Furloughcation

A couple days early, this Valentine-y sunrise was the first thing we saw this morning (with a Pop Tart being a close second)

TICKET TAKERS: This morning we got an email notifying us that our tickets to a Disney Resort were ready to be claimed. Yee haw! We earned them last Saturday during our Earth Corps work crew gig at Golden Gardens park.

I printed up the passes and presented them to CeeJ and Bee who were thrilled! You would have thought it was the golden ticket inside a Wonka bar!

MORE MUSIC: Since it is a furlough Friday in our home, Christian was able to go to Musikgarten with the kids. I'm told the kids demonstrated their budding glockenspiel talent during the parent participation part, and it is reported they played some percussion instrument that sounds like a frog. That's all I know. ...

MIXED BAG: Second grade workbook "Math Made Easy from Dorling Kindersley. Doubling, counting by 2s, 3s, 5s, and 10s, ordering, dimensions, fractions and some neat sheets on symmetry.

Before they started the symmetry sheets, we reviewed the concept. I used their faces as examples, noting that if we drew a line from their chin to their hair, the left and right sides of their faces are (mostly) symmetrical. However, if we drew our line from ear to ear, the top and bottom parts of their faces are nowhere near symmetrical - imagine, you'd need eyes on your chin and a mouth on your forehead! That made them laugh.

As they were trying to figure out if an object was symmetrical or trying to draw the second half of a symmetrical object, they were definitely helped by a reflective rectangle I had on hand just for that purpose.

DYNAMIC DUO: This afternoon, a new pair of superheroes debuted on the MPA campus, a CJ creation. They were Measure Man (wielding a steel tape) and Alien Girl (wearing jaunty baseball antennae). The two weren't very adventurous superheroes. Mostly they sat on the couch.

Later this afternoon CJ started laughing hysterically. I asked him what was so funny. He said, "Measure Man is a crappy superhero. All he does is count and measure things."

GAME TIME: Around noonish, Annabelle was reading The Magic School Bus Adventures in the Food Chain Coloring & Activity book. She came across a two-page spread titled "Scurry!" and asked if we could play a game. Of course!

In the game, you were supposed to be a mouse headed for home whilst trying not to get eaten by predators. Annabelle had the great idea to use the little plastic mice from Mouse Trap as our tokens. She beat me fair and square.

UP, UP & AWAY: Another nice surprise in my morning email was an enticing offer from LivingSocialDeals, a Web site/email list that offers one 50 percent-off promotion every day. Today's deal: Half off a helicopter tour of Seattle. Just $135 for three people. Oh hell yes, we're in. The flight starts at Boeing field and its path is over Elliott Bay, the Ballard Locks and Golden Gardens - all of our on-ground haunts! The kids were so excited when I told them about it.

So we'll be booking that soon - probably on a sunny Monday in the not-too-distant future.

SAY AHH: This afternoon the kids both had dentist appointments. Happily, we have found a wonderful place to go - Lakeview Kids Dentistry. A great office with excellent staff.
Because there is something really, really wrong with me, I thought it would be a great idea to show the kids the dentist scene from Little Shop of Horrors before their appointments.

Actually, it wasn't a bad thing to do at all (I swear!). The kids have both been to the dentist before and know their dentist is NOT like that. CJ was still singing the song 8 hours later. :)

MEANWHILE, SOMEWHERE UP IN SPACE: Backdropped by the blackness of space, Endeavour approached the International Space Station during STS-130 rendezvous and docking operations on its current mission. The Tranquility node can be seen in the shuttle's payload bay. Image Credit: NASA, photographed by the Expedition 22 crew

I'm Going Slightly Mad

MORNING UGLIES: Thursday morning means ballet and library. We had three DVDs due to take back to the library, so I asked CJ to go to his room and retrieve them. I might has well have asked him to rotate the tires on my car.

This task is something that should have taken him between 10 seconds and two minutes (max) to do. When there was no sign of him or a single DVD for three-plus minutes, I poked my head in the door to find him peering into the cabinet where we keep the DVDs. He's holding a Fisher Price flashlight and shining it in the general direction of the kids' DVDs. I repeated the list of things for him to find and I also turned the overhead light on for him (duh!) so he could actually see. He was less than an inch away from all three items.

