It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas...

... thanks to wonderful Christmas programs! Here's Drake's:

I love the twirling! And the little bow at the end!

Gracie's Christmas Recital

Gracie was absolutely thrilled when she learned how to play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." And it was the first song she picked to play in her Christmas recital. She was less thrilled when her piano teacher mentioned that she could bow after she finished playing. In fact, this completely unglued her. It was as if *this* were the thing that finally made her realize that, hey, maybe she'll get this thing called Stage Fright. She completely fell apart. She wasn't going - AT ALL.

After we talked her down (and I maybe pushed her a little bit towards the piano), she did fine.

UC Davis

I often wonder how to explain political ideas to Gracie. Do I show her the injustice in the world? How will she react? Will I be sorry I showed her that the world is not all wonderful?

I was cruising Facebook when she wandered over. So we watched this video about the protest at UC Davis together, and though I paused it about 5 times to explain, she really seemed to get it. Her confused response after seeing the campus police spray tear gas on the protesters: "But... I thought we were allowed to do that in America?" I explained to her that even police make mistakes. How else to explain it? That people in power sometimes abuse that power?

It certainly makes one think.

What to do at night, instead of sleeping...

Last night I was checking on the kids and I found this:

Hmm, a secret message, I thought. I wonder if Gracie was reading a story about codes? So I looked through the book she'd been reading. Nope, no secret codes. So I asked her about it the next morning.

"Oh. You found that?" she replied, a bit uneasily. No doubt worried she was going to get in trouble for not going to sleep.

"Yeah, what is it?"
"It's a secret message. Hippo taught it to me." Hippo is her beloved stuffed animal.

"What?" This was getting more and more interesting.
"Hippo taught me how to write in her language, and I wrote her a note."

So last night, instead of going to sleep, Gracie created her very own cipher (and quite a good one, I might add), and then used it to write an entire letter.

Ross made a quick attempt to decode the letter. "Ah, I can see that that is a T!" Without even looking at her key, she says "Daddy! That's not a T! That's an N!" So not only did she create the code, she memorized it - in one night.

She never ceases to amaze us...

PS - If you want to figure it out, you may find this helpful. Hint: there are some misspellings, which, if you think about it, are just clever ways to make your code even more encrypted!

Halloween

The Most Interesting Man in the World and a Black Cat, to go with...

A witch and Buzz Lightyear (or, as he used to call him: Bud Light Beer. HAHAHA!)
Pop Quiz: Can you guess who's costume was the most expensive? Hint: It looks *so* real! :-)

Creativity...

....is not what it's cracked up to be.

"Drakey, what's that blue on your legs?" "We painted!" Oh no...

The kids are really good at keeping themselves entertained. Granted, the results may not be expected and/or desired. Example: while I was at church this am (kids still sleeping!) and Ross was still in bed, they woke up and decided to play finger paints. Thankfully, they decided to do this in the bathtub, which I was very excited about. "What a good decision!" Hey, maybe this won't be too bad!

Then I went into the bathroom to check it out.

1) It was an effing DISASTER; paint was everywhere.

2) This was not finger paint. It was tempura paint. Much harder to scrub off.

So I armed them with scrubbies and baking soda and told them to get busy. And I armed myself against the complaints, which were predictably numerous. This is what I get for encouraging creativity.

I thought about taking a picture, but didn't want to appear to be enjoying their misery. So instead, here's a picture of their other activity for the morning: getting their own breakfast. They were in the middle of this when I got back from church. Note their angelic expressions. This was before I knew about the painting. Note also the little pile of raisins to the side. Apparently, they don't like raisins in their Raisin Bran.

Stoogents

I admit it: this is a reenactment of actual events. The morning of the kids' first day of school was rainy and and rather dismal. Very un-San Diego. So I couldn't be bothered to take the mandatory first-day-of-school photo. By the afternoon, it had cleared up and was beautiful. So I made the kids get their school stuff, and even their rain boots to pose on the front lawn.

Thanks for humoring mama, kids!

After I took the picture, I took some video , and I was trying to prompt Drake to say something, "Drakey! Show me what a student would look like!" I love how you can see his confusion between his response and Gracie's response to take out her school supplies.

Stoogents: such a wonderful portmanteau for these guys!

