State Chess Tournament

Friday night and Saturday were spent traveling and participating in the state chess tournament with the three big kids.  We left the little ones with Grandma and Grandpa, knowing they would have a better time with them than with us and that made the entire experience much easier. 
 

State chess is for grades K-12 and is held at different schools in different towns each year.  There were TONS of kids participating.  Sam competed with 105 K-3rd graders, taking 43rd place, winning three of his six rounds (his best tournament so far!).  Rebecca and Emily both did well, each winning 2 of their 6 games, but ended up near the bottom of their grouping.  They were disappointed they didn't do well enough to metal.  But each of our kids did much better in this tournament than previous tournaments and that is something we are very proud of them for.  They were confident and didn't get rattled at all by the number of other kids participating.  Before Becca and Emily's first round started, a kid came out and threw up in the trash can outside the playing room, his stomach in knots with nerves.   

This was our first year attending the state tournament and I think in the end we decided that as long as the kids enjoyed it, it was worth the investment of time and money*.  We are continuing to look for ways to help the children better understand how to play chess, specifically helping them understand and identify classic patterns and how they play out.  I'm learning this is critical to doing well consistently, and something that truly comes with practice.  Nevertheless, I'm on the look out for a good chess book or two for kids (either geared toward them, or for adults to help teach children the game) to purchase with my supply of Borders gift cards before they are worthless ... if you have any recommendations, send them my way.  One I've looked though and like, although it's a bit advanced for my kids at their current stage, is "How to Beat Your Dad at Chess." 

  

* For the sake of family history ... typical tournaments cost $7/child as an entrance fee. State did not have an entrance fee.  Then there is food.  Much to the childrens annoyance, we do not purchase items from the concession stand.  It just isn't practical financially.  We typically pack snacks, water, and purchase lunch off site ... 2 $5 pizzas or at state, we purchased Subway sandwiches, which doubled as our dinner.  Since this tournament was 3.5 hours away, we stayed in a hotel Friday night to the tune of ~$100.  And then there is the gas money ... ~$3.20/gallon.  As for the time commitment ... you arrive at the tournament at 8:30am and you're there until 4:30 or a bit later.  Add to that travel time if it isn't local (and we are very blessed to have most of our tournaments close by) ... and that's a serious amount of time spent in a school commons.    

A couple of months ago GR ordered Faith in God posters for the girls.  Their arrival was quite timely.  They were shipped MONTHS after he ordered them, but arrived a week or so after an exhausting showdown, parent/child discussion about working on completing Faith in God goals, that went from hours to days in length.  

To make a lengthy story that does not make all parties involved look their best, our approach of "Please choose a goal from Y category and work on it in the four hours you have before church." did not yield the results we were hoping for.  In the days that followed, it was clear to me that if I wanted my girls to work on the goals in Y category ... that were "boring" ... I had to come up with ways to make them exciting, interesting and engaging in a way that will encourage and motivate the girls to willingly fulfill them.  

GR and I are hoping that these posters will work along with other strategies to help the girls take responsibility and accountability for completing their Faith in God requirements.   

Two houses ago, I found two poster frames at Target for $5 each.  I decided to use them to frame the girls posters. We are hoping this will be a cool and unique way for them to keep track of the goals they complete during Activity Days and be added motivation to complete others on their own so they can mark them off too.  Using a dry erase marker the girls can easily check off completed requirements and write out a plan for completing future goals in the margin space.

We're hopefully optimistic.  The plan isn't in full swing yet ... the frames need to be hung so the girls can really use them to do more than mark off things they have completed.  Then we'll work with them to plan out a couple of months of goals, on the plexi-glass surface, so when we say, "you need to spend time this morning working on Z goal." there is pre-agreed to, in writing plan to work from and will hopefully allow us to avoid massive, draining melt downs.

Everyone Say "Cheese"

A certain someone we know turns 70 today.  A song was song on an answering machine early this morning at 7:30 before everyone headed different directions for the day.  And of course the children are plotting and scheming a family celebration on Sunday. 

