Maybe if we lived in Maine....

Flashback, Sept. 6, 2008, Seward, Alaska. Elliotte was enjoying her first trip to the SeaLife Center. She particularly had a great time hanging out with the Alaskan King Crab. Little did I know that she is a Crustaciantounge, and that the crab was giving her lessons. No, he didn't influence her disposition, she's not so much crabby as exceptionally mellow, but he did give her pointers on WALKING!! This became obvious when she FINALLY decided to take a few unaided steps yesterday...sidways! She has yet to walk in a forward direction. Guess we should have visited a few more LOBSTERS!!!

Maybe I'll post a video, if I get around to taking one. In the mean time, Congratulations, El Halibut...I mean El Crabio!

What do you get...

...when a bunch of cool hippies plan the school carnival?

Winter Faire at Winterberry!
Now, this was a great event. I've been to some carnivals in my day, but this one takes the cake. Or should I say, "muffin"?

At Winter Faire, you exchange cash for jewels instead of tickets. It's a pretty cool system if you ask me. They use jewels for everything, including games, food, and crafts. One of the food items was a bowl of homemade potato soup. I helped peel the spuds the night before, and out of 100 pounds I must of peeled about 40. There were several people helping, but I was just really good at it. If you have to have skill, it might as well be peeling potatoes! (I guess...) They were observing my technique and asking all sorts of questions about proper peeling. It was pretty funny to me. I told them they should see Dale peel spuds; he can do it with a paring knife almost as fast as with a peeler. They were beyond impressed.

Anyway...This is the muffin walk (I guess they don't do cake walks at this school. They do muffins instead because its more organic. The only difference I see between a muffin and a cupcake is frosting, but I didn't say anything.) Rebecca's class was in charge of games, so I helped set these up. It's not very organic, but they did use my duct tape dice because they are large. They started out the day using students' old paintings cut out in the shape of numbers, but they got ripped up. The mom in charge of the muffin walk had no cake walk experience. She told me that she was going to look it up on the internet because she didn't have a clue. I filled her in on the tricky points (of which there are none, except use something other than paper taped to the floor for numbers, which she rejected.) I offered to use duct tape to make numbers on the floor, but it wasn't organic enough, I guess. In the end they got so ripped up that she begged me to re-do the numbers with tape. Which I did, without saying "I told you so!" That was big of me, wasn't it? (Click on the picture if you want to see the detail of the dice and numbers.)


This is the slingshot range. It was pretty awesome. I donated the pie plates. I didn't do the painting.
Logan taking careful aim:Elliotte was more interested in eating the ammunition!
In between games, there was a live orchestra so we could do folk dancing. Here is a photo of me (rare) dancing. (Rarer. If that's a word. Which I doubt.)



Dale contributed to the faire by roasting almonds and pecans for the bake sale. It was fun, and they were VERY popular. Here he is with a delivery.

And another of him with the baby. It was VERY cold...I think about 15 degrees F.
There were lots of crafts, and not exactly of the Oriental Trading Company variety. Sarah's favorite was dying silks. She did two of them. They hang in the window, and are very beautiful. Lily did one, also.

The kids also felted a tennis ball.
This is one of only a couple of pictures that actually has Rebecca in it because while I was taking pictures she was watching a marionette puppet show! By the time she was done, I was in charge of running the muffin walk. She had lots of fun, though. We all did. I can't wait for the Winter Faire next year.

You, know I think I just might be turning into a cool hippie myself! MUFFIN THE MATTER WITH THAT! (I couldn't resisit!)

Battle of the Books...the Duece!

Thursday was Battle of the Books for Sarah. It was her second year doing it. She did awesome! She even won a "challenge" for her team. A challenge is where your teams has an answer that is different from the judges, but believes that they are correct. A "challeging" team has 2 minutes to find a passsage in the book to back up its answer. The speaker then "proves" to the judge that it is there, through verbal argument backed up with written passage and/or illustrations. Sarah was the speaker during this question: "In which book does a character lay down and cry in fright?" The answer the judge had was "Akimbo and the Lions." Sarah's team wrote down "Roxie and the Hooligans." In the challenge, Sarah showed the text, which said that the character "sobbed in fright" and showed a picture where the character was lying down in the passage. Her team got the credit!

