A Sleepover and a Festival

Oh how we celebrate the amount of time we're able to spend with our dear friends the Gilmores!  Though our last connection was with just their house and not them, we got another opportunity this weekend as their family headed north to participate in a children's book festival at Fairytale Town.  Since Dorina is a published and popular children's book author, Fairytale Town contacted her to come read her book and do a presentation during the 2 day festival celebrating children's lit.  And since our house is right in between her's and the festival, guess who got to have a super fun sleepover with their buddies this weekend?

It's not news that these four girls get along really well.  They play hard-- with lots of energy and imagination.  They stay occupied in their own world so well that we adults always have a nice long time to chat and catch up on the latest in our lives.  As all 4 girls cram into the bunk bed, the sleep does suffer, but the fun is so great that Ella is in tears the next night when she misses her beloved Meilani and Giada.

On Saturday, we together took the trip to one of our favorite places, Fairytale Town, to support Dorina and play with our pals on all the fun fairy tale themed playgrounds.

While we waited for Dorina's turn, we got to hear other authors and illustrators present their books.  Ella is on an "I'm gonna be an illustrator when I grow up" kick, so she especially enjoyed this.  In between each presentation were invitations for the kids to come on stage and dance.  Here our oldest get their Hokey Pokey on.

Dorina's presentation was great!  Her book, Cora Cooks Pancit, celebrates culture and families coming together in the kitchen, and lent itself well to questions about what kinds of foods the kids like to cook with their parents or who can demonstrate how to say "Thank you" in another language.  I loved that for each question about the book that Dorina asked the little listeners, my girls' hands were the first ones to shoot up!

The fun of the outing, the pride I have for my friend's writing and interacting with kids skills and even the wild sleepover were all great, but I think what I loved most about this visit was just the chance to get to know the Gilmore kids even better.  Giada was my buddy at Fairytale Town.  Meilani spent a good amount of time on my lap while authors read and blond Baby Zayla had us chasing her all over and rewarded us with 100 dimpled smiles and cuddles while we watched her during her parents' 9 mile run in the morning.

We're already looking forward to our next time with these friends and we trust that, with things like preaching assignments down south and children's book festivals up north, it will come sooner rather than later!

This Birthday Gets an A!

An A for Awesome day at Apple Hill, that is!  Because Delia has been learning about apples in kindergarten, because I worked super hard this week to get all my school stuff done and have today be totally off, because we've been racing through the apples that I buy from the grocery store and because apple donuts and apple dumplings sounded better to me than birthday cake, Apple Hill is where I requested my special day be spent.

It's taken us 5 years, but we may have finally figured out the right timing for Apple Hill.  Go on a Saturday in October and it's insanely busy.  Try to beat the crowds by going on weekday and everything is closed.  Today the crowds were minimal, everything was open and all the U-Picks were up and running with no weird weather this spring to knock them out, like in years past.  The girls have clear memories now and start asking as soon as we say the words "Apple Hill", "Can we get donuts?  Can we ride horses?  Can we sit on the swing?  Can we pet animals?  Can we pick apples?"

First stop: apple cider donuts and the porch swing.

 Second stop: alpaca and goat feeding and petting.

Third stop: apple picking!

Going on the early side of the season had just one potential drawback: not as many apples were ripe.  But, the place where we pick has such a wide variety that we still easily found 16 pounds of good ones to take home.  We know they're good because we have to sample each kind before it goes in the bucket.  I love this part of the day-- working together to reach the biggest and best apples and trading apples around with the exclamation, "Try THESE!".  Watching Ella figure out how to eat an apple with no front teeth was fun this year too! :)

Fourth stop: picnic lunch followed by dessert (again).

The nice thing about celebrating your birthday in Apple Hill is the guilt-free indulgence in all kinds of apple treats.  This caramel apple milkshake we all shared was as decadent and delicious as it looks and sounds!

Fifth stop: Horses!

We had to find some new horse buddies when our favorite pony-riding place was closed today.  Though they were at first disappointed that these were not the horses they look forward to riding all year, it doesn't take much to win the heart of Delia if you're an animal.  A fun name (Salsey), a ride and a time to pet you will pretty much do the trick.

