Piseco Time

We are home.

The three days spent focused on Great-Aunt Mel’s funeral passed without any extra trouble. BabyGirl was happy to stay at camp with Aunt Robin and JediBoy was good as gold during the service, paying attention and asking suitably thoughtful questions.

The rest of the week, my kids turned to the lake for endless entertainment.

JediBoy loved the paddleboat, now that he can reach the pedals himself. He was a water-boy, an explorer, more outgoing and independent than ever before. He made an eight-year-old friend four camps up the lake and spent large parts of Saturday and Sunday out with him, roaming the land and shore between our two camps (all the camps in between are either family or friends). Another night, he went over to talk to the fifteen-year-old girl at the campfire next door, and stayed with her for an hour an a half, roasting marshmallows and talking.

He would finish breakfast in the morning and announce, “I’m heading out!” and be gone for a nice long stretch of time. He collected rocks and built a sand-and-rock city. Uncle Mark caught a fish and was nice enough to save us a few scales to examine plus the fish tail and spine to bring home and explore further. Uncle Roo helped him build a plaster volcano. PisecoDad took him on the JetSki and let him drive the party barge. We saw several seagulls catching fish and one eagle out fishing. We heard lots of loons. We watched a lightning-storm beyond the hills. JediBoy read and played games with the grown-ups and played his DS after dinner.

BabyGirl learned to love the chilly lake. She liked to go wading and loved to be paddle-boated around by JediBoy.

She learned to climb up and down the cement pilings to get herself in and out of the lake, jumped off the dock into our arms, fed the ducks and played with her friends C. and A. She loved camp food too, especially pancakes in the morning and hot dogs at night.

It’s hard to adjust to life at home after all that sweet time. I will miss seeing this every morning, too.

A Transition and a Journey

Tonight we’re mourning the loss of PisecoDad’s Great-Aunt Emelia, who finally lost her long battle with scleroderma.

Aunt Mel was Gigi’s closest sister and best friend for all of her life, so the loss hits her especially hard. We are doing all we can to comfort her in this dark hour.

The passing has us scrambling to leave town right after breakfast tomorrow instead of a leisurely after-dinner drive up to the lake.  Fortunately we’d already planned to be in that part of the state for the next week.

At the same time that we are absorbing this transition, the kids are still excited about the journey and our lakeside, mostly-tourist-free week exploring the gentle world around us.

I will be internet-free until next Saturday, September 6th.  I’ll see you then!

Twelve Fun-Filled Hours

12 hours.
5 kids.
1 van.
1 zoo.
30 kinds of animals.
3 parks.
4 carousels.
6 happy meals.
2 sheet pizzas.
16 balloons.
196 photographs.
1 happy 4 year old.

That’s how we spent our day. It was lovely. Happy birthday, Anna!

Notebook Experiment: Mini Taffy Apples

I’ve enjoyed reading Amy’s Notebook lists - weekly lists of links to great ideas or fun projects she’s found. I bookmarked several of the ideas as things I wanted to try. This week, Amy has an exciting contest! Those of us who complete an “experiment” - take on a project or craft we found through her notebook - will be entered to win a great prize.

The list of “experimenters” and contest entry page can be found here.

A few weeks ago, in Amy’s Notebook entry from July 31st, I spotted a link to - let’s see if I can get this straight - an idea Amy found on Craftzine linking to Sakurako Kitsa’s flickr site featuring an idea she originally spotted on Iron Chef America! The funny thing was, I had just seen the same basic idea in the latest issue of Family Fun magazine.

It’s one of those ideas that is so clever that you wonder why you never thought to try it before.

We made bite-size caramel apples - also known as candy apples or, around here, taffy apples - by taking a melon baller to a full-size apple.

We made a special shopping trip for our supplies:

JediBoy poured some of the butterscotch chips into one bowl, and peanut butter chips into another. We microwaved them until they were melted.

While I was melting the chips, JediBoy added our toppings to three more bowls: chopped pecans, jimmies, and the big crystallized sugar.

JediBoy and I worked together to use the big end of our melon baller to scoop out apple balls.

Then we stuck lollipop sticks into the rounded ends (so they would sit flat in the mini cupcake papers) and started to dip!

(You can blame JediBoy’s funny face on his elfin personality and the fact that I asked him to stop and pose before he had eaten any treats. Blame BabyGirl’s crazy face on Pappy - or, as she calls him, Dappy. He taught her that making that face and then huffing and puffing is hilariously funny.)

We made about 8-10 tiny taffy apples from each large Fuji apple - and the three of us were hungry enough that we ate two and saved the other two Fujis for another day. This was a great snack, one that I can see us trying many more times as the fall season moves upon us. Both kids loved the interest of dipping, swirling, choosing toppings and eating a snack-on-a-stick. Definitely a success!

belated Learning Notes: August 18-24, 2008

Last week’s Learning Notes are belated for a good reason: Friday the 22nd was our 10th Wedding Anniversary! We spent the whole long weekend, even Monday, celebrating. But I did still want to put some notes together about our 8th week of homeschooling for the year, so here they are, a little late.

This was a light week of book-learning for us as PisecoDad was only at work for two days (Tuesday and Wednesday). It was a heavy week for life-learning, though, since JediBoy got glasses, lost a tooth, had a haircut, celebrated our anniversary AND spent his first night without me!

If you’re interested, you can find my summary of the week’s learning notes behind the cut. Continue reading »

Anniversary Weekend

I know you’ll forgive me my three days of bloggy silence.

My dad and his wife were here and gave the two of us a little kid-free time for our tenth anniversary.

