We hadn't gone to the beach in ages. Josh and I thought it was time.
Showing posts with label Brynne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brynne. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Photo Shoot
One of the pros of having Shannon come visit us was taking advantage of her photography skills. Here are some of the results of that - minus the best ones that I'll post later in all their photo-shopped glory!
We started off at the Mendocino Headlands in "the dating place", but it was too windy and the lighting wasn't that great.
After eating our picnic dinner, we thought we'd cruise around Mendocino and look for some alternate locations. We had the brilliant idea to swing by the inn of some friends and ask if we could use their garden.
The Headlands Inn is their Bed and Breakfast and it is so cute!
Thanks, Mitch and Denise, for letting us use your beautiful garden! The light was much better there, we had a fun time, and the cookies were yummy!
After all of that, we took a walk down to Big River Beach and played.
Shannon shot some more candid photos of the kids and we enjoyed the evening sun.
A great finish to a beautiful day!
We started off at the Mendocino Headlands in "the dating place", but it was too windy and the lighting wasn't that great.
After eating our picnic dinner, we thought we'd cruise around Mendocino and look for some alternate locations. We had the brilliant idea to swing by the inn of some friends and ask if we could use their garden.
The Headlands Inn is their Bed and Breakfast and it is so cute!
Thanks, Mitch and Denise, for letting us use your beautiful garden! The light was much better there, we had a fun time, and the cookies were yummy!
After all of that, we took a walk down to Big River Beach and played.
Shannon shot some more candid photos of the kids and we enjoyed the evening sun.
A great finish to a beautiful day!
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Ladies and Gents....we have a WINNER!!
What a fun weekend!
We enjoyed the Pinewood Derby, in which Brynne placed 2nd!!!
We also were treated to a lovely piano recital that Hannah performed in.
We enjoyed the Pinewood Derby, in which Brynne placed 2nd!!!
We also were treated to a lovely piano recital that Hannah performed in.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Blessing Day
I wrote about this briefly down below in the previous post, but here is one of the photos that Darwin took.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Science Day...and a few other things
I just loved this picture.
Logan went to the A's game in Oakland with Josh. It was his birthday present. He had a GREAT time. He came home with a Red Sox cap from the wholesaler who gave Josh the tickets. Hopefully I'll be able to post some photos soon.
Kenna with Logan's new baseball cap. Too cute.
Our new double stroller...love it!
Building volcanoes for science!
Logan went to the A's game in Oakland with Josh. It was his birthday present. He had a GREAT time. He came home with a Red Sox cap from the wholesaler who gave Josh the tickets. Hopefully I'll be able to post some photos soon.
Kenna with Logan's new baseball cap. Too cute.
Our new double stroller...love it!
Building volcanoes for science!
Friday, April 3, 2009
BRYNNE
Brynne had a birthday.
Last week.
And we didn't celebrate because SOMEONE in our family was sick. (Brynne) And then about four days later when she started feeling better EVERY ONE ELSE (Logan, Kenna, Natalie) wasn't feeling so hot.
But we finally celebrated last night. Josh and I realized that it had to be then or she'd have to wait until after Logan's birthday, which really didn't seem fair.
Last week.
And we didn't celebrate because SOMEONE in our family was sick. (Brynne) And then about four days later when she started feeling better EVERY ONE ELSE (Logan, Kenna, Natalie) wasn't feeling so hot.
But we finally celebrated last night. Josh and I realized that it had to be then or she'd have to wait until after Logan's birthday, which really didn't seem fair.
Happy Birthday Brynne
who is now 9 years old
who is now 9 years old
What we did: Brynne loves our birthday tradition - so that's what we did...the bookstore and then dinner (she chose Mexican, yum!). She chose the book "Dealing with Dragons" by Patricia Wrede. Daddy and Mommy added an extra couple surprises to that, including #2 in the series. It's a cute book!
When we got home it was time for dessert! Now, Brynne told me very specifically that she wanted ice cream - but not chocolate - and NO CAKE. So I had to be a little creative. I made an ice cream pie with one of her favorite kinds of ice cream, mint chocolate chip.
When we got home it was time for dessert! Now, Brynne told me very specifically that she wanted ice cream - but not chocolate - and NO CAKE. So I had to be a little creative. I made an ice cream pie with one of her favorite kinds of ice cream, mint chocolate chip.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
My School Update for January
My school updates are mostly for me. I like to have a summary of what we studied. If you're not interested...don't read!
