Monthly Archives: September 2010

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At this moment

The girls have a friend over. This would be a completely happy thing if said friend wasn’t here because her house is, at this moment, being packed into a truck and everything being shipped to China, where she is moving. So sad for all of us. I mean, it’s a wonderful opportunity for her family, and they will have an amazing adventure, but we will miss them so much. Thank goodness for air mail, e-mail, and Skype.

The house is strewn with toys from a birthday/going away party we had here earlier for the same friend and 2 others who are also moving.  The mess isn’t as bad as it could be, as we did a decent amount of clean up during the party. We all had a great time- 10 kids, 3 moms, tea party lunch (with actual teacups, which were the hit of lunch), 2 different kinds of cupcakes, a “little kids table” for the littles, goodie bag presents from Hong Kong… it was pretty great. These kids really do get along so well, and it’s hard to think of having to find new little ones to fill back in our little group. I’m SO glad for my friends who AREN’T moving. :)

It’s stinkin’ hot outside. I’m VERY thankful for a house with air conditioning.

The girls are playing with prince and princess dolls and a Mustang and Mach 5 (from Speed Racer). The prince and princess are racing. This makes me happy. :)

There are red velvet cupcakes sitting on my counter, asking to be eaten. My beloved Valerie (who thankfully is NOT moving) is amazing.

I’m about to go post some new things on my other blog. Have you checked it out yet?

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Burn the Floor!

My sister and I got to go see Burn the Floor on Saturday, and my goodness, it was awesome. During the performance, I learned some things, which I will share with you now.

1. Pasha really is the gold standard when it comes to men’s ballroom. It was a little difficult to tell who people were on stage, but I could tell the instant he came out because he just holds his body in a certain way – his posture is ALWAYS on. And his arms are always exactly where they’re supposed to be. We’re talking exactly, every single time. You can tell that he was trained in Russia and they probably smacked him around if he got it wrong. The other male dancers were awesome, but his technique blew them out of the water.

2. No female should get on the stage with Anya. She’s so amazingly sexy that it’s kind of embarrassing for anyone else. Your eye just gravitates to her. And it’s not because she’s trying (take note, Ashleigh), I think it’s precisely because she’s NOT trying. And because she’s just so dang good at what she does, and she enjoys it so much.  ALTHOUGH, and this is a big although, I have to give Miss Anya huge credit, because she totally pulled it back when Mary Murphy was on the stage with her. There was a noticeable difference in the amount of wattage she was giving off. I thought it was very sweet.

Check out Anya and Pasha doing their thing:

History Repeating

The Dirty Boogie

3. The rumba is NOT improved by adding 4 men and a blindfold. But don’t take MY word for it.

Stupid Rumba

4. The rumba IS improved (not surprisingly) by the addition of Anya and Pasha.

Actually a good rumba (That’s kind of an oxymoron, but what can you do?)

5. On the other hand, the quickstep IS improved by adding 3 girls. (Who knew?)

6. When you have Anya and Pasha in the cast, having Ryan and Ashleigh do the Paso instead is kind of mean. Well, really, having ANYONE else do it is kind of mean. But you’re kind of stuck, because if you have them do the Paso along side anyone else, the other people are going to look bad, and if you don’t have them do the Paso, everyone is going to be comparing the performance to what P&A would have done.  And I understand that they couldn’t do the Paso because their rumba was directly after it, but I’d take them doing Paso over rumba any day. I’d take almost anything over rumba any day.

7.My opinion of Ashleigh hasn’t changed. I’m not going to put anything else about her because I have a deep seated fear that she might somehow stumble onto this blog and read this, and I’m sure she’s a nice person and I’d feel awful.  So if you want more details, talk to me.

8. Karen from SYTYCD season 6 is captivating in person. If you don’t remember her (I didn’t to begin with), watch this. She’s the one that’s not Ashleigh. Or, if you don’t know Ashleigh, Karen’s the one in black. It wasn’t until the end of the show that we figured out who she was, but the whole time we kept being drawn back to her. She really was a standout.

9. I need more salsa, samba, cha cha music in my life. I really do.

10. Nothing beats a stage full of dancers, wearing fringe dresses, dancing the Tina Turner dance to Proud Mary. It was lovely.