Ella quickly bonded with her horse, Sassy, too.

So, I guess you'll be seeing this "How tall this fall?" picture again next year.  The girls know and love it too well, I don't think we can get away with NOT coming to Apple Hill each fall.  This year it was great to celebrate my birthday with this favorite fall tradition!

Twinkies!

("We're twinkies!" is what Delia says when she matches someone in some regard.  "We're both eating Life cereal, we're twinkies!" for example.  I think this must be another Mrs. H.ism!)

We've been in school for exactly one month now.  Hard to believe!  To celebrate the excellent start to the school year that we've had and to help remember the excellent summer that now seems so far away, I recently gave the girls some small gifts.  Delia got a little stuffed bald eagle that actually makes the eagle sounds we heard every day on our week in Washington.  And Ella and McKenna got matching American Girl Doll Seattle shirts that I found in the clearance of their extravagant website.  We're still happily plugging along in our new routines and lovin' life right now! :)

Delia's Applesauce Recipe

Life for the VMs is pretty much just work and school and school and work.  Assuming you don't want to read a post about which theory of language development in toddlers I espouse, or what's on the agenda for Dave's New Church Website Design Team, that leaves me to write about the cute things the girls are learning in school! :)

Delia's class has been working their way through a unit on apples and today participated in a big cooking project.  Delia was SO EXCITED about this that the entire ride home was spent relaying each detail to me. I found this so adorable, I just had to write it down.

Delia's Applesauce Recipe (in her own words)
1.  Take 100 apples.  Or 6.  Or 4.
2.  Make the skins of the apples be a slinky.
3.  Cut the apples with a knife that is not too sharp. You don't want to cut off your finger.
4..  Put the apples in the pot.
5.  Add 1 cup of water to the pot.
6.  Add 1 cup of brown sugar to the pot.
7.  (It is fun to snoop some sugar.  I took just a little clump, Ben took a huge fistful and then he went super crazy!)
8.  Add 1 spoonful of cinnamon to the pot.  The spoonful should not be just a crumb, it should be a pile.  If you spill a little cinnamon on your arm, like I did, your teacher may smile and say, "That's okay!  Try it!", but you will say "BLECHHHH!" when you lick it off and need to run to the drinking fountain.
9.  Put the pot in the fridgerator for 6 hours, or until you are back at school again.
10.  Cook the applesauce for 4 hours.
11.  Eat the applesauce with your class!!!
12.  Here are some things you shouldn't add to your applesauce: plums, peaches, grass and spiders.

I swear, this was just the way she reported it me!  Aside from the silliness, the recipe may actually be fairly accurate.  Anyone brave enough to try it?

Happy Trails

Because everyone has had a few years to get the reading thing down, 2nd grade is the year to fall in love with books.  The teachers recognize this and plan their reading units very thematically, with Friday often being a day to experience the story they've been studying all week.  This sure makes their books come to life and the students super excited!  This week, Ella's grade was looking at cowboy stories, so, of course, today was Cowboy and Cowgirl Day.  

The kids were encouraged to come dressed for the part, which Ella got totally into with the help of a friend.  The nice thing about having not just one, but three feed stores closer to your house than the mall is that we know legitimate cowboys and have access to lots and lots of cowgirl clothes!  One quick call got me a whole, huge, stuffed bag with multiple sparkly cowgirl shirts and bandannas in every color for Ella to choose from.

In case you missed it, this was the part of her outfit Ella was most excited about!  Our big bag of borrowed cowgirl clothes also had a total of THREE pairs of boots to pick from.  She chose these over the red and light pink pairs and felt like hot stuff struttin' around all day in them!

 I was asked to help with the Cowboy Day lunch, so it was super fun to get a peek at some of the 2nd graders' activities.  They rotated around three centers doing things like sitting in saddles while roping steer heads set up on hay bales, leading miniature ponies around a field and trying their hand at horseshoe tossing.

And man were these little cowboys and cowgirls ready for some grub after all that fun activity!  We ladled beans and tortilla chips onto tin plates with hot dogs for them.  Yeehaw!  What a fun day!

