, that are my helpers, they help put things away and are always wanting to please! Kind of how my sisters and I were at that age! Well, maybe not all of us! But most of the time things are going smoothly, but for one, listening and cleaning up toys is the worst part of the day and it just doesn't happen. Nothing seems to work either! I am getting to the point where everyone else is getting a treat for clean up except this kid! But we are moving forward.... not always a lot of help from those higher up. The director came in today when I called, but too late to see the worst of it. So... maybe another day! But they are all sweet kids, they are mostly kind to each other and some are pretty sensitive! Not a mean bone in their bodies so I guess I should count myself lucky after all!

We are Starting to "Become"!
Yeah, I know, it sounds like something from a science fiction movie! I have always been a bit negative about the moms that enroll their children in a million activities, they never have time to relax at home! I have found that my kids did best doing stuff at home like I did as a kid. My mom never sent us off to summer camp, nor did we have 5 or 6 extra curricular activities after school! Well, we have been skating on the edge of "doing things" for a while and this year Kaleigh decided she wanted to try dance. So we signed her up for a dance class. Just 4 weeks, once a week. Just to try it out. Cole is still in swimming lessons (not his choice, but hey we live in California!), and since Kaleigh had said she didn't want to do lessons anymore that was fine. Then Kaleigh decided she would like to swim, but not on a swim team. Well at the swim school they go to they have Pre-competitive swimming (just basically polishing up your strokes and your stamina) and she was encouraged by her old swim teacher to join. Kaleigh loves swimming so she asked if she could. I said sure! I loved swimming too and she is a natural! So then we found out that Cole's swim lessons are Mondays, Kaleigh would be swimming Mondays and Wednesdays. Ok so now Kaleigh has MWF activites! Plus she is also in Girl Scouts which starts this Sunday! Ok, that is more than we have ever had before! Cole is still just in swimming, but has showed an interest in Baseball, which will begin in January (I think). So the kids are finally coming up with some things that they would like to do, and I am happy, although it does mean we are "becoming" more like the other families (not a bad thing, as long as we don't overdo it. For example Kaleigh wanted to get into Choir too but I think that was because her two best friends were doing it. That would have been every TU/TH afternoon. I said no. Too much and not enough time for school work.
There is enough of that to give me a headache!

Oopsie!

Well, you learn something new every day! I found out um...yesterday, that unless you have a current TB test, you can't even go into your classroom! So my TB test expired in July (I did one 4 years ago) and I waited until the last minute to do it (needles ick), and then when I DID do it, I totally forgot about going in after two days for them to check it! Grrrr....I mean it was my fault no question and you do not know how I am beating myself up about that! But then I was told...again, yesterday, that it is illegal for me to work as a teacher without the current test on record. Well, no one told me how urgent it was....I know I know, duh on my part but still you think they would have been a little more on top of things! Anyway, so here I am, on a Friday sitting here while someone else teaches my second day of school....sigh....I think I need to get some serious help with my memory! I did invest in a small day planner, and yes, I have tried that before and I do well for the first few months then I don't do anymore. Well, I think I may have to try a little harder, seeing as how bad my memory has gotten! For some reason faces, names and places are no problem, but it is the appointment dates and times that I seem to have trouble with. Especially now that Kaleigh is taking Jazz, Cole has swim lessons and so on. So those of you who read my blog are my witnesses! I will keep my day planner up to date!!! I am even using it to try and put together a budget! Tina used to do this....she would write down everything she bought, which store, how much, etc. So that is my plan as well. I am going to try to remember at the beginning of each week, to write down all the things that are neccessary for that week and any other dates that need to be put in my calendar. I will do this on Sunday when I have a quiet moment to myself. Ok, that being said, I now need to go shopping to get Kaleigh her poptarts that I forgot to get when I was at the store yesterday!!!