 

One of our schemings was an updated picture of the kids to load on the grandparents photo frame.  Spirit week is in full swing at the school in preparation for state testing next week.  3 of the 5 were sporting KU attire, for today's spirit day activity, which made the perfect "theme" for our picture.  It's been ages since we had a good picture of the entire family taken ... word on the street is that one local wards YW is working with a local photographer to do family pictures as their camp fund raiser near the end of April.  Perfect!  We'll be signing up for that one for sure!

RR 3.0

At preschool today we celebrated Alex's 1/2 birthday (his 4 years and 7 month birthday) with mini pumpkin muffins frosted with cream cheese frosting. He came home with a very cute book that his classmates create for him. They each drew him a special picture and dictated a birthday message for him. He has such a sweet class.

They also started "R" week and over the long weekend built Recycled Robots to share with the class today. Alex and Papa even got out the power tools Sunday night to put this guy together. Like the others, Alex had very definite ideas on how this guy should go together and it was neat to watch him create the robot he had pictured in his mind.

Here's Rebecca's Robot, and Emily's Robot from their preschool years. 

Day 9

Technically, it probably shouldn't be considered Day 9 ... we've been anything but consistent.  But she spent time in underpants each day this week and today, today she spent the majority of the day in underpants ("underwears" if you're asking Miss. Anna) and didn't have a single accident!! Woo Hoo! She even told me a time or two that she needed to go.  I'm not ready to leave the house in underwear yet ... I've been burned before.  But I'm hopefully optimistic. 

BTW - did you know you can download Dr. Seuss books for your Android?  I didn't either.  A few weeks ago "1 fish, 2 fish, Red fish, Blue fish", "magically" appeared on my phone, quickly followed by "The Grinch" for about $4 a piece, thanks to ads that play on games my sweet four-year-old likes to play.  1 fish, 2 fish, Red fish, Blue fish, makes for great potty training reading.  We have both the hard back and the digital version in our bathroom right now.

Day 1

Day 1 = 5 accidents, a dry nap, and one successful pee. 

GR, after learning I had put Anna in underwear again, after the 5th accident.  "You know what the definition of insanity is don't you ... doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

Thanks Einstein.

Happy Valentine's Day

We celebrated this Valentine's Day with a late dinner ... unintentional, but allowed GR to join us since his elementary school task force committee met earlier in the evening and he went straight there from work ... of heart shaped pancakes (with pink, red and white sprinkles), fresh strawberries, "homemade" strawberry sauce and real whipped cream.  YUMM!  I made a triple batch of mom's Feather pancakes and only a couple were leftover.  The strawberry sauce consisted of one can of strawberry pie filling whirled up in my mini chopper, and diced frozen strawberries cooked over the stove until thick and saucy.  It worked really well, and used up a pantry item that's been sitting far too long.  

After dinner we opened Valentines from the grandparents.  It was a really fun evening.

The kids enjoyed their classroom parties and handing out their Valentines.  There were only a couple of casualties which everyone weathered well.  We made candy cane hearts for the kids Valentines this year, using cherry flavored candy canes I picked up at Target at the 80ish% off after Christmas sales.  A link to the tutorial I used is here.  They are extremely fragile.  I purchased 192 candy canes to make the needed Valentines, but in the end, thanks to a number of casualties, we had just enough striped hearts for all four school kids to give them to teachers and classmates.  13+18+24+25 = 80 Valentines, or 160 candy canes.  In the end this "thrifty" valentine ... $1.70 for the candy canes + $7.98 for the bags + $3.50 for the paper backing = $13.18, cost ~$.17 each.  Having never priced out the kids valentines before, I guess $.17 is pretty good for a handmade valentine?

The truth

It's never easy to hear what your children think of you. I got an email from Sam's teacher, Mrs. V today. It made GR and I totally bust up!

"As we're working on our important books today Sam asks for help writing about mom."

Teacher: Do you want to describe the way she looks? Would you say she's pretty?

Sam:...mmm, mostly on Sundays.

