HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Tired Boy

This is Nathaniel, Sunday afternoon. I brought him home from church a little early because of his majorly runny nose. He'd fallen asleep with Brian and by the time I was able to get away from the piano and get him he was out. But it was horribly windy and as soon as we took him outside he woke up. He did fall asleep on the short short drive home from the church, but didn't stay that way. I even tried nursing him, which did no good. Brian had a meeting after church, so he and Joshua didn't get home until after 2. I fixed the boys a peanut butter sandwich and put Nathaniel in his portable high chair in the living room...then I was talking with Brian about his meeting, etc. while he changed out of his suit and stuff. When we went back out into the living room, this is what we found. I guess whatever Living Scriptures video Joshua had put on, it just wasn't exciting enough to keep the boy awake! Joshua helped me by pulling the chair out from underneath Nathaniel as I lifted him up and then I just laid him on a blanket on the floor. Such a tired boy!

Our Tomato Plants

In the spring, Joshua and I planted some tomato seeds in one of large pots. When they got big enough we transplanted them. Being as I'm really the only one in the house that eats tomatoes, I wasn't concerned with having a large tomato crop. So I left two plants in the pot. Joshua couldn't bear to see all the rest tossed, so we planted two more in a hole in the flower bed where another plant had died after freezing in January.

Well, the two in the pot seemed to do pretty well for awhile...we even got one small Roma tomato on one of the plants. We picked it (but it never got eaten) and didn't really worry about watering the plants and they shriveled up and died. Now, the two in the ground...they did so-so for awhile...then all of a sudden they kind of took off. Pretty soon we saw maybe three little green tomatoes on them...we thought that was cool. Then this past month we've gotten a little bit of rain. I don't know if that's it or what, but our two measly little plants currently look like this:

There's at least one red tomato on them that I can see, but I'm not messing with these plants anymore. I've known for several years that when all the tomato field around here are harvest in August (and there are a lot of tomato fields!) my allergies go haywire...especially as all the finished plants are pulled up. Driving through the fields between here and Woodland are horrible for a few weeks for me. My head and sinuses just don't appreciate it. Well, last week, I decided to check and see how many tomatoes are hiding in there...as I lifted the limbs (there's no other word to describe these branches or what have you on these plants) and searched I started to get itchy. By bedtime, even though I'd scrubbed my hands and arms, my sinuses were starting to throb and my throat was getting scratchy. By the next morning, yep, I felt just like I do in August driving through those darn fields. So, I'm thinking that there is something in tomato plants that just doesn't agree with my system. Sure, I can eat them, no problem! But forget harvesting them! It's probably a good thing that when I was supposed to go and help at the church cannery last month - when they were doing tomatoes - I ended up staying home because Nathaniel wasn't feeling well. It probably would've been very bad for me to have been sorting tomatoes and all that. So, this weekend Brian is going to pull up the plants. We're not sure about the actual tomatoes on the plants. There are tons of little white flying bugs on the plants...and there's some fruit fly or something in the area that is causing problems. Neighboring communities have be quarantined (just fruits and vegetables or something like that...not the people) but not ours...but there's no barricade keeping the bugs out! I don't even know what it's called...something Brian heard on the news. Anyway, here are our very robust and healthy tomato plants that have the opposite affect on me!

Pumpkin Fun

Saturday was the high school's FFA Harvest Festival at the Ag Site. We've gone almost every year with Joshua - except last year for some reason. We went first thing Saturday morning and since it's just down the street from us, we walk. We decided to take the stroller - thank goodness - I don't know how we'd have gotten our pumpkins home without it!

Usually all the carnival type games are outside, but this year they were inside the Ag building...it was supposed to rain Friday when they set up. It never rained, but they were ready. Both boys "fished" at the fish pond. Joshua did his turn so fast that we didn't get any pictures...but we made sure to take pictures of Nathaniel since it was his first time with a "fishing pole." I was surprised he didn't start pretending it was a sword!

Joshua wanted to do the cake walk...and then I ended up having to buy two more tickets because Nathaniel wanted to do it too, with Daddy's help. Really, Nathaniel just wanted to dance to the music...both boys ended up winning plates of cookies. They were store bought cookies, but hey, they were cookies!

Finally it was time to go out and find our pumpkins. Since we can see the pumpkin patch from the end of our street, we've kind of been keeping an eye on them and we were pretty excited when we saw all the orange pumpkins peeking out from among the grass and pumpkin vines over the past few weeks.

We ended up getting 2 large pumpkins and one smaller one...all for $10 - a pretty good deal. We'll carve them this coming Saturday. Nathaniel was real fun...his nose was running like a waterfall (again!) and I didn't notice it when I took a few of the pictures...thank goodness for the touch up option in my photo program :)

Growing up too fast...

