Artwork

A brilliant fellow blogger mentioned that she scans her kids' artwork so that she can post it on her family blog and in her photo books.  Then, she doesn't have to keep all the original pieces and it takes up less space.  Great Idea!  Jude is turning into an artist junkie.  He loves art time at school and is so proud to show me his masterpieces hung proudly on the walls outside his classroom.  I love that he exclaims "I did that, Mom!" and "I show Daddy this!".  We take the art home and Jude proudly places it on the fridge or on the mantel.  Tamlin...not so much into art.  He would rather keep on playing with blocks or cars than be bothered to go to the craft project.

I decided to give this electronic means of archiving a try.
Downside...the first few scans I did are pdf and can't be displayed here on the blog.

Easily corrected for the next installment.

Playdough Afternoon

After church, I was looking for an activity for the boys to do while lunch was being made.  The boys made the brilliant decision to play with playdough.  We have a whole rubber-maid tub of playdough paraphernalia that we have received or I have picked up at yard sales over the years.  By far, the favorite are the car molds (thankfully, there are two of these).  The playdough presses are also big hits.  At first, Jude would make the cars, with help, but refuse to smash them / destroy them.  He was constantly asking for more playdough to make more, rather than reuse what he had.  Eventually, when he saw his brother Tam smooshing his cars, he realized that destruction was okay.  Jude than asked to make butterflies. Butterflies?  Where do I have anything to make butterflies, thought. Well, Captain Obvious saw his favorite insect on the handle of the press...something that I had never noticed.  He then happily smooshed cars into butterflies, and then back to cars.  Tamlin, likes to make long snakes and spaghetti...which he cuts up into little pieces.  Oh, the bigger the mess the better.  Luckily, I have a high tolerance for playdough mess, as long as it is contained to the kitchen with the easily sweepable linoleum floor.  Good times.

clean up

We were that family...
The one that is the cause for the dreaded "Clean-up on Aisle Two" announcement over the intercom at the store...
Tamlin threw up on the floor.
Out of no where, the little man started not feeling well.  I look back and pink (yes pink) goop was flowing out of the mouth.
I had one of those out-of-body experiences.  I saw myself being disgusted at the mess, and yet wanting to hug and comfort him at the same time.
We alerted the staff and left.  I did not feel bad leaving immediately.
Tam was feeling better by the time we got home and was asking for french fries.

Memory Monday - Computers

Ah...we live in such the electronic age.  I don't think a day goes by when we haven't used a newer electronic gadget...a phone or tablet or computer.  We use 'em to check the weather, the news, what's going on around town, watch movies, cartoons, missed tv shows, draw pictures, and play games.

I grew up with a computer in the house.  Oh way back when, we had the top of the line TRS-80 Model III.  This had the awesome black and slightly greyish screen.  It ran on BASIC and used the huge ol' square disks.  I remember first learning how to turn the machine on and then making it run my favorite game programs.  There was no Internet back then, so there wasn't any checking email or blogs or whatnot.  My favorite games involved calling Santa and telling him my Christmas wishlist; this was complete with ringing phone sounds printed across the screen.  Another favorite was Oregon trail...My family often died of snakebites, exhaustion, or typhoid.  I remember that I had to have time limits on how long we could be on the computer and when I had to give it up so that my sister could play too.

I remember taking computer classes back in 6th grade and learning how to write code.  I remember learning how to type because my mother thought this would be an extremely useful skill for the future. (Thank mom...I think of that every time I sit down to type and I'm so grateful I don't use the "hunt and peck" method.)  I remember learning C++ and Colbol programing language and writing my own simple programs.  I remember when we final upgraded to a color monitor!  Wowee!  Computer games in color!  My mind was completely blown.  I remember the first person 3-D shoot 'em up games like Quake.  I was horrible at these games! 

I remember that by college, computers were more advanced than what I could code for.  I remember when the mouse came about and then the Internet came to our home.  At college, we had online games to play and I found my way to massive role-playing games with others.  I was an archer running around fighting smurfs, and trying to level up.  (This was pre-warcraft!).  My college had computer labs open 24hours, so one of my first jobs was as a computer baby-sitter on the grave-yard shift once a week.  Man is it boring watching one person play games at 2am. 