Yeah, well 10 minutes later he was still empty-handed and I was extraordinarily annoyed (better known as pissed). He can read. He can see. He is very familiar with the three titles he was to find, they were literally in front of his face and he was (for whatever reason) completely incapable of finding them. And it was time to go to ballet/the library/the post office). Aaaargh!

I made CJ take the 20-high stack of DVDs out of the cabinet, spread them on the floor in front of him and presto! the DVDs magically appeared. I honestly don't know how long it would have taken him to do that on his own. Clearly, his mind was elsewhere and his heart wasn't in it. In the end, he felt bad and I was mad. And so started our day. ...

(ed. note - when Christian proofed this, as is our SOP he asked, "Why do you suppose CJ does that?" meaning sometimes shift into the "out there mode" when presented with an easy task like fetching DVDs. With time and distance from me being Super Annoyed, I immediately knew why. "It's because he saw all those movies and started thinking about them, and the sequels he wants to make for each one of them." If you've spent time with CJ you know that in his head he has a sequel for every movie he's seen and video game he's played. So tomorrow, I'm going to talk to CJ about what happened and get his post-mortem take on it.)

OUT, ABOUT: While Bee got her pink on in ballet, CJ and I strolled Magnolia, first to the library a few blocks north (where we did NOT check out any more DVDs) and then doubled back to the post office to the south.

We got in 45 minutes of brisk walking, so that's a good thing. And CJ got about 5 minutes of park time. He didn't seem to mind the rain at all - in fact, poor course conditions didn't deter him from trying to set "a new world's record" of crossing the playground equipment.

LIKE SAND THROUGH THE HOURGLASS: Yesterday I picked up an intriguing little tome called "The 60 Second Encyclopedia - The Most Amazing Things Ever Done in a Single Minute." It came with its own little hour (minute?) glass, which I just knew would entrance CJ. (I was right.)

We conducted a couple of tests to see how accurate the cheap little timer was. We compared it to the kitchen timer on the microwave and the stopwatch on my cell phone. Remarkably, the little sand contraption was within one second of being accurate.

The 5x5-inch, 306-page. graphic-rich book contains bite-sized stories about feats accomplished in 60 seconds. Subject matter ranges from garbage (41,667 plastic bottles get thrown away every minute) to hair growth (.000018 inches per minute, on average) to the rate of CD revolution (200-500 RPM). My favorite factoid: "When stadium sports fans 'do the wave' at a big game, the speed is nearly always 1,200 seats in a minute." Who knew?

It's a cool little book - entertaining and educational - and a great tool to help quantify things. Annabelle kept perusing it all day long.

MEASURING UP: In early afternoon, the kids practiced their measuring skills in preparation for a trip to Lowe's. We needed a whole bunch (a couple of hundred lineal feet) of trim and moulding for six windows in the new entry, as well as trim for the wood-paneled ceiling. Fortunately, CJ and Annabelle are veterans with a steel tape. We got all the measurements we needed within about 10 minutes. :)

FACEPLANT: The kids had another skating session this afternoon. I guess CJ was feeling a bit saucy today after his success yesterday, so he wasn't being as careful. As you might imagine, that resulted in him landing on his face on the floor (not sure how his hands were otherwise engaged and couldn't save him, but oh well). So he might be sporting a bruised cheek for a day or two.
BELLY UP TO THE BARS: This afternoon the kids got a little glockenspiel practice in. We went through a couple of exercises in their book, I let them have a few minutes of free-form composition and performance, and then I wanted to work with them and their rhythm (or lack thereof). I found an online metronome tool that's cool - I could easily adjust its tempo with precision.

CJ and Annabelle's tempo was less easy to adjust with precision. ;) Man oh man did they have a hard time getting the beat. They'd be just ahead of it or just behind it. Or way ahead of it or way behind it. That said, I realize they're new to the glockenspiels, so expecting them to play the thing with proper form and spot on rhythm at this point is completely unrealistic.

LIVE! FROM OUR LIVING ROOM: Tonight after dinner, CJ basically begged Christian to play "live action Castlevania Bloodstream" with him (Castlevania being an old school video game). In the middle of a fierce battle between the good guy, Simon (played by CJ), and the bad guy, Dracula (played by Christian), Simon went in for the kill.