I took this picture of Nathaniel at my parents' two weeks ago...I told Brian it's one of those pictures you take of a toddler that gives you a glimpse of what they're going to look like when they're older.

I took this picture of Joshua earlier this week before heading off to school...he looks way grown up to me, too. Time is flying so fast!

Craft Fair Photos

open explosion album

closed explosion album

I've been trying to post here for days...but every time I sit down to do so, something else more important (usually one of the boys being in bodily harm from the other) comes up. So we'll see if I actually get this typed and posted or not today.

At our 3 generation craft fair, we had two tables/booths. Grandma does wonderful knitting and crocheting - blankets, sweaters, booties, doilies, tablecloths, etc. (I got a cool scarf that she made). She had one table...Mom put some framed pictures on it and I displayed some of my stuff on it too.


Mom & Dad do woodworking stuff - Dad cuts it out and Mom paints it. They do some really cool stuff, too. Mom also paints ceramics (Grandma used to have a shop, for those that don't know that, and still does some pouring, etc. from her house) and does some sewing.

Me, I guess I'd be classified as a paper crafter for the most part...I made a bunch of cards, paper bag albums (little scrapbooks made out of paper bags (usually lunch size) and then decorated up with scrapbook paper, stickers, etc.), explosion albums (hard to explain, but you can see one opened up and hanging on the shelf in the picture above), some magnets and decoupaged letters (Brian cuts them out, we all painted them and then I decoupaged scrapbook paper on to them and then decorated them with ribbons and bells and some other stuff my mom had in her stash since we had to do some minor surgery on JOY and PEACE when we got to my parents' since things had, er, stuck together during transit. I also made some fabric trees (for lack of a better name) that I found the directions for on-line while searching for Enrichment stuff. They were fun...you tear strips of fabric and tie them on to a dowel and stick it in a slab of a tree branch.

I also had some rice cold/hot packs that I'd made last year and sold quite a few of at Brian's office and at the craft fair last year. I should try marketing them as sleep-aids...Joshua can't sleep unless he has a cold (we'll see if that changes with the weather getting colder) pack to cuddle up with!

I sold 6 paper bag albums and got an order for an explosion album. Some of the stuff I've already earmarked as Christmas and birthday gifts, and a few I left with Mom for another craft fair in December.

It was really fun to do this and to see how creative my mom and grandma are. Last year, I said I'd work on stuff throughout the year and it never happened. This coming year, I really mean it :)

Craft Fair weekend

Four Generations at the Craft Fair

We got back from Etna Monday evening. It was a fun weekend. Saturday Mom, Grandma and I were at the Grange Hall in Greenview at the craft fair for most of the day. Mom and Grandma did pretty well...I sold 6 paper bag albums and made $60...and have one order for an explosion album. The two I'd made and taken up were Christmas themed and someone wanted a more "every day" one. So I need to get that done in the next couple of weeks so that when Mom and Dad meet us in Redding to pick up Grandma, Mom can take it up for the person that wanted it. Joshua enjoyed having a guy day. When it was time for them to leave after helping us set up, Joshua said (to Brian and my Dad) "Come on, men, let's go!" They came back and helped us pack up and get ready to go home and we made it back to Etna in time for Brian and Dad to change to their suits and make it down to the church for the Priesthood session of General Conference.
I made Joshua's favorite - chicken strips - for dinner and we had it ready when "the men" made it home. We were all tired that night.


On Sunday, we went to the morning session of Conference at the church and then had a potluck. I'd forgotten how good Etna Ward potlucks are. I don't think any ward does them quite so well...I know ours here sure doesn't! Not a single main dish was something bought at Costco or Sam's Club or a rotisserie chicken from Safeway or KFC. All the desserts were homemade (except for one pumpkin pie) and there was more than enough food for everyone...and not even the whole ward was there! It was lovely. Conference was really good too. Brian took Nathaniel into the Relief Society room where he could play and Brian could watch it on the TV in there. The rest of us stayed in the chapel and I took notes. We watched the afternoon session at home. I dozed off on the couch (it'd been two rough nights with Nathaniel and both boys got up so early - 430 one morning!)

That night Mom and I went through a couple of bags of family history stuff that Grandma had rescued from her cousin wanting to shred it. An old ledger that has a handwritten listing of a couple generations of family - written in 1893! We had fun deciphering that and comparing it to what has been passed down word of mouth the past 100 years. There were also a bunch of letters...written from Iowa and Ohio to our branch of the family out in California (in Southern California at the time, we think). My 5th great grandmother is the one who wrote most of these things. There was also a picture of her and a picture of her son who is my 4th great grandfather. Those were at least labeled. There was a small booklet/album of pictures that we're not sure who they all are. A few have a few things written on the back that will hopefully help us all figure out who they are. What a wonderful find...our little family of genealogists is rather excited. It's like finding that proverbial box in the attic...thank goodness someone cared enough to save them...or didn't care enough to throw them out...could go either way.