Computers kept changing radically, especially getting smaller, faster, and larger in memory...I remember getting my first laptop, my first apple computer, and eventually my first tablet.  I remember watching Star Trek with all their radical touch-screen technology and thinking how awesome it was...and here we are with it in our household.  I remember learning how to dial on an ol' rotary phone, and then a push dial phone, and thinking how awesome it would be to have a little flip tri-corder like on star trek or to be able to see the caller instead of just listening to them.  Then came the huge cell phone, and then a small cell phone, and now we video call!  I feel that all the Enterprise technology can't be too far out of our reach now :-)

An now...my boys huddle around the tablets.  Both have the instinct to use the touch-screens to make things go.  Both now look at phones and try to find the screen where the people are.  Both know how to open and close games.  Luckily, I also know enough to put on the ol' parental locks and not divulge the passwords to the credit cards.  We still limit their screen times, and I still feel that we have enough real world time too.  However, I just can't even begin to image where we will be next with computers in the future.

Another photo book completed

Lately I have been plowing through paperwork for taxes and the photobooks.  I am a bit over a year behind on publication and I am trying madly to catch back up.  I love the end results of the books I create with the combination of these blog ramblings and all of our photos...However, it is a bit time consuming (ok, a ton of time consuming) to get them completed.  And I'm not even a perfectionist!
Well, I just uploaded and ordered the next installment from January to August 2012, all 280 pages of it.  (See I told you I was a bit behind).  My goal is to try to get the next one finished over the next month, but we will see. 

The mini-historian in me loves documenting our family, our growth, and our past...so I want to keep these going as much as I can!

Memory Monday - Story Time

I remember my love of books beginning at a very early age.
I remember having my mom hold us in bed and read a book or two or three before we were shuttled off to go to sleep.  I remember reading books or trying to read books and falling asleep on top of them.  Well, I still do that :-)

I remember "reading" this book often.  I would imagine myself in the story and pick our my favorite things on each page or I would imagine myself waling through the setting on the page and talking with the other characters.
 Luckily, this book held up reasonably well and the kids now read it too. Richard Scarry was an awesome author.

I remember going to the library back in my hometown...down the steps into the basement, which housed all the children's books.  Even now, I recall exactly where some of my favorite books were located in the stacks.  The downside is that I don't really remember who the authors were to find these books now. 

Brian remembers visiting the bookmobile in Forest Hills instead of the library.  He says that he remembers there being tons of books in his house growing up, so there was never a shortage of finding something to read.

Our library here is awesome.  I love our two children's librarians.  They are both awesome with the boy and are really good at suggesting and finding books they think they will like.  The weekly story time is fun and they are very patient with the squirrelly kids.  Just lately, I asked one of librarians if she could find a book about piggies where the youngest refused to take a bath and said "icky-picky nope."   Yeah...that's all I gave her to go on.  Amazingly she found the book!  It wasn't in our library, but she could get it on loan from another library and better yet, she found the Reading Rainbow show that featured it for me.  Awesome. 

Both of our boys love books to and love our trips to the library.  We read two or three bedtime stories while all snuggled together.  Lately, I soon as I finish a book, Jude grabs it and states "I read it!"  He then attempts to flip through the book and repeat the story back that he has just heard.  Tamlin waits until both stories are done and then grabs extra books to take to read in bed on his own.  I've caught him imagining that he is in the story too, like I use to.  They now want the light to stay on a bit longer in their room so that they can look at their books.

Tamlin's current favorites are:
Story books / Fairy tale books
Stephen Kellogg's Boa Constrictor books
Superhero and Ninja books
Bernstein Bears books
Books with mazes in them
Magic School Bus books


Jude's favorites
Books about stars...This one has been checked out several times from the library.
Books about cars, trucks, and trains
I spy books
Books about shapes or colors


Brian and I just can't wait until we can get them into older fiction and science-fiction books so that we can share our favorites with them...like Lord of the Rings and comic books!

I know I still favor holding and reading an actual book, even in this digital age.  I have discovered that there is a virtual loaning library on Amazon.  I borrow a book at a time to read on the Kindle for no fee.  I have found a few interesting books... and some badly written romances so far.  On the flip side, the interactive ebooks for kids are pretty cool.  I try to score free ones when I can for the boys to play with and listen to.  The downside is that it is confined to the tiny screen rather than a big book that they can hold and share.  Who knows where the next technology will take us...