"Simon gave Dracula a wedgie!" CJ declared with glee.

Silly me, I always thought garlic, sunlight and a wooden stake through the heart were the only ways to ward off Dracula. Who knew a simple schoolyard wedgie would do?

SWEET HEARTS: No doubt traditionally schooled kids will be getting massively sugared up on Friday, when classes will have their Valentine's Day festivities. But my poor "unschooled" children are denied this indulgence, so as a great alternative, Christian took them to the Community Center tonight for a community cookie decorating shindig.

And just to make sure they don't miss out, while they were at that event, I was whipping up some cookies for them to decorate at home tomorrow.

Calculating Kids

MY FUNNY VALENTINE: We started the morning by crafting some Valentines. For inspiration, we turned to a trusted source of ideas and inspiration: ActivityTV. Sure enough, we found a cute cartooning activity, turning the letter B into a "bee mine" valentine. After they finished that, they tried another project, this time a broken heart themed valentine.

The ActivityTV cartooning tutorials by Bruce Blitz are great. They break drawing a multi-step cartoon into bite sized pieces that are easy for the kids to follow along. (It helps that we can pause the video, too, so they don't feel pressured to keep up with the pro.) This type of activity is especially valuable for CJ, since he isn't one to draw just for the fun of it, but this approach allows him to produce something he's actually really proud of when all is said and done. (In fact, his work usually ends up resembling the teacher's example moreso than Annabelle's does, as CJ hangs on the teacher's every word and really works at following directions.
JUST WALKING IN THE RAIN: I had hoped to get our walk in before the rains came, but by the time we were buttoned up and ready to go at 11 a.m., it was drizzling. Oh well, that's what coats with hoods are for!

Before we headed out, I started singing and whistling "Just Walking in the Rain." Now there's a golden oldie (Johnnie Ray, 1956). If I'm not mistaken, I listened to that on a 78 RPM as a child. I found a YouTube clip of Ray performing the song and the kids got a kick out of it, largely because of the whistling. Annabelle sang it throughout the afternoon.

ROLLER BOOGIE: Late this afternoon Annabelle rediscovered her skates in a cupboard. She strapped 'em on and started clomping/skating around the house (one of the "advantages" of still having plywood floors is that I couldn't care less about them getting marked up).

Bee eventually coaxed CJ into strapping his skates on, too. "I'm nervous," he admitted, standing up stiff-legged. Annabelle reassured him that she'd hold his hand and keep him from falling down. :) As it turned out, Bee went down three or so times, while cautious CJ managed to stay upright for the duration of their rollerplay - about an hour.

YOU WANT SOME FRIES WITH THAT?: We hit Value Village today just for the fun of it. One of the items the kids homed in on in the toy section was a McDonald's branded toy cash register. Of course, the kids wanted to buy it and of course I did not.

"But it's a calculator," Annabelle pointed out, knowing I'd been looking at calculators in another aisle just moments before. (Somehow we are calculator-less in our home right now, other than the ones on our cell phone and computer, neither of which are very convenient when figuring out measurements, or for the kids to use while doing table work.)

"Look, 9 plus 4 equals 13!" Annabelle said, demoing the register.

"One hundred plus one equals 101," CJ chimed in. So, of course I caved (it's for the children's education!) and we are now the proud owners of a McDonald's cash register-slash-calculator. (Do you suppose I'll be the first person in the history of the U.S. doing her tax returns using a McDonald's cash register?)

That aside, the kids played with the register for a couple of hours this afternoon. They played McDonald's franchise, taking turns ordering and ringing up orders. And they also just used it as a calculator, having fun with multiples (like a regular calculator, it displays a running total, so they messed around with adding by 2s, 3s, 5s and so on).

NOUN v. VERB: Our language arts activity for the day was perusing a few games on the Scholastic Web site. The kids chose to play "Clean Up Your Grammar." Two recycling bins were on a beach, one labeled 'noun,' the other labeled 'verb.' Newspapers would pop up on the screen with a word on it and the player had to place it in the right receptacle. It was a good activity - we would be well served to spend more time talking about the parts of speech. (Time to break Schoolhouse Rock back out!)

