Paper Purging

I got the cutest help with my piles!

In October, I took on the commitment to get clear about our finances and get everything in order.  Because after 17 years we hadn't exactly figured this out for ourselves, I hired a GREAT finance coach to help me find our way.  Though I have been following Mikelann Valterra's blog for over a year, it took a friend

wondering if working with a coach might help me in my quest to prompt me to call and set up an appointment.  Step by step, her knowledge and experience is moving us towards the understanding we want and need.

Last week, the exhilarating by-product of seeing where we are at included paperwork purging.  I threw out 5 large bins of paper.  We're now down to one file drawer, all our past taxes info in one place with a tidy folder waiting for Bill and me to take a first stab at this year's taxes. My favorite part? the complete elimination of paper avalanche potential!

Here is the article Mikelann shared with me about what to keep and what/when to dump that started the cleaning frenzy.  Maybe you'll find it inspiring, too.

Soccer Mom

Pretty quiet over here in Sarablogland for the moment.  However, I did write for the Seattle Neufeld Community blog this week.  Let me know what you think.

Soccer Mom

My 12 year old son Theo can’t get enough soccer this year.  He plays for a select team which practices twice a week, plus at least one game per weekend. Since September he’s also had weekly one-on-one lessons with a coach he admires and likes. Over the cold rainy winter, Theo participated in the local indoor soccer league to keep his foot in the game. 

This spring break season, I find that I have agreed to three weeks of soccer camp in a row – one of the possibilities of being home schoolers is moving our school work to the afternoon to accommodate mornings of scrimmages, hilarious drills, and skill building games.

 For all this time spent on the turf, Theo’s not a top player.  He’s not at the bottom, just somewhere near the middle.  Currently his visions for adult life start out as a professional soccer player. Once he gets “too old” to continue in pro soccer and is forced to retire, he plans to shift careers to work as an engineer and start a family.

Besides driving him all over town, paying for his various soccer pursuits and gear, and adding skills practice to his daily homeschool routine, I’ve watched his passion and wondered how else I can support him to become the player he dreams of. Standing on the sidelines during the final game of the spring season, I listened to some of the team’s best players talk while they waited their turn to go back on the field. I found myself surprised by unexpected insight into what was needed.  Read the rest of the post here.

Mason Monday: Party Dog

Really, we have a VERY nice dog. Give him a blinky ball and he'll boogie with the best of them.

Fetching in the Rain is So Much Fun

Mason, in all his glory

Because mud just makes everything better.

Busy Summer Fun

Being gone for 10 days in August allowed our garden to go crazy. With Bill and Rosie off together on a business trip (her first!!), Theo and I took advantage of the lovely day to harvest some bounty.

We got giant squash and 16 (count them 16) cups of basil leaves.

Of course, that much basil calls for some serious pesto preparation. Theo and I took turns adding ingredients.  Our recipe turned out to be a little creative because I didn't have enough of most anything in the house to make 5x my normal pesto recipe.  For nuts we used almonds, pecans, cashews and pepitas.  For garlic we used some fresh, some roasted giant garlic I happened to have on hand and some whipped garlic from Lebanese Breeze.

 Theo adds in the first layer of basil for a lovely stratification of ingredients (if that looks to you like a lot of salt on top, it is.  I got a little confused in my converting).

After a thrilling time mixing the ingredients, we scooped out the pesto into 1/4 balls for freezing.

Now, we have a large bag of summer sunshine ready for those cold gray days ahead. As a bonus, we really enjoyed our time together as just two, and I got some good sidewards homeschool math and problem solving into the mix.

Next project: doing something paleo with those giant squashes.

Outside is Good

Summer seems to have finally arrived in Seattle.  While the rain has been trying for my soul, the newly installed garden has greatly appreciated the many deep soakings. Probably our water bill has, too.

The updated yard includes four generous planting boxes for my baby-step square foot approach to growing veggies. With 44 designated square feet, I'm awash in 44 yummy options. And that's in addition to all the edible bushes filling our plantable spaces.

