My Incomplete Home

For over two weeks I had various members of my family missing.  It started with Ella's week at Science Camp.  In our state, 6th grade is traditionally the year you go away for a week with your class to Science Camp.  Ella was so excited that the camp our school chooses for this is one at our beloved Mount Hermon.  She was not worried about feeling homesick at all in this familiar home-away-from-home.  Me on the other hand...

The only way to communicate with your kid is through good old fashioned letters.  Even though we knew she was going to have a fantastic time, it was very weird to kiss Ella goodbye and know it would be the longest we've ever gone without talking to her.  How blessed was I that the high school counselor of Ella's cabin was the daughter of  a good friend!   She hooked me up with a few texted pictures throughout the week, so I could at least see Ella smiling and having a blast.

Ella did love, love, love her week at Science Camp-- learning all sorts of fascinating things about the world God created, growing closer to her friends, and having lots of wacky camp fun.  About 20 minutes after we picked her up, we kissed Dave goodbye for his 8 day trip to Guatemala with a team from our church! 

  

While Dave was gone, we girls managed to balance life's responsibilities without him.  Delia had her big 4th/5th grade musical.  This year they performed a walk through history with the program American Voices.  There was an Elvis, a Big Bopper, an FDR, a Martin Luther King Jr., hippies, and more!  As a 4th grader, her role was in the choir, but new this year was putting the choir on the stage in patriotic costumes and giving them choreography to the songs they sang.  Singing and dancing is Delia's JAM and she loved everything that came with being a part of this fun production.  (And Dave was able to catch a matinee performance before he left.)

Dave's time in Guatemala was really awesome!  He's been on this trip several times now and he said what he enjoyed most was just seeing old friends.  As we send a team down every single year, the people in these rural communities are really learning that we care about them and can be depended upon.  And as we build relationships with and help equip our Guatemalan brothers and sisters with resources that can improve their quality of life, we are attracting the attention of higher up leaders.  Dave and his group were able to meet with mayors and government people and that was an honor too.  But, not as much of an honor as the love and gratitude the people heap upon our team members.  They were treated to a couple different cultural programs that the entire school worked hard to put on just for our team.

  

For over 2 weeks my little family was not whole and that was an unsettling feeling.  I know the experiences both Ella and Dave had were valuable, but I was so happy to hug everyone "Hello!" and have us all back under the same roof.

A Different Look this Almond Blossom

It finally happened.  This year the girls, Ella specifically, tactfully informed me that they were feeling a little too old for our annual posing in the almond blossoms.  Wanting to respect their feelings, I decided that I have perfect peace in the years and years of beautiful pictures I have of my girls frolicking in the blooms.  So, you won't be seeing any of those this year.  At this year's parade, the girls were also quick to take off and sit with their friends, leaving Dave and I on an odd curb-side date. ;) 

Alas, here is what my photographic memories of Almond Blossom 2017 will be: the girls with their friends at the carnival on $1 ride night.  I want to let them enjoy some independence in their social lives, but (along with the other parents of my girls' friends), am not quite ready to set them completely free at a carnival, so a new tradition emerged.  Ella and Delia ran around with their groups of friends while I and the other parents followed a safe distance behind-- getting our own time to visit, but also able to keep an eye on them (and snap the occasional picture).

What a strange new world this is for us parents of middle/upper elementary kiddos! Sniff, sniff.  Weren't my babies JUST looking like this during Almond Blossom Season????

Loving Those Long Weekends

After the power came back on and the storms subsided, we still have a few days of freedom from school to make the most of!

One day I took the girls to the bouncy house place.  I was sure they were getting to old for this place, but they assured me they were not and spent several hours burning energy, perfecting new tricks, and making friends.  My Boomerang app is especially fun at the bouncy house place, but I won't post all 27 goofy videos we made. 

Another day of this long weekend, we especially wanted to take advantage of the post-storm, rain-cleaned air, and bright blue skies, so we took a hike around one of our favorite spots.  You know that "Hike 40 Miles in our 40th Year of Life" Goal?  Well, check 3 more miles off!

