Company and BBQ

Grandpa L. came out for a visit and the boys were so excited to play with him. We spent the day mostly in the backyard, can you tell? We had BBQ and swimming time for the boys.

His Birthday Continues....

A.'s birthday continues with some packages received in the mail.

Guess what it was, money from Nana and Umpa. They are all ones which makes for a VERY fat wallet.

Kid Surplus - Clothing for Kids

I try to buy my kiddos' clothes on clearance and generally buy a size in advance to do this. I just hit the sale at Kidsurplus.com. They sell great StrideRite sneakers (the wide ones I need for R) and I also picked up some $3.00 t-shirts. Besides Kidsurplus, I normally only get good deals like this at Walmart or at the Goodwill.

http://www.kidsurplus.com/

Baby Turnips and Sugar Snap Peas

It isn't often I find myself with Baby Asian Turnips and Sugar Snap Peas. This recipe sounds awesome and I'm going to cook this up tonight!


Baby Turnip and Sugar Snap Peas
1 bunch baby turnips1 C sugar snap peas, strings and stems removed2 T bread crumbs2 T butter1 T lemon zest, minced, plus some whole strands for garnish3 T scallions, chopped2 T cilantro, mincedsalt, hot sauce to taste
Wash the turnips, trim and cut them in half (peeling not necessary). Blanch about 3 minutes in rapidly boiling salted water, then remove to a collander to drain and cool. Blanch the peas about 2 minutes, then drain. In a skillet, melt the butter and toss the the turnips and peas over medium-high heat for a minute or two. Add the bread crumbs, scallions and cilantro and toss a minute or two more to brown the crumbs. Season to taste with salt and hot sauce.

http://www.stephencooks.com/2006/06/baby_turnips_an.html

Cash4Books.net

I just can't stand it when my favorite bloggers join affiliate programs and advertise to their readers. HOWEVER, I did just try Cash4Books.net and sold 4 books. I earned $40 and they picked up the shipping. I am happy to say that I received my check today. I would guess that I received the check withing two weeks of mailing the books so not too bad. Since it went so well, I thought I would share the links on my blog with full disclosure and having had a good experience with the company myself, well, perhaps I can bend the rules. In the spirit of full disclosure, the links on this blog are tied to my account so that if you do join Cash4Books.net I will earn a whopping $4.

If you see me wearing a new pair of sandals this summer you'll know where I found the money...

Vintage Mom

My A. had his 5th birthday party and requested everyone attending dress up. He was a Power Ranger, his brother Bob the Builder, husband was a racecar driver and I dressed as my mother at the time of my 5th birthday party.

Who does he resemble?

Does he resemble my husband?

Or myself?

Or is he his own man?

Don't Be Alarmed!

It's just my Power Ranger turning 5!

Here comes the birthday cake!

And here comesthe wish!

And here comes the big gift!

It's a scooter!

Do you Compost?

In addition to our new worm bin we have a new compost bin.

CSA

We finally have a CSA delivering to our town and it's called Abundant Harvest Organics. Here is the website https://www.abundantharvestorganics.com/ If you would like to learn more about CSAs you can check here http://www.localharvest.org/csa/. The produce from Abundant Harvest Organics comes to us from the California Central Valley. Here is a picture of our box from last week.

Mother, May I Eat a Tomb, Please?

a what? A tomb, it's something you put dead people in. Ahhh.

The boys went to Sunday School today. Yes it's Easter (and A.'s birthday. It'll be more than 200 years before that happens again). Even more exciting, it was R.'s first day of Sunday School. He's been before but never made it from start to finish. He has sat with me in the crying room with the "ladies" for the most part. The ladies are the wheelchair bound grandmas who sit in the crying room. I have not seen any babies in the crying room, just the ladies, R. and me!

R.'s first bible verse was "Do not be alarmed, He is not here, He has risen!" Mark 16:6. Yes, he did memorize it, complete with chroeography. Before the recitation, he drops to his knees and throws his hands to the heavens and says "Do not be alarmed..."

Well, at Sunday School, the boys made their artwork displaying their Bible verse and they also made a special snack "tombs". They had cinammon rolls that were risen, so they were hollow inside. When cut in half they resembled tombs. The boys brought home their leftovers. They seem to have enjoyed their tombs.

Sunland Smell-o-Vision

Have You Considered a Career in Vermiculture?