The Challenge....part 2

So, first day of school was yesterday. 9 of the kids in my class are great! They get along ok, they are pretty much a really neat group of kids. The tenth child is sweet but not so easy to handle. I will call him Bud. Bud doesn't like to sit for crafts, he will get up and go to the toys. I pulled him aside and really talked to him. I told him we would get along great, but he really needs to listen and obey his teacher. He is very flighty too, almost ran out of the room at the beginning of the day. Luckily mom was still there and she brought him back into the room. Once the kids were all there, I closed the door. He pretty much refused to do the "ME" picture, where the kids just do the best they can to draw a picture of themselves. Usually, I end up with quite a few scribbles and some pretty good stick figures. He did nothing. Then when we were coming back from the playground he wanted to be first so he pushed ahead and shoved a little girl down. She was ok, but I had to talk to him again. This is definitely a case where it would be beneficial to have an aide. We don't do that at our school however, so I wonder why a parent would even want them at our school. It does make it difficult to teach the whole class, when there is one that is so disruptive. The other parents expect a lot due to the fact they are paying quite a bit for this school. It isn't fair to them to have less than 100% quality teaching. I am going to be documenting all the problems for the mom and for my director. Mom was kind enough to pull him out of school last year, maybe she can do it again! He just won't get the individualized attention he needs and the others need to be able to learn! If he stays I will have to learn to let him wander a bit, because no matter how or how many times I tell him, he doesn't listen. I don't think he can do some of the things like sitting and looking at a book. He is too antsy. Ah well....
If you all have any thoughts on the matter feel free to comment.

The Challenge Begins

Here we go again.
The last few years have been very rewarding, I have taught preschool now for two years and this is my third. I am teaching 4 year olds again but this time I have 3 days a week instead of 2. I am glad because I can fit more in.
Now I am a worrier and I am always nervous on "Meet the Teacher" day. I met my students yesterday and found out that I will be having another challenging student. The first year I started out with a little boy with speech delay (I thought it was a lot more than that but...) who left after October because I told mom how disruptive he was (pulling papers out of cubbies and walking around the room tearing any paper he could find) and he was replaced with a little girl who spoke no english! So that was my first year teaching, then last year I had another challenge.
A little girl who seemed to me to be somewhat mentally challenged in that she has a hard time following instructions and could not answer simple questions with anything that made sense. For example if I asked, "What is your favorite thing to do at school?", she would say, "My mommy is going to get her hair cut!" There seemed to be a connection missing there. This year I will have a little boy that has been diagnosed ADHD. I am not an expert so I don't really know how to deal with him. I am hoping (since mom pulled him out last year because he couldn't handle it) that he has grown enough for this to work. Mom is very willing to work with me so that is good. Better than her being in denial. He apparently was adopted and is a drug baby, so the problems started there. So I am praying that this year I will be able to step up and do a good job for these kids and their parents! Wish me Luck!

Legoland Monday!

After a great nights sleep at Steve and Annamarie's cabin, we headed for Legoland! The weather was pretty nice and the kids had a great time! We did meet up a couple times with Vince, Kelly and the boys and did some things with them like the Driving School and they also introduced us to the cool 4D movie! We hadn't seen any of those before! Thanks for that!

Cole's highlight was going on the newest rollercoaster, "Technic Test Track" It was pretty high and pretty steep drops and at first he didn't want to go on, but Dad was very encouraging so he did it and loved it! Kaleigh said no to that but for the first time went on the Dragon rollercoaster. It is definitely more tame than the Technic but it was still more than she had done before! They both went on the trackless rollercoaster, "Knights Tournament" and I took photos. That was toward the end of the day and I had a bit of a headache, so Carl swapped out with them and they both did level 2! I was very proud of them for trying new rides! The photos are of the kids in the stockade, Mom and Dad in the stockade, Kaleigh on the Aquazone ride and Kaleigh and Cole with SpongeBob! It was a really nice day but at the end of the day we were all pooped! As you can see in the first photo, which was of course the last taken, we are beat! But a great time!

A Big Thank You!!!

On behalf of my family as well as for most everyone that attended, a big thank you is in order! I know some have already blogged a thank you but I thought it needed to be said again! We all had such a great time and that was due to the planning and inspiration of Steve and Annamarie!

I also want to thank McKenna, Lauren and Patrick for their hospitality as well, they made it really fun for the kids! Another thank you goes out to Robert and Celeste for making the shirts and doing the Geocache stuff! Thank you also to Diana and Hayley for watching over the littler kids too! I think we all enjoyed this trip, and would like to do this again sometime! With all of the address swapping and Christmas card promises, I hope we can all keep in touch!

