KeishoZil

We had a fun Halloween. I think it was the warmest Halloween we've experienced since moving to Colorado. We only needed sweatshirts for trick-or-treating which was great! It was almost Arizona-like!

Dave, Sandy, Avy and Max came over and we had some pizza. Sandy brought over some very fancy carmel applies, ghost cookies and carmel corn. We ate a lot and the kids had fun trick-or-treating.

Nadia was a water fairy, Sophia was wearing a Greek costume with a mask and Andrea was Betty Crocker. I was the lady from the Progressive commercials.

Enjoy the pictures!

Nadia is not letting me do my usual procrastination thing. She wants me to post this now!

We had her birthday party yesterday. We ended up doing a dance party at the a local rec center. The dance teacher ended up being Avy's ballet teacher, so that was kind of fun. I think all of the girls had a really great time.

On Nadia's actual birthday she wanted to have a big decorated cookie instead of a cake. I ended up making too much frosting, but instead of throwing it out I decided to load up the cookies with tons of frosting - just the way Nadia likes it. It was pretty sickeningly sweet for my taste, but Nadia enjoyed them.

The cookies here are actually my second attempt. The first attempt I stupidly tried to bake on a foil covered pizza stone that I have, thinking that might work pretty well. But, instead the cookie grew over the sides of the pizza stone and leaked all over the bottom of the oven. Then that dough caught on fire. Dave and I had a heck of a time trying to put out the oven fire and all of the smoke alarms throughout the house were screaming. I had to send the kids out in the garage in the car to get away from the noise. That may have been my worst cooking distaster ever, maybe second to the time I let my mom's pressure cooker get too hot and it blew off the top and sprayed split pea soup all over the kitchen.

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. I kind of figured I wouldn't be the best at this blogging thing.

So the kids all started school again. Andrea is a sophomore, Sophia is in 5th grade and Nadia is in 1st! So... yesterday was my very first day home all alone all day. I've been looking forward to it for years, thinking of how nice it would be to work uninterrupted, not having to stop every few minutes to get snacks, put toys together, etc, etc. But, I think I actually just felt kind of weird and lonely! In fact, I ended up going to meet Nadia for lunch to break up the day! She was happy to see me though, so that was fun.

Lunch with the first graders was so cute! They are all so little. My favorite quote from that was: "Hi Nadia's Mom! My name is Stephen, but you can call me Snake." Ha!! Where did that come from?

Anyway, even though I think it's going to take some getting used to, I think I will start to really like being able to get all my work done before everyone comes home in the afternoon. Yesterday kind of made me realize what a challenge it has actually been to work and take care of kids at the same time. I got accustomed to it, but it definitely isn't an easy thing.

Here's a video I've been meaning to upload since May:



It's from Nadia's kindergarten program. She had so much fun at this program. I think that's evident in the video.

I really liked this article:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395-1,00.html

One thing I think wasn't emphasized enough in the article though was the fact that parents aren't the only ones to blame. Parents have to be constantly worried that if they don't live up to our culture's view of what proper parenting is that we'll lose our children to family services or end up on the nightly news.

Our school district for example seems to have some pretty strange expectations. For example, I just got an email today for an invitation to a meeting about a particular program being offered at our high school. The first line was

"To all current 9th grade and 10th grade households. Attention Parents and Students:
Want to be prepared to compete in the global economy?"

Are you kidding me? My 14-year-old is supposed to be worried about her ability to compete in a global economy? That's after being told in 8th grade that having a 5 year plan about what they want to do after high school is essential to their success. I wonder how many adults had a 5 year plan in junior high and if they did how many of those actually stuck to that plan. I mean I'm not against setting goals, but this is over the top in my opinion.

They give homework to our kids in kindergarten. It's required by the district. Here's an example of one math assignment:

"Children like to be involved in making food choices for family meals. What are some of your family's favorite foods? Take a survey to find out. Mathematics Note: Collecting data helps children sort, count, record and visualize complex information."

They can't possibly expect Nadia to be able to create a survey on her own. So basically the homework is for me. What happened to 1+1=2; 2+2=4?

Anyway, this article gave me hope that maybe people are starting to recogize the weird way we're raising our kids now and that in the future there may be a shift back to something that feels a little more natural and normal.

At Roxborough Elementary they have a special Thanksgiving school lunch where they serve turkey, mashed potatoes, a roll, cranberry sauce and usual some kind of special dessert. It's a sort of tradition for parents to show up and eat lunch with their kids at the cafeteria on that day and I think I've participated almost every year since Andrea was in first grade.

Anyway, so Nadia and I joined Sophia and her friends for lunch. The food was, well, school food of course. But it's always nice to see my kid during the day.

Nadia especially enjoyed going to the big kids school. Our elementary is divided into two locations. One building is K-2 and the other is 3-6, so Sophia and Nadia are in different buildings. Nadia got to go to recess after lunch with her big sister and was in heaven as all of Sophia's friends paid attention to her and pushed her on the swings.

On Friday the kindergarten had their "Thanksgiving Feast" where they wear Pilgrim and Indian hats and they get to prepare some food. They do things like make butter by shaking cream in little jars, or pumpkin pie in a cup (pumpkin, pudding, vanilla wafers). My station was vegetable cornucopias - vegetable sticks with ranch dressing put inside of an ice cream cone. Cute idea, but I was supposed to let the kids help cut the vegetables - with real knives! Yikes! They didn't realize I guess that I am way too much of a worrywart to let the kids handle the knives on their own. So I just let them push down on my hand which was holding the knife. Funny thing was I think I was assigned the same station for Sophia's kindergarten feast.

Anyway, kindergartners are cute. Here are some pictures. They are from my cell phone so the resolution isn't the greatest.



P.S. Just in case someone doesn't realize this, when I post these Flickr slideshows you can view them in full screen by clicking on the little icon with arrows on the bottom right. Also, if you click on the slideshow itself you'll be taken to flickr where you can download a picture in its original resolution.

We had a fun and busy Halloween this year. On October 24 the elementary school had a Halloween carnival. The kids got to ride ponies and play in a jumping castle and go to a "Haunted House". The guy who brought the ponies let Sophia and her friend lead the ponies around for each other.

On Halloween I had an orchstra concert. It was a children's concert so all of the kids got to come. We played Harry Potter and a piece called "The Composer is Dead" that has narration by Lemony Snicket that goes with it. It was actually pretty funny. It was a fun concert and I'm glad all of the kids got to come.

Andrea dressed up all of the American Girl dolls in different outfits. There was Dorothy, a cowgirl, a balleria and some others. Sophia and especially Nadia thought that was pretty neat.

In the evening Dave, Sandy, Marisa, Avy and Max came over to trick or treat and Andrea's friend Sarah stayed with Andrea and helped pass out candy. We had so many trick-or-treaters that we ran out of candy even though I had three Sam's Club bags worth. I thought for sure I bought way too much this year, but I guess not!

Luckily by Saturday evening the sun had melted most of the snow off of the sidewalks so trick-or-treating was pretty pleasant. It wasn't even very cold. We had a nice time, ate lots of food and candy and played Mario Kart.

Enjoy the pictures.

This is how it looks outside today. School was canceled. This isn't our first storm this winter either. I don't know if I'm ready for this kind of weather yet!



Later in the day:



Trying to make snow angels: