At the beginning of this school year, Nathaniel decided he wanted to apply to the same school David started this year. He kept seeing how engaged David was and how much he was thriving and he wanted it for himself. I too wanted that for him. I also would love to have both my kids at the same school again (assuming it’s a proper fit for each, of course.)
So Nathaniel applied, we wrote a bunch of essays, he went to a Shadow day which he loved and to an Activity day, which he also loved. And then we waited.
And waited.
For him to get in, someone had to leave the school because third grade is not a year where they expand the class. I tried to explain this to him but he was still so excited, and he was counting down all the days.
When I finally got the call that he was the only boy they accepted to the third grade class, I cried and cried and then got home and gave Nathaniel the very best news and hugged him so tight.
And then two days later, he finally got his envelope in the mail. This particular school puts wonderful confetti into their acceptance envelopes (which Nathaniel knew from David’s one last year.) so he opened his very carefully and saved every single confetti.
I love you my sweet boy. Here’s to the beginning of a new and wonderful adventure.
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
Last weekend was the STEM fair in David’s school. It’s a K-12 event and like most things this school does, it was absolutely mind-blowing. The sixth graders had 3 displays. One on ooblecks, one on making little drawing robots, and one on general relativity as in the photo above (oh and something cool with play dough and electricity you can see in the last photo.) Jake tells me the demo above demonstrates Einstein’s theory of how gravity is actually a stretching of space and time, not a “force” and the lycra shows how this works. I had to copy his exact words because I still don’t get it. Science was never my strong suit and I so so wish it were because the sixth grade was a tiny tiny fraction of this incredible day. They had robots, a whole math section, research papers, amazing chemistry demos and on and on. Professors from Stanford. I can’t even tell you because I don’t appreciate the awesomeness due to my lack of science education. But the kids did appreciate it. They walked around, they learned, they loved it. So did Jake who knows a lot more science than I do.
I decided I needed to take a lot more science classes so I can actually understand next year.
So grateful that my sons get to experience all this!
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
A few weeks ago I posted the Valentine Nathaniel made for Paige, I wanted to make sure to also post the Valentine he received from his friend Emerson. It says: Dear Nathaniel, you are a sweet, awesome, fantastic friend. I like it when you smile because it makes me feel happy when you do it. I like your creative imagination because you can figure things out easily. From, Emerson.
Gotta love second graders.
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
The March prompt for One Little Word 2017 was to put together an inspiration board. This is one of my favorite projects each year and this year was no exception. I love love love looking at this board. I love how shiny, mindful, love-filled, bold and open it feels to me.
I use these boards as my computer background, i glue them to my notebooks, and i even use them as a wallpaper on my phone. A constant reminder of my inspiration for 2017.
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
Up until last week, my kids had never been to Disneyland. Or Disney-anything. When I was in sixth grade, my family went on this wonderful trip from Paris to New York to Orlando to Miami. It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip and I still remember it vividly. It was my first time in the United States. My first time in Disney World. And I loved every moment of it.
My parents did a similar trip with my sister’s kids a few years ago but Nathaniel had just been born so I couldn’t join. Almost eight years later, I still hadn’t taken either kid to a Disney Park and I really wanted to change that. I really wanted to go myself. I still find it all magical.
So I decided we would spend part of our Winter Break there. We drove down to Los Angeles and spent one day in Disneyland and one day at Universal Studios. It was an insane amount of walking and standing and just a lot of chaos in 48 hours but we did it!
David liked parts of Disneyland but on the whole preferred Universal. Nathaniel liked Harry Potterland and some of the rides at Universal but on the whole liked Disneyland better because it had a lot more rides. So I feel it was worth going to both (for our family.)
I wish I’d gone when the kids were a bit younger and might have found it a bit more magical. I will say that the highlight for both of the kids was the Electric Light Parade at the end of the Disneyland day. So there’s some magic left in both of them after all.
Here are some other photos from our adventure:
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
Nathaniel’s class only did one valentine per kid this year. (woohooo!) which gave each kid time to personalize his valentines. Nathaniel got Paige. The night before, it was clear that he lost the one he’d been working on so we sat together and did an impromptu one! Here’s the cute little card he did. And I love what he wrote in the back.
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
Two weeks ago, Nathaniel’s class celebrated 100th day of school.
In preparation for this, each student was told to bring 100 of an item and then sort/group them in a way they chose. A few days before the assignment was due, Nathaniel asked me if I could email his teacher and ask if it would be ok for him to do something different. I asked him what he wanted to do and he said he’d like to do 100 equations that equal to a 100.
Teachers said it was ok (after they talked to him about how he planned to group it.) So this little boy and I wrote down 100 formulas which he grouped and put on a lovely poster.
I love my boy so much!
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017?here.
Even though David stopped a while ago, Nathaniel is still continuing to go to swimming class. Despite a long lull last year, he’s been excitedly earning his ribbons. He earned his freestyle one just a few months ago and then the backstroke one just last week. My little boy is happy, joyous and now learning how to swim breast stroke.
I love you my sunshine.