He said basically the same thing in Preschool on his Mother's Day "All About Mom" poster. I guess I should be grateful I haven't let thing slide more in the last four years.

* * * * *

Earlier this week, when I picked up the kids from school, Sam was carrying a slip of paper. I asked him what it was, and he showed it to me.

"You've been caught having a clean desk by the desk fairy. Great job!"

Me: Sam, that's really cool!
Sam: Yeah, I got a piece of candy. It says its from the desk fairy, but I know it's Mrs. Vail. Fairies can't write, and there is no such thing as desk fairies.

When I shared this with Mrs. V, she replied, "That wasn't all he had to say about it yesterday!! Sadly, some girls are busy writing notes to the desk fairy, hoping it's not me but kind of knowing it is..."

Dig It and still Learning Lessons

For months, the fifth grade has been working on their music program, Dig It: Traveling through Ancient Civilizations, and last night they finally got to perform it.  It was fun and the kids did a great job ... least you think I always say that, word is that the 4th grade was totally and completely ill prepared for their program (yes, Emily's that I sadly missed because I double booked myself).  Apparently, it was bad.  Really bad. 

But back to Dig It ... Rebecca and the girls in her class had the part of Egyptian Princesses.  In December Rebecca started telling me I was to sew 8 white Egyptian dresses for the girls in her class to wear for the performance.  I was doing no such thing, until I saw a note from the music teacher outlining costume needs for the program.  By Tuesday when I hadn't heard anything official, I emailed the music teacher.  The girls were to wear heavy eye make-up and had talked about some kind of headband/head dress, but hadn't really decided what it would be.  They wanted more, but didn't really know what.  

The internet mixed with desperation provided two "do-able" costume options I felt I could duplicate eight times in two days.  I wanted something I could bang out in an hour.  The headdress in this YouTube video fit my criteria ... Gold Jumbo RicRac and safety pins.  All the Egyptian costumes I saw had gold or colorful collars.  Using white butcher paper I made a collar similar to what I saw as a test.  We colored it jewel toned markers and added three tin foil diamond jewels to the front.  Cute and quick.  I emailed the teacher offering to do these two options for the kids, suggesting that we use the butcher paper at the school, orange or yellow, to make solid color collars for the kids to make.  

As you can see, the teacher took me up on my offer ... you'll also notice that the collars are NOT a solid color.  I did not stand my ground.  And I can't articulate why, other than I was in a hurry.  Wednesday after school I stopped in the office to show the music teacher the collar and get paper.  I had 15 minutes to get what I needed, pick up kids and get Sam to a dentist appointment.  The music teacher took one look at the collar I made - stripes and all - and never heard a word I said about, "What solid color would you like the kids to wear?  Orange?  Green is pretty.  What about blue?"   "I really like the stripes."  ... this is where I should have stood my ground.  I should have said ... Yes, I like how it turned out too, but I don't have time for stripes.  I have time for a solid color.  Which one would you like me to use?  ... instead I said.  "Well, we could layer them I guess."  

Despite the hours I put into them, and how upset I was at myself for not standing up for myself and sticking to what I knew I could do and handle, I am pleased with how they turned out.  Most of the girls happily wore them, and they did exactly what we needed them to, simply and inexpensively transform the girls (with the hugely helpful aid of their make-up) into Egyptians.  The time wasn't a total waste.  I reinforced the "seam" used to get the collar on and off with packing tape and they were reused the same night by the sixth graders.  Mrs. A is planning to laminate them for future years.  

I'm keeping this in mind for future Halloween costumes. 

FYI - The tin foil diamond shaped jewels ... I colored the tin foil with a gold maker (the bold colors of Crayola markers), covered it with packing tape so the marker wouldn't come off, and then cut the shape out gluing it on with a glue stick.  Surprisingly effective. 

