Sit 'n Spin

He likes to sit on the swimsuit spinner to make it go.

How I found Christian this morning, just looking out the back of the car while waiting for me.

Progress. New nail looking mighty fine underneath there!

Literary Greats

Instead of workbooks, I told the kids to 'type something' to practice their typing. Olin's is on the top, and the single sentence took him about 20 minutes. Christian's is on bottom and also took him 15-20 minutes. The screenshot is blurrier than I expected but basically their works are all about cats for some reason.

iPhone photos

Christian said teacher Tessa taught them how to do Narrative Writing and he started reciting a whole bunch of nice stuff that came to mind so I told him to write it down. His little curly Q header and footer are cute. 

At Lowell's for breakfast. It still surprises me when I see the $18 corned beef hash eggs benny! But the whole family likes their food so it's worth it. Olin still has some difficulty with L's! So instead of enunciating the L in Lowell's it ends up kind of sounding like 'woles'. heehee. When we laugh about it he laughs along with us at least.

Side note: This orange jacket is too large because it's Christian's because he has lost not one but TWO winter jackets in the last two weeks. His old Costco one that has duct tape sealing a rip shut and his new Columbia ski coat. Grrrrr......that guy.

Hoping they'll throw a fish

Miniature car store

No-longer-in-use Highway 99. There's some debris on the left hand side of the photo and there was a dead seagull out in the middle of the road outside the photo...I thought they were tearing it down but we didn't see any signs of it in this portion at least. I think the tunnel is ready to go but I'm not sure if it's in use yet. Basically, I have no info. :)

Pie Bar after dinner last night. 2 slices of cherry pie and 1 mixed berry. So good.

Found their charms again.

January Weekend

The new nail is growing right underneath the black one, at the bed of the nail. There's a good 1 mm gap between old nail and new nail and it's really interesting.

Made themselves breakfast before school. That morning, Olin says "mom, that was the most relaxing morning and breakfast". haha.

#chesslife

1st place in 1st grade! His second first place finish in a row.  If you look closely they accidentally switched the trophies around, so he had to exchange his with the winner of Kindergarten.

I like to take photos of Elliott Bay at all times of day. It's always pretty!

Check out the last roll of our game. Yahtzee with 6's!

15/16

Olin got in to the car at school pick up today, head low (I knew something was wrong). The second he got in he immediately came up front and sat on my lap and started crying. I asked him what happened, and after a little more crying he goes, "I got 15 out of 16!" and then started crying hard again. So of course I knew it was spelling because they are all about getting "16 out of 16". Turns out he missed the word "nutrients" on his spelling test that he had been practicing pretty hard for. He kept spelling it nutrience during the week but by last night he thought he had it. Then he said "also, I did my test in cursive, and my cursive looks so bad!" (crying) and then "I am really upset about 15/16 because I got 16/16 on my other tests. Now I wish I didn't get 16 out of 16 on all my old tests because I feel so bad now!"

Funny 7 year old logic.

As an aside, the words he had problems during practice this week were:

• vitamins (vidaminds and vidamints)
• noise (noice)
• nutrients (nutrience and nootrience)

Spelt Loaf

I'm trying my hand at a 25% spelt sourdough loaf. I've tried it 3 times with 3 partially bad outcomes.

Loaf #1. Looked pretty but taste was just ok. I did not use warm enough water, and I didn't stretch and fold it enough right away.

Still loaf #1

Loaves #2 and 3.
#2 was accidentally 50% spelt, so it was very whole grain-like. We liked the taste!
#3 also did not have enough stretching and folding time, but was the proper amount of spelt.
Next: I'm going back to a double refrigeration (one time for bulk ferment and one time for proofing)

River Walk

It was mild outside so we walked down to the river after school. It was so pretty! The river was very glassy.

No filter, just my good old iPhone XS

Very low tide

Moon

Weekend of Nothing

We had zero on our weekend plans. So we did a lot of very random things:

Saw this funny guy at the Fred Meyer parking lot

Made cinnamon rolls. Lots of work for a mediocre-ly good outcome

Kids helped me

Did more Top Chef. Olin making eggs in the background while Christian made a banana, almond butter, coconut dessert for Top Chef.

Drew the Dark Mark from Harry Potter on Olin's arm. We found it on YouTube and I sharpie'd it on.

Witnessed lots of origami this weekend from Christian. This is one of his most impressive creations. A ring which turns in to a ninja star when you compress it inward.

Microneedled Dae's very own "Dark Mark". hahahaha. Then I took a Portrait mode pic on my new phone.

Had some wart removal supervised by Kelly who advised us to use these pads after each session. This occasion also warranted another photo on my new phone.

Monitored Christian's finger progress from a month ago. It's so black!

Saw Christian do some architectural drawings from YouTube. Pretty cool!

Waterprooth

Olin: "Mom, is this bandaid waterprooth?"

I asked him to repeat himself, and I confirmed that Thountain is not the only word in which he substitutes the F for TH!

Today, we went ice skating with school friends. It was a lot of fun except the ice is surprisingly slick (hehe) and my arches hurt so badly in the rental skates.

All of these kids were very shaky in the start and by the end of the 2 hour session they were all going pretty fast.

Claira and Olin went pretty fast and flailed their arms around a lot. They looked fast and slightly out of control the entire time. 

Henry, Gabe, Christian

At-Home Delivery of Tooth #G

Christian's orthodontist told him to wiggle his tooth hard (#G) to try to get it out before Christmas since he needs to make space for his permanent laterals to start coming in. It was in there pretty solidly so today I finally brought home a forcep, syringe, anesthetic, and a curette and got to work at my "clinic" (kitchen countertop). He was nervous and didn't want me to give him the numbing, or to even take the tooth out.

He wouldn't let us take any pictures during the extraction. Too nervous.

The operatory

Root was surprisingly long, but spindly. The palatal side was pretty resorbed.

Day 2 of "Can we do Top Chef?". I gave them 2 minutes to collect their supplies and then they got 30 minutes to cook. Olin cooked me another scrambled egg, with maple syrup and fresh cilantro. :) Christian cooked me a one-bite and it was pretty adorable - he made a scrambled egg with diced bell pepper, onion, cilantro, and a little bit of Tajin (Mexican seasoning) and placed it in a Chinese soup spoon. It was tasty! They both keep asking me to pick a winner but I do not have the heart to have one of the lose.

Also, after today they told me they have run out of Top Chef ideas. hahahah.

I haven't dyed my hair for 3-4 years it seems. It has been very black. She colored it pretty light and showed me some wet strands which weren't set yet, and were a little too light, so I told her to go a little darker. Now, it's almost as dark as my original black (ha!) but I personally can tell it's lighter, so I'm ok with that. I didn't want it to be too dramatic for the winter anyway.

Funny skiing note: When we were at Bluewood, the answer to many of the kids' questions was "Things are old fashioned here". For instance they asked why the chair lift was slow while moving, but moved fast when it picked you up and I said the chairlifts used to be that way back in the old days and it was old-fashioned. Then when we were in the lodge they saw an old sled hanging on the wall and asked if that's how the sleds used to be and I said, yup those are old fashioned sleds. So when Olin got thirsty I told him to go fill up our cup at the water fountain. When he came back he asked "Mom, is that an old-fashioned water thountain?" I made him repeat the question to make sure I heard him correctly, and sure enough all this time he has thought the word was thountain! The fact that he asked if it was old fashioned just cracked me up even more.