More Camping!

Adjusted Expectations

Holy moley! Who do I think I am - a freakin' novel writer?! I look at my previous posts and just shake my head. It's no wonder I didn't keep up with that! But then, it's really not surprising. I'm not known for, um, concise writing. I get to my point. Eventually.

So, let's reassess our expectations of what might actually be found here, shall we?

A picture. Or not.
A witty caption. Or not, if my brain has been overly taxed.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on...

Funny conversation at the dinner table tonight (Backstory: they just watched 'Tangled' a few days ago.):
Wahwoo: I want my hair to reach.... the yellow house across the canyon!
We all ooh and ahh. Wow! That's long!
Little Man is silent. Then, with a flourish of his hand: But, the coyotes will eat it!

And now, a picture from camping on Palomar Mountain for Father's Day weekend...

Before The Hike

We went on a "Treasure" hike, where two of the parents organized a hike and threw plastic jewels and snakes and lizards along the trail for the kids to find. You can imagine the bedlam. Meanwhile, our kids, the hangers back in wild activities like these, were intrigued, but not intrigued enough to actually run along. Fortunately, the organizers of the hike thought of this, and I'm convinced they had someone stationed halfway back charged with replenishing the "treasure." And the kids (with their parents' gentle reminders) were very good about just taking one or two and leaving the rest for the stragglers (babies, toddlers, and my two kids, LOL). So that was fun.

But then we got to the end of the organized part of the hike and everybody turned around. Ross and I were eager to keep going. It was a beautiful day and you never know what you're going to find next!

So after a few calls to Drake, he and I started along again. Gracie was having none of it. She was all about the herd mentality. "Everyone else is turning around!" Well, we want to keep going. "NO! HIKING IS BORING!" And... complete meltdown. Um, what the? This kid is The Hiker. In Hawaii, she was *all* about the hiking. She LOVES hiking. Maybe it was because everyone else was heading back, and she didn't want to possibly miss out on any fun that MIGHT happen? Sheesh... So she and Ross had a little "chilling" out time and then she begrudgingly followed along.

But of course, she is a true hiker and soon regained her cheerfulness. Especially after we came to The Magical Place - a beautiful little oak grove with massive oak trees perfect for climbing and The Totoro Listening Spot - a huge verticle rock that we all leaned against to hear the totoros speak to us. It was quite a nice moment. Then we hiked across a beautiful grassy meadow with green and red grasses and spied a little blue dragonfly. That's where Gracie learned that dragonflies are a good sign for freshwater. So off she went, in search of water. Sure enough, a little farther down the trail, we came across a little stream that we hopped across. And then we saw a valley (French Valley) that it fed into. There, we discovered a lovely little grotto with a babbling brook, a little waterfall and a small swimming hole. Gracie had a good time floating a leaf down the stream to see what would happen to it. Drake freaked out when he was trying to walk upstream and got part of his foot wet.

On the way back, Drake had the wonderful idea to lay down in the grass. As we peered up through the oak branches, we spotted mistletoe. We listened to the wind. As we walked back, the kids spotted acorns, which they collected, with the idea to have their own totoro trees. But boy, were they dragging by the time we got back. Afterwards, I asked Gracie what her favorite parts were. I was curious to see if the treasure part outweighed the rest of the hike. But no, her favorite parts were The Magical Place and "discovering" water. Now *that's* my little hiker! :-)

What turned out to be a truly memorable hike...

The trip was tons of fun - minus the horrible mosquito and horsefly bites on poor Wahwoo. One landed on Little Man's hand, and nature lover that he is, he says to me, all excited (or "decided" as he says) "Mommy! Look!" He would have reacted the same if a butterfly had landed on him, so awed was he. Before I could swat it off, it had done what horseflies are apt to do. "AAAUUUGGGHH!" Poor thing, you could just see the look of betrayal on his face. How could a "cweature" do this to him??

And because I'm feeling super-ambitious... A VIDEO!


AND! We get to camping NEXT month too! Yay! The kids are thrilled.

Cinco de Mayo

Our first foray into papier mache. It was surprisingly therapeutic....

Check back for the follow up to see how it turned out!

Happy Birthday Wahwoo!