We are exploring vermiculture. Ewwww! Here are the steps to creating your own worm farm.

Step One: Go to the City and purchase a $5 Rubbermaid tub with holes drilled in it. Hey, I know you can do that at home, but the City calls this a Worm Bin and will give you lots of brochures and crayons and toy trash cans if you buy one from them. Kids love this stuff so it's worth the 5 bucks.

Step Two: Gather the kids. Worms like bedding. We shredded newspaper.

Step Three: Worms like a nice moist home, don't you? Pour in a cup of water and toss that newspaper salad.

Step Four: Gather your womrs. Here are the worms. We bought them at the local garden supply.

Step Five: Prepare the worms. This part is easy, simply remove the lid. The worms are ready to move.

Step Six: Pour the little guys in, gently. Here are the worms in their new home.

Step Seven: Feed the little worms.

Birthday Time

A. has his 5th birthday this weekend. His Nana D. and Grandpa L. sent him a card and some birthday money. We went to the toystore to go shopping for a battery operated robot. No such thing was in stock so A. selected a variety of goodies. Before we get too far ahead, here is R. with his gift for being so patient in the toystore. It's a squishy, light-up UFO ball. It's fantastic!











Here is A. with his toys, 3 Bionicles, a 3-D dinosaur puzzle in an egg and a knight's sword with sheath!!






Now, I'm not a Bionicle building variety mom. I'm more of a cookie-baking, hey let's play ball in the backyard kind of mom. All those tiny parts and those instruction books just don't work for me. Big A. is the go-to guy when it comes to building models. Here is A. waiting for his Dad to come home. He sat here for hours!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY A!!!

Above is baby A at one month of age. Hey baby!

The Greatest Kids!

Okay, I have the greatest kids. Here is one of them now. He's vac-ing the house, and he isn't pretending. He has taken to vac-ing after his nap the last few days. I adore that in anyone, but in a kid, whew! My husband does the real vac-ing. Am I lucky or what? My dear R. actually will come get me to move furniture to get the crumbs underneath. I don't clean the crumbs "under". He's so good at vac-ing that this will have to be his job ;) Cheers to R. for vac-ing until the machine loses it's charge each day!!

Free Stuff!

I love free stuff. We are members of two local Freecycle groups. If you aren't familiar with Freecycle you can read about it here. http://www.freecycle.org/

A former teacher posted that she had a 50 gallon, yes 50 gallon, storage tub full of her old teaching texts and supplies for grades K-3! Holy moly, I was all over it. The box literally filled my trunk and I have the largest trunk available without tracking down a 1970s station wagon. Let me tell you, there was quite a bit of good stuff in that tub and I'm still working on organizing it in our "school bookcase". Well since I so willingly took these things off of this former teacher's hands, she contacted us when she found a box of educational games. Bingo! Literally, we received Money Bingo, Time Bingo, etc. as well as many great spelling games.

Here are some pics of the family playing Spin and Spell.

A Friend in Vinegar

I saw this post on Sassykats blog. Ahh, well I do love my vinegar. It's a great cleaner and fabric softener. How wonderful to see someone is as fond of vinegar as myself, but I suspect even more so. Here is the link and the post http://www.xanga.com/sassykat1213



Sometimes I'm a poet...
Oh, vinegar, vinegar, my sour little friend

I love the way you clean for me; for the chores you gently tend!

I poured you in my teapot last night and turned the heat on high

As you toiled and boiled in my copper pot, I gave a thankful sigh.

"Mom, what's that smell?!" *cough* *gag* "My eyes are starting to water!"

(Our little guys do not realize that any drama will become my blog fodder!)

And then, dear vinegar, you soon dwindled and my teapot was bright and clean

I happily rinsed my pot and prepared a spot of tea~ named for Catherine the Queen!

Secret Messages

I received a email post from one of my online groups from a mother of a 10 year old. She says she's been trying to get him to write more and she offered to dictate to him while he typed. He told her about the secret messages he leaves in his writing assignments. He'll type the assignment and then add his secret message in a white font. The secret message won't be visable until he highlights all, exposing the message. Pretty neat I thought. Try highlighing in black which makes the assignement disappear and your secrect message appear.

Huh, Creative Math Learner, What?

