Art Institute

I just finished my 5 day "Art Institute" for teachers. I justified taking the class to my district (who paid for it) by saying that it was a great way to teach language to kids through visual means. But really, the reason I wanted to take the class was to help develop Cal's artistic talents. I hope I can help Cal with (what seems to be) some of his natural gifts. But many projects we did were too advanced for a preschool aged child.

Here is a sampler of our projects based on the scrapbooking I did.

After the first day of class, I came home and excitedly shared my "Struggling Artist Masterpiece" with the family. The idea is to fill a big paper with beautiful designs that "cannot be named". But you are only given 3 colors: yellow, magenta, cyan. Our problem at home was that our yellow had deteriorated since buying it last December, so we only used 2 of the primary colors.


After the second day's class, I rushed to the store to buy some new yellow paint. I had the kids make "Handprint color wheels". Then they used their rainbow colored hands to create their own masterpieces.




This project was called "Writing in the Sand with Sticks: Inspired by the Estuary". We used sticks with cloths wrapped around the ends and dipped them into thinned black paint. We designed sand, rocks, and water lines through the middle. Then the group chose a few oil pastel colors to stream throughout the entire middle section (the water). The rocks and sand were filled in with pastels with no consistency for pattern or colors.


I taught Cal how to make orange from magenta and yellow. We covered several sheets of paper with gorgeous colors. Hopefully, we'll use this colored paper later for some other project.

"Observational Drawing". My sketch (top center) was a cross section of an onion, maximized. Other people's drawings are also included on this collage.


The "Mask Project" was incredible. Although I wasn't thrilled with my end result compared to others (mine is at the top), it was an amazing process starting with painting all of the papers beautiful colors, and then eventually cutting those papers up to make these crazy 3-D masks.

Facebook rocks!

My college friend invited me to sign up with "Facebook". Since I never need an excuse to be on the computer (ha! ha!) I signed up and started finding "friends" right away. Among people that I found included a classmate from high school that I hadn't heard from for 14 years, and a friend from college, that I hadn't heard from in about 7 years. The college friend, Peter, is spending this summer about 3 hours drive from here. We offered to come visit sometime this summer, and with only 2 days notice, ended up driving up Friday afternoon and returning Saturday night.

Although we were only there for 24 hours, it was so great to meet up with him again. We met his wife and his THREE kids! Wow! They are all gorgeous and brilliant. I hope we can keep in contact with them! :)

Cal and Peter's 2 oldest kids at the beach


Cal and Peter's oldest. They are very close in age and got along very well :)

Cal's party

Cal had another fun party this year. I really do enjoy planning these (although thank goodness I only have 2 kids to plan for!). My cousin told me how she paid someone else to take care of her son's entire party and I wondered, "What's the fun in that?"

We had a "Cars" themed party. I made a race-track cake (and decorated with MatchBox "Cars" characters, much to Cal's delight). I created 2 box racing cars for a game. We also had a bunch of race car themed rubber duckies that the kids tried to ring inside a wading pool.

Cal was a shy, whiner throughout the beginning of the event. He was surrounded by his friends, but he just wanted presents and cake. Lissi did very well. Overall, I think people had a good time.

Cal was in the first heat of the race. Unfortunately, I wasn't moving very fast and could only get a picture of his back.


Cal interfered with subsequent heats by riding his new no-pedals bike (our gift to him) up and down the race track.


Lissi raced herself (and did a great job!).


By cake time, Cal was finally willing to smile :)

Time at the beach

We spent an amazing 3 days at the beach! The beach here is usually cloudy, cold, and windy. After one day of wind, however, we had lots of sun and a perfect time! We are currently recruiting others to rent this home with us (it has 4 bedrooms) so that we can go back soon!

The day we arrived was Cal's 4th birthday. We mentioned this at the lunch restaurant and they put a candle in his noodles :)



Cal used to hate the feeling of sand on his feet. He's doing much better now.


Super boy racing through the water


The kids and grandma


One of my new favorite family pictures. Click on the picture to enlarge and see the kids hilarious (and fairly typical) expressions

Inspired? Cursed? Drip-irrigation system

I'm not sure if I was inspired or cursed when watching my brother-in-law set up a drip watering system in his yard. I watched him and asked a few questions. Looked easy enough. I loved the idea of spending less time watering my plants, and conserving some water as well. So the day after returning from our vacation, I ventured to Home Depot. The first of many trips.

Now, after about a week of working for hours, spending a few hundred dollars (ouch!), recruiting Wink to help, hurting my hards and shoulders, making Wink bleed in various places on his hands, and multiple trips to HD, I have a new watering system for the yard. Much to my chagrin, some of the connectors between hoses leak in a high pressure spraying way. The sound of that leaking grates on me like fingernails on a chalk-board, since this was supposed to be a water SAVING venture.