This month in school:
We've had two history lessons every week. Our family lesson has been about the 1600s...including some Indian history (that's India the country) about a grandfather-father-son dynasty with the coolest names. They called themselves: "World Seizer", "King of the World", and "Conqueror of the World". Obviously they had healthy self-esteems. "King of the World" was the 'builder' of the Taj Mahal. We looked at lots of pictures of that amazing structure, sampled Indian food, and read some stories about India.
After that unit we turned to Great Britain where Charles I had been crowned king. He dissolved Parliament, was ousted by Oliver Cromwell and then executed. Oliver Cromwell took control of England, but turned out to be a less than stellar ruler. He died and was succeeded by Charles II. So far in our reading Charles II is surviving, but London is not. We've been reading about the Plague and the great fire that destroyed 4/5 of London during this time. Makes for great visuals. :-)
Our other history lessons have been ones I'm teaching for my children and another family that joins us. We have been focusing on American History, starting with the Revolutionary War and so far including the War of 1812. I love studying the founding of our country so it's been wonderful to be able to share some of my favorite stories about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others. There is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about Paul Revere that has been turned into a picture book with beautiful paintings. I highly recommend it. Just search for works by Longfellow at the library - the poem is in it's original form - not condensed. Some parts might need to be explained a bit to children to help them follow the story.
So that's history. Science has been taught by the family that joins us for our American History unit. They've learned about how to conduct experiments, made fog in a jar, and are observing and learning about clouds right now.
Logan is getting ready to start his official reading program. I planned to sign him up mid-February (so it would still be around when I had the baby and could entertain him a bit for me - it's online). Brynne has been reading like crazy. Both kids doing handwriting every day and that's been fun. I write crazy sentences for Logan to copy. His favorite so far was 'Purple penguins play ping-pong'. Obviously, he was practicing his P's. :-)
For math Logan has been practicing his addition and subtraction facts up to 20. I am teaching him about fact families to help him remember which numbers are related (for example, 3+4=7, 7-3=4, 7-4=3).
Brynne is in a review period. Before I start her on multiplication I want to be sure she has a really good grounding in basic math. It seemed to work for Hannah to put multiplication off a year and just focus on accuracy, speed, and usage of basic addition and subtraction concepts. So Brynne's working on borrowing, carrying, and doing her math facts as quickly as possible (on her head, of all things). We won't start multiplication until beginning of 4th grade instead of introducing it now. One area that she is naturally ahead in is fractions...because she loves to cook! She has also memorized some conversions such as how many tsp to a Tb and how many TB in a quarter cup, etc. Interesting to me what children will choose to learn.
Hmmmm. Is there anything else?
Oh, Music - Brynne has suddenly developed an interest in playing the piano. She plunks away as often as I can stand it. I'm letting her explore and play and teach herself for now without launching into formal lessons. So far she's learned several songs from our beginning piano books.
Gardening - we have spent a lot of time working in the yard before the rain starts (yes, we're getting rain again!). I read in the garden section of the paper that January should actually be one of the busiest months in your garden as you clear out old growth, weed, and prepare for spring planting. So I've taken that to heart! On Saturday we visited a nursery run by a friend of ours called Simple Succulent. Our friend specializes in....succulents. Are you surprised? :-)
They grow so well in Ft. Bragg. We have decided to plant succulent ground-covers on the patch of gravel to the north of the driveway. It's the ugliest strip of ground! It gets walked on once in awhile so we wanted something green, that didn't need much water, and could handle occasional traffic. We received a lovely lesson about different types of succulents and some advice, and then were free to browse. Succulents have not always been my favorite plants, but when you see so many varieties grouped together they are interesting to look at and compare. Josh and the girls planted two varieties and we have a third kind to put in still. I can't wait till they've taken root!
Fun Stuff - Hannah was treated to a riding lesson by a friend in our ward. He taught her the basics of saddling and handling a horse, then they took the horses to the outskirts of Ft. Bragg and rode in the hills for 90 minutes. Hannah LOVED it. Brynne was a little envious, but she was very nice and hopes to have a turn herself when she's older.
We've been given a multitude of fresh farm eggs this past month. Got to love having cousins in town!!
This month in school:
We've had two history lessons every week. Our family lesson has been about the 1600s...including some Indian history (that's India the country) about a grandfather-father-son dynasty with the coolest names. They called themselves: "World Seizer", "King of the World", and "Conqueror of the World". Obviously they had healthy self-esteems. "King of the World" was the 'builder' of the Taj Mahal. We looked at lots of pictures of that amazing structure, sampled Indian food, and read some stories about India.