   

It was not a vacation or spectacular outing packed Presidents' Day Weekend, like we've enjoyed in the past.  But, between the friend sleepover, the day of living like Little House on the Prairie, the bouncy house place, and Knight's Ferry, we still managed to make it memorable.

Powerless!

Our President's Day long weekend kicked off with some real excitement!  We Californians, of mild, easy weather, endured a day of storms so fierce our lives were a bit turned upside down for day!  We were actually having a friend sleep over when the power line across the street went down and our power whooshed off for about 6 hours. 

 The girls embraced this adventure in powerless-ness, however, and turned my entire living room into a massive fort where they played "Children orphaned in the storm and fending for themselves."  (Why do they enjoy playing "Orphan" so much??? Do your kids do this?)

Eventually PG&E brought a whole caravan of rescue vehicles to our street and got our power up and running again...for about 2 hours.  Then ANOTHER power line was blown down in the wind and off clicked our power again, for 4 more hours.  This second downed line was actually sparking and sizzling, so we called the emergency line this time and eased the panic in our girls with a night of take-out food, candles, and cards by lantern-light.

In the end, we all survived our 10 hours of electricity-free living.  Two huge branches from our tree and about 20 roof shingles were not so lucky. :)

Valentines

Waaaay back, over a month ago, we enjoyed a break from the ordinary with a few special Valentines Day treats!

 Grandpa, who always spoils his girls on this day, sent a box full of  delicious and beautiful chocolate covered strawberries!

 The girls decided on Valentines for their friends that reflected their interests and personalities.  Delia gave everyone a cute little panda eraser, and Ella home made these awesome emoji Valentines!

And I was showered with chocolates, cards and Starbucks from my students.  Valentines Day was a little nuts for me, we had our classroom aide out sick with no sub and had to manage both the Valentines Day Party and a rainy, inside recess schedule.  Not a great combo in preschool. :)  But the day's frantic pace just made all those treats all the more enjoyed when I finally got home and put my feet up.

For Heather :)

When you get a text from your sister gently reminding you that you have not updated the blog in a while,  and when you find yourself unable to teach and under a 24 hour quarantine due to pink eye, you decide to sit down and finally let friends and family (who aren't on Instagram) know what's been happening in our lives the past month.  So, backing all the way up to Valentine's Day, here are the daily details.  For you, Sister!

Weekend Update

Here is what has been keeping our life busy for the past 3 weeks: school, church, homework, housekeeping, meetings, and a 3 day battle with influenza.  Luckily the list of things that have been keeping our weekends busy is slightly more interesting.

  

 As a culmination to our Signs of Winter unit in preschool, we have a big Hibernation Party.  We wear our jammies to school and make pancakes and read bedtime stories and learn about all the animals that hibernate.  After wearing my pajamas to work for 2 days straight, I had a craving for some breakfast for dinner, so Dave took us out.

 We also had a huge, bright moon one night, so we enjoyed getting some use out of Auntie Karen and Uncle Chris' present for the girls this year, a telescope.

One Saturday we went on a spectacular outing.  A nearby art museum was featuring a children's literature exhibit that was perfect for us.  We met many of our favorite book characters in their original art form and learned all sorts of interesting things about the illustrators who created them.  (Open this picture bigger to see No David, the pigeon who drove the bus, the mouse who ate the cookie, and a dinosaur saying goodnight...)

One of the best parts of the exhibit was the little library where every book featured could be read, with the artwork we'd just seen bookmarked!  It was so neat to compare the published version to the artists' rough or finished drafts on the wall!

 This illustration was probably our favorite-- Don Wood's King Bidgood in the bathtub.  We LOVE this book and seeing this picture in all of its glorious original detail and color was a treat.

 After the art museum we made a stop at the cheese place where we learned all about cheese making, watched the workers squishing the curds into blocks, and ate ice cream at the creamery.

One Sunday after church Jetta had the girls over for an afternoon of playing...which turned into a sleepover since we did not have school the next day.  It is a combination of weird and fantastic having  a quiet, clean, kid-free home for 24 hours.  I just love how much fun the girls have in the country, climbing dirt piles, building log cabins, and running around the pastures.

