Moving On

It's the last few days of school and both F and I are approaching them with a mix of elation (summer, whoo hoo!) and melancholy.  It's been a fantastic school year, and we're incredibly lucky to have landed a perfect fit for school and teacher. W'll be sad to say goodbye to his wonderful teacher, Miss Harken, but will look forward to seeing her on the playground next year.

Snacking on watermelon during field day

indoor cart races at field day

We're both looking forward to a summer filled with days off, camps, a vacation, and swim team. Swim team has been way more fun than either of us expected, F asked if he could swim all year round....not sure I'm ready to commit us to that but we'll see! Last week he got to move into the lane with the 'big' kids and is now practicing with mostly 7 year olds.

F in blue jammers and shark cap. Moving on up!

This semester of piano wrapped up this week, recital will be next week. During our 'party' the kids got super goofy.  They bought these goggles with their practice tokens. Of course they sang through them and giggled like mad.

Add caption

On the very last day of school the kids were only in for a little over an hour so I stayed to help out. They reviewed and read their Kindergarten Memory Books and got to ask whatever they wanted about first grade.

Last time ever at the little tables

The longest recess of the year, topped off with popsicles

 After school let out a group of us went to lunch and to see the movie "Epic." It was a rowdy lunch, but these three best buddies enjoyed the time together.

Sacha, F, Matt. Friends Kaynush, Talon, and Brayden in the background.

 Thanks for a great year Miss Harken!

Summer Just Around the Bend

School is wrapping up, the end of year piano recital is a week after that, it's time to restain the deck, flowers are popping up left and right, and yesterday was the start of summer swim team.

It seems awfully early, but with the first summer season swim meet a little less than a month away it's time for the kids to hit the (chilly) water!

Yesterday was F's very first ever swim team practice.  He was crushed that it was dry land, but reported they'll be in the water tomorrow.  Here he is with his new 6 and under age group pals.

Go Holly Park Sharks!

Getting to the Hard Stuff

Most of Kindergarten has been a breeze for F.  He thrives in the social scene and he's learning how to deal with those days when someone calls him a poopy head or doesn't want to be his friend anymore. For a LONG time, however, he was reluctant to write much beyond his name.

His brilliant teacher deduced that there was a schism - F wanted to write eloquent, complicated essays but his budding writing/handwriting barred him from getting it down on paper the way he heard it in his head. He especially did not want to write if he knew he was spelling something wrong, which is par for the course with a 5 year old. She broke through to him and while writing isn't his favorite thing to practice he's getting much better at it.

In April the Kindergarten class hosted a Spring Open House. The kids served lemonade and cookies and showed us their art and writing projects. The books' only requirements were that that they had to be at least three sentences long and illustrated on every page.  His teacher and volunteer parents did the typing. Topics ranged from real life to really bizarre. One of F's was about a very happy family that turned out to be his family.  The other was, surprise surprise, about a gray kitty.

page 1 of the original manuscript

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Two completely unrelated, amazing things disappeared recently.

1. The Lunch Battle
Since my surgery F's been eating school lunches on the days he's at school for a full day.  While our school lunch program is decent, with a fairly "healthy" offering pretty much every day, they also offer a total kid meal every day.  There isn't one day a week when you can't get chicken nuggets, pizza, or a hot dog. It's hard for chef's salad, pasta, or teriyaki chicken bowl to compete with pizza.  While I was down for the count I think F ate pizza for about four meals in a row. When I bounced back I suggested that he think about which thing was the best for his body and pick that.

Today, for the first time since spring break, I managed to move fast enough in the morning to pack him a lunch.  I literally squealed with glee when it came home looking like this:

not a speck left!

Guess Mom's lunches are edible after all.  Perhaps this is the beginning of a long, healthy relationship with the lunch box.

2.  We took out the spruce tree that was taking over the front of our house.  Now, we LOVE our trees. They are all about 30 years old, huge, mature, beautiful but SO SO big. As soon as we moved in I had the 6 dead and dying Aspen trees cut down.  When the wind blew they'd knock the eaves and roof.  It was freaky.  A previous owner planted the two spruce in the front and they are stunning trees,  BUT HUGE.  We trim the one closest to the house twice a year. You can't tell from this angle, but when you'd look out our front window all you'd see was tree from 2/3 of the window.  It constantly bumps against the house and windows ( we've been trying to keep it hacked back).

The crew arrived just as F and I were headed out the door for school drop off.  We made sure they were working on the right tree and I dashed off to school.  When I came back 30 minutes later (must have time to chat with the other moms!) The tree was GONE. 

The guys hopped in their bucket and shaped the remaining blue spruce, it's a nice cone shape now and the twin tips at the top are gone.  Poor F missed the whole thing.  Luckily the stump remover came later in the day and F got to watch him grind the stump to nothing.

We see a lot more of the side of our neighbor's house now, our 3 year plan includes some large shrubs and a new smaller tree for the space.  We'll also put in a walkway from our back yard to the front.