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
For the last five years, my kids have been bringing lunch to school every day. My kids are picky with what they eat so our lunch was the exact same thing every day:
- A danimal yogurt
- A cheese stick (mozzarella for N and cheddar for D)
- a few ritz or graham crackers
- Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich on white bread for D and just a jelly one for N
- a banana for N and an apple for D
I know that doesn’t sound super-terrible but now that i’ve been reading up on food, here’s how I am breaking this down:
- danimals has no actual yogurt in it, mostly chemicals
- cheese stick is ok
- ritz or graham crackers have no nutritional value and likely make my kids hungrier
- PB&J – white bread I use has pretty much no nutritional value and a lot of scary stuff in it, both the PB and J is similar with tons of added sugar.
- fruit is ok 🙂
They used to eat oatmeal (packaged) for breakfast and sandwiches and fruit for dinner.
Sooooo… as part of the work I started last summer, I’ve been working with my kids to eat better and more variety of foods. When the school year started we did a big makeover and bought some salad containers and my kids began eating salads. After reading Michael Pollan’s book last week, I decided that wasn’t enough and did an overhaul of all of their lunches. They still need a bit of work but I think we’re in a much better place. Here’s what they have now:
- for main lunch:
- spinach salad + shredded carrots
- corn for N and goat cheese for D
- strawberries+raspberries+black berries – i buy these at the farmer’s market weekly
- organic turkey deli meat – likely not good enough but not sure what else i can do at the moment
- jelly sandwich on Dave’s Killer Bread – 21 Grains Thin Sliced
- for snacks:
- grapes
- cheese stick
- an egg and peanuts for N
- raisins for D (his school is nut free)
We’ve also changed up dinner to be broccoli, fruit, chicken, and then they can have their favorite dessert. Breakfast is yogurt and bananas and granola for N.
This is not perfect in any way. Here are some issues I see with it:
- it lacks variety. I have signed up for CSA and I will slowly introduce different things.
- it’s high on fruits. this is not ideal but i’ve replaced all simple carbs with fruits. i think it’s ok for now. slowly we can increase the veggie to fruit ratio.
- the deli meat is not ideal, i’d rather they have chicken or fish or some other protein (we already have a lot of dairy so i’d rather not add that.) they are still a bit too prickly with meat/fish so i am taking my time on that.
- i’d like to find at least one more snack for David
- i’m not fond of the jelly. it has a ton of added sugar, i’d like to find an alternative that’s healthier even if it’s still jelly.
These are the core things I’d like to work on at the moment. If we can increase the veggie variety to 5-6 instead of just spinach, carrots and broccoli (and corn for N), I’d be happier. I’d like to add zucchini, squash, green beans to the list at a minimum. I’d also like to do better on protein. Just those two would already make me happier.
Considering the fact that I don’t cook at all, I think this isn’t terrible. For every meal now, my kids are eating some fruit and they have dairy at breakfast and lunch and veggies at lunch and dinner. A marked improvement from last year.
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
I learned how to ski when I was 3 years old. I was never super-good at it and still am not. But I am comfortable skiing. I don’t overthink it, I don’t worry about it constantly like I do with most other things and it’s one of the few sports I know how to do. Even though it’s expensive, hard-work, and mostly a PITA, I want to make sure my kids get enough exposure to skiing at a young age that they can choose whether they want to continue or not. In the last few years, the snow here has been pretty bad so we haven’t been able to ski much. But this year the snow is wonderful. So this past weekend, when David’s school was closed for conferences, we decided to get in the car and drive to Reno so we could go skiing at Diamond Peak. It’s a smallish resort and if you’re a serious skier you’d probably not like it.
But for us, it’s just fine. The kids took day-long classes both days and Jake and I skied together. Even though both of the kids didn’t really want to go to school on the second day, they each made a lot of progress and have gotten closer to being better skiers. I usually tire by the second day and don’t feel like going the whole day, but I was ok this time an skied pretty much two full days. (Though we did take long lunches.)
All in all, it was a great two days where we each made some lovely progress. We also got to exercise all day, get some wonderful fresh air and sunshine and spend a lot of family time together. All in all, a lovely two days. Here’s to more skiing in 2017!
Stories from 2017 is a year-long project for 2017. You can read more about my projects for 2017 here.
One of the Christmas presents we got for Nathaniel was the awesome Makey Makey. He likes the idea of learning more about computer programming and is interested in hardware and software and we thought he’d like this simple but awesome one.
And he did.
We did the “play drums with the banana” and then the two of them did a big black button and played cookie game of some kind. Nathaniel even did the playdo challenge. This little thing is magic.
I think I originally saw puzzles on Ali’s blog or instagram. I know she’s posted them before and for some reason this past October, I just decided I wanted to try them too. The last time I made a puzzle, I was around sixteen. All my puzzles were in Turkey and I didn’t even know how to buy one, where to buy one, which one to buy.
As it worked out, the week I was thinking about all this, my kids and I went to the local bookstore and found this wonderful puzzle on the Transit theme. Since I work on Google Transit, I decided it was serendipity. During Thanksgiving, I spent most of my moments working on that puzzle. And then I was hooked. Since then, I’ve done around ten puzzles.
The worst part of doing puzzles has definitely been the ache in my neck, arms, and back from all the bending over. At first, I was making them on the couch, which was likely the very worst position I could make them in and now I do them at the kitchen table but I still have quite a bit of pain after hours of sitting and leaning over.
On the up side, the best thing about them has been the sheer number of books I can listen to while I make puzzles. I love sitting at the table, drinking my tea and listening to a great book. I love the peace, the serenity. It’s become the thing I most look forward to in my weekend days. Certainly beats Candy Crush.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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