We had a present for Gracie when we got back from our trip to Hawaii:

This is The Coolest Toy Ever! The kids and I have totally been having a fun time with this. We even made a doorbell that plays Happy Birthday!

Little Love Notes

Yesterday Wahwoo was making a birthday card for her uncle. After she was done, she showed me this. She said it was for Little Man. It's approximately 1.5" x 3".

They may not have hands, but Little Man's got PANTS!

"Ah, sweet, that's nice. Is that you two playing?"
"No, we're hugging."

And I died of the adorableness of her five-year-old self. And then I turned it over.

I "like" you, too, my sweet-sweet.

And my heart sighed...

Supreme Mnemonic

So one of my fears is that I'll be stopped on the street one day and David Letterman will ask me to name the Three Stooges (whom, even though I detest, I can still name). And then he'll ask me to name three Supreme Court Justices. Let's put aside the fact that I don't live in New York, so I'm not likely to be sauntering past the Late Show headquarters.

While I'm sure I'd eventually come up with three, it seems a bit shameful that I don't know all nine. After all, I can remember all nine planets in our Solar System (well, now eight, I guess. Poor Pluto. Added for clarification: It seems that Pluto was down-graded to a dwarf-planet and we gained two other dwarf planets. Oh wait, two more. I just can't keep track of this stuff...). And so, I've taken it upon myself to memorize all of their names. And, recognizing that My Very Earthly Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Porcupines worked for me for years, I set out to create a mnemonic for the nine Supreme Court Justices. And this is what I came up with: Their Supreme Rulings Give Some Killers A Bad Sentence.

Alright, so it's not nearly as exciting as "My Very Earthly Mother...", but it gets the job done. Here we go:

Their = Thomas, Clarence

Supreme = Stevens, John Paul

Rulings = Roberts, John (Chief Justice, BTW)

Give = Ginsberg, Ruth Bader

Some = Sotomayor, Sonia

Killers = Kennedy, Anthony

A = Alito, Samuel

Bad = Breyer, Stephen

Sentence = Scalia, Antonin

As an after-thought, I Googled "supreme court mnemonic," and came upon this one, which I think is much more original. But alas, it's now out of date. But then, Flocabulary goes and one-ups me with a mnemonic that helps you remember the order in which the justices were nominated!

Studying Scandals Keeps The Giant Bride Robots All Sober
Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Roberts, Alito, Sotomayor

"Giant Bride Robots?" WTF? But whatever works for ya, now you're prepared for that Man on the Street nightmare...

PS - I realize that the tie to nurturing the family and environmental issues may be tenuous, but I figure 1) in order to teach my kids anything, I need to know it first and 2) Environmental issues often involve laws. Oh, and it's fun to write about something different once in a while. So I got all crazy and wrote about the Supreme Court justices. Wow.

PPS - After trying to remember the above mnemonic all day, it just wasn't working. Instead, I came up with one that names them in alphabetical order: A Blond Girl Kissed Ross, So She Stayed True. While a bit person-specific, this is working for me much better!

Preservation Plans for 2010

Farmer's Daughter recently wrote about her goals for preserving in this upcoming year. She was inspired by reading Independence Days, a book I'd like to read at some point. This got me to thinking about how pleased I was with last year's canning efforts (my first EVER!), and how I'd like to expand on that. And so, without further ado:

Peach Jam: 1 dozen 12 oz. jars (for gifts), 1 dozen 1/2 pints for us

Canned whole peaches: 1 dozen quarts

Applesauce: 2 dozen pints

Strawberries: freeze as many as possible (whole)

Strawberry jam: 1 dozen 1/2 pints (some for gifts)

Roasted Tomato sauce: 4 dozen 1/2 pints

Whole tomatoes: 2 dozen pints

Freezer Pesto: 2 dozen 1/2 pints

It looks like I'd better start buying some more 1/2 pint jars. Fortunately, Ralph's is now selling them. So, hopefully no more broken jars.

Some provisos: I'm planning to grow strawberries this year. Hopefully, they do well. And it'd be nice to get more than six apples off of our tree this year. And maybe the peach tree will fruit this year... As you can see, I have a lot of hope for our little orchard...

Do you have any preservation plans for this year?