Glit and Glammor

We went to playgroup this morning for the first time in ages and had such a wonderful time.  I am so glad we went!  Jeanie had so many fun things planned for the kids to do all centered around a theme of snow.  We cut snowflakes and covered them in glitter, cut out snowman paper dolls, turned ourselves into snowmen using a huge roll of black butcher paper and white chalk, read snowman stories while eating snacks, had a relay race to build snowmen (children race to pick up & put on, a hat, scarf, sunglasses and gloves, at the end of the line, they strike a pose and then race to return everything to their chair and tap the next person in line - great classroom party game), and then made ziplock bag ice cream!  

Anna had great fun adding glitter to the snowflakes we cut out.  While my attention was on cutting a snowflake and not watching her every move, she got a small tube of glitter and opened it.  The lid was a bit snug, as glitter lids should be, and so when she managed to pop it off ... well, take a look for yourself.  

And the Winner is ...

 

Saturday evening, we had our annual chili cook-off at church.  This year everyone wanted to enter the contest.  Rebecca and Emily looked through chili recipes with Grandma and Grandpa Wednesday afternoon and brought 5 or 6 they were considering.  They each choose a recipe to make Saturday morning, and with a little help from Dad, made their chilies on their own.  Sam and I made cornbread muffins and I also made Baby Ruth Bars.  We were totally surprised when the votes were counted and Rebecca and Sam both won!!  Rebecca won first place for her spicy chili and Sam, for cornbread!!   

This continues to be a favorite ward activity and since we weren't up against a basketball game, we had amazing participation ... 19 pots of chili were entered!!  And from what I hear from the judges, they were all really good.  No wonder the counts were close in each of the categories.  
 

Brotherhood

It doesn't show signs of stopping

We woke up Monday morning to the school district calling our house to inform us that school was canceled due to snow.  GR quickly ran upstairs to dismantle all the alarms before they woke kids up.  

I LOVE snow days.  I love having the kids home and letting they do whatever, and we did exactly that.  They watched TV and had cookies for breakfast, had a good long play out in the snow, then came in to warm up with hot chocolate and homemade pizza, played hours of video games, and just enjoyed a day where homework and school work weren't done.  Then we repeated the entire thing again today ... almost.  Here are pictures from Monday:: 

I'm kind of glad I caught them doing this (see above photo) ... this is behind the shed, beyond the garden plot.  They are making slush in hopes of creating a small ice skating rink.  When asked where they got the water, the responded, "From the pump."  Oh dear.  Sweet, sweet children.  Hopefully, we don't actually end up with a ice skating rink in the backyard.

Chess Tournament

Thursday we got wind of a Chess Tournament.  The three big kids were really excited to go, and thankfully the parental schedule allowed us to support the event. The kids had a great time -- entirely too many electronic games were played but they really enjoy hanging out with classmates and it's a really good group of kids.  Thankfully, a few homework assignments got done and I did get them each to read for a few minutes during a mandatory electronic devise break. 

Tournaments make for a really, really long day.  If they are local and you are lucky, you're only gone about 9 hours.  The kids each play six games of chess with a variety of partners, and then there is an awards ceremony.  Our kids are still learning the mechanics of how to play, evident by their Win/Loss ratio. But for their second tournament ever, they kept their chin up and did well.  None of them had scores high enough to place, but Sam was able to help the K-3 team win 3rd place for our school.  He won 2 of his 6 games, something he was pretty excited about.  

The next tournament is in a couple of weeks.  I need to look into some chess tutorials for kids to help improve their game.

Rube Goldberg

For the last five weeks, Rebecca has been working on a science project with a partner. The task, build a Rube Goldberg machine.  Basically, combine 6 simple machines, using three of Newton's laws of motion, to perform a simple task ... move a soda can a meter, pop a balloon, knock over a row of dominoes, etc..  

The girls settled on removing a lid from an applesauce jar, and pouring the apple sauce into a bowl as their task, and put together a plan.  Once they had a plan, a design, a phone call to Grandpa Bob (who should get all the adult credit for insuring this project happened) was made.  Rebecca really wanted the jar lid to be sealed, but I was able to convince her that for this project an unsealed lid would be sufficient.  Maybe for their 8th grade Rube Goldberg project they will figure out how to remove a sealed lid from a canning jar.  