On the surgery front I'm still pretty swollen (it's really hard to elevate your hip) and I'm barely limping. I still can't put all my weight on my right leg going up/down stairs.  It's getting stronger every day, but PT says it'll take a while to get it back.  I told her she's got until the start of ski season to get me up and kicking at 110%.

Still Alive and Kicking

Things are slowly getting back to normal here.  I'm still uber-tired and am in bed before 9pm every night, but I'm weaning myself off of the daily nap(s).  Last week I started driving again, like everything else it makes me tired. While FFM enjoyed riding to and from school with his buddies he's happy to have Mom back in the saddle again.  I still can't bend down to reach things on the floor and I will have to sit lounged back in my chair like a guy for another four weeks, but I can walk reasonably well, if not fast.  The nerves on the outside of my thigh are repairing themselves from the trauma of surgery so my leg feels like it raw and on fire most of the time, but it doesn't hurt to put weight on it.  It's not stable enough to hop around on, but I can take short walks in the neighborhood without too much trouble.

Other than putting my leg up and watching entire seasons of TV shows from the DVR and reading endless books I haven't done much of anything the past couple of weeks.  FFM is in class plays next week and he started getting nervous when he realized I hadn't started his Big Billy Goat Gruff costume. He's had enough on his mind lately so I started on it right away.

Since my excursions are limited, I looked around the house to see what we already had.  I used the same concept from his lion costume that we did a couple years ago.  Luckily I am very well stocked in yarn and we had a spare headband from St. Patrick's Day that I could cannibalize.

 I knit a tube and attached two ears to it.  Then I cut about a zillion 7" strips of various colors/textures of yarn and used a crochet hook to pull them through the knitting on the headband. I used about half a zillion twisted brown pipe cleaners to make the horns and a knitted triangle "pocket" for the chinny chin chin. If you're on Ravelry, find the pattern here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lion-mane-with-ears

FFM is in two plays (I think most of the kids are) and his second role is narrator for The Gingerbread Man.  Luckily this role requires no costume, but FFM dug out a sparkly gold top hat from his dress up bin to liven things up.

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2013

What a weekend we had around here!  It all started on Friday with the school celebration for St. Patrick's day.  Mysteriously several of the drop-off parents (ones who drive their kids to school vs. kids who ride the bus) were requested to come to the classroom for a few minutes after drop off.  Hmmm....

Turns out it wasn't anything sinister or disciplinary.  First both Kindergarten teachers were locked out of their rooms. None of the keys worked! So ALL of the Kindergarten kids squeezed into the office to ask the office staff if they had a key that worked.

Mrs. Flagg asking if anyone has a spare key

Once they finally got into the classroom the kids discovered (note FFM was the first one who squeezed through the door into the classroom, he was SO excited!) that the leprechauns had been up to some tricks!

It was 3rd grade buddy day and the kids had to clean up the mess before their buddies arrived. What a great way to get kids to clean up, if it's leprechaun mess it's a hoot to clean.

It was feeling like Spring on Friday so after school I took FFM and his buddy Talon to the Botanic Gardens to run and play. There's not much blooming yet, some great bulbs, but it's always a fantastic place for kids to run pell mell without worrying about losing them (or bothering anyone this time of year).

This was not as peaceful a scene as it appears. They were hollering at the giant dragonfly sculptures.

Who doesn't love digging in the dirt?

Saturday was gloomy and damp, but I had a baby shower to co-host so everything was pink and lively for me!

My friend Danielle is having a baby next month and her mom's friend offered to co-host a shower. I got to do all the decor, my favorite part, and then I got to eat all the food and yummy stuff Linda made.

The mother-to-be

Sunday FFM and I got up bright and early (there were some grumblings on both our parts) to see Dr. Scott of Dinosaur Train fame speak at the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. While we were enjoying the show FFM wiggled and wiggled his loose tooth.  All of a sudden he leapt out of his seat and said, "It's gone!" Of course I knew what he meant and we scrambled around our seats until we found the teeny tiny first ever lost tooth.  He's thrilled and constantly sticks his tongue in the gap.

sniff, sniff - another milestone under his belt

The fun doesn't stop there. We have season tickets to the Colorado Symphony and today was Carnival of the Animals and Peter and the Wolf.  We invited our friend Emma to go with us. Little did we know that FFM and his best pal Emma (who I've NEVER seen in a dress, and we see her a lot) would show up in matching outfits.

They're so grownup and tall!

Poor Emma must have been pooped, she dosed off during the Carnival section of the performance. FFM as usual sat on the edge of his seat the whole time.

Happy St. Patrick's day to all of you around the world, wherever you may be!

The Lunch Struggle

I loathe the days F eats lunch at school. He faithfully hauls the lunchbox he picked out, opens it, and then pokes at one of the three items I lovingly packed and puts it all back. A nearly entirely intact lunch returns to me at the end of the day. Plus, one grouchy, grumpy, tired kiddo who has low blood sugar and is taking it out on me.
During the winter break I decided to attack the lunch struggle with all available forces. I checked out lunch cookbooks, I read online articles about cute food, I purchased cute pokey things to stick into/onto food.