I’m so sad that the show was only here for such a short time, I would have LOVED to see it again. If you ever get the chance, take it.

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Check out my new blog!

Remember my blog post from a couple days ago? The post full of recommendations? Well, since then I’ve thought of more to post, and I didn’t want to just go back and add them to that post, because they’d get lost, so, long story short, I have a new blog, just for the things I like the best. So if I’ve ever told you about something and forgot to send you a link to it, this is where you should go. If you want a new game to play or a new book to read, check it out. You might find something you like.

Here it is:  May I Recommend…

Let me know what you think!

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At this moment

I’m eating a Tootsie Roll. I love Tootsie Rolls. I could eat a billion of them. But I never buy them. I never even think about buying them. They don’t even cross my mind until they somehow show up – usually in a Halloween bag, but today because B brought some home from a party at work. Then I eat them and want to keep on eating them until I die.

I should be editing and rewriting a piece for the writing club I’m a part of. It’s the first chapter of the novel I wrote a couple years back, and while I dream of it being published someday, I’d kind of rather shoot myself in the foot than work on it. The process of writing is just tortuous for me. It always has been. I enjoy sharing ideas, sharing stories, but sitting there picking out the right word, the right imagery; it’s like dry heaving before you finally have the release of actually throwing up. (How’s that for imagery for ya?) And I know that’s what it’s supposed to be like- it’s work, after all. But I’m realizing recently that I’ve lost my drive to work in a lot of areas. I don’t want to go through the effort, I just want the result. I don’t want to work out, I just want the body. I don’t want to focus on cutting straight lines, I just want the perfect quilt. I don’t want to write, I just want the finished book. I’ll admit it, I’m getting lazy. And that’s problematic. I need to do something about that.

Speaking of lazy, I have two super good books that I should write about, but I just don’t have the energy to expound about them properly. (And I’m starting a new blog soon with all of my recommendations, so they’ll be up there.) But, should you care to investigate them yourself, they’re  A Girl of the Limberlost (that cover is lame, so don’t judge the book by it, the book is AMAZING – honestly, life changing), and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews. Yes, THAT Julie Andrews. And it’s just as perfect as you’d expect from Sister Maria herself. Z is just *slightly* too young for it, but kids probably 5 and up would LOVE it. It’s part Wizard of Oz, part Narnia, part every book I LOVED as a kid. It’s seriously SO wonderful.

I’m tired and should go to bed. I need my sleep – I get to go see Burn the Floor tomorrow with my seeester for her birthday. But it’s kind of like my birthday, I’m so excited. Anya and Pasha will be there, Janette, Ashleigh (I hate her face) and her husband, (I’ll tell them you said ‘hi’, Hilary), and…. Mary Freakin’ Murphy. I seriously could die. I may die. This may be my last post ever. You may never get another recommendation from me again. And if I do die, you can take that AS a recommendation. MARY FREAKIN MURPHY!

I’m really hoping that my girls sleep all the way through the night, and that they sleep in tomorrow. They’ve been sleeping in gorgeously for the last week or so, but for the last couple of days they’ve been waking up closer to 6:30. It’s still dark at 6:30. Before long, the rulers of the clocks will tell us that 6:30 is actually 5:30, and my girls won’t listen to them. I don’t want to be up at 5:30. Heck, I don’t want to be up at 6:30.

I’m listening to the Synth-Pop Mix on my iTunes Genius Mix thingie, and Tragic by Erasure just came on. It’s such an odd, evocative little song. I think it should be in a movie soundtrack. If I made a movie, I would use it. I would also use Plainsong by The Cure, right at the end when the girl is walking down the street and the boy comes around the other corner and they walk closer to each other as the wind chimes … chime, and then, as the little explosion of music happens (you know, with the cymbals and the tinkly sounds), their eyes lock. They keep walking toward each other, and the next explosion comes, and they kiss. And the credits roll. But it would stop before the actual singing starts, and segue into Beautiful by Moby when the screen is actually black with the majority of the credits.  What? You don’t think about stuff like this? What will you do when they put you in charge of a movie? Get on it, you don’t want to be unprepared!