FUNNY FACE: I got an email from someone named CJ that Annabelle's face is featured on the front page of his (or her) child delevopment Web site. It's a cute photo of her - she was trying to drink the sprinkler spray on a hot summer day.

Treasure Seekers

CONCENTRATE: Right out of the gate this morning, the kids and I played a "concentration" style game where you had to turn over (virtual) cards, but instead of matching two pictures, you had to match a picture with a word that describes it - for instances a thermometer and the word "temperature" or a measuring cup and the word "capacity." The game - along with dozens of others - was on the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Web site.

We also played a couple of games that are tie-ins to their first grade textbooks, but they were way too easy, so we bumped up to second grade, which was a bit more challenging. One of the exercises was a slideshow related to fire fighting. It showed a series of photos, and then would ask the kids for related ideas. For instance, a photo of a ladder truck was shown and the narrator said, "Working with your partner, talk about some of the things firefighters might use the ladder for."

I liked that it encouraged the kids to brainstorm ideas amongst themselves - and they worked nicely together. (Regarding the ladder, Annabelle suggested it might be to help them rescue pets stuck up trees, while CJ reasoned it could be used to rescue people on upper floors of burning buildings.)

TEAM GREEN: It was a gorgeous day outside and I decided we were going to get plenty of fresh air today. I'd been meaning to bushwhack the laurels, roses and blackberries that are trying to overtake the alley. I decided today would be the day, and figured with their Earth Corps work crew experience from Saturday, Bee and CeeJ would be big help on the project. Yeah, well, what I found interesting (and a tad irritating, actually) was that they were totally NOT into it and not really much help at all.

However, they did get in at least an hour's worth of good exercise (scooting, biking and running around) which has real value, and it seemed appropriate since Michelle Obama recently rolled out her campaign to battle childhood obesity. More exercise = a good thing!

GOIN' ON A TREASURE HUNT: In yesterday's Seattle Times, I read about a Seattle man who started hiding vouchers redeemable for a small ($25) amount of cash around town - sort of a random act of kindness thing. He posts clues on his Web site (SeattleTreasure.com). Checking it, we learned that a treasure was hidden right here in Magnolia!

Clearly, a treasure hunt had to be on today's to do list. The clues we had to work with were as follows:
Hint 01/26/10: Part of this neighborhood is named after a man who died sometime in the 1890's.
Hint 02/03/10: This Seattle neighborhood is isolated from the rest of Seattle, cut off by train tracks. (This is what cued me in to the fact that it had to be in our neighborhood, Magnolia)
Hint 02/06010: In a normal treasure hunt, "X" marks the spot. For this treasure, a piece of tape marks the Spot.
We were given this photo as a clue. We knew it would be in a public place, and clearly it was outside, so parks came to mind first and foremost. We started off at "our" park, Bayview, checking the perimeter of the concrete restroom. No dice. From there, we checked four other parks. No dice. We cruised through "The Village" ('downtown' Magnolia), looking for concrete walls meeting sidewalks. We saw those, but nothing like this.

And we checked the library. On the way to the library I told the kids, 'I think I know where it is. It's at the Ballard (Chittenden) Locks." There are tons of concrete walkways and walls there. So, we headed for the locks and within 10 seconds of leaving the car, I knew we were in the right place. These thingees (sidewalk lights, as it turned out) were located about every 30 feet or so along the walkway.

We excitedly made our way around the park, checking every one of these pathlights (around 50 in all, I suppose) that we found throughout the park. None of them had a piece of tape by them, as was the case in the picture. Frankly, I didn't really expect the tape to be there, given the lights are outdoors/in the elements and the first clue was more than a couple weeks old.

We know the park pretty well and I am confident we saw each light. I was a little less confident that Annabelle and CJ had given every one a thorough once over. ... We left the park with no treasure, but we felt pretty good about at least figuring out where the treasure was hidden.

We reported our findings to Christian when he got home and we decided to give it one last go (the locks are less than 5 minutes from our house). Photo clue in hand, this go round we found THE exact path light depicted in the clue, thanks to Christian who had the idea to look for a golden toned rock in the concrete wall to the right of the light that he spotted in the photo. We found that about 10 lights into our hunt this time.