The Smile of a Second Grader

Remember when Ella had a whole mouth full of perfectly lined up, sweet, little baby teeth?  And remember how desperate she was to join her classmates in the stage of losing those teeth?  Well, those days are long gone!  Yesterday, Ella's smiled changed once again when tooth number 4 came out.  This tooth was a real stinker.  Despite days of wiggling and a few nights of fitful sleeping because it bled, hurt and felt weird, it would NOT COME OUT.  

Then during story time at school, it finally gave up and fell out.  Ella was sooo excited to be the first in her class to lose a tooth at school.  When we met her at the the bus stop, she bounded out, beaming her new smile and waving her little baggie.

The tooth fairy did visit last night, leaving another dollar and tiny note exclaiming over the unique way Ella lost this tooth.  We just discovered that Michael's sells adorable and extremely cheap doll clothes that fit American Girl Dolls.  With her pouch full of tooth fairy dollars and my wallet full of 50% off coupons, Ella and I are going on a shopping date this afternoon! :)

How Online College Works

(If you're wondering.  If not, just breeze past this post!)

I'm 3 weeks into my first of 4 online college courses in Early Childhood Education.  I can say that I totally love being in this world of learning new things again and have found a schedule that's working well for me. Since the idea of "going to school through the computer" was so foreign to me at the start of this, I thought I'd write out what a typical weekly school schedule looks like, in case you're curious too.

Saturday/Sunday:  Read the first of 2 chapters in the text (usually 40-50 pages) and take notes on the Power Point for the chapter (about 30-40 slides).

Monday:  Read and take notes on the second of two chapters due in the week.

Tuesday:  Write and post a response to the professor's wrap-up from the previous week.  (All responses usually end up being about 1 to 2 pages and, to receive full credit, must include personal examples, citations from the text and evidence of a Christian Worldview supported with specific Bible verses.)  Write the first of 2 responses to the professor's essay questions from the week's text and notes.

Wednesday:  Write the second response to the professor's second question.  Reply to the responses of 2 classmates.

Thursday:. Take the 20 question, open book, multiple choice quiz on the chapters and notes.  Reply to the responses of 2 more classmates.

Friday  Reply to 2 more classmates (for a total of 6 classmate responses, spread across 3 days).  Begin research and a rough draft for paper due each weekend.

Saturday/Sunday:  Submit final draft of paper (usually about 4-5 pages.)  Begin reading next chapter and Power Point.

If I stick to this schedule, I find I am able to have my class work interfere very little with my job of wife and mom.  I am mostly able to get these things done in my 4 quiet hours each morning.  Then on weekends, Dave is here and I am able to read and write while the kids play or have their own quiet time.  This class is comparable to a part-time job-- it seems to require at least 20 hours a week.  But everything that is submitted is graded on a completely objective rubric of points.  If you put the work in, you see good results and so far I am rocking a near-perfect score (missed 2 points on this week's quiz-- grrr!).  We'll see what adjustments become necessary once mornings start filling up with things like Bible Study, which kicks off next week, or helping in the girls' classrooms.

So, there you go!  Everything you always wanted to know about taking an online college course!

Love this Girl!

Here's a post featuring the 3 most recent pictures of Delia that I just pulled off my camera.  They capture what my afternoons with her are like.

 One of Delia's favorite things to play with is the mermaid and animal bath toys.  Our busy school schedule doesn't leave as much time for long baths as Delia would like, though, so she has to just hop in the empty tub with her clothes on to play.  And when I try to take a picture of this silliness, she pulls out the "Chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool" pose.  For real.  That's what she calls it.  This may or may not have been influenced by a mom who grew up watching The Fresh Prince of Belair.  My Child Growth and Development class would call this "Passive Correlation."  Just FYI. :)

For Delia, no day is complete without a good, long swing.  And apparently the time she gets to spend doing this at recess is not enough.  At home, she finishes her lunch and immediately heads outside.  I'm thankful for the new swing set every single day as I see it get use every single day.