When we bought this house our 7200 square foot property came split into various smaller "regions." The backyard came as a lush green lawn surrounded by tall cedar fencing -great for privacy.  Then there was a tiny front yard split by tall fencing from a good sized but non-visible and much-neglected hilly side yard.  Along the street, on the other side of both the driveway and the tall backyard fence someone built a fairly large terraced area that is invisible from all other parts of our house and yard. We call it the Back 40.

The front and side yards recently merged and terraced to create a space that our family spends a huge amount of time enjoying.  I drink my morning tea out there before the rest of the family wakes.  The kids play and jump in the trampoline by the hour.  We all spend time picking berries and fussing over the veggie boxes. Bill hangs out in the sitting area practicing guitar.  The dog lolls around near everyone, keeping careful watch over birds and passers-by.

For some reason, during the planning process, Bill and I (well mostly me) figured we wouldn't need help with the Back 40.  I had plans to recruit a neighbor to garden the space.  Well, for the 2nd year in a row the garden-share plans fell through.  So while our front/side yard is delicious, gorgeous and well used, the Back 40 sports a gigantic weed pit.  Mostly I'm distressed by the horror of it, but Rosie as an 8 year old doesn't see weeds, she sees flowers.  This week it became our bouquet picking area.

I'm grateful summer is really here.  I'm grateful to have an outside space that works so well for our family.  I'm grateful to have such lovely kids who remind me to relax and find the joy in life.

Gosh, I hope the weather holds!

Traditionally Busy

I love the traditions and routines that come with the winter holidays. Of course, this season also presents me with loads of opportunities to become absolutely crazy busy. Crazy is something I've tried to be mindful about this year as one of my on-going goals in my life is to create plenty of space for peace and connection.  Based on this goal, I tried to be mindful of how I planned this December.

Here are some of my favorite moments from the past few weeks in which I got to experience both:
- dipping candles and sharing stone soup with friends to celebrate the winter solstice
- decorating sugar cookies with my family
- chatting and wrapping presents with my hubby
- working with my son frying up donuts for Christmas morning
- sitting quietly by the light up tree while drinking my morning cup of tea

I also created several opportunities to see myself as overworked and under appreciated.  Thankfully, I managed this year to fairly quickly be aware of those moments and find ways to undo them.  Sometimes it simply meant taking a nap. Sometimes a phone call to a friend to express my frustrations or fears helped bring me back to a relaxed, more centered space. Once or twice it meant checking in with others to gauge expectations and then asking for help.

What do you do over the holiday season to feed your heart?  What worked well for you this year?

10 Year Old Birthday Fun

Sharing a few of my favorite pictures from Theo's birthday fun.

Showing off the Nerf gun his sister gave him.  This gun was definitely his most hoped for present and his sister got big points for being the one to acquire it.

Admiring the Nerf vest from his Grandpa, which until this vital moment he didn't even know was part of the Nerf arsenal.  He keeps it fully loaded by his bed at night.

Now completely geared up for birthday fun - what you can't see is the important contraption on his back, a camelback water back pack (from his seriously outdoor geeky grandma), thus enabling him to shoot many, many, many Nerf darts at his friends without even the need to pause for a drink.

And finally the birthday party.  10 boys shooting foam darts at each other for two hours.  Serious, sweaty, wild (and well facilitated) fun.

Watching kids grow is a privilege, but watching them indulge in being the focus of their day is so much fun!

Pretty Cute

Little update from October...

If I do say so myself, Bill and I made some pretty cute Halloween costumes this year. We carefully arranged ourselves wherever we walked or sat as the order of our tiles pretty well summed up the pair of us.  We really can be pretty full of it.

Happy Halloween, 6 weeks late!

Sad Doggie Day

We put Maggie down Tuesday.  


She'd been a little under the weather and our vet had been keeping an eye on her. We figured she'd gotten into some bad food or water.  Then Tuesday morning her health changed drastically.  It turns out she had a huge cancer in her stomach that probably took over part of her liver.  It had grown so large and she lost so much blood there wasn't really anything we could do for her. 