A bit of trivia – I have 15 songs with the word ‘beautiful’ in the title in my song library.  47 items with the word ‘beautiful’ in the song title, album title, or name of the band. And The Beautiful Ones by Prince is one of my top 10 songs of all time. Goodness me, I LOVE that song. I saw him perform it in concert and I almost hyperventilated. (Tangentially,  my sister and I have determined that had we been Beatles fans back in the day, she would have been one of the girls screaming and crying hysterically, while I would have been of the passing out persuasion.) But yes, it was amazing. His concerts are the best I’ve ever been to, he’s simply a mesmerizing performer. Especially the time we were only 5 rows from the stage- yowsa, that was amazing.

And now I’m just stream of consciousness-ing. Speaking of which (hah!) I’m also supposed to be reading Ulysses for the I Will if You Will book club. I even got a reference annotation book. And instead, I’m reading Johannes Cabal the Detective.  Apparently I’m experiencing flashbacks to my college life, avoiding what I’m supposed to be reading and writing.  But again, it ties back into the being lazy thing. I’m finding it difficult to summon the effort. (Though I’m not completely convinced it will be worth it. I really liked Joyce’s Dubliners, but didn’t care at all for Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.) But I’m also supposed to be reading Tom Sawyer for the RS book club and I haven’t gotten to that either, so maybe it’s just the condition that spreads to many members of book clubs wherein the book you’ve really wanted to read suddenly loses all appeal during the month directly before your book club discussion.

Ok, enough of this. It’s time for bed. But before I go – how many songs do YOU have with beautiful in the title?

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Are you up for an adventure?

Today we went to the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park for our first adventure day of the new school year. It’s housed in a gorgeous building built in the 1870′s, and the plants are absolutely stunning. It’s kept warm and humid, which the kids had some uncomfortablility with, but once we showed them the “plants that eat bugs!” they were all over it. Every room we went into, they were looking for more carnivorous plants. And they did a great job finding them. My favorites were the aquatic plants- so amazing. I wish I’d taken more pictures in that room, they were so beautiful, but the girls were DONE by that point, so we went out and had lunch. My dad came with us, which was awesome. He and my mom used to take us to places like this when I was little, so it was fun to have him with us today.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger. (Not a ton bigger, but a little bit!)

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All in one place: A reference post

Apparently I recommend things a lot, and I thought it might be useful to someone (ahem, Becky, Sherry… :) ) to have all my recommendations in one place. SO… while this may not be every recommendation I have ever made, it will be as many as I can think of at the moment. Hopefully you find something you like; personally, I love all of these things. And I’m not getting paid by any of them to say that. (And I’m in no way guaranteeing any of them, though to the best of my knowledge and experience they work great.)  I’ve included links to everything, so I’m not really going to go into too much description of what they are, just why I like them. :)

Crafting stuff:

Fat Quarter Shop: This is where I buy all my fabric online. They have fair prices, sometimes amazing sales, and they stock a TON of stuff. They also carry packs of fabric that’s already cut, and quilt kits. Their shipping prices are good, and they have great customer service.

Joann Fabric and Craft: This is where I buy a lot of my fabric in person. Good prices, great coupons, really nice selection.

Custom Crops: This is where I buy scrapbook and other crafting supplies online. They have the best prices on Cricut cartridges that I’ve found, if you’ve tumbled down that particular well. They also carry glimmer mist and lots of other wonderful things.

Homemaking:
Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life: This book changed my entire outlook on homemaking and cleaning. Seriously life changing.

Education:

100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing the Right Curriculum and Approach for Your Child’s Learning Style : This book is essential for anyone starting out homeschooling, or just trying to sort out their view of education or trying to figure out their child’s learning style.  I seriously cannot recommend this book highly enough. A word of warning though- DON’T get the Kindle edition- there’s a multi page survey in graph form (that’s essential to the whole point of the book) that is rendered completely ineffective in digital form.