Alex, Anna and I went up with GR to see the projects in action.  So cool. So fun.  There were some really ingenious projects done with very, very simple materials.  I wish I had pictures and video of all of them, but there were so many!  The 5th graders presented their projects to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th grade classes who came to see the three 5th grade classes machines in action.  

Here's Becca's project in action, followed by two classmates projects:

Ringing In 2011

The girls really wanted to invite some friends over to ring in the new year.  As a general rule we won't have friends over to spend the night, but given that no one wants or should be on the road New Years Eve, we made an exception.  Only one friend was able to come over, so this gathering was a far cry from a "slumber party" and we were just fine with that.  They certainly weren't lacking for fun things to do though ... they played Scotland Yard and Monopoly Deal, watched 'Muppets in Manhattan,' made sweet little flower pins using this technique, and of course enjoyed a little junk food.  

While we were at Mom's I found a caramel corn recipe in my grandma's hand writing.  I love caramel corn, but have never made it myself.  I instantly wanted to try it out so I could share it with the extended family.  In reading through the recipe, Mom determined that it wasn't the recipe Grandma used, (she would often write down recipes she thought would be good and send them to us, so it's made it hard now to whittle it down to her tired and true recipes) so we went in search for a different recipe.  We found an excellent one and I set out to duplicate it for our New Years Eve festivities.  

Growing up Mom always popped her corn in a large stock pot on the stove top.  A while back I tried to pop corn the way mom did on the stove, and burned every single batch.  This time I used one of mom's tips ... she told me to put in test kernels with the oil.  Once they pop, pour in your kernels.  Viola!  Three perfect batches in a row!  I am so excited to be able to quickly and easily pop popcorn for the family just like my mom did!


BTW - the recipe we used is not like Grandma's.  Grandma made sticky caramel corn that wasn't baked in the oven, which is probably why I prefer sticky caramel corn to crisp. 

Black Ops

Wednesday afternoon we had mist that froze all over everything.  Road conditions in town weren't too bad, but on the lesser traveled roads it was really slick.  Really slick, so slick in fact that I managed to total my mothers little Camry by taking out 6 mailboxes when the car did a 180 rather than slow down so I could make the 90 degree turn necessary to turn onto our street ...  

I hit the mail boxes perfectly ...

• perfectly to shatter the driver side window, when the far right mail box (in the above picture it's in front of the others sitting on the ground on the right) hit the top rim of the window, rather than have the mailbox come through the window and into the car/my face ... 
• perfectly enough to allow me to drive the car home with no problems ... 
• perfectly to take out the posts swiftly and completely -- had they not been there, the car would have likely gone on it's side or upside down given the grade of the ditch ... 
• perfectly enough that (as far as I know) only my mail got laid out for the night ...
• perfectly make the car a total loss because of how perfectly I hit the posts, rough estimates for repair are $3-4,000 ...  it's a 92.  
• so perfectly that I am not scratched, bruised or sore.  

 

Thursday morning GR purchased supplies to fix the mailbox posts and Bob and a neighbor had them up right again before lunch and mail delivery.  Amazingly, none of the mailboxes were damaged, not even a dent.  They hadn't been so lucky 2 years ago when a DUI took out all the boxes and ended up all the way in the ditch.  

Unfortunately, Mom and Dad value this car more than their insurance company does.  It's a sound little car whose transmission is doing great and isn't showing any signs of dying soon.  So rather than ditch it for something else, they will likely replace the door with something from a salvage yard and continue to drive it until the transmission has issues.  In the meantime we're investing in gloves, plastic and duck tape for the drive home.

Visit to Santa

Anna respectfully and determinedly declined every invitation to even stand next to Santa.  And that was with both Grandma's encouraging, suggesting and I'm going to assume bribing as well.  But Anna does an awesome "Santa, Ho, Ho, Ho!", you should ask her about it. 

Preschool Music Program

This continues to be my favorite event of the season, and we have missed it so for the last two years.