Alas, the treasure was nowhere to be seen, but it was an educational, fun adventure nonetheless. (It's always great to visit the Locks - today the Victoria Clipper was passing through while we were searching.)

And now we have "the fever." We'll definitely check out other hunts featured on the SeattleTreasure Web site.

Golden Gardening

Image credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann

UP & AWAY: The first thing I did this morning was check to see if the Shuttle Endeavor launched and sure 'nough, it did! A day late, due to weather, but that's not a significant delay. With us set to head to Florida in May to see a launch, we're keeping close tabs on all the launches between now and then, hoping the schedule holds.

IN PLACE: This morning, it was back to workbooks. Today's tasks included some spelling and writing exercises, followed by math dealing with place values.

As a soundtrack, inspired by yesterday's truly super Super Bowl I played football-related tunes for the kids, including the College football on CBS, NFL on Fox, NFL on CBS themes.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN?: Visited the Web site of textbook giants Harcourt. There, we did a few of their online lessons. One lesson was about making inferences based on activity depicted in a drawing. Another was about drawing conclusions, where the kids were either shown a picture for which they had to infer what was happening or they were given a riddle to solve. Each time they got an answer right, they earned a star for their detective badge.

GREEN SCENE: We returned to our Monday field trip tradition today. Our destination: revisiting Golden Gardens, where we spent about 5 hours on Saturday as part of a volunteer Earth Corps work crew. This time the trip was for pleasure/leisure.

In addition to our work crew duty, we'd been there a couple of times before, but just to the beach right by the parking lot. Today, we ventured to parts of the (enormous) park we'd never seen before, including the northernmost part of the beach. There's, it's very much like being at a beach along the Pacific Ocean in Oregon or Washington. There's the same type of grasses and sand and even some small sand dunes. Down by the shore, the kids tossed rocks in the water and Christian tried to skip a few stones.

Next, we looped around to a marshy area with a pond full of colorful waterfowl and then we jogged all the way back to the southernmost part of the park, where there's a public fishing pier. Standing there, we could hear a sea lion barking.

Then it was into the car and we drove up to the upper park - where we planted trees and shrubs on Saturday. But before we went to inspect our handiwork, we let Kirby have her first experience ever in an off-leash dog park that's on Golden Garden grounds. While the bigger section of the park was full of huge canines, the small dog pen was empty, which I think was just as well since it was Kirby's first go round at a place like that.
Naturally, she was hap-hap-happy to tear around the place. The kids played tag with her, as well as hide and seek.

Finally, we took a hike to find some of our handiwork from Saturday. CJ and Annabelle were total troopers on Saturday. They stayed focused and really worked the entire time we were there.

Together, our family probably put around a dozen plants in the park ground on Saturday. It will be fun to revisit "our" plants in future trips to the park to see how they're growing.

Rubber Hits the Road

ALARMING START: Nothing like awaking in the pitch black to your spouse standing at the picture window yelling down at a man in the alley, "WHAT DO YOU WANT!?!" Ah yes, just another casual Friday around MPA.

Though I didn't hear the initial commotion, apparently at 5 a.m. a man began rapping on our basement door. He was trying to rouse us to tell us he found a cell phone (specifically Christian's cell phone) on our back stoop.

I'm thinking if spied a phone on someone's back porch, I would probably try to tuck it under the eaves (it was misting) but I probably wouldn't pound on their door at 5 a.m., unless their house was on fire. But hey, maybe the dude is just a LOT more helpful than me!

So Christian retrieved his wet phone, thanked the man, and put the phone in the oven (in hopes of reviving it - it was wet and DOA). And so started our day.

By 5:20, I was making cookies for a delivery later in the day. At 6 a.m. CJ stumbled out of his bedroom into the mostly dark house and asked, "Why are you making cookies in the middle of the night?!" :)

THE 'SPIEL: This morning at Musikgarten, the kids spent a lot of time getting to know their glockenspiel better. By the end, they were even (partially) accompanying one of the songs on their latest Musikgarten CD.