We spent a while in the afternoon sun with her and then said goodbye to our funny, frumpy, patient dog. 

Gentian Dog

Maggie the delightful, patient, frumpy, labradoodle suffers from an on-going low-grade yeast infection on her doggie bottom and chin (or as Rosie says, "geesed"). We've pursued may solutions: herbs, homeopathics, high quality raw foods, tons of probiotics, plenty of supplements and all the accompanying visits to several highly recommended holistic vets.

Having other things to do besides worry about my dog's back end, time passes between various solutions. I can watch her itch for only so long before I'm once again spurred in to action to find another vet who might come up with the final answer for Maggie's discomfort. Last week, reviewing all our thus far failed solutions and thinking about what relief might look like for the dog, I came up with a new idea.

When Rosie was wee, she and I developed thrush. It's a sort of yeast infection in the baby's mouth and mama's breast. Hoping to avoid pharmaceuticals for our baby, we treated it very effectively with gentian violet. What's gentian violet you ask? About.com says:

Gentian violet is an excellent natural remedy. It can be found in health stores. The yeast protocol for gentian violet is application once a day for 4 to 7 days. However, if the pain is gone, the mother should stop using it on day 4. If pain continues, she may use it until the seventh day, but it should not be used for longer than that. It is important to note here that gentian violet has a deep purple hue and it will stain everything it comes into contact with -- skin, clothing, etc. Mothers are clothed and can hide that aspect of it, but babies will have purple mouths for a while.

Drunk on my my moment of brilliance, I figured it couldn't hurt to try it out on the dog. It's non-toxic and applying it to the rear end would insure it's spread to the licking end. Maggie wasn't keen to having it painted on (not that I can blame her), but it was quick and relatively easy. I figured doing it right before bed would allow for it to dry overnight while she slept.

What I hadn't counted on was the after-effects. Remember the line "it will stain everything it comes in contact with"? We now have bright violet spots on the carpet. Spots on the dog bed. Spots on the sidewalk out back. Spots on my jeans where she tried to wriggle away from me.

Today we got smarter and applied it in the morning - outside - and then left Maggie to dry, and lick, for several hours. This afternoon she's looking smart in a pair of underwear that cover and embarrass her simultaneously.

Hopefully 4-7 days of this will end the persistent yeast. In the meantime, we're really enjoying our gentian dog.

(if you're reading this on an RSS feed, you really have to click-through to the picture!)

His Daddy's Son

Theo's latest creative moment.

Spelling Fun

Trying to keep the spelling fresh, Theo made a crossword from his list today. I dished out the letters after he spelled the words, then he arranged them. Boy, was it hard for me to keep my hands to myself and let him have the fun.

Now I need a bananagram fix and 2 of my favorite opponents are out of town. Yikes!

Never drive...

...while trying to eat a chocolate dipped ice cream cone.

It won't turn out well. Especially on a hot day.

Ancient Rome (in less that 10 minutes) by Theo

There was some debate Wednesday over whether or not Theo actually paid attention during the day's history lecture - the final summation of Ancient Rome.  

To prove that he intently listened and understood, Theo insisted on giving me the rundown.  I had the presence of mind to get the video camera out.  He was concise, fairly clear for an 8 year old, and so animated and cute it made my mommy toes curl.  

I'm not sure everything is 100% correct, but he still knows 99x more about ancient history than I do. I know it's long, but check him out!

edited to add:

This is Theo's version of what he learned.  And I want to call out that his ability to hold onto all this information is in huge part due to Scott Powell's clear and engaging presentation of the material.   

Cute as a Bunny

Or even cuter than 2 bunnies!

  

  

    

Tower of Library Power

Theo's job during our end-of-day clean up this evening was to tidy up the books. When I came in to check his work, here is what I found:

Completely delighted with himself, he marched up to bed.  I followed right behind him deeply aware of how much I love our public library system.  The stack is 45 books high.  Two came as birthday gifts to me.  18 of them we purchased last night at the Friends of the Seattle Public Library book sale.  The remaining 25 rolled in this week, reserved to compliment the Ancient Roman history lessons from HistoryAtOurHouse.

