It's Wild Here

Merry Christmas, 2008

 

We all had a lovely Christmas this year. There were a few small mishaps and sources of anxiety (which cousin was last puking and who did they breathe on?) but it all went fairly smoothly. 

I was hoping to make these nice tree images into a new blog banner, but I couldn't figure it out in time. I love this old elf ornament from my childhood. The crocheted stocking in the center was made this December for Myrtle.  The stocking second from the left was made last year for Ryan.

 

After we moved, it took us many months to get pictures on the walls and other decorative stuff out. One of our favorites is this fabulous branch Ryan found in our yard at the old house. We hang seasonal treasures, art work, and nature items.

Some socks I made for Kelly last week.

Four balaclavas for four sweeties, to use while sledding, shoveling, walking to school or bus.   You would think that getting a group picture wouldn't be so difficult with only 1/4 of their faces showing. Still, eyes can be crossed, hair can go in the eyes, we can look down into our laps... it took a while as usual.

My friend Lizz at ZooLoo Naturals made these custom carvings of the boys. Aren't they cute? Her wooden animals are lovely and her children do some beautiful felting.

A couple of highlights...  rescue safari boat, "Mammoth" crocs for the toddler...

 

MOON SHOES!

And not pictured here, #1 son, not the slightest bit impressed with the crack of dawn christmas, declined to be photographed but was happy with some new shoes, jeans, iTunes card, and an incredible large canvas from Grammy.  [note to Grammy and Grandpa: can we get those photos off Grandpa's camera and into email?]

My camera cord is missing.  I don't seem to be able to blog without photos. I've ordered a new one from ebay, so in a few days, get ready for a flood of updates.  Briefly, though...

Evan - writing christmas story, watching a lot of football (winning his work pool, no money at stake), enjoying Risk and "that's what she said" jokes with older boys

Jamie - still sculpting, beginning to offer lessons in Photoshop, reading, schooling, PC gaming, playing piano

Jeremiah - suddenly turned on to music, his taste is a unique combination of 80s (eye of the tiger, seriously) and 60s, Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc.  Just completed several large school projects related to their study of Egypt, played in his first school band concert, the object of no small amount of female attention, but don't even think about bringing that up.

Ryan - excited to be almost 5, excited about the holidays, coming out of a very long respiratory illness and seeming to respond well to daily allergy meds, which bums me out, but we had to do something.  Protective of Kellen, affectionate with all smaller children, enjoying 2x/week play time at Laurie's, can count to a million... not really, but can count high - somewhere between 40 and 80 I think.  Still very interested in writing and letters, hasn't expressed an interest in reading.  Still extremely, seemingly-uncontrollably curious and "grabby" - so many broken objects. So. many.

We also went to a local holiday shindig - pancakes and santa and crafts - ryan loved that.

Kelly - in a "pretending to be a  baby" stage, having little meltdowns daily - loud but not long - when I run out of milk (fairly quickly these days :-(  he says "this one's not working." lol.   

Amy - still busy with Threshold Choir, NVC group, trying to hang on to my connection with the dharma center but it's just not happening.  knitting - I finished that red sweater and the finishing and resulting object was so dreadful I can't even post it, can't even try to correct it.  I am knitting hats and toys all winter.  And also socks, definitely.  Enjoying old seasons of Six Feet Under.

updates

K: nursing less (plugged duct/infection to show for that), talking more, daddy-love all the time, can spend long periods at the kitchen sink playing, never forgets his vitamin.

R: scared of the dark and shadows, enjoying the Baha'i children's class - he does so well in situations like this - so compliant and joiner-y, but in a cooperative, contributing way, very different from at home, where we still experience daily surprises. Learning letters, is remarkably quick to understand simple arithmetic, has had a cold for weeeeeks.  Will not blow his nose ever. Planning to be Jedi for Halloween.

JJ: writing a 4-page story for school, starting a tumbling class at X YMCA with his friend E, spending a lot of other time with same seemingly-best friend, although he assures me his "group" at school consists of about 14 friends :-) 

J: still struggling with sleep, working with AR weekly on amazing sculptures, worked last weekend at her studio for the studio tour, maintaining As and Bs.

J and JJ's team finished in 2nd place in rec league soccer this fall - it was SO close! They tied and went into penalty kicks. Great to see the brothers on the same team again - it's been years since they happened to be in the same age groupings for soccer.

E: traveling more than we'd all like, seems to be weathering the financial situation at work, enjoying participating at the Baha'i Center, listening to Marshall Rosenberg, watching the bizarre foods and fighting shows, cleared out our shed (yay!).  

A: injured back, trying out a new meal routine - repetitive but much easier to maintain, enjoying the NVC group and Threshold Choir, absolutely cannot keep up with laundry, setting goals to hang curtains and art by J's birthday, planning to offer some community service in the form of computer help for seniors, considering whether to homeschool with R next year - kindergarten age.

Spinning/knitting: still working on red sweater, spinning about every other day for 20-30 min. Finished these bullseye mittens a couple weeks ago - yes, the color combo is just as horrid in person.

busy older guys

Late last month, J began 8th grade. He's also busy with soccer, the end of the season at the intergenerational garden, catching up on past seasons of Lost, and the beginning of the soccer season. He's also doing quite a lot of painting (post to come), and continues to beg for a fabulous camera like Aunt Katie's.

JJ began 6th grade in public school and has adjusted marvelously. As expected, he enjoys an easy and fun social life. He finds the academic work very doable, although at times not very stimulating. Both boys enjoyed the local blues festival last weekend, where JJ purchased these distinctive shades. He's playing travel and recreational soccer, and continues to be dedicated to our trusty trampoline out back.