A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning, A Charlotte Mason Education, and More Charlotte Mason Education: Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is what we’re following for our homeschooling, and these books give the best introduction and practical application I’ve found. The first is long and is meant to be read over a period of time and thought about, the second two are super fast reads but SUPER informative. I recommend reading the second two first, and then getting into the first one. (I really should have put them in a different order, shouldn’t I? HAHA, I’m not changing it now!)

Reading:

LeapFrog – Letter Factory: This DVD, along with the Talking Words Factory, Word Caper, Learn to Read at the Storybook Factory make up a FANTASTIC introduction to letters and reading. They really work incredibly well. There are math DVDs too, but we haven’t used them as much. I should get them out again.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: This is the book we used with Z, and it is fantastic. We did have to stop at around lesson 65 as it takes the kids up to a 1st or 2nd grade reading level, and she hit her personal ceiling.  HIGHLY recommended.

Now I’m Reading! Playful Pals, Level 1 : This is what we’re working through now for reading lessons, and Z is loving them. Each “book” has 10 mini books inside, and there are 5 or 6 sets.

There Is a Bird On Your Head! (An Elephant and Piggie Book): Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie series is a new hit at our house. The words are straight forward enough that Z can read them, and the pictures are hilarious enough that she WANTS to read them.

Tell Me A Story Cards: OK, so technically I haven’t actually tried these yet, but I have it on good authority that they’re amazing, and I just ordered them. There are 4 sets, “Mystery in the Forest”, “Fairy Tale Mix Up”, “Little Robot’s Mission”, and “Circus Animals’ Adventure”. The pictures on the cards look really evocative, but vague enough that you could get some really great story telling happening.  At less than $10 a set, I kind of want all of them.

Art:

Come Look With Me: World of Play : This series of books is so fantastic that I want to own every single one. Each two page spread contains a full page reproduction of a piece of art, and the facing page has a little paragraph about the piece and the artist, and questions intended to get your kid really looking at the art, finding new things, thinking about it. I LOVE these.

MathArts: Exploring Math Through Art for 3 to 6 Year Olds and Art with Anything: 52 Weeks of Fun Using Everyday Stuff (Mary Ann Kohl Books): Both of these are chock full of AWESOME and fairly easy art projects.

The Artful Parent: This blog is full of super fun ideas for art projects to do with kids, we’ve stolen at least 4 or 5 since I started reading it just about a month ago.

Filth Wizardry: Also full of crazy fun art ideas. So inspiring.

Yoga:

Jillian Michael’s Yoga Meltdown: It’s a quick, intense, good workout. Lots of movement within poses to keep your heartrate up, short periods of holding the poses to build strength.

Fat Free Yoga and Ultimate Stretch Yoga Workout : Both of these are Kundalini Yoga, and so there’s lots of movement, lots of crazy breathing. :) I LOVE both of these. They both come equipped with a heavy duty Matrix menu where you can pick and choose which parts you want to do, which is awesome when you have a specific amount of time.

Shiva Rea – Creative Core Abs and Yoga Shakti: Both of these are by Shiva Rea, who is a crazy amazing yogi. They’re both very flow-y, with a lot of standard yoga asanas that flow effortlessly (hah!) into each other. Yoga Shakti includes some super heavy duty moves, but they tend to be inspiring rather than depressing (at least to me). Both workouts are filmed in amazing settings- one of the beaches is seriously SO pretty. And Yoga Shakti comes with a Matrix menu. The Creative Core Abs really is “creative”; she introduces the movements and then says “do what you want! Let your body move!”, which could be kind of irritating if you don’t like that kind of thing. I enjoy it, and definitely feel it the next day.

Gaiam Kids: Yogakids Fun Collection: The two dvds in this collection are awesome. My girls LOVE them, and love yoga because of them.

Music:

Cape Verde: I love this album for it’s “multi-culturalism”, but mostly for it’s ability to make me feel like I’m living in an Ocean’s Eleven style heist movie. The girls really enjoy it too.

You Are My Little Bird by Elizabeth Mitchell: This is what Z calls “calm music” – calming and quiet without being boring. I turn this on when the girls are getting crazy and it tends to tone things down a bit.

