yet another "update"

It's been busy around here. Zig mentioned his mom was wondering what was up with the blog.

Tina, this is for you!

First off, you know I'm desperate for rainy day activities when I allow stuff like this:

Yes, I'm lowering my standards of what it means to have a tidy home!


What? no one is getting along? Not to worry! Mom and Dad have a cure for that! The best cure to put the kibosh on arguing children is always work. Hard to believe these kids were all at each other just an hour before they prepped the greenhouse for Spring. Love you guys....

On Wednesday, I took a visit to the doctor with a very roughed up looking Evan.  I had been trying so hard to keep everyone well for our Kauai trip, but as luck would have it, we did not make it to the finish line. Evan had pink eye and double ear infections. We had to take an antibiotic this time because of the impending 6 hour plane flight. I hate antibiotics and only use them when we have to. I think this is the 4th prescription I've ever filled. Babies, earaches and long plane flights are not a good combination though and I didn't want to risk it. Getting Evan's antibiotic, pro-biotics, and eye drops in have been a real joy. Oh boy.

The girls had their well child check-ups. Dr. Candace informed me the last time they had seen Sela was when she was 8 1/2. We had a good laugh about that. Sela has a rock solid immune system. And a Mom who must have completely forgotten her 9 year old check-up! We had a nice visit and Nina gets to go see a speech therapist for her adorable lisp. I almost don't want to take her because I love her little voice so much. But it won't hurt to check it out, I guess.

The kids worked on their Valentines this week. They have to be done before we leave so the kitchen table has turned into a Valentine factory. Sela's teacher requires hand-made individualized cards which I LOVE, but we are having to squeeze them in in an already busy week. Sela took a quiz to school to find out everyone's favorite animal and is working hard making pop-out cards for each classmate. Rollin joined the fun and we made dinosaur valentines. Surprise, surprise. And Nina's have a guinea pig theme. Good stuff.









Wednesday we had an art docent session on Picasso. I actually stress about these quite a bit. Sela's teacher, Mrs. Knapp, is so wonderful about working around our schedules and giving us plenty of time to really do some quality projects so I always want to make it worth her time. I set up a huge still-life in the center of the room with all kinds of objects of varying sizes and colors. The kids divided their papers into three sections. They then spent ten minutes sketching in charcoal pencil from three different perspectives (they moved around the room). They could sketch as many or few of the objects as they wanted. Then they outlined in sharpie and added color with pastels. This project stretched the kids and it was fun to see 22 very different projects at the end of the class.One of the moms was taking photos at school that day for the class website. I couldn't figure out how to remove them and paste them from shutterfly, but here is a very brief slide-show. I hate slide-shows on blogs, so sorry!

Click here to view these pictures larger

Friday afternoon I had a tennis match. Unfortunately, all that kissing and snuggling with Evan meant I woke up with a huge sore throat. Our team captain is injured and we had no available subs this week so I went ahead and headed to Edgebrook with a water bottle full of Emergen-C. I was thinking about the match on the half-hour drive to the club and thought that maybe I could pull off a win if I lucked out and got an opponent who was impatient and went for big shots but wasn't super consistent. I've had a couple of those. What I did not want was a slug fest against someone who gets everything back.

I walked into the club and I knew who was playing singles the second I saw her. I'm almost always able to pick them out. I saw her and immediately thought, oh no. How's that for mental toughness? She was strong in the warm-up and I was down 3-0 in minutes. I was trying to end the points quickly and missing winners in an effort to prevent myself from tiring out. I even started to serve and volley. Basically, I was not playing my game. Then I gave myself a little talking to. I basically told  myself, you're going to feel bad whether you try and conserve your energy or give it your all. You're going to be sick either way so you might as well go for it. Plus, this match is costing me 60 bucks for a babysitter and court fees and half my day, so I better make it worth it! So I stuck with it and somehow was able to pull off a win for our team. 7-5, 3-0 at the buzzer. I was so happy to hear the timer go off! I was sucking wind by that point. But we had a good match! I love tennis.


Next up  was the 50's sock hop at the school. The kids had a major blast. This is one of my very favorite school events. I was in charge of decorating the gym so Sela and Nina entertained Rollin and Evan on the playground while we taped and stapled and taped and stapled Friday afternoon. We only had a few minutes to run home and get ready before heading back to the school, which was obvious in our outfits (Sela wore an inside-out tennis shirt)! There were so many adorable poodle skirts and 50's costumes though. Even some pink ladies.
















Some of us moms gave the hula hoops a go and were stunned when our hula hoops spun a couple times and crashed to the floor. I thought hula hooping was like riding a bike, but apparently not. I am proud to say I kept at it though and some of my skills did return. Plus, it's quite fun to embarrass the kids! And the really sad part, I woke up today and my abs were sore. For 10 minutes I laid in bed reviewing my activities trying to figure out the cause until it dawned on me, the hula hooping! I'm kind of embarrassed to even write that.

Saturday I woke up with no voice. And Sela had a basketball game. I felt like I was missing an arm not being able to cheer for the girls. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE watching basketball?! Oh it's so much fun! For a first year team, they have made great progress and are about even on wins and losses against mostly teams with at least an extra year under their belts. This week, they had another close one, but the best part about their win is that lots of different people scored and the win was a total team effort. And Sela made a free throw!





I needed to get Sela some summer clothes so we headed to Seattle in the afternoon. We were near the University of Washington so I took Sela and Nina to a men's tennis match against Nebraska. We didn't plan on staying for the entire match but 3 1/2 hours later we were still there. They play 3 doubles and 6 singles matches. The teams were tied 4-4 and the last match on went to a third set. There were some fireworks and "personalities" to put it mildly so that provided the drama the girls needed to stay into the match. We were glued and had so much fun. The Huskies beat the Huskers in the end. The players stayed after and signed autographs/t-shirts and talked to the kids. They were in good spirits since they pulled off a close win. We got the schedule for the rest of the season and will definitely be back for more!




This guy won the deciding match.


 More tennis players.

Let's see, what else?

My friend, Lilian, ordered 100 pounds of almonds and ran out of places to store them (imagine that!) She's nuts :) She was so kind to give us a few pounds so we revisited an old favorite cookie recipe, Jam Thumbprint Cookies. These are so healthy and delicious...whole grain flour, ground almonds, and a small amount of pure maple. We are on our last few jars of strawberry jam from the summer so we mixed strawberry and peach jam on the cookies. Yummy!