What I am even more proud of is her maturity. Her fellow team members were a year younger than she, and were often very implusive in their answers. Sarah was more thoughtful, and would often come up with the correct answer after the other girls quickly wrote down their best guess. They would get it wrong, but she never got irrated with them. She also is the only person on her team who read all 15 books. Since there are four people on the team, but only 3 play at a time, she wanted to play a second round and have someone else sit out twice for "the good of the team." I told her that wasn't how it worked. In that last round, the team missed around half of the questions, all of which Sarah knew. Had she played, they would have gotten a ribbon (give out for those in eighth place or better) Had they written down her answers, they would have medalled. (3rd place and above.) Sarah didn't pout, she didn't get mad at the girls, and told them they did well. She was dissapointed they didn't get a ribbon or medal, but she was proud of herself for not getting mad at the team. On the way home she told me, "That's why I sometimes don't like working on a team. I'd rather be on my own, because then I could've gotten a medal." Join the club, Sarah! But good job being a true team player!

A few pictures:

Both teams getting a quick "potty break" before the battle began:
Sarah tests her blood sugar and the team has a snack to prepare for the battle:

The team in the final round. Sarah was the alternate. The cute man in the brown shirt and glasses was not an official member of the team.


Way to go, Sarah!

Happy 100's Day!

Today was 100's day for Logan! He wanted to do something "huge" (gee, I wonder where he get's that from....!) so here he is, working on his project: (It only took 2.5 weeks. Not bad. To be fair, we only really worked on it for two Saturdays and Tuesday night. We were done one night early. Record!)

So, here it is. How to make a 4' x 8' caterpillar puzzle in 9 easy steps:

Step One: Trace 100 circles onto the wood, and then number from 1-100 so we don't lose track.
Step Two: Ask Dad nicely to cut out the pieces using the jigsaw and scroll saw. (Not pictured)

Step Three: Spray paint the caterpillar in tens with Dad.


Step 4: (Not pictured) Paint number 0-100 using a paint pen. (zero is is favorite number; we couldn't leave it out! Plus we sort of messed up. But that's neither here nor there...)

Step 5: Coerce your mom (ya, right!) to make a box for the puzzle out of duct tape. (Semi-pictured below...the red square on top of the green crate. You knew the duct tape had to be in here somewhere, didn't you?)

Step 6: Mix up the pieces and put it together again.

Step 7: Sort into piles by colors/tens and reflect about how you are SO much more organized than your mother. (Both order and inorder pictured below. )
Step 8: Set up the puzzle, and try t0 prevent your jelly faced sister from wrecking it as you go.

Step 9: Lay back and enjoy the fruits of your labor!
Good Job, on a great project, Logan!

Nostalgic Photo of the Week:

I post this picture because I love it! (duh) I also wanted to document just how proud I am of Rebecca. (The adorable child is not Rebecca, however. It is Elliotte.) A couple of weeks after her classmate died, she was having a really hard time and didn't have her favorite stuffed animal. She really wanted it, and I remembered how Unicorn (I know, what a display of creativity in naming a stuffed horned horse UNICORN!) had helped me through some really tough times when I was a kid. (Not as tough as this, though.) I pulled him out, and she was so happy to hold him and was so excited to sleep with him. She felt what I felt from him so for so many years: comfort, loyalty, non-judmental, friendship. She carefully mended his hooves (My sloppy stiches from years ago have finally broken loose) with green duct tape, wiped the tears from her eyes, and trotted (galloped) off to bed.

She's doing so well, and I'm so proud of her! She brings so much comfort and joy to her classmates. Let's hear it for Unicorn! Let's hear it for Rebecca!