Monday it was time to head home. Grandma Darlene came down with us...she flew out of Sacramento to go to Nashville early this morning. It was so nice having her visit - even just for a day or so...and we get to have her again for a day when she comes back. Joshua was so excited to take her to storytime yesterday...it's not everyone who can bring their great-grandma to storytime. On the return trip, we'll take her to see his classroom...yesterday she stayed home with a sleeping Nathaniel...he'd fallen asleep about half an hour before I had to go pick up Joshua. Nathaniel is as much a grandma's boy as Joshua was a grandpa's boy - with all grandma's or grandpas. Nathaniel was asleep in his carseat when we stopped in Fort Jones to pick up Grandma on Monday...he woke up after we drove over the mountain to Yreka. Her voice didn't register on him at first, but she put her hand up and stroked his cheek and he turned his head and got a huge grin on his face. Yesterday he'd take her books to read him or she'd find little books to read to him and he loved it.

Here's a picture of Grandma and the boys last night right before bed time. Nathaniel's busting up at a silly face Daddy made at him and Joshua's being silly - so typical.

She made it safely to Nashville this afternoon and has already gotten to see her new great-granddaughter there.


I'll add some pictures now and then head to bed.

Joshua's 1st Parent/Teacher Conference

Today was Joshua's first parent/teacher conference. We scheduled it for 7:40 am so that Brian could go too. We had to roll both boys out of bed and get the dressed quickly so that we'd make it on time. It was a very good conference. He's doing well in both Spanish and English. His teacher said that he is picking up the Spanish really well and uses it a lot in class. (I keep telling him that he and I are going to make one day a Spanish Only day and I'll just talk to him in Spanish...he's not too excited about that idea). We got his progress report and he's already met or surpassed the End of the Year benchmarks in some areas...he reads 22 out of 30 Spanish sight words (the EOY benchmark is 15) and has 28 of 33 letter sounds (in Spanish)...the Mid year benchmark is 22 and EOY benchmark is 26. His knowing the names of all the letters in Spanish isn't so great, but considering that he's only been learning them for 1.5 months, he's not doing too badly. The only thing he was low in was rhymes in Spanish...in English, that's not a problem. In Spanish, it's a little different. One of the assessment forms that Yisenia, his teacher, showed us showed that sometimes he tries to rhyme and English word with a Spanish word. So I need to see if I can find some books at the library that are rhyming in Spanish. I can't just think of Spanish rhymes off the top of my head. In the Math section he's also doing well...His met the EOY benchmarks for ordering numbers to 31 and doing AB patterns. He's been counting to 100 in English for months, now we just have to get him doing it in Spanish. The EOY benchmark is 31. He can sometimes count that high - just needs a little prompting. They did a writing sample recently (I hated grading those things when I taught). He had to do it in Spanish. All he wrote for it was Me gusta (I like) and drew a picture. He knew what he wanted to say, but didn't know how to write "playdough" or "puppet theater" in Spanish and for writing samples, the teachers can't help the students with spelling or anything. His writing was nice and spelling correct, but since he hadn't written a complete sentence or story, he didn't score very high. But if he'd been doing it in English, it would've been different. They have a word wall in the classroom (an area of the wall where high frequency and other words are posted in alphabetical order corresponding to each letter...I guess that's kind of redundant) and he knows how to use it and will look there for the words he needs before he asks for help which shows that he's learning how to find things on his own instead of just depending on someone to give him the answer. So all in all we were happy. I'm very happy that we put him in the Immersion program...some days I have my doubts (especially when it seems like he's one of the very very few that only speak English instead of the half and half we were told there would be), but when he's already surpassed many of the end of the year benchmarks in Spanish, it makes me wonder what the English benchmarks are and how he'd look with those...I think they're quite similar and I think he'd have met many of them already too.

This past Sunday was Brian's great-nephew's blessing over in Woodland. Brian's dad flew up for it - since it's his first great-grandchild. So we were over in Woodland for the majority of Sunday and then again last night to have dinner with Grandpa Val before he left.

Joshua refused to let me take his picture with Brian and Nathaniel, but he let me take a picture of him by himself and then finally let me take a picture of all three generations together.

I need to go work on craft fair stuff while Nathaniel is sleeping and Joshua is at school. I'd like to think that Nathaniel will sleep a long time since he got woken up before he was ready, but I'm sure the three hour nap on Friday was a fluke!