Office Party

On Saturday, Rob’s office had a party for the associates and their families at Dave’s and Buster’s. It’s sort of a cross between a bar, a casino (only in decorative atmosphere, there’s no gambling or smoking), and Chuck E Cheese. There are some party rooms with pool tables and a little buffet, a restaurant and bar section, and then the game room. There were traditional arcade games and a lot of the ticket giving games where you basically put in a coin and watch it fall or push a button to see how many tickets you will get. It was a ton of fun! Even Hannah and Sabrina were so good and enjoyed the crazy, loud activities. Hunter and Emma tried out pool for the first time, and we did a little chatting with the adults. Then we just went crazy in the arcade.

We ended up with a ton of tickets and two people gave us their extras when they saw us with four kids. There is a little store where you can spend your tickets, and everyone got something fun to take home. In the mix, we ended up with three extra long slinkies: green, red, and purple. They were all instantly messed up as soon as they came out of the box. I spent 20 minutes untangling one for Emma yesterday, only to have her come back with a tangled mess again 2 minutes later. I looked at her like “don’t even ask” and she said, “I’m going to fix it by myself.” Smart girl. So now that I will not untangle the slinkies, I decided to try them out as art. We got a couple of digital photography books, and I tried some things I read. I still need to work on a sharper focus (time for the tripod), but I think I got some nice abstract images. I’m planning to post on the books later, after I try some more of the advice.

What? Develop Photos?

I have a whole bunch of film that needs to be developed just sitting in my fridge. There must be 20 rolls. I still used the film camera a lot before I got my new digital one because the pictures were such a nice quality. Now I hardly ever use it, but still have this backlog to get through. I finally took in four rolls to Sam’s Club and got them done. (This first one is with Sabrina and Adrienne, not Hannah)

Two were the disposable cameras I gave to Hunter and Emma when Sabrina was born! They took pictures in the hospital when they would come to visit. I did this same thing when Hannah was born and loved the pictures they took. They would get things like the flowers and the dry erase board the nurse would write on, and the morphine machine. All things that help really bring back the details of the experience and see it from their point of view.

The third roll was from when Matt came home from his mission. This is the last time all of the cousins from my side were together too. The fourth one had pictures from Christmas that Hunter took with the “Cars” camera Emma gave him. I thought I’d post a few of them. I will also post some in the February Folder. Good times!

Whale Watch

While much of the country has been shut down because of winter storms, we are loving the weather here in the west. Yesterday was Hunter’s field trip to go whale watching, and it was beautiful! I really wanted to go with him, so I asked a new acquaintance of mine from church to watch the little girls for me. It was a big deal for me to do that because I hate to ask for help or feel like I’m causing an inconvenience– especially with people I don’t know very well. But the girls did well there, and Hunter and I had a very fun day!

It was the perfect day to be on the water. The winds were calm, the sky was clear, and the temperature was in the 60’s. Hunter and his friends had a blast just taking turns with the binoculars that he had brought along. They were all looking for “footprints” in the water– a flat spot that happens when a whale or dolphin surfaces to take a breath. There were several times kids thought they saw something and it would turn out to be a guy in a kayak, wake from another boat, or a bird sitting on the water. After about an hour they announced that there were dolphins at 2 o’clock! There were about 100 of us on the boat, and everyone gathered at the railings to get a look. There were several dolphins swimming along the surface. We watched from a distance for a while, and eventually they came closer to the boat. It was really a great experience to watch them out in the ocean instead of behind glass at an aquarium. The kids were all so excited, but eventually we had to move on and see if we could find a whale. So it was back to eating pretzels and crackers (to keep from getting seasick) and scanning the water. It wasn’t until our time was almost up that we saw the top of a whale in the distance. It was surprising because we were close to the harbor and they usually aren’t in that area. He surfaced briefly twice but was pretty sneaky, so I didn’t get any pictures of him. We felt lucky to have seen both dolphins and the whale, because there have been years that the kids didn’t see either one. If you ever have the opportunity, give whale watching a try!

Build a Bear Winner

A couple of weeks ago, Hunter got a letter from Fed Ex. It was a little odd because we didn’t recognize the return address. We opened the envelope and saw at the top of the page, “You have won the Run For the Stuffing Sweepstakes!” Hunter was so excited and knew exactly what it was, but I had no clue. A couple of months ago Hunter and Emma went to the mall with their friend Paige and her grandmother. While at Build a Bear Hunter entered this Sweepstakes and now he found out he was the winner. The prize was that he would get 45 seconds to run through the store and grab anything there. The letter explained that he could bring a best friend with him for the shopping spree. Hunter took a few minutes to think about who he would take with him and decided to bring his sister Emma. She was so excited and they spent the next week counting down the days until the big event.

We arrived at the mall 45 minutes early because the kids wanted to check things out and make a strategy, and if we were late because of traffic or something it would be the worst thing ever. So we got there when the gates were still down and the kids watched as the employees got ready for the big moment at 10:00. They ran in circles around the mall practicing how long 45 seconds was, and the employees could see how excited they were. At about 9:50 they brought Hunter and Emma their name tags and t-shirts, did some warm up stretches, and handed the kids their boxes to fill. Emma went first and one of the employees carried the box for her and followed her around the store in case she wanted something up higher. She ran right to the back of the store and went for the outfits first. She was a little hesitant about just grabbing everything and stopped a couple of times to get a good look at things. It was fun to watch her running around the store looking for the best things to grab. Hunter was next, and he started at the animals and went for the sports outfits. He got going pretty fast too, but was also careful about being too grabby. I was teasing the kids afterwards that it was hard for them to be grabby because mom and dad have spent so much time telling them not to be greedy. Although they did make quite a haul, it rang up to over $260.00.

Rob and I had such fun watching the kids. This will be something they remember, and it wasn’t about how much they got, but about the idea of running free through Build A Bear and never being told no. What could be better?

Our New Wolf

Hunter just had his first pack meeting as a cub scout this week. It was a lot of fun. The families all came with blankets and folding chairs to a park for the first pack meeting of this year. We noticed that picnic dinners have become 90% fast food or pizza. We were part of the pizza crowd. It just seems easier than packing a basket full of sandwiches, drinks, napkins, utensils, etc. Our world is different now than it was when I was a kid. After dinner and the introduction of the new wolves, the boys all worked on earning a belt loop. I think it’s pretty interesting that Hunter’s first merit badge was for “Ultimate Frisbee.” Scouts has gone urban! The boys all ran around and worked really well together and then were awarded their belt loops. Hunter had a great time, and I think he is going to really enjoy scouts!

STAR Pupil

We recently got a letter in the mail to report how Hunter did on the STAR test that he took at school last year. It is an acheivement test that measures the student’s progress in meeting the state’s academic standards. Hunter did extrememly well and scored as Advanced in both English-Language Arts and Mathematics. I was not surprised by this, but was very impressed. He scored 100% in all three of the reading categories, “Multiplication, Division and Fractions”, “Algebra and Functions,” and “Statistics, Data Analysis, and Probability!” WOW! Rob and I are so proud of him and had a family dinner night out to honor his accomplishment. We asked him where he would like to go and he picked McDonalds mostly because it has a Playplace. Great job smarty!!

There is a list of books that are suitable for his reading level and it has books like: A Wrinkle in Time, Tuck Everlasting, A Light in the Attic, and Cricket in Times Square. All books I remember as a kid, but don’t remember being ready to read them this young. I guess it’s time to expand our home library!