She is so my child!

Today I was cleaning off our counter. (That is the place that all our junk usually ends up like the mail, homework, etc.) I found two different sticky notes written by Ali with the same list on them. I am trying to gather up a group of girls Ali's age to play soccer in the spring. She has been making lists of the girls who have committed already. Not to mention lists of potential uniform colors and names. Here's the kicker. I started to get irritated because she is always leaving her papers laying around. Then I realized what they were and that I have the same darn list in my notebook! We are both always making lists. Grocery lists, things that need to get done lists, meals to make for the week lists, Christmas lists (you can guess whose list that is!), etc. We like to write everything down. We like to organize on paper (the organizing only goes as far as paper because we both have messy rooms). We like to doodle (she is a much better artist than me!). We like to plan things on paper (I swear that kid has her next 3 birthdays planned out!). Dave and Tanessa have both said that she is exactly like me but I never really thought about it until today. I guess it's time that I get her her own "list" notebook. Maybe at least then I won't find her lists all over the house!

Ali's Field Trip

Last Thursday, Ali and the rest of the third grade went on a field trip to the Nuui Cunni (?sp) Native American Center. They had lots of fun seeing how the different Indian tribes lived and all their different traditions.

They learned about the different plants that they used for food and medicine.

The kids learned a song and saw how they blessed the drum. The drum was very important to their culture.

They used a stone to ground the corn into flour.

This is them dancing the Bear Dance.

Watching a lady weave a basket out of reeds.

They finished off the day with a picnic lunch and some play time.

Left to Right: Samantha, Helania, and Ali

Ali had a lot of fun and she thought it was very interesting. Her favorite activities were playing the drum and singing (even though she was too shy to actually sing), and grounding the corn. She was bummed that Tayah was out of town and couldn't make it. She really missed her. She even brought her own camera to take pictures for her but then she was too embarrassed to use it!? I told her she could use my pictures!

Control freak........

out of necessity, that is! Sometimes I feel so guilty that I am such a control freak about my kids, my house, my life...... Then all it takes is a day like today and I realize that I have to be like that because if I weren't, things wouldn't get done. Or they just might fall apart! Since the kids had no school today and Dave got home from work this morning, I took the opportunity to go to Bakersfield all by MYSELF! I left my husband with only 2 instructions: 1)the kids each needed to read and 2)get Ali to dance at 4 and back home at 5. (I counted that as only one since I thought it was obvious if you drop her off, she must come home) So, I called home at 3:45 (I just couldn't resist!) and asked if Ali was getting ready for dance. Dave says,"Uh, yeah" then pulls the phone away and tells Ali to go get ready for dance. Good thing I called! Then I call his cell at 5:05 (Again, I just had to!) and ask him if he is picking Ali up. Again, he says, "uh, yeah". I wasn't convinced so I proceeded, "are you there right now?" He then tells me, "no, I was talking to your brother. I'm leaving right now." Hello?! He's already late! So today reminded me that my control issues are validated!! (Oh, and by the way, it should be no surprise that when I got home and asked the kids if they had read, they all replied, "oops! we forgot!" Need, I say more?

A trip down memory lane

Tanessa has 80's day at school today. Of course she tells me this last night which didn't leave much time to prepare. So I get up this morning and start searching the internet because that was a long time ago and I don't remember everything. But as soon as I see the pictures, it all starts coming back to me. OMG! Were we really that geeky? Now, the 80's were done by the time I finished jr. high, which made me pretty young. Here's what I remember......

Jelly shoes-ouch! Those things were not fun when the ground was hot but we wore them anyway

High top Reeboks-I made my dad search the whole mall with me until I found those royal blue ones, man was I in heaven!

Rolling our skinny stonewashed jeans and either putting our colorful (had to match every color in your outfit) slouch socks over them or up to the bottom of the roll. I remember wearing up to 3 colors of socks at a time!

Cutting the neck and sleeves and bottom off of all my sweatshirts for that "off the shoulder" look and wearing tank tops underneath.

Hair-high ponytails with colored scrunchies that matched my colored socks, side ponytails, or better yet, the "wings". My bangs would be teased straight up and the sides of my hair would be plastered with hairspray to make the "wings"

Make-up-I wasn't allowed to wear make-up until 7th grade......my first day of 7th grade I was wearing this hideous lime green skirt and matching shirt....and matching make-up! I am appalled that my mother let me leave the house looking like that. I had matching eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara in shades of blue, pink, purple, and green.

Mini-skirts-in spandex, none the less!

All my clothes were black or fluorescent

I listened to Madonna, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, U2, Bangles, Belinda Carlisle, Debbie Gibson, George Michael, Whitney Houston.....you get the idea.

I watched Family Ties,Small Wonder, Full House, Who's the Boss?, Silver Spoons, Punky Brewster, Growing Pains, Out of this World, Charles in Charge....

I had huge crushes on Michael J Fox, Scott Baio, Kirk Cameron

I wanted to be like Alyssa Milano (she even had a brother named Corey just like me)

The list could go on and on as you know....

Here's a cool site I found with a bunch of pictures and sayings

You were a kid in the 80's if....

http://www.b105.com.au/entertainment/galleries/80skid?selectedImage=5

So, all the reminiscing aside, this is what we came up with for Tanessa's 80's look this morning: notice the green eyeshadow?

