A Boy & His Lion

Yesterday we had a scare with our little Lion, but we are happy to announce that he is safe and healthy now, with lots of life left in him!

It was time to go to bed, time for the same routine every night... Rychen: "Where's Lion?" Dad: "I'll go get him, you stay in bed!"

But then Dad didn't come back.

Lion was nowhere to be found.

Where did we last have him? We all looked. But no Lion. We made a deal to sleep without him while we parents kept looking. But he didn't turn up.

This morning as we were talking over where we last had him, it occured to us that Rychen had brought Lion shopping with us yesterday, but Lion didn't make it home. And then, "A-ha!" Must have been at the thrift store when we ran back to grab a puzzle, but ended up loading our arms full of random junk (such as a complete set of Dairy Queen BLAZERS collectible glasses from 1994!) instead, leaving our most Prized Possession behind!

So of course we had to trek all the way back to St. Paul's to find Lion. I had no idea what odds we had of finding him. I mean, you can't exactly call up a thrift store asking if anybody has turned in a well-worn stuffed animal. With our luck, Lion was probably tucked into a new kid's bed after fetching an unbeatable price.

Well then, I guess our luck has changed. Our sweet Lion was safe and sound, with all the other stuffed animals for sale.

Thank Goodness nobody else wants the filthy, stinky thing.

Hooray for DIY!

Seems like all I read on blogs nowadays is how people are having fun buying cheap, old furniture and refurbishing it! So Rychen and I are giving it a shot. Today I found a couple great bookshelves for $3. They didn't look half bad as-is, but I had the spectacular idea to paint them with our leftover accent paint from the kitchen! Now our living area looks so coordinating and cozy! We just need to get matching sheers for the front windows now.

This just shows the kitchen walls in the same paint color.

Finished product!! Now doesn't that just make you want to curl up and read a book?

Long Time Comin'

FINALLY I have a BEDROOM!!

That is, a room without children's beds or children's things, just MY THINGS!

My bedroom contains 5 things.

(1) a bed

(2) a closet with my clothes

(3) my nightstand with my books
(4) bookshelf with my books

(5) *new addition* my stamping table!!!!!!

We've also been mulling over where to put our school stuff, since workbooks and watermelon don't really mix. It took some tinkering around in our little 3-bedroom house. But now we've rearranged the computer room to be a home to Rychen P's work also. This works great--now we can both sit at our desks and I can help him as I am busy on the computer with my own projects.

(sorry, not yet cleaned up!)

Human Body Lesson & Art

We've been reading books about the human body lately. So when we were at Costco and I happened to spy these huge sheets of cardboard, did I hesitate? Nope! I didn't let the fact that I was already pushing a 170-lb. shopping cart stop me, neither the fact that we were all exhausted from our errands and Elisabeth was already crying. When you see an opportunity and catch a vision, you gotta snatch it up! Even if it means balancing these things on top of toilet paper and watermelons, all the way through the warehouse store, to the very end of the parking lot. You gotta do what you gotta do!

We traced both Rychen and Elisabeth. On Elisabeth's body, we drew organs, bones, muscles, and blood vessels, explaining each one.


...on Rychen's body, I told him he could do whatever he wanted.

Naturally, he chose to paint!

What a beautiful, colorful body! (you can tell he did the left side first and then got lazy. ha!)

...and check out these glittery fingernails!

Learning is so much fun!

Idiot

well I am a true, blue idiot. I am so foolish, I hurt myself again running and I have been too ashamed to even tell people. It's 100% my fault and I should have been smarter and avoided it, but I was too overzealous and eager to increase the mileage on my long runs - oh, and go from working out 2 days a week to 5 days a week, all at once!

the good news is, my knee is now completely healed, and my toenails aren't a problem anymore (and probably won't ever be again, now that they are dead). and so hopefully I will have a new left foot as good as new, 4 weeks from now. At that point I may decide to train for the Mesquite NV Marathon November 20th, or I may decide to never don my running apparel, ever ever again!

in the meantime I am a helpless bed addict and my children could really benefit from getting out of the house! thanks to a friend in the ward for lending me crutches to use when I do leave the house. but frankly I'd rather not.

(if you're re-considering trying to get into running, let me assure you that running is safe. however, not if you are an idiot and refuse to follow training schedules.)

Let's Go Shopping!

My kids just love going to the Gilbert House kids museum. Today was Elisabeth's first time. Her favorite things were the train set, the grocery store, and what we call the "Dance Room," which is a dark room with cool techno set-up where your silhouette (yes I had to spell check that weird word!) is dancing across a big screen...hard to explain, and impossible to photograph. Sorry! But here are the photos from the grocery store. Elisabeth and Rychen were pretty much racing their carts around the place. She had a lot of fun recognizing her fruits and saying her words (her vocabulary has really exploded lately!)

Wet!

Thanks goodness for water parks!!!! We really love the new N. River Road park here in Salem. The kids were shy for about 20 minutes but then got really soaked and didn't want to leave.

This picture is hilarious. I just now realized there is no water going on. Ha!! I didn't take a picture of the water. *doh*

Daily School

I'm so glad, I finally got a system set up for homeschool, and I've actually stuck with my intentions and got us all in the habit of it!

Right now we just do about one hour of structured time, first thing in the morning (after our runs and breakfast).

Rychen and Elisabeth sit at the table--Elisabeth with her coloring book and crayons; Rychen with his worksheets, scratch paper, reading book, and pencil. He gets a clipboard to keep his daily work on--this makes him excited to do each page and get it done.

Rychen has a daily checklist with a reward system. Each check is a point and if he does them all, he gets bonus points. He also has the option of doing extra work for additional bonus points, and then there are various games throughout the day for more points (e.g. in the car, he gets a point for every word he can recognize out the window).

For the summer, his daily list consists of: reading, math, handwriting, piano, housework job, exercise, Spanish/ASL, and teaching Elisabeth. If he gets all of these done, he gets 30 minutes of video/computer game time.

Meanwhile, we keep track of his points. At the end of the week he gets to "spend" his points at my Points Store--things like stickers, games, puzzles, and coupons for special outings or privileges. He enjoys doing school without the reward system, but I think it's fun, and it keeps us accountable (by reminding us to do the checklist).

So far it's been fun, and he's really happy to do it. This morning I told him to hurry up so he can get done, and he told me "I don't care if it takes a long time." ha! Okay then!

This set-up is pretty good... I am able to do my own activity sitting at the table, or kitchen housework, as long as I'm available to give directions and help. Elisabeth is really cooperative, which is a relief. In past months, we had to do school time during her nap. But now she enjoys being a part of it. She loves coloring, and then Rychen helps her learn her shapes, colors, and alphabet.