Lexington Liveaboard

 

We spent out weekend on something we've wanted to do for a few years: the overnight program called the Lexington Liveaboard.  This is an overnighter that the USS Lexington, a WWII-era aircraft carrier docked in Corpus Christi bay and converted to a museum, conducts with scouts and JROTC programs where the kids (and parents for our kids' ages) stay overnight on the ship with a full schedule of educational (and fun) programs with the staff there.  When we visited the USS Lexington a few years ago (the kids were so little!), we were really jealous of the families doing this, and were determined to take advantage of the opportunity if we got a chance.  Our cub scout pack goes every two years, so we signed the whole family up.  

The quarters were cramped!  I should have taken a picture of our accommodations  metal bunks stacked three high.  The women were on one end of the ship and the men were on the other, making me wonder why I bothered to come... but we had a good time.  The boys loved running around and exploring, we all got plenty of stair/ladder workout, and Zack was promoted from wolf rank to bear rank.  We didn't get much sleep but we did have fun!

Scrapbook Layout: Poetry Winner

Here is a scrapbook layout I did as an addition/complement to Zack's Kindergarten overview - the story of his poem he wrote for the school poetry contest. When he first heard there was a contest, with a winner for each grade, he dashed off a poem on the back of a page in a spiral notebook. It was written in green sparkly pen, very messy, with lots of random "decorations" all around. The spelling wasn't so great either! I knew we'd have to re-write it to submit it, but boy, was that a hard sell to Zack! He just hated having to write something already written and trying to use lowercase letters was really a trial. In desperation I resorted to... candy, of course!

I put an m&m at the end of every line, plus one for the title and one for his name and grade. He got to copy a line in his best handwriting and then take a "refreshing pause" and eat the m&m. Nothing could have worked better to get him to finish the copying!  Since we didn't get the original back, I snapped a photo before turning it in.


Zack's teacher told me that when the results were read over the loudspeaker at school that they didn't name a winner for kindergarten.  She had to run down and have them look again for K entries!  Maybe he was the only entry for Kindergarten... but I think he might have won anyway, don't you?  Hee hee.

What I liked most about Zack's poem was how it captured his love of books and alluded to the way he finds little hiding spots to squeeze into so he can be cozy while he reads.  Someday I'm going to make a mini-book about the boys and reading - right now I tag photos with "books" in Picasa as I go so that later I can find them to capture the reading moments over the years.  In the meantime, I wanted to make a layout about this particular story.

I normally make double-page layouts but I wanted some more variety and really, not every story needs two pages.  So, I was determined to make this a single page, even when it was a lot harder to switch than I expected!  I originally had printed the photos in 4x6 but then had to reprint some of them in different sizes to make it work.  I put the poem itself in 5x7 and then cropped it down to the right proportions for the writing.  The others I printed at half size.  The two small photos of the original poem I wanted small because although they are repetitive, I wanted to use both of them.  Small prints was the only way to make room.  The photo of Zack in the Reading Loft I printed small because it was so busy and so high-color that it overwhelmed the page in a 4x6 size.

I ended up struggling with this layout a very long time, walking away and returning to it a few times over a few weeks (yes, weeks!).  I wanted to use the blue construction paper "ribbon" they had given Zack but then had a hard time because it seemed so ugly with the dull color and uneven writing (I like handwriting, but usually I like writing of people I at least know!).  I finally decided it just "is what it is" and put it on there as the title.  I pumped up the contrast on the writing by going over it with Ranger black Enamel Accents.  I also sprayed it with Archival Mist since construction paper seems to fade soooo quickly, so we'll see if that helps long-term.

I also had a hard time fitting in that giant journaling block.  I wanted the whole thing to be balanced but I kept juggling the pictures.  Finally I got an arrangement I liked, but then when I added the paint and glued it down I realized I put everything farther to the left than I had planned.  Argh!  It turned out like this:

which I felt was pretty, but lop-sided.  I added my punched and inked leaves, echoing the foliage on the reading loft, a twisty ribbon flower, and a little paper pinwheel inspired by this quick video, but it still seemed lop-sided. 

Recently Noell from Paperclipping, a great instructional video site with some free and some paid content, has had some excellent posts on the visual weight of different items and how to use it to achieve balance. There is some content you can read, though you do have to be a member to watch the entire videos (I think the membership is totally worth the cost!).  I remembered how high-contrast things have high visual weight for their size, so I grabbed one of the label-sticker name tags Zack would come home from school wearing whenever the kids were meeting new people - I had saved several, in bad shape though they were.  I added a little blue and green inking along the curled up edges and also inked up a chipboard z.  After adding these I liked the balance of the whole thing.  Compare the first and last pictures (click on them for a better view) and see the difference!

I'm going to a brayer workshop!

But not until February.  Still, I'm excited.  This is the instructor:

http://zindorf.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/

She does really cool stuff.  Like check this out. The apple basket is a stamp and the rest of the scene was created with a brayer.  (Click on the picture to see the full post - lots of larger pictures and step by step instructions.)

Or this one. Again, the tree is a stamp but the whole scene looks much different than it would with only the stamp.