So cute! Wouldn't your lunch taste better with cool stick things stuck in it? Or these snazzy lunch box notes complete with stickers?

Before school started back up T and I sat down with kiddo and had a talk that went kind of like this,

"But I do eat my lunch!"

"Well, no, you don't. You bring it all home." 

"Sorry, I forgot."

ARGH! The I Forgot. No more cursed words could ever be found in a 5 year old's vocabulary. Yes, you can remember the name and number of every single ski lift on the mountain and exactly what color socks we all put on 17 days ago, but you forgot to eat your lunch.

I bought a cookbook and F and I went page by page and stuck flags on all the items he deemed good enough to eat. Now, this child is not a picky eater. He just has better things to do on his lunch hour than eat. I soldiered forth, stuck my fancy sticks, cut cool shapes out of bread with my cookie cutters, and I thought FOR SURE he would eat lunch. Nope.

Next conversation went like this,

"You may NOT go to all day kindergarten if you don't EAT YOUR LUNCH. You have one more day to show us that you can eat lunch before I cancel all day kindergarten FOREVER!!!! MWAH HA HA!" Ok, so maybe not quite so dramatic but you get the drift. F finally did, too.

Next day, the only thing left in his lunch was the stick I stuck in his wrap :)

February Fun

I'm always glad February is only 28 days long. It's not usually a banner month for me so having fewer days is fine and dandy. This year I've barely noticed it's February with all the good times we've had lately.

A few weeks ago FFM skied his first legitimate black run. For those locals, he skied Cataract on the east side of the Rose Bowl. It's a tricky run, but he was game. After a few nerves he got the hang of the steep stuff, which wasn't very bumpy due to a nice big dump of snow. He fell a few times and learned it's easier to get up on a steep slope than down on the flats. I can't wait to get my hip fixed, I'm going to need to be in top form to keep up in no time at all!

"Yeah, take my picture Dad. I rocked that run."

 FFM knows all about GNO, or girls' night out, and has been hankering for his own guys night out. It ended up being an afternoon, but he and Travis had their guys day out at MONSTER TRUCK JAM! I wanted to go, too, but thought they could go do their guy thing.

Ready for the show to start!

 Prior to the event I talked with FFM about what to expect. It was going to be loud, it might be "smoky" (exhaust), and he might want to take a break now and then from the noise and/or smell. This was of great concern to our young man who took it to heart and was planning how often he'd need to have a break. He really thought the show should pause periodically so he could take his breaks and not miss anything.

Little boy heaven

 Last week we made some Valentines to hand out at school. It's so much fun to choose a crafty idea together and have FFM execute almost all of it on his own.

 His Valentines = "I only have eyes for YOU Valentine!" complete with googly eye rings. We used up all the leftover eyes from his 100s day project and a couple more bags besides.

My end of February-March fun arrived in the mail this week. The Moores have signed up for a plot in our Community Garden this year and we're going to grow all kinds of yummy stuff. Purple carrots, yellow tomatoes, lime green cucumbers. I hope they all work! The plot ended up being about twice as large as I remembered, so we've got quite the assortment. We'll have some prep and planting to get done starting in a few weeks. Travis built a lovely, lovely seed starting station and soon our basement will bathe in the glow of grow lights.

In the meantime the mountains keep getting more snow and while my hip aches the boys are itching to get some time on the slopes. I'll take it easy the rest of the season and end a little early with hip surgery scheduled for March 29. I'm hoping it's as successful as my other surgeries and that I'll improve my mobility and get back into activities like biking and yoga.

100 Days

I'd never heard of 100 days until my friend Katie's daughter celebrated it at her school. If you're not familiar, school children start counting on their first day of school and when they get to 100 days (which is in about February for US schools) they have a big party, make projects using 100 things, and at our school there is an evening celebration where the kids present their projects to interested parents.



FFM picked his 100 days project and we got started on it a couple of weeks ago. He wanted a shirt with 100 eyeballs on it. He picked the shirt, the paint, and the eyeballs. Then he drew his alien monster on a piece of paper. It took a few tries to get one that had a big enough head to hold all the eyeballs. Then he counted and laid out all the eyeballs to make sure they fit.

waiting for the glow in the dark paint to dry

Finally, he spent about an hour gluing all the eyeballs on. Since it's an alien monster each antennae has 3 eyeballs and the rest are on it's regular head.

100 eyeballs, ready to go!

However, we then found out the project had to be left at school for a day. GASP! FFM was incredibly distraught. He did not want to wear a shirt and then have to leave it at school. His solution, make another project that he could easily leave. After bedtime one night Travis and I spent a while counting various kinds of toys he has. Turns out he's got EXACTLY 100 Matchbox sized cars. Thus began 100 days project #2. 

FFM helped Travis during display construction. He selected the layout, the handles, and did a lot of hammering. I suggested road tape for the sides and a project was born.

On the way to the party after school.  100 hat, 100 eyes, 100 cars in the car. The party was a lot of fun, it was in the evening so we got to meet and see parents (especially dads) that we don't often see at pickup times. I'm pretty sure FFM ran around the room 100 times meeting and greeting all his peeps.