Thank You Renee!!! So while down south for the reunion, Tina, Diana, Kaligh and I drove into the city to drop off Leonie at the airport. Before we needed to go there we stopped at Horton Plaza to do a little shopping. We also ran into Renee and her beau Justin! While we were looking in the GameStop store, I told Nae about the kids love of Lego Star Wars and that they were saving their money to get the Indiana Jones game. Renee decided it would be a good idea to get Kaleigh and Cole an early birthday present and proceeded to purchase said game!!! So a Big Gigantic THANK YOU!!!!!! The kids are already playing it and I had to cut them off at 4 hours!! It was good seeing you Renee and nice meeting Justin!!!

Getting Ready!

Ok, so we are getting ready for our trip down south and are working to get all the laundry done, and pack and make sure we have space for the Kiester clan to land and sleep! I don't think it will be any problem, we have the room and lots of things to pile up to make it nice and comfy. I am working on moving a coffee table to make more room so there isn't any weird configurations needed! Kaleigh and Cole are having a watch as much Spongebob, Fairly Odd parents and other Nick toons as you want day. I know it isn't great, so sue me! Just an expression people! They did go over to Aunt Helen's for about 2 hours and just played their little hearts out and soon they will get bored, and I will send them outside once the air cools off. Maybe they will go outside and play in their moonsand, who knows. It was just kind of a lazy day. Something that most people don't really recognize anymore! I am happy to say I don't feel the least bit guilty either!!! I know I usually do if I know that something really needs to get done, but today isn't like that at all and it feels great!

The kids are pretty happy too!

A T & T 3 in 1

As techno-illiterate as I am, I kind of understood when Carl told me about something new (about 1 year ago) that AT&T was putting together. Computer, phone and TV hook ups all through the one company. Fast computer, more channels and well....the phone stays the same I guess. So they finally put in the boxes in our neighborhood and about a week ago we got a mailer stating we are now able to get this AT&T thingummy. Well, all I know is that Carl said we would get what would be considered similar to basic cable. Cool. More choices for tv like home design and cooking! I am good with that. What I didn't anticipate was the reaction from Kaleigh and Cole! They were soooo excited when the guy came! All they could talk about was getting to watch Spongebob and some of the other cartoons that they only see in motels when we are on vacation. Luckily, they don't seem to realize how much is available, and I ain't tellin' 'em!
Of course there were a few glitches like at first we couldn't connect to the internet and Carl had to do some rewiring and then they rehooked up the playstation differently so we couldn't really figure that one out without some help from Daddy! Cole was very relieved. Out of the two kids, Cole is the playstation junkie and I have to limit the amount of time he spends on the games. I did however drag them to a church work day this morning, so they get a little more grace than normal. But all in all it seems like there are so many channels and still not much to watch during the times that I am mostly watching! Of course it is the Summertime and I may actually use the DVR to record some stuff come the fall! In a nutshell, I hope to add some new favorites to the current ones. I am happy that ION television is playing things like Quantum Leap and The Dead Zone series, pretty cool and that one was free!

Duck Pond Cupcakes

So this last weekend, yesterday in fact, Carl's cousin's wife had a baby shower. This is the second child and we decided to go simple. Just dessert and coffee and punch, gifts and a couple games. So I was the one who got to make the cupcakes. I have always found cupcakes to be, in general, rather boring. I am not a master confectioner, so I don't know how to make beautiful cupcakes. I enjoy putting them all together to make a different type of configuration. This was my idea. We had a boy themed ducky shower. So at first I was just going to do the blue frosting with the duckies on top. Again, I thought that was kind of boring, so instead as you can see I made a duck pond with dirt and grass/moss (the frosting was supposed to be stiff like grass but didn't cooperate). Everyone enjoyed it and I got a lot of compliments. Easy to serve and everyone got to pick chocolate, yellow or white cake cupcake. It was fun, though not as fun as Kaleigh's 6th birthday Pirate cup "cake". Although, now that I look back at that photo, I like the Duck pond better! hehe, but the kids adored the pirate cupcakes too! I also note that Kaleigh's cupcakes were for 20 kids whereas the shower needed around 60! Whew, good thing Kaleigh helped with these!

Summertime -Packed vs. Relaxed

Growing up my sisters and I never went to camp, didn't go on "playdates" didn't have planned activities or sports. We of course had a pool that we spent most of our time in and we did have friends over to swim. Summertime was really for relaxing and playing and going on vacation.