The more I learn about giftedness and education, the more I come across all kinds of new lingo. It seems A. is a Creative Math Learner type of kid meaning he learns through story and application rather than worksheets. I want to be one too! It sounds like so much fun. Well, when I was at the CAG Conference I was quite unimpressed with the exhibits except for King Joe. King Joe is a set of texts that are in storybook form. I purchased the text that teaches problem solving and it is a huge hit. Both boys love this story and beg for more. At some point I may order the remaining texts.

www.kingjoe.com

Our small town, Sunland is actually part of the City of Los Angeles. Home Depot has been fighting to place one of their stores withing 1/2 mile of our house. Here is a great video displaying the characteristics of our town. Tomi is a local realtor and representative to our Neighborhood Council and she put this together.

McGuffey's Readers

Did you know that you can download the McGuffey's readers from this site?

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14640

Click on McGuffey, William to see the other downloads available.

Lunar Eclipse Dress Rehearsal

Did you know there was a dress rehearsal for this evenings lunar eclipse! There was!

Here is the sun, a very small sun.


Here is the little moon. Isn't he a cute little moon!

Here is the little Earth. Ahh, what a sweet little Earth he is!

Can you see how the Sun's light shines on the Moon? It's faint but it's right there in the middle of the Moon's chest.

Hey, what happened? The Earth slowly moved in between the Sun's light and the Moon. The poor Moon is all dark now. You can see how hard the Earth had to concentrate to pull this off. Good job Earth.

I don't have a picture of this but I bet you can imagine what happened next! Yes, the Earth continued moving over, allowing the Sun to shine it's light on the little Moon!

Now, try not to miss the real lunar eclipse this evening!

Happy viewing,

The Sun

Two Happy Boys

When I pick up the boys from preschool each day I ask them what was the favorite part of their school day. A., my dear, always says "You, Mom, you are the favorite part of my day." R., my dear, always tells me what he ate for lunch. Food is the favorite part of his day. Ahh, the simple life-family and food. Come to think of it, family and food are way up on my list of favorite things.

Here are a few pictures of happy boys.

A. after excavating and building his T-Rex model. Satisfaction!

R. preparing to eat his morning pancakes. Mmmm, happiness.

Who Ya Gonna Call - CLUMP BUSTERS!

Today we added some soil to our new raised garden bed. Big A. assembled the bed using premade corners. Here are the corners now!

Everyone participated.

A. was the designated clump buster. See that clump right there? It's about to be destroyed!

I was the dirt leveler in charge as well as documentarian and R. was my trusty assistant. He took his role quite seriously.

Big A. was the dirt dumper. He's so strong. He wowed us by carrying 6 bags of stinky dirt to our work site.

Voila! The dirt is in place! We have about 4 inches of dirt and need another 4 inches before planting.

CAG Conference

I co-presented with Dr. Barbara Klein at the California Association for the Gifted Conference today.

http://drbarbaraklein.squarespace.com/

http://www.cagifted.org/

It wasn't something I normally would do but Barbara asked for my help and I did have a good time. It was nice to step out of my normal role for the day.

Butterflies!

A. and I really enjoy Journey North and their education programs on the subject of migration. Today we watched the amazing videos of the Monarch butterflies.

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/PoetrySanctuaryVideo.html

Chinese New Year

Did you celebrate Chinese New Year? We started attending the Families with Children from China Chinese New Year banquets once R. came home to us.

http://www.fwcc.org/

The boys wore their vests again this year. These are magical vests as they never seem to grow into them. I think we'll get a third year out of them!

Year of the Rat Stamps

The United States Post Office offers stamps each Chinese New Year.

http://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10152&storeId=10001&categoryId=18401&productId=35901&langId=-1

This year is the year of the rat! I have purchased a sheet each year for our son R.

The New Century Jelly Glass?

Well you know, I'm always up to trying something new especially if it's on sale and I have a coupon. Alan picked up some Hillshire Farm lunchmeat. Typically we don't eat lunchmeat unless it comes from real meat, lol. Alan loves peppered turkey sliced from the deli but it just isn't in the budget. In comes the Vons flyer and the Hillshire Farms coupon for lunchmeat. I bite on the deal and Alan heads out to Vons to do the shopping. So today I try the new lunchmeat. It's so-so, typical suspicious water-added lunchmeat but it does come in reusable Gladware. Now we use Gladware all the time for packing our lunches. I would buy this again for that reason alone. I'm a sucker for Gladware. Aren't the folks at Hillshire Farms smart!

