Art Class

From Blog Favorites #2

I while ago I heard about an after school art class called Young Rembrants from my friend Kim. Allie took a class and came home with the cutest works of art. I decided to do some homework and see what it would take to get the art class at our school. Mei, the director, was excited and had been wanting to get the class in more schools on the west side so all it took was a phone call and talking with Lauri, the principal to get permission.

Sarah and Natalie really enjoyed the class. Shannan and I came to help for the first few times as Lauri wanted me to make sure everything went smoothly. It was fun and I loved the cute things the girls brought home. This fish is one of my favorite. I think the class focused a little two much on copying a picture that the teacher brought each week, but it taught the kids that they just have to divide up something into its basic elements in order to draw something that might initially seem hard. So while it did not inspire a ton of expression and creativity - it gave the kids more confidence in their abilities to make beautiful things.

Crazy Hair Night!

From Blog Favorites #3

How could I have let this one slide??? I can't believe I didn't blog one of my favorite young women's activities! We had a crazy hair night where each of the girls was paired up with a team member and they had to do each others hair in as wacky of a style as they could dream up. We had some great ones. We laughed our heads off that night. It was so fun!

From Blog Favorites #3

Britlee in her 80's 'do'.

From Blog Favorites #3

Nina looking fabulous! Ready for a Jane Austin movie.

From Blog Favorites #3

Janae looks like someone in Whoville! Penny used a plastic cup under her hair to get the height she needed! Hilarious! I wonder what her husband thought when she came home - this was when she was fairly new to young womens. (o:

From Blog Favorites #3

I think Cleo was everyone's favorite! What a great sport!

From Blog Favorites #3

Melanie ready to go to Whoville with Janae!

From Blog Favorites #3

From Blog Favorites #3

Yes, these are the leaders of our teenage girls in our ward! Would you trust your daughters to them? (o:

From Blog Favorites #3

Kelly, another leader - looking very youthful in her hairdo!

From Blog Favorites #3

Penny and Katie (in the background with a balloon tied to her hair!)

From Blog Favorites #3

Close up of Penny - she is our resident hairstylist - the professional and the one who came up with the whole idea!

From Blog Favorites #3

Tylin - this wacky hairdo goes well with her hilarious sense of humor! I think she would actually go to school with this 'do' if it stayed in all night.

From Blog Favorites #3

Me looking a little scary with Ellie

Lunch Date

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was really surprised a few weeks ago just how much it meant to Natalie when I came to eat lunch with her. So, we had lunch again and I brought my camera for fun. Natalie and Sarah get to have hot lunch once a week for a special treat. It's not the healthiest and can get expensive so I figure once a week is a good compromise. Natalie loves the little salad bar.
Natalie and her sidekick Emma. They are attached at the hip. (o: Cute girls.

I like to play at recess for a few minutes afterwards with Nat, boy do the kids go nuts. If I am anywhere near the swings I get tons of requests for pushes. Or several kids ask me to watch them do a trick, etc. It really makes me appreciate our wonderful recess teachers. They are the sweetest ladies and really make recess fun for the kids. It's a tiring job! (I know - I did recess duty at Franklin Elementary back in my college days.) They laugh when I get roped into pushing. This time I told the kids 'only three pushes'. (o:

A Seussical Birthday

March 2nd is Dr. Seuss' birthday! We LOVE Dr. Seuss!
We LOVE (well some of us) to eat green eggs and ham on Dr. Seuss' birthday to celebrate.

This is also a special day because it is grandma's birthday too!
As you can see by Natalie's expression - this was no ordinary rendition of the Happy Birthday Song. I don't think grandma's sides have stopped hurting from the performance. It was opera, punk rock and heavy metal all at the same time.

I helped at the school that day and loved seeing the Kindergarten and first grade teachers celebrating as well! I had on my Dr. Seuss shirt too.

Natalie was feeling very creative - perhaps inspired by the Dr. Seuss tales she'd been reading all day. She made me this crown to wear while I fried our green eggs.

And I LOVE this creation! I hung it on our door. It's a cross between Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton. She presented this to me while I was cooking as well. I love her imagination! This cute piece of art is about 2-3 feet tall.