Here Come the ABCs, Here Come the 123′s, and Here Comes Science by They Might be Giants: Awesome music that teaches basic letters, numbers, and science concepts in a way that won’t want you to cut your ears off. Seriously, some of the songs are really catchy. We listen to “High Five” in increments of about 30 times in a row.

That’s all that I can think of at the moment. If I’ve recommended something to you and forgotten and you think it would be helpful, let me know and I’ll add it.

Now it’s your turn! What do you recommend?

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Answers come

This afternoon on the way out to the store, Z started crying in the hallway. Serious crying. And she blubbered out, “Mama, I stepped on the bug! I tried to go around it, but I couldn’t, and I stepped on it and I think it’s dead!”.

I checked, and indeed, it was dead.

Z was distraught. Bugs are her friends, and she didn’t mean to step on it, and now it’s dead, and on and on. I tried to comfort her as best I could, giving her the 4 year old’s version of what happens after something dies. We got in the car, and she was still just so sad.  All the way to the store she kept asking questions about the bug, expressing sorrow for having stepped on it.

On the way home, she asked if she had made a bad choice by stepping on bug. I assured her that it had been an accident, and we talked about how everything is born, gets a body, lives, and dies. Some things live a long time, some things for a shorter time. She was ok with that, but was still very concerned that she had done something wrong.

So I suggested that she pray about it. That right then and there she say a prayer, and ask Heavenly Father if it was ok and for Him to send the Holy Ghost to help her to not feel so sad. So she did. It was a simple little prayer.  I suggested that she sit quietly and listen to see if the Holy Ghost said anything to her. While she did that, I offered up my own raw, momma’s prayer, “Send her an answer now!”

And from the back seat, Tiny piped up.

“Momma, da holee daghos say more happy gain”

Me: “Tiny, did you just say that the Holy Ghost says to be happy again?”

Tiny: ” Yeah Toe (Zoe), da holee daghos say more happy gain”.

You could have knocked me over. I didn’t know that she’d even remotely been paying attention.

Zoe said that she still didn’t feel it, but a few minutes later, she said happily, ” I feel it Momma! The Holy Ghost is telling me, ‘It’s ok, Zoe, it’s ok!’ I feel it in my heart! It feels warm!”

And she hasn’t mentioned the bug again.

I know why I offered up my own prayer, but at the same time, I don’t know why. Heavenly Father doesn’t need to hear it from me – as Z and I discussed a couple of days ago, He hears kids’ prayers just the same as He hears grown up prayers. And He answers them.

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Our butterfly adventure

We’ve been a little obsessed with butterflies around here recently, and today we decided to go find some in the wild. So we headed out to Ulistac Natural Area and got our looking eyes out.  Tiny also got her whistling mouth out, which translates to short high pitched screaming, but we convinced her after some tears that if she wanted a “butterfly land on my tummy” (her goal for the day) that she was going to need to be quiet.

Our first find was this fine fellow. Not a butterfly, but pretty awesome nonetheless.

We walked around in a fruitless search for a while (in retrospect, I think we were there too early) but before long we stumbled upon:

Do you see his tongue? Z was very excited about that part. This little guy hung out near us for quite some time, so we were able to get a bunch of pictures. I think we’ve correctly identified him as a Fiery Skipper.

Isn’t he pretty?

We caught a couple of glimpses of this next one, but he was a speedy little guy, and far more skiddish than the Skipper above. I think he’s a Buckeye. This was the best picture I could get of him. But he and his friend did perform a lovely game of chase around and above our heads that had the girls staring open mouthed and squealing in delight.

Lastly was this little one. Also pretty friendly, but he refused to open his wings, so I could only attempt an identification from the back of his wings. (But all of the pictures of the kind of butterfly I think he is had the wings closed as well, so maybe it’s a species thing.)

I think he’s a Grey Hairstreak.  The orange going up the wing differentiates him from the California Hairstreak, so I think I’m right. But who knows, I’ve only just started with this whole identification thing. But I can see how it could get addicting!

Z also found what she called a “spiderweb house”, which is a pretty apt description. She was a bit concerned about the bugs that would get caught in it, because “the bugs are my friends!”.  Yes, they are.

And that was our butterfly adventure. The girls want to go out again soon, so I’ll post  pictures if we get some more.