Yesterday we had some bizarre weather!  We've gotten the first rain of the season around this time before, but yesterday THUNDER accompanied it!  A rare CA thunderstorm is always a huge thrill for me since thunderstorms are one of the main things I miss about the Midwest (okay, also family and good pizza and people who pronounce the word "almond" correctly!).  Delia was scared about the first few claps, but then the desire to dance in the rain with her umbrella won.  

Labor Day

Along with Thanksgiving Dinner, Labor Day Breakfast is probably my favorite meal of the entire year.  After taking a few years off, we were thrilled that Anna Jean brought back this beloved tradition!  A huge crowd of VMs meet at Ed and Anna Jean's dairy for a full day of fun.  We each bring a breakfast dish to contribute to the pot-luck style feast.  We eat a little later and the food stays out for a while, so this meal works as both breakfast and lunch, especially since we pile our plates mile high with Dutch pancakes, French toast, egg casseroles, sausage, bacon, cinnamon rolls and fresh fruit!

With stuffed bellies, the rest of the day is spend having fun on the farm.  We watch the calves being fed their bottles, check out the mama pen to see if any new babies are being born, take walks up and down the aisles of cows and go for wagon and golf cart rides.  And, of course, there's tons of time to just sit in the shade and savor your cup of coffee or iced tea while chatting with church friends!

This winter Grandpa Ed had his antique firetruck refurbished, so he was more than happy to pull it out and show it off for rides around the country roads.  As soon as it rolled out, about 50 kid gleefully piled on!  Since we know Grandpa Ed's truck from our Christmas tradition of caroling on it, this crowd of kids thought it was hilarious to sing, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas!" while taking their ride on this summer day!

Our day ended with everyone changing into swimsuits and hopping in the pool.  Since Ella's teacher is a part of this big VM family, Ella thought it was funny that she spent her day off from school swimming with her teacher.  We're still excited about new school routines and the girls honestly prefer school to days off, but this Labor Day break was fantastic!  Now, back to work...

Turning Work into Play

It worked out just perfectly that the church calling Dave to preach for them this weekend was right near some great friends.  With the assignment to be down south anyway, we were happy to plan a day at Kings Canyon National Park with our good friends Phil, Teri, Beth, Allie and Nathan.  We think it's pretty cool that this is the 4th National Park we've seen this season.  While the parks we have already experienced have knock-you-down beautiful, stand-out features-- like Yosemite Falls, Mt. Rainier or Crater Lake, Kings Canyon's natural beauty is more subtle.  It is known for its towering giant sequoias, but some of our favorite sights were things like sheer walls of rocks, meadows of sweet-scented wildflowers or gurgling river rapids.

Our first stop with our friends was an easy hike around the Grant's Grove loop.  Here we saw lots of big trees.  One was sideways and hollow and we could walk through it.  In the middle it was as spacious as our living room!

It was neat to find this old cabin and dream about what it would have been like to live back in the day where things were so rustic.

Our hikes here at Kings Canyon were happy hikes because the kids were having so much fun playing together.   Their constant conversation and exploration of the surrounding area made me smile at how well these 5 just "click" and seem to love each other.

The center of the Grant's Grove Trail is the General Grant tree. At 40 feet across, it's the widest known tree in the world.

We ate a nice picnic lunch then drove down a very long and twisty road to the bottom of the canyon.  Here we took the 1.5 mile Zumwalt Meadow Trail.  This was awesome!  In about an hour's time we walked through every type of terrain.

This tree had caught fire and was mostly hollow all the way down to where the roots used to be underground.  Amazingly, it was still living and growing new branches at the top!

I loved hiking behind the kids, who had each found and named a walking stick and were telling each other pretend stories.

This was a full, but wonderful day!  When in the company of some of your favorite people and such gorgeous scenery, though, you can't really go wrong!

We were thankful to end our day at the home of some other good friends-- Dorina, Ericlee, Meilani, Giada and Zayla.  Though they were out of town, they were so gracious to open their house and let us crash after the long day.  Another ideal arrangement-- it took only a few minutes to drive to the church from their house.  Our few hours of worship this morning were another really nice part of this weekend.  We always enjoy the opportunity to see a new church and meet friendly new people.  It was a really good two days!