Cloth napkins from scraps

Now that I have my beloved sewing machine, I am now A Person Who Peruses Craftsites. Wow. I did not see that coming... But indeed, I find I am constantly on the look-out for easy projects that I can sew. Because I have yet to take a sewing class.

But I did find a few links to making cloth napkins, which was exciting to me. Because, really. How hard can it be to make a square piece of cloth? It seems like something even I could do. I already have a stash of cloth napkins (that I, ahem, purchased from Amazon. Cough, cough.), but I do feel like we're a little short on napkins sometimes. You'd be amazed at how many napkins two little kids can go through. Or maybe not.

But then I was really excited to find this link from Sew Mama Sew on how to make cloth napkins from your fabric scraps! (That's a picture of her finished napkins at the top of this post.) Now that's ingenious! Double-environmentalism! You're making a durable good from reused materials! This is upcycling in action. Now.... I just need to have sewed (sewn?) enough to generate a decent amount of scraps...

If you're a sewer, what were some of your first projects?

Weekly Meal Plan

Here we are, in the second week of the new year, and already I'm deviating from my resolution to eat seasonally. We're going on a 6-day ski trip to Mammoth, CA with another family and staying in a condo. To save money and simplify things, we're bringing food to prepare our own meals. The thought of having to incorporate seasonally available produce into our combined meal plan was just too overwhelming.

Nevertheless, here is the produce offered by the CSA for this week:
Lettuce
Tatsoi
Swiss Chard
Grape Tomatoes
Spinach
Carrots
Onions
Butternut Squash
Apples
Tangerines
Strawberry Jam

Yeah, I can't say I'm crying my eyes out not to be using "Tatsoi." No idea what that even is...

Here's my meal plan:
Dinner #1: Sweet potato and Peanut Stew
Dinner #2: Pot Roast, mashed potatoes, veggies
Lunches: leftovers, eating at the lodge
Breakfasts: Pumpkin pancakes with yogurt, granola

I have to say, one thing I like about combined meal planning with another family: fewer meals to come up with!

Send good thoughts that I don't kill myself on the way down the mountain. Lack of coordination + one year since skiing = Danger! Danger!

Weekly Meal Plan

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to eat more seasonally. In order to do this, I'll be looking at the produce that a local CSA distributes in its weekly boxes and doing my weekly menu planning around those items. Note that I'll be incorporating other items, that won't necessarily be seasonal. But my goal is not to be wholly seasonal, just more seasonal than I have been in the past (where I pretty much just disregarded what season it was!). One small step.

To that end, here is the produce listed by the CSA for this week:
Lettuce
Cauliflower
Swiss Chard
Grape Tomatoes
Beets
Carrots
Dill
Valencia
Apples
Tangerines
Strawberry Jam

And here is my first Weekly Meal Plan:
Dinner #1: (New Year’s Eve celebration with friends) Beets Mediterraneo, use with chard, in addition to beet greens; Pumpkin & pistachio risotto (can use butternut); 5-Minute fearless Bread; Gingerbread
Dinner #2: Steak w/ roasted potatoes, Roasted Cauliflower
Dinner #3: Chicken salad (use lettuce, grape tomatoes, dill, carrots, apples) Dinner #4: Chicken Noodle soup, salad, & bread
Dinner #5: Many Vegetable Stew over couscous (Freeze half)
Dinner #6: Black Beans & Rice (with sausage, onion, cheese), salad
Dinner #7: leftovers

Kids' Lunch #1: Bean burritos, peas (dried or frozen), fruit
Kids' Lunch #2: Macaroni & cheese with vegetables, hard-boiled egg, fruit

Breakfasts: Soaked oatmeal, 5-grain porridge, jam & toast, parfait

Prepare in advance: yogurt, chicken (make extra broth), beans (black & pinto), salad mixes (dry ingredients & wet), bread, mac & cheese with vegetables, granola

One Small Change

Hip Mountain Mama has come up with a great idea for encouraging us all to make changes in the new year to become more environmentally conscientious. With their One Small Change campaign, they're encouraging participants to make one change per month for the first four months of the year. This meshes with my belief that big, lifestyle-changing choices can only realistically be made one (small) step at a time. And also, conveniently, with some of my New Year's Resolutions. So here are the four changes that I will be making:

January: Implement my effort to eat more seasonally
February: Cloth hankies!
March: Compost kitchen scraps
April: Waste-free birthday party

Keep tabs on my progress in upcoming blog posts. We'll see how it goes...