HIT THE ROAD, JACK: By 10:15 we were I-5 southbound, to drop off some boxes and Super Bowl cookies and for a whirlwind visit with G&G. The kids got in a couple of rounds of croquet, though tournament rules were definitely not in effect.
The car ride to and fro was filled with singing and creative storytelling on the kids' parts. We also played a few brain games, including hangman and the shopping list game. (You know, the first person says, "Kirby went to the store and bought hot dogs" and the second says, "Kirby went to the store and bought hot dogs and peanut butter" and with each turn, the list gets longer. I don't think we got past 5 or 6 items in all of our attempts.)

CRASH LANDING: Just before bedtime tonight, Annabelle was laying on her stomach on the top of the couch's back pretending she was an airplane. She apparently lost an engine or two and started shouting, "Mayday! Mayday! I'm going down!"

I asked her where she learned the term 'Mayday' and she said from watching cartoons. Then she asked me why people say Mayday.

Well crap, I don't know. For whatever reason, in my 44 years, I just never wondered why pilots or captains in distress say "mayday." But now I know. Apparently "mayday" is an anglicized version of the French m'aidez (help me).

I just asked Christian if he knew why people say "mayday." He replied, "Because of m'aidez or 'help me' in French." Now I feel even more lame.

WORK CREW: Tomorrow we're all scheduled for an Earth Corps work crew at Golden Gardens Park north of the Ballard neighborhood. We're scheduled to plant trees and pull weeds for four hours. In return, we're supposed to receive vouchers for free admission to a Disney theme park. If it pans out as advertised, that should save us around $320 when we visit Florida and Disney World in May. That's certainly worth four hours on a Saturday, plus it's good to get out and help improve the gem of a park we enjoy.

The Sky is Falling!

SUNNY MORNING: Not only did the sun rise this morning, you could actually see it! It streamed in through our eastward-facing windows.

I noticed I could see the kids' shadows behind them, on the front of our kitchen island, so I suggested they play shadow charades. They were totally down with that idea, and took several turns striking different poses. Two I caught with my camera were Annabelle's tree and CJ's elephant.

MUSIC TO MY EARS: Since the kids were up early enough, we had time for them to get in a jam session before ballet. I had them fetch and set up their glockenspeils and we reviewed the proper way to grasp the mallets and how they were to hold their arms while striking the notes.

They started in on a few drills and I ran upstairs to fetch something. It was so nice hearing the tinkling downstairs (and no, it wasn't Kirby making a puddle on the floor). I miss the days of having Rick and Ken around, providing live in live music on a regular basis. Here's hoping CJ and Annabelle will get as much enrichment and enjoyment out of music as their older brothers did.

SCHEDULE SHAKE UP: On Thursday mornings, our S.O.P. has been to drop Bee at ballet, then CJ and I walk to the Magnolia branch of the Seattle Public Libraries system, check out a bunch of DVDS, er-I mean books, and then walk back to the community center to collect Annabelle. Well that was B.B.C., or before budget cuts. In an effort to contain costs to match reduced revenue, the library system is cutting hours back at several branches, including Magnolia. So it doesn't open until 11 a.m. now, which is when Annabelle's lesson ends.

So today, CJ and I burned the clock by walking to Albertsons for Super Bowl cookie fixins, and then over to the post office. He even had 10 minutes or so to play in the park adjacent to the community center.

I guess the upside of the schedule change is that Annabelle will be able to join us for our library visits. Today, she and CJ read a small pile of big books together.

LITTLE CHICKEN: This afternoon the MPA student body and staff watched "Chicken Little." The movie we screened was an animated version from Disney, released in 2005. But before I hit the play button, we all talked about the age old fable, with roots reaching back to Aesop and beyond.

I asked the kids what would be wrong with going off half cocked, running around freaking out and yelling that the sky is falling? The kids generated a number of negatives to that scenario, including that you'd scare people, that people would think you're crazy, and that if it wasn't true, people would think you're a liar, and wouldn't believe you if it was true in the future, like The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

I was planning on the movie being background noise for me while I was working on a baking project, but I found myself actually watching and listening to it. The plot advanced at a good clip and the movie featured baseball and aliens, with music by the Barenaked Ladies, Elton John, and R.E.M. What's not to like?

Take away messages from the film: Every day is a new day; Communication between kids and parents is key; It's important to tell the truth. Good stuff.

SHORT STORY: Today's retelling is short and tomorrow's may be even shorter, as we're taking a road trip down to the 'Couve to deliver some goods and check out our old haunts.