I'm trying to hide all the tubing (since this is an above the ground system), with only minimal luck. Maybe next year I'll buy bark dust and cover the tubing over :)

Grandma and the heat

My mom came to visit (hurray!). She arrived during a heat wave of 100 degrees. Since we do not have Air Conditioning, we decided to visit a park with a water spray and shallow pool. The kids had a great time splashing and running through the water. I thoroughly enjoyed it until I took off my shoes for 2 minutes to walk with Lissi in the water and then jumped out to take a movie of Cal. I stepped on a bee and spent the next 24 hours hobbling around on the other foot.



Wink got to spend an hour engaged his one of his favorite activities: thinking in the sun!

Passport finally arrived!

3.5 months after applying, Lissi's passport arrived in the mail today! Hurray!!! Her greencard (that caused us much anguish when getting ready to pick up her Certificate of Citizenship) was also returned to us, so we can keep that in the scrapbook.

It's hard to believe but we only have ONE more paperwork trip to make for the kids! We need to get Lissi's Social Security number and card, and change Cal's social security status to "citizen" (because the different government agencies apparently don't have a central communication system immediately changing one's citizenship status).

Videos from vacation

Thanks to Phoenix's great swimming modeling skills, Cal got over his initial fears and became a master kicker around the pool! It took him 5 days to work up the courage to try this. I was soooooo proud (and I think he was too!)!!!


We went to a "bounce area" fun place. Cal was in absolute heaven bouncing around. After initial terror, Lissi also decided that she loved the huge slide. I had a lot of fun until skinning up my knee (never go down a nylon slide on your stomach!!) and hurting a tendon in my thigh doing the obstacle course...)

Back from vacation--tons of pictures!

We just got back from a 10 day vacation to California and Nevada to visit family (and friends!). We had a great time. There are so many pictures that these are just the highlights:

Taking a rest from the heat at Gilroy Gardens


The steam train at Tilden Park (this was GREAT fun for Cal!)



Discovering that Lissi LOVES cherries:


We took the ferry boat to Pier 39. The whole family modeled tons of silly hats at the hat store. This one was our favorite:


The kids had so much fun with grandma.


Lissi had a reunion with her old roommate from Korea-- Eun Suk. What a treat!


The kids swam every single day in their grandparents warm pool. By the end of our vacation, they both felt much more comfortable in the water.



Cal's 1st cavity was found :( And grandma had to give him his first filling. He did amazing!!! No novicane and no tears!


We swam with friend Phoenix one evening. Cal was obviously impressed with Phoenix's comfort in the water, because the next day Cal tried a bunch of kicking and swimming skills that he had been previously unwilling to attempt.


We met Wink's grandfather (he's 97!!!) for Dim Sum. Unfortunetly, we don't speak Chinese, his English is very limited, and he forgot to wear his hearing aids. But I think he enjoyed seeing the kids all the same. Lissi slept through the entire lunch.


We went to the Bay Discovery Museum, located right next to the Golden Gate Bridge!


We had a ton of fun visiting cousin Theo (and my cousins!) in Sacramento. Here Cal and Theo are flying their Red Baron plane. Much to Cal's disappointment, they were not strong enough to pull the lever to make the plane rise and fall during the ride.


Our trip ended with a weekend in Nevada to visit Auntie Celeste and Uncle Marc. It was VERY hot but great fun. Cal learned how to rock climb (hee hee!) while Lissi enjoyed the water. Cal loved their hot tub and insisted on a daily swim. I, meanwhile, got very sunburned from sitting in a hot tub at 2pm daily for 1+ hours in the dessert sun!



If you can believe it, these are just a small percentage of the photos on our photoweb site! Check that out to see the rest.

Dancing King

Make sure to turn up the volume to hear the music.

When preschoolers try to head-bang:


Grocery bag dance???

Learning her ABCs

SUMMER TIME!

First day of summer break has arrived!!!! Huzzah!!!!!!

Certificate of Citizenship

I had several difficulties after getting our Certificate of Citizenship notice last week. The first was that we were supposed to be at the Immigration Office on the afternoon of my last day of work. The "clean-up" day for teachers. It seemed like a very suspicious afternoon to take "sick time" and I couldn't afford to take the time non-paid. The second difficulty arose the night before the appointment when I could not find Lissi's Alien Registration Card, which was to be surrended at the appointment.