Baby Birds

Who doesn't love baby birds! If baby birds are good then baby bald eagle birds are the best. Please take a look see at these little guys. Look early in the day as it gets dark in Florida before it does out here on the west coast. A. and I kept the birds up on the screen for several hours waiting for the adults to come home and feed the fluffy little babies.

http://www.audubonofflorida.org/friendsoftheeagle/cam.html

Ni Hao Kai-lan

Ni Hao Kai-lan finally premiered. I haven't had a chance to see it yet. Have you? A. saw a bit of it today and was very excited to tell me about it. I'll record an episode for him on Monday.

http://www.nickjr.com/shows/ni-hao-kai-lan/index.jhtml

CVS Deals!

I swear by the deals at CVS. If you have the time for reading the adds and you don't mind buying in advance of your actually needs, you can save lots of money. Today I made my weekly run and saved so much. My total came to $24.24 after saving $52.43 with coupons and sales. In addition to this I earned $9 in Extra Care Bucks to use next week. Basically this was a net $15 purchase, less than the cost of the diapers alone which were originally $10.49 each (see below).

I bought 2 boxes of facial tissue, 2 packs of batteries, 2 bags of diapers, 1 dishwasher detergent, 3 cold medicines, air sanitizer spray, breakfast bars, etc. These are all things I'll use, maybe not all this week, but I'll use them. We have a section in the garage where we shelve these things.

Final note: I know what you're thinking, why do my kids need diapers. They're for night time only okay. I like to think that they're too busy dreaming up ways to save the world and solve complicated math formulas that they don't wake up to go to the bathroom - sometimes :)

Coupons and Savings

I heard a radio program where the value of coupons was being questioned; does anyone really save with those silly things? The host thought someone should keep track of their annual savings so we would know the truth. Of course, I thought that sounded like lots of fun.

Today my total at Albertsons was $107.09. I saved $50.66. This brought my total to $56.43. My weekly budget is $40.00 so I went a bit over but in my defense, I did bring my little boys with me and my brain was getting a little tired. I was bummed that they were out of the Peter Pan peanut butter on sale for $0.99 since I had a $1.00 coupon. Oh well. Let them eat Nutella!!

The kids are excited because we bought marshmallows for their marshmallow shooters.

Jingle Cats

Did anyone say Jingle Cats? My Jingle Kid loves this clip...



http://youtube.com/watch?v=GPp0g0A_6x8



Here's my Jingle Kid now

Intacs

I just wanted to post how excited I am about the news I received today from a fellow sufferer of keratoconus. Since I received my intacs implants I've made myself available through two internet forums and through my surgeons office to answer questions about Intacs insertion. Today I received news that one of the patients with whom I've been corresponding will be having the procedure in January. I'm so excited for her. I do hope that her experience is equivalent or better than mine. Here is the website for my surgeon. He's quite innovative.

http://www.boxerwachler.com/

Today's Grocery Deals

I have been couponing in a serious way. Here is what I got today at Ralphs for $24.48:

4 boxes of Bisquick

10 cans of tuna

1 can of coffee

1 cake mix

1 frosting

1 lb of ground sausage

1 coffee creamer

2 loaves of bread

I saved $25.61 with sales and coupons. This is my first time over the 50% savings mark at the grocery store so I'm a bit excited.

No Child Left Behind

Why, oh why are our schools in such poor shape. Could it be that it starts from the top?

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/2007/11/05/the-education-secretary-talks-about-nclb.html

Victoria Magazine is back!!



http://www.victoriamag.com/

What to be for Halloween.

I have one, possibly two, gifted little boys at home and they constantly surprise me.

My eldest, 4 years of age, can't decide what he wants to be when he grows up, a cartographer or a Power Ranger.

Roman the Raven?

We were working on the yard this evening and a little pal hopped aboard my clothing. We made him a home of a mason jar and a meal of a strawberry. A. named him Roman the Raven. Kids come up with the funniest names.

Lincoln Logs

Do you remember Lincoln Logs? A. 4 has finally discovered them. His Nana M. purchased him a huge set last Christmas. Here he is with his Stagecoach Station.

Today we went to the library. By the time we got home it was 2:00pm and I hadn't eaten lunch yet. I explained to the boys that they would have quiet time on the sofa and watch the movies we borrowed from the library. A asked if they could watch his first; I told him he could. He said to that "It's a great day in the United States of America." Ahh, it certainly is.