A little brag about the book sale.  The books priced at $1 each.  I hit the "ethnic studies" section first to score several recently released and highly recommended titles.  In the kid's language section I discovered Muzzy in both French and Spanish, plus 2 Japanese learning programs. The whole language learning bundle, which new would cost me well over $300, totaled $24. Color me pleased.

Now I need an awesome bookshelf sale.

Better Late than Never? Gingerbread House Pictures

WAY back in December, our family hosted a Gingerbread House Camp.  This warm and sunny April day seems like a good time to remember and share pictures.  Hopefully this will ward off any more unwelcome spring snow!

Three families joined us for a truly busy total of 6 children.  Most of them created their own houses.  One house had a delayed start that just never quite got off the ground, somehow his cookies were too soft and while his mom put in a Herculean effort to make the walls stand, gravity won out in the end.  On the third day of our camp, the skies open up and dumped more snow than I ever remember seeing in Seattle.   Sadly, this inhibited friends from coming to finish up their houses, however our family found embellishing our houses to be the perfect post-sledding activity.

Pictures of the sugary fun follow. Because we are now about to mix formatting and Blogger, prepare yourself for a little craziness.

Some children worked together to mix their own personal batches of dough, while others chose the design for their houses and cut the necessary pattern pieces. My favorite part is always watching the bigs and littles work together.

     

  

Dough perfected, we rolled out and trimmed it to fit our patterns. 10 minutes in the oven and time to cool got us ready for assembly.

The grind of preparation completed, we started the intricate business of decorating the houses. The kids could not get over the bowls and bowls of candy at their finger tips and the temptation to continually cram their little mouths with the sugary goodness overwhelmed them.  Our final compromise ended up with each child "shopping" for a small bowl of eating candy with the promise that all (in reality, most) other candies would go on the houses.

For a new understanding of the word fast, try watching a 2 year old swipe goodies off his sister's house when she looks away! 

  

Here is the line up of the houses awaiting day two of decorating. Never in the history of time has a home looked more holiday festive than ours did with 6 gingerbread houses on display.

Friends' masterpieces were delivered before I managed to get final pictures of them.  Here are the Barnacle creations in all their glory.

Theo's Gingerbread Castle, complete with many chocolate weapons, cannons and marshmellow knights.

      

Rosie's House of Delicious Treats.

Bill, who worked through the first days of the camp, used our scraps to create his own very special Gingerbread Robot Monkey. Cute and yummy.

     

Sara's House, the not-so-secret reason I hosted the camp.

   

And of course, the highly desired end result.

    

    

Play Ball!

Baseball officially started for us today at 9am when Theo's Rainier District Little League coach pitch team had its first practice. Thanks to his Daddy and his Uncle, Theo loves the game. Unfortunately his primary teacher (that'd be me) knows very little about the sport or the skills.

I've spent the last few weeks gathering information about how to teach basic baseball skills. Several websites out there made great sense to me and, via a search on amazon.com, I found our public library owns several highly recommended resources. 

Based on what I read, I've decided to take Theo's baseball practice in slow steps and make it part of our daily homeschool routine. After watching him at the skills day for the league, it was clear that he is comfortable with throwing, needs practice with his batting and struggles with catching. So in reverse order, we're working mostly on catching with a little throwing (mostly because the two are so closely linked).  As these skills mature, we've started to batting skills and practice.

The sources I've gotten the most out of so far are:

QCBaseball - webseite created by a man who played through college and coaches little leagues

The 59 Minute Baseball Practice by Marty Schupak

Backyard Baseball Drills also by Marty Schupak

Baffled Parents Guide to Coaching Youth Baseball by Bill Thurston

Focusing on catching first, one of the websites suggested children learn best if they start by throwing to themselves.  Also, most every source devotes several paragraphs to helping children conquer their fear of getting hit by the ball.  To this effect, Marty Schupak, introduces the "rag ball" - an ingenious device that consists of wrapping rags in masking tape to create soft "balls."  Since I was short on time for making rag balls, we started Theo's catching/throwing practice with a stuffed animal. He humored me with this for a few days until he could throw it up over his head and catch it about 20 times. We moved to a tennis ball from there and once he could throw and catch the tennis ball 100 times, I let him get out his mitt.  Figuring out mitt catching took him a few days, and after about a week's practice, he was successfully throwing the ball over his head and catching it with the mitt about 100 times easily.  