The girls wearing Horton ears, a "Who" headband and a Cat in the Hat hat.

I suspect perhaps these . . .

made this little girl sick the next morning?

Two Peas in a Pod

From Blog Favorites #3

Emma and Natalie - two peas in a pod. This was a picture I took when Emma came over for a play date. I love listening to these two giggle and laugh together. Emma has been Nat's best friend in her class this year. I am so grateful when my girls find friends who are good to them and make them happy.

Science Fair '10

Last year Natalie and Sarah did science projects for the Science Fair and I was up so ridiculously late the night before because I didn't realize how long it would take to glue all the stuff onto the boards. This year, since the kids aren't required to do it until 4th grade, I just helped Sarah do one. Natalie can have a turn next year if she wants. She really didn't care this go round thank goodness.

Sarah chose to learn about fingerprints. She fingerprinted grandma and grandpa, our family and the neighbors. I think that was her favorite part. Then she looked closely at them through a microscope and magnifying glass. But the best way to look at them turned out to be when I got pictures of them with my macro lens and then we printed them. It was fun to compare them that way. Sarah hypothesized that even though siblings have very similar genes, their fingerprints are still different enough to identify at the crime of a scene. We made it into a game where the people looking at her board had to try and figure out which fingerprint taken at the scene of a crime (a cookie jar) matched which of the girls. I think it turned out fun.

I got teased a bit about how neat and nice her board looked - I guess I should not be so anal about matting everything and lining everything up. It's just something I really want to look nice. Sarah really did help put it together - I taught her the art of matting and lining things up - but I do have to admit that I finished it up after she went to bed. Mostly doing the gluing. Hopefully no one takes fingerprints off the board and accuses me of doing the whole thing!

At the science fair night, OMSI always comes and has fun exhibits and science experiments. It's hard to see against the white sign behind it, but this guy and the karate girl were making "elephant toothpaste". (o: The thick foamy stuff came shooting out of a jar - pretty darn cool even for a 30 something year old. (O;

Angela and Natalie looking at the science experiment.
I was so busy gabbing at the event, that I never got a picture of Sarah standing with her board!

WOW

WHOA - will this look be on the runways in a few years? If Natalie has any say in it, the answer will be YOU BET! That has Fancy Nancy written all over it!

Healthy Eating Night

From Blog Favorites #2

I am going back to fill in all the pictures that for some reason didn't get blogged and found these clear back from February! This was our Laurel activity at Penny's house sharing healthy recipes and foods. It was such a fun night just hanging out together. I love these girls - Penny included!

From Blog Favorites #2

Penny and Sarah and a pot.

From Blog Favorites #2

Lizzy and a bran muffin.

From Blog Favorites #2

A yummy raw veggie "pizza"

Happy

Natalie has had a rash of tummy aches this year. She gets one on a school day about once every other week. I haven't figured out what it is yet. I'm guessing it might be a day after she eats an especially large amount of fruits and veggies. It's so funny how opposite Natalie's eating is to Sarah and Angela's. She has always had a more sensitive tummy. Anyway, we already got on the "blacklist" with the district for missing too much school because of our Disneyland trip and a couple illnesses that took Nat out for 2-3 days. So when her tummy is hurting and there aren't' other symptoms I have to give her a pep talk about being brave. She is a home body, so she prefers to be home anyway and most of the time her tummy aches go away.

On one morning last Wednesday, she said she had a tummy ache and didn't want to go to school. We made a deal that if she would go and be brave, I would come and eat lunch with her.

At 10:30 (yes, lunch is at 10:30! Ridiculous...) - I headed over for our date. (Angela was at preschool.) Mrs. B. said Natalie had been acting fine all morning which was good. When Natalie saw me, she had a huge grin on her face and ran up to me with a HUGE hug. She always does that and it melts my heart every time. She was so excited for our lunch date and we had such a fun time. She definitely was feeling better, which was nice to see so I didn't worry about her.

After Nat finished her lunch, I went out to play with her for a few minutes at recess. I pushed her on the swing. And let me tell you, when an adult offers to push a child on a swing - suddenly you hear a chorus from every other kid on a swing. "Push me! Push me!" So I ran back and forth pushing about six kids for a while until I had to go. Natalie walked with me to where the van was, giving me lots of hugs along the way and smiling so big. I could tell that our lunch date meant a lot to her and it made me feel so happy to do something so simple for her that brought her so much joy. I need to do that more often.