  

 The girls and I are involved in a church group for young ladies ages 4th-8th grade.  One weekend we had our biggest fundraiser of the year-- a whole-church soup supper.  I was on meatball duty and got to make 12 pounds (!!!) of meatballs for the soup.  It took 2 hours and I may have turned my children into vegetarians, but it was actually a super fun family time of singing and joking around as they were all gracious enough to help with this monster cooking project.  (And the fundraiser was really successful-- we can send all the girls in our church to camp for free now!)

 My sweet friend Amy, who is many wonderful things, including a talented sewer, volunteered to come over one Saturday and help Ella figure out the sewing machine she got for Christmas.  This took a few hours, but was a great time of learning for Ella.  She has made countless pillows and skirts for her American Girl doll since!

And this weekend I embarked on a mission to dig my vaccination record out of the tubs of childhood memories in our shed.  I was unsuccessful in finding anything about my immunizations, but I did unearth some golden memories that have been delighting the girls, including a stack of old paintings I did in a watercolor class, a small dish of the hardware that was actually in my broken arm, a high school journal chronicling the start of my relationship with Dave (pictured above), and a bunch of the Braille stuff my dad, who was blind, used to read and write (pictured below).

  

Seals and Star Fish and Sea Lemons-- Oh My!

Over this break, Dave and I told our girls a lot of stories about what Christmas Vacations looked like for us growing up in the Midwest.  Things like snow, sledding, ice skating, ski equipment for Christmas presents, going back to school wearing snow pants and boots, one year not going back to school for a whole extra week because one Snow Day after the next hit, were the norm.  Then I realized what kind of stories they might be telling their kids about what breaks from school looked like: hiking, wildlife sighting, National Parks, and the Pacific ocean, being their norm.  How awesome!

The Fitzgerald Marine Reserve has been on my list of places to check out for a while and over this break, we were finally able to cross it off.  Put it on your list too, friends!  It was one of the most unique landscapes we've explored.

We arrived at this piece of the coast around noon and, though I had read that an immense stretch of tide pools was the attraction here, all we found when we strolled up was a narrow strip of beach.  We walked down it for a bit, feeling a tad disappointed.  We did perk up when a dozen curious seals swam up to check us out and a Google check revealed that it was in fact high tide.

So, we ate our picnic lunch.  We watched the Marine Reserve's movie about all the wildlife that lives here, and we took a hike around the top of the bluffs.  Delia was not loving this cliff-hugging path, but Dave and I thought the views were amazing.  As we both turn 40 this year, we thought it would be cool if we could hike 40 miles as a family.  With this scenic path, we got 1 of those miles out of the way.

After just a few hours, the tide was already receding and the piece of coastline we had first walked up to was already looking pretty different.  We got to exploring!

We found the standard anemones, hermit crabs, giant crabs, and starfish.  And though we did not find the octopuses that the movie said are also somewhat common in this tide pool system, we did find the rare sea lemon (pictured above)!  Have you ever seen or heard of this?  We had not.  It's pretty much a bright yellow sea cucumber and it's super fun to pet!

The collage below shows 3 shots of almost the same area looking drastically different over the course of just 4 hours.  As the tide went from high to low, a whole world of underwater life became visible and it all happened right under our feet.

Since we were not far from the city. we went home on a path through it and made a stop at the SF Public Library.  I had heard that you only needed to be a CA resident to obtain a library card.  And once you held a card, you had access to this system's massive Kindle lending library.  All 4 of us got cards on this stop and have already been enjoying the luxury of nearly any book we've been wanting to read able to be delivered immediately to our devices, or put on a waiting list.  The SF library was something cool to see all by itself too.  With 5 floors, rotunda, and a children's section bigger than our town's entire library, we were amazed.  Definitely worth a stop next time you're in the city; just be prepared to see some colorful characters! :)

  

For our one big outing, we chose well.  This day was a real Christmas Break high point!