Eleven years

Have a look at the one and only, the clever and kind, the soccer footwork master of Ohio, Guitar Hero prodigy and all around spectacular human being, JJ at eleven years old.

Jeremiah this summer

Unlike in the picture, Jeremiah was serious on the field. His team won first place in their division for the league this spring.

Now, his focus is on swimming, pick-up soccer in the evenings, an upcoming 11th birthday, and some organized activities - soccer camp, Summer Strings (band camp), and possibly a regular sports and crafts day camp in August.

He had the opportunity to go to KI with K, T and the cousins, and will probably do that again a few more times this summer.

In preparation for school in the fall, he's spending time every day on multiplication/division memorization, hand writing, and as always he's in the middle of a novel (The People of Sparks).

playing catch up in the blog

A couple of weeks ago, the youngers attended a "Truck Touch" at a local dairy farm.

We also got a new (to us... nearly 100 years old) piano and Jamie began lessons with a new instructor at A. M.

And here is a little before and after for K's first summer buzz.  I think the new look is really sweet in person - he looks kind of unhealthy-bald in this picture, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Last week, we had cousin F here for some outdoor lunch and sleeping over. He ended up staying two nights because the big thunder storms and tornadoes arrived during our first attempt at dropping him off.

misc updates

There is a new local hs group starting in this town and the next one over - much saner driving than the last group we joined. So far, we've been to a board game day.  The kids were younger than Jeremiah, although I know of at least one family that didn't make it that day with a girl his age who I think he could enjoy.

Dentist - Jeremiah and Ryan and I needing work done, wah. Not a lot but still anxiety-producing for me.

Did I post about bowling? I've got some bowling pictures and a video coming up but the camera is nowhere to be found again. We bowled with WILC. Ryan and Jeremiah had a good time.

Soccer all the time. Jeremiah is on two teams, and has soccer every day this week. He's pretty overwhelmed but is improving and seems to want to continue, even though he can be unhappy about it in the moment.  His team (and he) played very well in the soccer tournament this weekend. We thought they had made the finals but then one team had a big upset and it ended up coming down to goal differentials, and they missed out by one goal. Bummer, but it did result in only a 75% loss of our weekend rather than a complete weekend slurp, since they didn't have to go back for the 4th match.

Jamie is very unhappy with his OWL class. He had to wear a pregnancy suit and care for a fake baby during the time of the class.  It seems the camraderie and mutual respect is breaking down in that group, at least for Jamie.

Today, our kitchen is being painted. We're going to try to stay out of the house a lot and will probably go for a field trip to the newish mall that opened last year.  I think it has some outdoor water play place and Jeremiah is hoping for an arcade.  I'd like to get back to listening to books on tape in the car, to give our fluffy not-so-academic outing a bit of redeeming value.

Right now, Jeremiah and I are working our way through the City of Ember series - I just finished The People of Sparks and JJ is midway through Ember.  I've been basically meeting my reading goals this year, but not posting much since starting to use GoodReads - I'd like to link to my book list but I think you might need to log in for that. It's a very helpful site for keeping track of to-read books, sharing your reading with others and getting suggestions.v

cold Easter

So, I'm still waiting for my new battery charger to come in the mail. The charger was one of a few move-related losses. I'm sure it's going to turn up, but in the meantime, no camera?? I don't think so.  Since I have nothing new, here's my annual favorite Easter joke for your amusement.

In other camera news, we bought J a new camera yesterday, as well as some slacks, nice shirt, and casual shoes, so that he will be ready for his big trip to D.C. with Grammy.  Over the past several months they've discussed visiting many different places and I'm not sure exactly what's been settled on.

Since December, JJ has endured a dramatic emotional rollercoaster over a highly anticipated video game. Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been finally released after two very long postponements. For 3+ months, we counted the days - he, because he was counting, and I, because double-checked with me daily how much longer we had to wait. It didn't arrive as expected from Amazon for several days, at which point we finally decided to buy it at a local store and return the Amazon order. We all exhaled with relief that the game was here and the build-up was over. Sleepless nights could end (not kidding!). 

But no.  The game would not work in the Wii - it had some kind of common problem that needed fixing in order to play this game. J had to send the Wii and game back to Nintendo (at Nintendo's cost) and get it repaired. He had another week to wait. Fortunately, Nintendo was fast and offered detailed tracking of the progress of the repair and the shipping.  We stalked the tracking site. At 11:04 am on Friday, he checked the site, which said the package had been delivered at 10:56am.  He checked the porch, and voila! 

Do you think this story is over? Oh no.  The game  worked for about an hour. Then the Wii was knocked off the table and it no longer played any games. It was looking like the Wii would have to be sent for repair again. J and his sleepover friend rented a movie and consoled themselves. The next morning, sleepover friend came dashing up the stairs announcing "IT WORKS NOW!"  In typical weird-technology fashion, the Wii decided it would now work, and it has worked since. I hesitate to say this, but it looks like the saga might actually be coming to a close.

spring

These were actually what came up in the yard at our old house before we moved. Yesterday, we discovered daffodils in the new yard.

Jeremiah is anticipating the permanently warmer weather, so that he can be outside every day doing his normal things - taekwondo on the roof of the shed, biking, trampolining. The littles are loving this new concept - a sidewalk! They have two very easy boundaries at the edges of our front yard, and they ride back and forth, back and forth on their bikes.

Yesterday, Jeremiah had a major accomplishment. He learned a back handspring without any help or spotting. He's a tumbling master!

This weekend, I made my first pizza dough in the new mixer, planted 24 little cups of tomato seeds, and other house-y things.