Alex choose to wear his suit and his gray sweater vest, he has a thing for sweater vests, loves them!  We laid out a couple of shirt/tie options and this is what he choose.  Once we got everything on, he looked at me and earnestly asked, "Do I look sharp, mom?"   Absolutely!  By the time he went through three hours of church, lunch in the car, and walking in to the preschool, he was done with the jacket, which made him look a little more like all the other kids up on the stage.  


He did a fantastic job.  This little kids LOVES to sing.  He and Anna both love music.  Alex learns lyrics really quickly.  Anna's been going to a music class once a week with Grandma.  I took both kids when she was out of town back in October and he's still singing some of the songs he learned in that one class.  

I had hoped to get video, but discovered minutes before the program that my video camera "magically" went from full battery to no battery overnight.  And I couldn't remember how to get my new camera to take video, so I have a couple of cute pictures of the program and that's it.

I did manage to get a couple of pictures of all five kids ... I was hoping for a Christmas card photo, but I'm going to try again when the lighting is better and when there aren't rows and rows of people behind me making for a very captive audience to perform for.  Although this picture does capture each of them, perfectly giving the viewer a hint of their personalities. 

Poor GR missed the entire program because of tithing settlement. I didn't consult all of my calendars when he ran tithing settlement dates passed me and once I realized the conflict, it was too late.  He's trying a new option this year to be more efficient with his time. He's only offering tithing settlement on a couple of days during the month; two Saturdays and a Sunday with huge blocks of time on each day.  If that doesn't work into peoples schedules they can schedule something independently. We're hoping this will allow him to help me pull of Christmas and celebrate the holiday with us rather than spending hours and hours and hours spread over four weeks at the church.  

Thankfully none of his appointments canceled or didn't show during Alex's performance.  Though if they had, I don't think he would have told me.  He teases that the only time you can really see his wife get frustrated is during tithing settlement.  I am amazed that people aren't more considerate of his time ... no shows/last minute reschedules, not signing up at all, or choosing a time that is convenient for them but leaves large gaps in his schedule.  It isn't intentional, they just don't think or realize what it means for the bishop and his family.  

I'm working this week at the campus bookstore buying text books back.  It's my second buy back and I'm excited.  The money is decent (as long as I don't compare it to what GR makes) and I get to work with fun people.  Mom's here to help with the kids.  We've got major home work projects due this week, holiday parties on Friday and holiday gifts for the teachers.  Busy week!

The Brunch

The brunch this year was a huge success, one of our best yet, and I'm so grateful.  I was really nervous. I was hosting in the house everyone has seen so beautifully decorated and prestinly kept by Diane.  Hosting Thanksgiving helped me start to get things organized, rearranged and cleaned up. I got the carpets cleaned on Monday, a little too close to Saturday for comfort, but they look amazing! Once they were dry Tuesday, we I started decorating and I'm really pleased with how it all turned out.   

Diane and I continue to work on finding the right balance of sweets and savories with the menu.  For the 20+ years she did this in GR's hometown, the ladies only wanted sweets.  Here there is a totally different mentality ... they want savories and only suppliment with sweets.  So I'm now only making one or two sweets, and leaving the rest to her, since that is still where her passion is.  This year we both cut back on the sweets (this is all I put out - huge success by the way - the rest in in the freezer waiting for another occassion) and pumped up the savories.  I fell a bit short on the savory end, so notes for next year::  make two spinach artichoke dips, 3 dozen turkey florentines is not enough - shoot for 6, we should probably have 3lbs of shrimp.  Two wild rice cassroles and three egg casseroles was perfect.  

We had beautiful weather this year, allowing many of our friends to attend. I think we estimated over 50 women came, and they came steddily throughout the morning and lingering well past 11 - love that! The last couple of years preparing for the brunch as been more stress than fun and excitement. I always enjoy it in the end, but after last year I was seriously questioning if it was worth the stress and output. Thankfully, this year was easier ... still a lot of work, but easier on both me and Diane. We made the event more manageable and asked for more stretegic help and I think it really helped reduce my stress level. So thankfully I think we're both really looking forward to next year!