As I drove away she waved with a huge grin and then skipped off happily back to her friends. She skipped all the way across the playground. I drove slow so I could watch her for a minute. It was such a sweet moment seeing how the simplest thing could make my sweet Nat so exceedingly happy. At that moment I felt so grateful and so happy. So grateful I could be a stay at home mom with my girls so I could do things like this. And so grateful for my sweet girls who don't ask for much - just to be loved and to be shown it in simple ways. Children are the greatest blessing we could ever be given. And with all the hard work, headaches, lack of sleep, worry and stress - there is nothing that makes my heart soar or that brings me more joy than the huge hugs, smiling faces and the laughter of my sweet girls. I am so happy to be a mom and drove away from school that day with tears of joy and gratitude.

Self Teaching the Birds and the Bees

Hey moms! I just figured out a new way to teach kids about the birds and the bees. Having the "talk" with Sarah has been on my parent 'to do' list for a few months now. I have procrastinated it 1. because we've been so busy and 2. I'm not ready! However, I have recently discovered that if I just hold off a little, my smart 9 year old will figure it all out on her own. Problem solved!

I didn't ever think that doing a science experiment with Sarah would get the wheels turning on this subject. Our school science fair is coming up and Sarah chose to do an experiment with fingerprints. So she gathered fingerprints from our family, including grandma and grandpa P. who were visiting this last weekend. She is looking to see if there is any similarity between family members' patterns on their fingerprints.

As we got talking about her hypothesis, she guessed that our fingerprint patterns will maybe look similar because of genes. She's always understood about the basics of genetics and how you inherit certain qualities from your parents - she knows her olive skin color comes from me and Natalie's dark hair comes from daddy, etc. But this time she really started thinking about this and it turned into quite the conversation. Chris and I were in stitches by the time we were done...

First Sarah started wondering, "How do I get genes from daddy? I was in YOUR stomach. Daddy's don't have babies." She pointed out to me. I followed up cautiously with: "Well, it takes a mommy AND a daddy to make a baby."

Sarah, "So there's got to be some way to get daddy's genes in your tummy for the baby."

Yikes! Did she really figure that out so fast.

Then, to add to the hilarity of the moment at precisely the height of the conversation, Natalie pipes in with the most random comment.

Natalie: "Well, whoever smelt it, dealt it!"

Obviously, her thoughts were on a different plain.

Sarah said grandma was laughing so hard, she thought she would have a heart attack and I think I almost peed my pants.

Then Sarah guessed, "I know! Daddy's genes go from his brain (ha ha) to his mouth and go in your mouth when you kiss him."

Yep - we left it at that for now. I actually confessed that it was a brilliant thought - but that we would have to discuss the details at a later time when my littler girls who were only thinking of gassy jokes weren't listening.

Oh my baby - I just want her to stay innocent. I'm not ready, but I guess she is - and who knows what she'll come up with if I don't help her out.

Here's some more pictures of the fingerprinting fun.

Angela tried on the microscope cover. Isn't it stunning?

Angela was hilarious trying to look in the microscope. It's a tricky skill when you're 4.

Sarah looks like she's still thinking hard - "So how do those genes get in mommy's tummy?"

Say it Ain't So!

All good things must come to an end. Grandma and grandpa had to go home on Monday. Luckily, the kids had school off so we got to enjoy a nice breakfast together and enjoy the whole morning before they had to leave. Grandpa and daddy even got to go hit a bucket of balls before the fun was over.

Staring contests are a favorite past time at restaurants for our kids. Nat is pretty good as you can see! Lookout grandpa!

This was so cute. The girls would not let grandpa and grandma out. They seriously wouldn't move. It was cute until it was annoying, but it was cute that they really tried to thwart our efforts to help grandma and grandpa make their flight home.

Thanks for coming! We love you!

This pretty much sums up how we feel when our family leaves after a wonderful visit. )o:

Sarah was crying. We are all depressed for about a day or two.

Natalie wrote in her journal at school that grandma and grandpa went home and now we don't have any fun.