Bye-bye '09!

Yes, it's that time of year for reflections.

My New Year's Resolutions for 2009:

1. Pay of my student loan

2. Start a Green Group

Done and done. Wow. I can't tell you how good that made me feel just to write that! This year I focused on making my resolutions discrete and measurable. I read somewhere if you made your resolution very specific, you were more likely to succeed in fulfilling them. Contrast "Read more" with "Read 12 books." When I got my new job, within three paychecks, I'd written a check to the DOE. And then towards the fall, I talked with some of my friends about starting a Green Group. We've met about three times now, and while it doesn't seem as "getting things done" as the book club, it is very helpful to have a group of people to talk about local environmental issues. And of course, since they're friends, it's always a fun time!

Here are some other things from 2009:

1. Lost a job. Gained a job.

2. Lost a dachshund. Gained a dachshund.
3. Gained a nephew!

4. Made ravioli by hand for the first time!

5. Started sewing

6. Finished Drake's baby book

7. Learned how to can applesauce, tomato sauce, and jam.

8. Went on *five* camping trips, a trip to Yosemite, a ski trip, and a trip back east to see family.

9. Made 2,000 basil seed starts for Earth Day, using reused materials.

10. Joined the PTA and Slow Food, USA.
11. We (um, Ross) continue to expand our mini-orchard in the backyard. We even got to harvest some apples and tangerines! And our orange/lemon tree is flourishing. The question is: with what? Oranges? Lemons? It's a mystery to us.

Goals for 2010:

1. Start composting - I really want to reduce the about of waste that we produce. Plus, this is great for gardening. It's one of those Eco-Nut 101 things that I've just never gotten around to. Risk: lots of rotting produce in the backyard. Rats (er, more than the usual).
2. Take sewing lessons - At the 11th hour this holiday season, I got a sewing machine because I decided I wanted to make something for the kids for Christmas. I managed to fumble my way through that, but I really want to learn how to use my new machine. Risk: 47 half-finished projects scattered about the house. Swearing (er, more than the usual).
3. Eat more seasonally - What, apples aren't in season in May? I really can't believe how little I know about agriculture. In order to reduce the amount of energy needed to produce our food, I will be striving to feed the family in a more seasonal (and therefore, probably local) manner. I'd like to note that we don't exactly live in Wyoming. Southern California, with it's four-season growing ability, would be a locavore's dream. Still.... Risk: I go insane with the planning aspect of this particular endeavor.
4. Oh, and exercise. Um, at least.... once a month (Don't want to overdo it or anything!). Risk: Well, at that interval, I guess the biggest risk is injuring myself.

Regardless of the risks, may 2010 be filled with happiness, peace, and love.

Insanity

How did this happen to me?? It started off innocently enough: I wanted to make the kids something for Christmas. Fine. I blogged about the little house pouches I made for them, which turned out super cute.

But then I went crazy.

I was so inspired, I got all crazy-innovative and came up with this:

Finger puppets! Fairy Friends on the left, Sea Creatures on the right.

Somehow I got to reading about egg cartons and ways to reuse/upcycle them, and my brain started working. I came up with this idea to sew puppets and use the egg carton for storage.

But it couldn't be a plain old egg carton. No. I had to decorate it. Ideally, I'd like to use fabric that reflects the puppets inside: marine fabric for the Sea Creatures and foresty fabric for the Fairy Friends. But the owl motif is what I could manage on the short time frame.

For days (DAYS!), I've been trying to reverse engineer the whole thing. It's one thing to make a little pouch (with a pattern). It's a whole 'nother thing to figure out how to cover an egg carton. All those little holes! And the pointy things in the middle! So, I've been cutting up carton after carton and designing a pattern (using scrap paper, of course). I took an old t-shirt and started cutting it with the pattern. I'm sure I've violated about 174 sewing rules so far.

Bundled up, ready to go to a restaurant, or on a plane.

But I got it done. It's only one egg carton, so they'll have to share for right now. But I hope they like their puppets.