Friday night we all went out together for dinner.  Saturday morning, JediBoy had his last game of summer soccer, so we all went to that.  Then JediBoy told us to go to a movie!  The kids and the grandparents went to Chuck E Cheese, a playground, and out for ice cream.  PisecoDad and I went out for Indian food then to see The Dark Knight.

We spent Sunday morning at home together, and then PisecoDad and I left - we went out to Sunday dinner, a spot of shopping and then tucked in to a jacuzzi suite overlooking the river at a hotel in a neighboring town.  Our first overnight alone since the era B.C. (Before Children).  It was very, very nice and relaxing.

The kids and grandparents did great until bedtime, going to see WALL-E in the second-run theater, looking for another playground and going out to eat and then out for ice cream again.  BabyGirl did fine at bedtime and through the night, but JediBoy cried and spent the night in the office, dozing and playing video games.  He told us when we met for breakfast today that we shouldn’t go away overnight again for another ten years!

After my dad left, I spent most of the day with one or both kids on top of me.  We played, we read books, we talked and sang songs.  Just now, PisecoDad took them out to run errands and then go to JediBoy’s soccer practice, so I have a little time alone… with last week’s learning notes and this week’s checklists staring me in the face, so I’d better put in some serious paperwork time!  Or maybe finish the novel I’m reading…

The All-New JediBoy

Today is our 10th wedding anniversary… and one of my two most treasured gifts used to look like this:

That was JediBoy on Tuesday. If you want to see him today, the all-new-and-improved six-year-old cutie, peek behind the cut!

Continue reading »

Where is my week?

On Monday night I was convinced it was Sunday. Today I kept thinking it’s Saturday - because PisecoDad’s been home again. This has been a most confusing week.

We just heard that JediBoy’s dear friend Nate broke his wrist last night, and spent all of today at various doctors to get it checked, x-rayed and finally casted. It makes our day of errands, Legos, Jim Weiss and rounding numbers sound perfectly blissful in comparison. Poor Nate!

(Does it surprise anyone that I was able to peek back through my photo files, skimpy as they are, and find a fitting picture of JediBoy consoling Nate?)

Watercolor Wash with Rubbing Alcohol

The other week I saw this terrific idea on AmandaChristina’s blog Hearts and Trees. She has a series of posts teaching basic watercolor techniques to kids. Last week’s technique involved making a wash and then flicking, dripping or dabbing rubbing alcohol onto the still-wet surface to create a really interesting texture and pattern. Click on over to see a great explanation and video… it’s okay, I’ll wait.

We gathered our supplies: watercolor paint (we chose black), flat brush, watercolor paper, water, old cloth diaper for drying/cleaning the brush, rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab.

JediBoy covered the paper with a black wash. I explained that he could just do a square or rectangle in the center of the paper, but he wanted this to be outer space which is, of course, entirely black with no white edges.

JediBoy started by dabbing on the rubbing alcohol with the cotton swab, making these neat concentric circles.

On his next sheet, he got a little more free-spirited and started flicking and dripping the alcohol onto the paper, amazed at the reaction taking place before him.

He made a series of these black wash with alcohol paintings to go along with our space theme (like the giant cardboard planetarium in our living room). It was a really great technique that we’d never tried with watercolor. Thanks, AmandaChristina!

Game Kids: San Juan

JediBoy is always begging me to teach him one more grown-up game. He has a great collection of kids’ games, but he loves to play my games. Today, while BabyGirl napped, we tried San Juan.

Let me start by saying that San Juan is a faster, sleeker, card-based version of Puerto Rico. If that means nothing to you (or fills your head with confusing geographical images) don’t fret, forget I said anything. But eventually I’ll get you playing Puerto Rico too.

Here are the parts to San Juan: a deck of 110 cards, 5 “trading house” cards, 5 “role” cards, a “governor” card and a scorepad.

The idea behind the game is that you are landowners in San Juan, trying to produce goods and sell them back to Spain. Along the way you can build production buildings (for indigo, sugar, tobacco, coffee and silver); you can also build the violet-colored buildings which give you special abilities or advantages.

The game ends when one person has built 12 buildings. At that point, you add up all the victory points printed at the bottom of each of your buildings, and the player with the most victory points wins.

The way this game plays out is an interesting one. On each turn, you are able to choose a role - Builder, Producer, Trader, Councillor, or Prospector. Let’s say you choose to be the Builder. This means you get to build - lay down a building and “pay” for it by discarding a certain number of cards (the number printed at the top of the building). The advantage to being the Builder is that you pay one less card to build your building. After you have built, each player in turn around the table also gets a chance to build - but at full price.

Now the next player gets to choose a role, but they can’t be the Builder since you have already taken that role. The next player could be the Producer (put face-down cards as “goods” on your production buildings), Trader (turn in the cards from your production buildings in exchange for more cards from the draw pile as “payment”), Councillor (draw several cards from the deck but keep only one) or Prospector (draw one card from the deck - and no one else can do that in this phase). Play moves in this way around the table until each player has had a turn to choose a role and start a phase. Then, the Governor card (which indicates who starts the round) moves to the next player and a new round begins.

What’s interesting to me about this game is the way in which the one deck of cards works as buildings, money, and goods. I love that. The original game, Puerto Rico, plays in a similar way but uses a board, tiles for buildings, wooden markers for goods, cardboard coins, boats for trading houses, and so on. There are so many pieces that set-up and tear-down takes a long time. In San Juan, it’s fast and easy.

JediBoy enjoyed the game too - he’s never played Puerto Rico, so I had to explain the whole game from scratch. As with most grown-up games, he had a hard time figuring out a strategy at first, and asked my advice for several rounds. He wound up deciding to build as many high victory point cards as he could - and it worked, as he beat me by one point in the end!

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Thanks to the sharing folks at BoardGameGeek for the images.