Somehow parents today don't seem to really get that idea. Almost every parent I know has there kids in everything to sports, to camp, to horseriding etc. The problem with this is if you want to just have someone over to play, there has to be a scheduled day and time because everyone has "things" that they have to schedule around. No more calling someone on the same day to come over and play. I find this rather sad, and so do my kids. There is a friend that will just call and say, "Hey, can Kaleigh and Cole play?" Which is surprisingly refreshing and we always say yes!

My personal opinion is that parents are afraid of spending time with their kids. They don't know what to do with them! Most kids if left alone and given a few ideas will last hours without complaining. My kids (just like my sisters and I) have great imaginations because the learned from my example, coming up with made up games, like "Police Sketch Artist", Puppet shows, and "Towel fashions". The ones in quotations are the ones Tina and I made up.

The first is where two people sit facing each other, one with a sketch pad. The other describes the "burgler, robber, perp etc." The person drawing asks questions like, "what shape was his face, did he have a narrow or wide nose, what did his hair look like?" And so on. Then when the drawing is done, the person drawing says, "so is THIS what the robber looked like?" Not only is it hilarious to see the end result, but you can really go far with it, scars, moles..in fact I think once Tina said something like, "well, the guy didn't have any cartilage in his nose so it was just hanging there!" What a crack up that was! It also helps children learn to really listen and helps with using descriptive words too!

Towel fashions haven't happened yet because it was something we did to pass the time after coming out of the pool. We would take a few towels and wear them in different ways, then one of us would be the commentator saying, "here is Tina, wearing a lovely skirt and top combo, with a turban as an accessory!"

So, as you can tell, we had fun with what we had access to. It is sad that people have to pay other people to entertain their children. By all means don't let them stay at home where they will just whine about being bored! We have solved that one too! My Mom told us if we ever said those two words, " I'm bored", it was code for "it is time to clean". So we were very careful! My kids are very aware of this code!

As we speak they have their toy Chevron cars that they have been playing with for about 2 hours so far. They build them houses or should I say garages with DVD cases. Then they have families go on vacation they visit different parts of the house and this will go on for another hour probably. Then they will try and think of something else fun to do. If they can't come up with something they will ask for suggestions. I have a few other ideas up my sleeve, because I too used to need things to do, and Tina and I had a great time playing our homemade games! So watch out kids, here comes the "Chicky Game!"
Tina, don't laugh too hard!!!

Photo's from our swim day! First one is the group, see below, the second one is Kaleigh going down the slide, and the last is Sydney, the dog diving in after a tennis ball! Pretty funny to watch.

Swimming with the Teacher!

So, Kaleigh and Cole both had this teacher for first grade. She is a fantastic teacher and a good friend. At the end of the school year she let me know that she wanted to have Kaleigh and Cole over during the summer for a swim visit. She has a pool and wanted to spend some time with us! Well, with vacations and all we just were able to talk in the last couple of days, so we decided to go over there today. Carl was home so he came too. We had a nice pizza lunch and then went into the pool.

The video is of the hot tub that is connected to the pool and her daughter showed the kids how to make a whirlpool. It was pretty funny watching them swirl around! Cole laughed his head off because he couldn't stop!

The photo of the group is Kelli, me, their teacher Roberta (sorry no last names), Kaleigh and Cole. Carl took the photo of course. We really appreciated Roberta as the kids teacher she is fun and fair. She is also a lovely person outside of school and I look forward to working with her more and more as the years go by. I only wish I had more kids so they could have her as their teacher! Oh the other photo is of Kaleigh going down the cement water slide. As you can probably tell the pool is a rock type pool very nice. It is relaxing to just sit and soak!

Sorry, no photos at this time. There is a glitch of some sort and it is not letting me add photos.

So check back later to see the photos, I will try again.

Oops, forgot the sunscreen!

There are very few instances where I forget something as important as sunscreen. And to be totally fair, I didn't exactly forget, I just applied too hastely. In fact, I was rather disappointed in one of the spray sunscreens because it didn't spray-it squirted! Like in a stream! So of course in one of the photos you will see the results of my self squirt application!