After that unit we turned to Great Britain where Charles I had been crowned king. He dissolved Parliament, was ousted by Oliver Cromwell and then executed. Oliver Cromwell took control of England, but turned out to be a less than stellar ruler. He died and was succeeded by Charles II. So far in our reading Charles II is surviving, but London is not. We've been reading about the Plague and the great fire that destroyed 4/5 of London during this time. Makes for great visuals. :-)
Our other history lessons have been ones I'm teaching for my children and another family that joins us. We have been focusing on American History, starting with the Revolutionary War and so far including the War of 1812. I love studying the founding of our country so it's been wonderful to be able to share some of my favorite stories about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others. There is a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about Paul Revere that has been turned into a picture book with beautiful paintings. I highly recommend it. Just search for works by Longfellow at the library - the poem is in it's original form - not condensed. Some parts might need to be explained a bit to children to help them follow the story.
So that's history. Science has been taught by the family that joins us for our American History unit. They've learned about how to conduct experiments, made fog in a jar, and are observing and learning about clouds right now.
Logan is getting ready to start his official reading program. I planned to sign him up mid-February (so it would still be around when I had the baby and could entertain him a bit for me - it's online). Brynne has been reading like crazy. Both kids doing handwriting every day and that's been fun. I write crazy sentences for Logan to copy. His favorite so far was 'Purple penguins play ping-pong'. Obviously, he was practicing his P's. :-)
For math Logan has been practicing his addition and subtraction facts up to 20. I am teaching him about fact families to help him remember which numbers are related (for example, 3+4=7, 7-3=4, 7-4=3).
Brynne is in a review period. Before I start her on multiplication I want to be sure she has a really good grounding in basic math. It seemed to work for Hannah to put multiplication off a year and just focus on accuracy, speed, and usage of basic addition and subtraction concepts. So Brynne's working on borrowing, carrying, and doing her math facts as quickly as possible (on her head, of all things). We won't start multiplication until beginning of 4th grade instead of introducing it now. One area that she is naturally ahead in is fractions...because she loves to cook! She has also memorized some conversions such as how many tsp to a Tb and how many TB in a quarter cup, etc. Interesting to me what children will choose to learn.
Hmmmm. Is there anything else?
Oh, Music - Brynne has suddenly developed an interest in playing the piano. She plunks away as often as I can stand it. I'm letting her explore and play and teach herself for now without launching into formal lessons. So far she's learned several songs from our beginning piano books.
Gardening - we have spent a lot of time working in the yard before the rain starts (yes, we're getting rain again!). I read in the garden section of the paper that January should actually be one of the busiest months in your garden as you clear out old growth, weed, and prepare for spring planting. So I've taken that to heart! On Saturday we visited a nursery run by a friend of ours called Simple Succulent. Our friend specializes in....succulents. Are you surprised? :-)
They grow so well in Ft. Bragg. We have decided to plant succulent ground-covers on the patch of gravel to the north of the driveway. It's the ugliest strip of ground! It gets walked on once in awhile so we wanted something green, that didn't need much water, and could handle occasional traffic. We received a lovely lesson about different types of succulents and some advice, and then were free to browse. Succulents have not always been my favorite plants, but when you see so many varieties grouped together they are interesting to look at and compare. Josh and the girls planted two varieties and we have a third kind to put in still. I can't wait till they've taken root!
Fun Stuff - Hannah was treated to a riding lesson by a friend in our ward. He taught her the basics of saddling and handling a horse, then they took the horses to the outskirts of Ft. Bragg and rode in the hills for 90 minutes. Hannah LOVED it. Brynne was a little envious, but she was very nice and hopes to have a turn herself when she's older.
We've been given a multitude of fresh farm eggs this past month. Got to love having cousins in town!!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Soccer woes
We've been dealing with soccer woes. Our little team is composed of the loveliest girls. Couldn't ask for better. They are very positive and compliment each other and try hard. But when it comes to games...that is different.
We are not only one of the youngest teams with the least experienced players, we also have one of the smallest teams (in terms of number of players). So fewer subs which results in more tired children.
There's another team on the league that has some really, really fabulous players. For their age, they are awesome and they should have been playing up a level. But they're not. The major problem with this team is that they are rude. They usually win about 10-0. During the game they consistently make comments to our team such as "you suck", "you losers", "you can't even score", etc. I didn't know 8-9 year old girls had such vocabularies! The real downside is that we play this team a total of 4 times this season (the most we play any team).