Halloween 2008

Ali: Padame from Star Wars/ Spencer: Policeman/ Tanessa: gangster/spy girl(?)

The kids painting their baby pumpkins, which has become a tradition

The kids gutting their big pumpkins to carve........

Spencer was so disgusted to touch the guts that we had to threaten him so that I could get a picture. I really thought he might cry. The girls, on the other hand, loved getting their hands all gooey. They liked playing with theirs and mushing it between their fingers. What is wrong with this picture?

The actual carving turned into more of a daddy project. Spencer wanted a pirate skull with swords and Ali chose a stencil of a ghost. Both were hard to carve so dad ended up doing most of it. Tanessa's was pretty simple and she did hers all by herself. Except she let her brother and sister help a little since they didn't get to do much on their own. However, they were all very proud of their pumpkins! I had to leave to go to Bible study right when they were beginning to carve them so I told them to finish taking pictures. They went wild with the camera!

The finished products

The day started with Spencer's field trip to the high school to go trick-or-treating with his "big buddy". Their big buddies are high school home ec. students. Spencer's big buddy's name is Carla. They trick-or-treated at the high school classes then went back to the home ec. room and played games, had hot apple cider, and treats.

Left to right: Spencer and Trey; Spencer trick-or-treating at the high school; Spencer at the party in the home ec. room

It was a rainy day and the kids were supposed to do their "laps for learning" fundraiser. Marcie and I revolted because we didn't want our kids running in the mud at school. So we pulled them out and they went home and played. Then we worked the system and brought them back in the afternoon for their parties. Are we cheaters or what? We did feel a little guilty because we knew that we would let our kids go out in the rain that night or that we would let them play sports in the rain and mud. But I covered by saying that we wouldn't want them getting sick and not being able to play their sports the next day, right? Well, it sounded good at the time. Spencer and Trey's teacher revolted against "the walk" too, so they stayed at school for the whole day.

That night we went trick-or treating with the Marcie and her kids. We went out really early and my husband made fun of us the whole time but oh well. The kids still got lots of candy. Tanessa had gone with her dad, so it was just the younger ones.

Spencer and Ali

Ali and Tayah

Left to right: Spencer trick-or-treating; Ali,Tayah,and Trey trick-or-treating; Marcie and Jayda

After all this, we went with Marcie and kids to her church's trunk-or-treat. On the plus side, I got rid of all my candy I had bought. (usually, I end up eating it) But my kids brought home a TON of candy. (and I'm helping them eat theirs). On the way home, we went by my mom's house and got even more candy.....

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of anything after dark......but I did have my camera with me every step of the way, if that helps.

Other random pictures.....

Left to right: Spencer with his friend Brenna at the Kernville School harvest festival the week before Halloween; Ali and Spencer being bored and creative and making Halloween masks with whatever they could find at the time.

8th Grade Science Made Fun!

Well, I'm almost caught up. Going back to the beginning of October, Tanessa had a pretty cool 8th grade science project. They had to pick partners and build boats. Boats made out of only plastic bottles and duct tape. Any kind of plastic bottles would do. Her and her friend Jordyn paired up and spent about a total of 7 hours on this thing. They did the majority of it themselves. Tisha and I helped a little with the final duct tape wrapping. They used our neighbors pool for test runs. (Ours was a little too green) It took them 3 times of sinking it before it would finally float them. I'm still unclear about the whole concept of the project. Something about buoyancy...... But they had a ton of fun. They got to miss out on a day of classwork to go out to the Southfork pool and race their boats. The teacher gave out A's for boats that float, C's for boats that didn't float, and F's if the kids didn't do one at all. Nessa and Jordy may not have won the race but at least they walked away with an A!

Tanessa was leaning a little too far forward and took a lot of water in the face-funny!

The big switch

Jordyn on the home stretch

All in all, it was a really fun day........and I think they learned something too! At least I hope so.

First month of school

My kids had a really great first month (or 6 weeks, whatever) of school. At the end of September, they had their first awards assembly. Spencer got the Principal's Award for his kindergarten class. This was a big deal, since he went into this class late. His first teacher got moved to another position after the first 2 weeks of school. This award goes to the child with all around great behavior and academics. I have to admit, I am proud. I was worried how he would handle kindergarten but he is flying through!

On the same day, Ali got the Character Counts award. This award is for outstanding citizenship. She's my child I worry least about (when it comes to school, anyway) but we are always proud of her!

Then the same day, I went to the post office and received Tanessa's progress report. I was so excited to see that she had all A's and B's. I was extremely worried about her since this is her first year back to school after homeschooling for the past 2 1/2 years. I was sure that I failed her somehow so I was very relieved to find out that we didn't do so bad after all!

As a treat for my awesome kids, we went to Nelda's for shakes after school. I had this blog all planned out......take picture of Tanessa with progress report, take picture of all 3 with their achievements in hand, then take picture of them eating their ice cream. As you can tell, I slacked big time! I forgot my camera when we went for our treat and never got around to doing the other shots either. So, you'll just have to imagine all that this post could have been! :)

An apology for the terrible photos above. I can never get a good shot in that darn cafeteria....very frustrating. They need lights up on the stage or something. Maybe I should lodge a complaint.......