After learning that many other friends were getting their COCs at the same time... I begged my principal to let me off for a few hours on the last day of work. She let me go on the priviso that I make up the time. Since my room had been cleaned and my paperwork finished already, she was essentially asking me to make up the time surfing the internet and making things for Cal's birthday party.

We arrived at the Immigration Office and were told to go straight up to the desk because they had just called for "everyone who doesn't have a green card". We brought Lissi's Korean passport, adoption paperwork, US passport application proof, and everything else we could find. The person at the table looked at them quizically wondering why we were presenting all this paperwork. She didn't want any of it. We said that we didn't have a green card because we sent it in to the passport office 3 months ago when applying for her passport. The employee doubted that we would get the green card back from the passport office. She had us sign the Certificate of Citizenship and we were finished! Immediately after, everyone else was asked to line up. So even though we didn't have the important Alien Registration Card, we lucked out and got served first!

The entire process from leaving work to returning to work was less than one hour and forty-five minutes. Had I said nothing to my principal, she probably would have never even known that I was gone!

At the Immigration Office. Our family of US citizens!


Photo shoot outside:

Toddler Rules of Possession

1. If I like it, it's mine.
2. If it's in my hand, it's mine.
3. If I can take it from you, it's mine.
4. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.
5. If it's mine, it must NEVER appear to be yours in anyway.
6. If I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
7. If it looks just like mine, it is mine.
8. If I saw it first, it's mine.
9. If you are playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine.
10. If it's broken, it's yours.

I thought of this list this morning as I heard Lissi in the other room saying, "My hippo. My blankie. My hippo. My blankie....." There was no one in the room to hear her. She seemed to just be reassuring herself! :)

Celebrating my birthday

We celebrated a little early at the Cheesecake Factory (it brings back great memories of Rhode Island) for lunch. Then I had fun spending some birthday money at Sephora and Macy's! :) I don't look any older, do I?

Don't rain on my parade!

We've looked forward to this parage for the last year. Finally the day arrives with a forecast of possible rain. What started as a few drips when we got into the car became quite the rain storm. The friends we were supposed to meet bailed on us, but forgot to call. Wink forgot to bring a coat or hat (doesn't he look great in Cal's hat!). Cal insisted on wearing his soft soled shoes. Both kids refused to be in the stroller with a nice rain cover, and instead wanted to be held. Ah well.... at least we weren't the poor soles IN the parade!!!

A few movies

This is a movie from April that I finally got loaded up. Lissi has learned to do fake snoring and pretends that she is sleeping from time to time :)


Another one from last weekend (when she was so sick) showing her contagious laughter and adorable little voice

Job hazards

One of my biggest job hazards is getting spit in the face unintentionally (or occasionally intentionally). Kind of ironic that I always told people I never wanted to be a dentist like my mom because I didn't want to work in people's mouths!

I mentioned this to a nurse at my annual blood-borne pathogens training last year. I was concerned because she said that every time an employee gets spit in their eye(s) they should flush out their eyes for 5 minutes. To me, that meant my entire day would be spent flushing out my eyes. Now thanks to me, everyone with a similar job description to myself has snazzy dazzy goggles to wear. If you think the picture to the left looks great, you should see them on!

I was not wearing my glasses on Wednesday when working with two of my students who are more likely to spit. I was right in their faces trying to get their to talk. Fast forward 10 minutes later when I am about to begin circle time and one of the girls starts projectile vomiting towards me. 5 minutes later another student in the class starts projectile vomiting. The teachers determined that 4/5 of that special ed bus had come down with a very sudden stomach bug. As far as I was concerned I was next in line.

I had a break an hour later and so I rushed home to take a shower and change my clothes. I really got some flack for that ;) I felt sickish all evening, but it was probably psycho-somatic. Today vomiter #2 came back to school only to have diarrhea in his pants not one, not two, but THREE times! Yahoo. I can only pray I don't get this bug. Or the family (since they came to that classroom to visit me today!).....

Best daddy ever

goes to THIS daddy!!!! :)

She's so beautiful that....

it's hard to believe she had a temperature of 103-104! I thought she was just hot because it was such a warm day....

It's beginning to feel a lot like summer...

Possibly, Cal was concerned about his tan line and decide to sun himself in the buff.

Carnival

My school's annual cartival was a great hit with the kids. I was in charge of the "Pastry Walk" (aka the traditional "Cake Walk" with Hostess cupcake type prizes). But I got some relief for 45 minutes to do games with the kids. Wink showed up late and was also able to take the kids around for about 45 minutes. Cal had so much fun with the mega-slide, the "duck pond", and sitting in the cars out front (vintage car and Police car). It was so fun to see that he was old enough to really enjoy the activities this year :)