Ok, so yesterday we decided to meet Kaleigh's 3rd grade teacher at the beach. She had sent a note saying they would be there on certain days and would love to see the children in her class and their families. So we decided to go. Now usually if I know we are going to be at the beach the whole day or most of the day I put the sunscreen on at home. That way the kids aren't itching to get away to play in the sand. Well, first of all, this was a beach we weren't all that familiar with so I wasn't thinking an all day deal. I guess I thought we would go for a couple of hours and then head home. Well, that didn't happen, the waves were really small and manageable so the kids tried a little boogie boarding and we were all having such a good time, well you know what they say! Time flew! So no problem, we are on our way home, thinking of what we are going to do for dinner, when I look down and notice my chest is a little red. So we get home, all take showers and well you know when you step into a nice white shower? You become a lot darker! And redder if you got burned! Well, the photos will explain. Just so you know the photos don't do the burn justice! It is worse than it looks! Kaleigh's isn't too bad, it doesn't bother her anyway. Mine bothers me. A lot! And no smart comments about the photos! And yes the bathing suit was new and goes a bit lower than my other ones!

Oh and one other tidbit! While we are at the beach, we are all just sitting there watching our kids and Carl (of course) says something quietly to me about some foreigners that are just about 4 yards away from us a little to the right. Apparently they are not aware that americans don't change willy nilly on the beach! So they are changing from street clothes to bathing suits then putting on a wetsuit and going in the ocean. Then instead of just leaving on the bathing suits, they change back into street clothes, until they are ready to go in the water again! We couldn't quite figure it out until we noticed that all the women (5) were sharing 2-3 bathing suits. Yuck!

Now, we had about 4 shows all together, and few little girls that noticed were pretty disgusted and went down to the water to escape it. Of course the frenchies ranged from about 25 years of age to about 70. All of them changed right out in the open. The only one that was a bit discreet was grandpa frenchy who took of his undies with is button down shirt still on and changed into his speedo under the cover of that shirt! Good thing the breeze hadn't picked up yet!

A Funny TV show called Wipeout!
We don't get many channels, we don't have cable or satellite or dish or anything else so we just have the basic channels and those don't always come in clear. One of the newer shows that is pretty funny is Wipeout. It is probably as close to one of those Japanese game shows as we westerners can get. Funny thing, Carl and I are watching and there was a sneak preview for the next episode and there was a girl, with a cat hat, white not orange, doing the dance! You know the one! Her name is Erin Merry something and she was going to do one of the obstacle courses. Of course she gets pretty much bounced and beaten around, stuff my mom used to call Schadenfreude! Carl loves stuff like that!
Anywhoo, both my sis and bro weren't on to chat with so I thought I would put it here in case they checked on it. The show is Wipeout, but I don't know what channel it would be up there, or when it is on. Check your listings! Even if you don't care about the girl, the show is funny!

Room Makeover...kind of
Ok, so for those of you who have never seen our back room or living room, this might be a little boring....ok, maybe a lot boring, but I had to put this in. We worked hard on it so it warrants a photo and some words.
While Kaleigh and I were in Canada on vacation at Omi's house, we watched a lot of Interior decorating shows. We both enjoyed the changes that the designers made, and since we don't have cable at home we were in awe of the shows that are available. The favorite of course were the super duper changeovers, but since those cost a lot we paid more attention to the low budget makeovers that are basically refreshers for a room. So, we decided when we got home to do over our family/livingroom. The photos are after shots...I forgot to take the before shots, but believe me this looks a lot better. Part of the problem was that we had a lot of unwanted clutter, which was partly my fault and partly the kids junk, spilling over from their rooms. So, first we had to clean (the worst part in my opinion) that was mostly the kids putting their stuff away. Then came the deep cleaning, which is also pretty yucky if you haven't moved things in a while.
The couches weren't too bad, but behind the entertainment system it was an inch thick with dust and just stuff that had fallen back there, icky. So we vacuumed and mopped the tile under everything that was moved, then we pretty much moved all the furniture in a counter clockwise move. So the black couch that was under the wolf photos (where the entertainment section is) was moved to the middle of the room, the love seat couch was moved up against the wall where the entertainment system used to be (was where the black couch was), and the entertainment system was moved from below the window to under the wolf photos. The big chair was moved from under the kitchen window to under the back window. The coffee table was moved with the black couch and a lot of stuff was gotten rid of or put out of sight. There is also an automan that matches the big chair and the loveseat that never really had a set spot but now it works for both the loveseat and the big chair in the present location. So all in all I think it looks pretty good. As long as we can keep the room uncluttered (which is of course the hardest part). I was going to get some accent pillows in a stronger color but Carl says we have too many pillows as it is...I kind of agree. Maybe when these pillows wear out or something!