Wanting to get some fielding practice in, I started rolling Theo grounders in the living room. He found it hard and boring.  Our first viewing of the Marty Shupak video introduced us to the goalie game.  Theo stands between two chairs spread about 6 feet apart with his mitt and I try to roll balls past him.  He doesn't have to catch them, just bat them away from the goal.  Turns out this is hilarious to an 8 year old and he begs to do it over and over.  I notice the game has has him both moving his body to get to the ball and really focusing. Since we've been playing baseball goalie for a few weeks, I've started occasionally challenging him to catch the balls and throw them into a bucket to represent 1st base. I'm amazed at how his abilities have grown.

Once the throwing/catching to himself started to lock in, we made the rag balls.  Next to our rag ball construction area happened to be a blank wall where his sister had hung a homemade stop sign.  Theo started throwing the rags balls at the sign to test them and that immediately became the throwing spot.  He started by trying to hit the stop sign with the rag balls, again 100 throws.  At some point I suggested he throw the tennis ball (gently) against the wall to see if he could catch it.  Now he spends about 10 minutes every morning with the tennis ball and mitt, which makes a great alarm clock for anyone in the house who might have been still sleeping.

We've just started working on batting practice.  Thus far everything I've used comes straight from the Shupak videos.  One suggestion was a rag ball on a rope, using masking tape instead of duct tape.  I jumped on this immediately because I can't pitch.  Somehow, we're out of duct tape (Theo swears he knows nothing about this), so we tried with masking tape.  The batting practice was super fun for two days until Theo beat all the masking tape off the rag, so we're currently stuck waiting on a trip to the hardware store. 

I really like Schupak pointers for what good batting form should look like. Once we get the new tape, I'll be using several of his other tricks to help insure that Theo learns good footwork habits while batting.  

A few weeks ago, a super nice woman at playing Sunday morning softball loaned us her tee.  Along with the loaner came a quick lecture on how hitting off the tee is some of the best batting practice possible.  As this echoed more Shupak advice, I'm currently on the prowl for a hit quality tee and a tarp that Theo can hit into so we won't spend half the day chasing down balls.  

After several weeks of home practice, this morning was my chance to see how much progress we were actually making.  Most importantly, Theo had a great time - even though it was pouring rain and freezing cold!  And, I saw great strides.  His catching is wildly better than it was at the skills days.  He has a strong throwing arm, so I was stunned to see he didn't throw the ball all the way to the little boy he was partnered with more than once.  I was concerned the small kitchen space was stunting him and my first thought was that we need to get outside and do lots more long throws, which we will.  But it also turns out Theo didn't want to hurt the much smaller boy with the hard ball so he was aiming in front of him.  Isn't my boy sweet? 

Currently we have baseball built into our morning homeschool work.  I'm hoping to expand our equipment and games so eventually our time can involve a combination of skills games. As usual, because I am schooling two children, I need to find a balance with things he can do independently and games that require me. Here are my ideas thus far.

Throwing

 - against the wall

 - relay games into tarp

 - catch with a real person

Batting 

 - with ball on a rope

 - with tee into tarp

 - with soft toss rag balls

Fielding

 - goalie games

 - pop fly games

Running and sliding drills

My favorite tidbit from everything I've seen and read so far is from Marty Shupak and I've taken it as my mantra:

Baseball practice should always be more fun than work.

Guess What We Did Today

    

What a sweet little museum.  Just the right size and information for Theo's interests with plenty of Seattle history for me and mom.  The docent enhanced the displays with interesting stories of her own.  And the padded window seats up front created a lovely napping spot for a certain tired 5 year old!