Yesterday Christe let the girls do all sorts of complaining about the other team and tell her all the mean comments and frustrating things. Then, she said, they had to put it behind them.
She laid out some goals for the girls. Winning, in this case, is not the ultimate goal. And since the other team makes it harder to even just have fun, that's not a good ultimate goal. It's hard to be a good sport when the winning team is rude!
Our goal is to slow them down - particularly R, their star player. Christe spent the entire practice yesterday teaching a portion of our team how to double-team effectively. I worked with the other girls on how to play more effective defense and help protect the goalie. They are such hard working little girls! They love playing and never give up!
We play the "mean team" again on Saturday (twice in a row - not fair!!!). We'll see how our double-teaming works out. Christe picked our fastest players (of which Brynne is one) to shadow R and slow down her scoring. And she told the girls, "when the other team gets frustrated, they start saying mean things. You'll know our secret plan is working when they are annoyed that they can't score as easily as they want to!" The girls were very excited to have a 'secret plan'. Hopefully it works out alright!
We are not only one of the youngest teams with the least experienced players, we also have one of the smallest teams (in terms of number of players). So fewer subs which results in more tired children.
There's another team on the league that has some really, really fabulous players. For their age, they are awesome and they should have been playing up a level. But they're not. The major problem with this team is that they are rude. They usually win about 10-0. During the game they consistently make comments to our team such as "you suck", "you losers", "you can't even score", etc. I didn't know 8-9 year old girls had such vocabularies! The real downside is that we play this team a total of 4 times this season (the most we play any team).
Yesterday Christe let the girls do all sorts of complaining about the other team and tell her all the mean comments and frustrating things. Then, she said, they had to put it behind them.
She laid out some goals for the girls. Winning, in this case, is not the ultimate goal. And since the other team makes it harder to even just have fun, that's not a good ultimate goal. It's hard to be a good sport when the winning team is rude!
Our goal is to slow them down - particularly R, their star player. Christe spent the entire practice yesterday teaching a portion of our team how to double-team effectively. I worked with the other girls on how to play more effective defense and help protect the goalie. They are such hard working little girls! They love playing and never give up!
We play the "mean team" again on Saturday (twice in a row - not fair!!!). We'll see how our double-teaming works out. Christe picked our fastest players (of which Brynne is one) to shadow R and slow down her scoring. And she told the girls, "when the other team gets frustrated, they start saying mean things. You'll know our secret plan is working when they are annoyed that they can't score as easily as they want to!" The girls were very excited to have a 'secret plan'. Hopefully it works out alright!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
August 25-August 30
This will be a short weekly update. I did school with Brynne and Logan. It was our first real week, but it was interrupted by our trip to Medford (to pick up our new van...more on that in a separate post).
Kenna has been actively getting into things. I totally agree with my sister Heather who said, "I didn't realize my house was this messy". Since Kenna army crawls, instead of the more traditional method, her tummy is black by the end of the day and covered in fuzz. Gross. I've give up trying to keep everything out of her mouth. As long as she can't actually choke on it I'm not going to worry about it.
The kids have been having fun practicing gymnastics and their own brand of karate. We watched the movie "Little Manhattan" with them and they thought the karate class looked pretty fun. Brynne has gotten especially good at headstands. She has great balance!
For spelling practice this week I created a spelling treasure hunt for Brynne. She had to solve the clue (the answer was a spelling word), spell it correctly, and then find the next clue! We all had fun doing this together!
We went to the Fort Bragg parade on Labor Day. We have a community Paul Bunyan celebration every labor day weekend. It's got some cool old-timey activities. We missed most of those activities this year (like the ugly dog show!) but the parade was a blast. Kenna thought the fire trucks were fabulous. The rest of us hated the noise (Josh was holding Kenna's ears)! Logan waved faithfully to every float/group to walk past us. He was really surprised when a fireman saw him and actually talked to him! Our absolute favorite is the Humboldt College band. I remember them marching in the Cloverdale parade when I was growing up, and Josh remembers them from Ukiah parades I think. They are a very fun band - silly and crazy!
We spent most of our time in Oregon with my sister Jenny and her family. Usually we rush, rush, rush when we are in Oregon. Even though this was a very short trip, we felt much less rushed and it was very nice! My kids loved roaming around Jenny's yard with her kids. We went to church in our old ward - Jacksonville Ward. Still lots of great people there that we love to visit with! Always a treat.
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