Pretty impressive, right?  I'm really looking forward to the class!

Cool Videos and Perfect Pearls

I have to tell you about this cool set of crafting/scrapbooking videos by Jennifer McGuire. Jennifer posted a series of classes to the scrapbooking website Two Peas in a Bucket last summer.  There are free photos, a video, a downloadable PDF and discussion in each of twenty-seven classes! It's a great introduction to multiple products and techniques but also provides multiple ideas for expanding how you use your products.  There is so much awesome information here! 

For example, one product I am really loving lately is called Perfect Pearls.  I usually mix them with water and spray on finished decorative elements to give them a little sparkle (like in the picture here).  Now that I've had some for a little while I'm ready to expand what I do with them.   I just re-watched this video class and I'm so excited to try the things she recommends.  I'm going to go make some dots out of Glossy Accents and color them with perfect pearls right away!

Please, somebody, go check out these video classes and let me know what you are trying out!

The Littlest Kindergartner

Zack in his Kindergarten Room

I am loving getting to go help in Zack's classroom.  I go once a week and Sammy comes with me.  I like getting to know the kids and seeing how the classroom operates.  This past week his teacher put me on a job I'm going to be continuing for several weeks - helping the kids sound out and write words for a repeating project.  Since all the kids are at different stages, I am really learning a lot.  It's interesting to see the different order in which skills develop - something you don't get a sense of when you are only watching your one child.  I'm also getting little tidbits here and there about how to teach.  Very rewarding.

Sammy at the Sand Table

Sammy has been shockingly easy to take along.  He seems to think he belongs there.  He would go every day if we had the opportunity.  The kids do get distracted by trying to hug on him, but other than that it hasn't been a disruption even.  He loves the class centers so between that and his snacks, he is entertained the whole time we're there.  The only time he interrupts is when he thinks it's his turn to do the Kindergarten projects!

Toys

I've been checking out the new (to me) world of Discovery Toys. My sister is a new rep for them so we've been talking about the products. I remember this company as the one who made the Tangrams I loved when I was a kid.  I'm not normally one to be into a lot of toys but I've been impressed with the combination of simple + educational + fun. 

We have a little friend turning three.  He loves boats so I had a a boat puzzle picked out, but it turned out to be a little old for him.  I instead got him one of Julie's recommendations, the Giant Pegboard. She says her three year old loves it. I got it, but I wasn't really sure what the point was. There are 25 pegs in five colors and five shapes. They go in the pegs or stack in each other. I got it out of the box just to see what one would do with it. I didn't want to give something that was too young for him or that I didn't know how to play with.

My kids really loved this thing. I sent Sammy to check it out and he was thrilled with it. The pegs are plenty big for his chubby fingers but require enough dexterity to be challenging. I sent Zack to check it out and twenty minutes later he was still proudly making patterns based on the shapes and colors.  I think it's pretty good if my six and two year old enjoy it!  I sat down with Sammy and felt like we were really having fun, educational play. I was pretty pleased by the time we took it to the birthday party. I felt compelled to warn the parents that it didn't look like there was much point but it had performed really well with the kiddos. A few hours later my friend sent me this picture:

Almost-eight year old sister is sitting and playing with it too! Fun stuff.  We're doing a few more of these toys as gifts and for our own kids, so I'll keep reporting back on what we think!

The USS Lexington

While we didn't have a chance to go tour replicas of Columbus' ships, we did spend a day (or as much of a day as one could expect with an 18 month old) aboard the USS Lexington, a WWII era aircraft carrier which has been converted into a museum.

Zack was extremely excited about seeing the ship. We had really talked it up - partly because we wanted him to enjoy it but partly out of concern that he would freak out about being on a ship. You see, lately he has a lot of fears about things being unsteady. He has never liked any feeling of instability, even as a young toddler - although he would happily climb higher than my head, he would freak out if he was turned upside down. More recently, he's refused to get in a canoe and been afraid his ceiling fan would fall on him. He even asked that we take things downstairs because he thought they were too heavy for upstairs and would cause our house to collapse (not sure what's up with that one). Then, after we read some stories and information about the Titanic, I was just sure it was going to cause our planned Lexington trip to fail. I had this vision of him crying and refusing to go on board (right after we bought the tickets, no doubt) for fear it wasn't "stable". Hence all the talking up of the Lexington. When he talked to his grandmother about the Titanic and the Lexington in the same conversation, I was standing behind him saying, "And wasn't it very safe and very stable on the Lexington, Grandma?" while nodding vigorously out of his view to indicate she should say it was. I guess it worked because he was thrilled with the whole experience.

It's interesting how steep some of the stairs and low some of the ceilings are! But most of the fun was to be had above the hangar deck - the main deck where most of the "museum-y" stuff is - on the flight deck - the top of the ship where planes take off and land. It was a windy day and the winds on the flight deck felt like it might just knock us over. The kids love wind, so they were in heaven running around. They also loved looking around at the planes and trying the simulators - the ship held 200 planes when it was in service! We loved climbing up to the bridge with all its buttons and dials and big wheels, and also seeing the mechanism that catches the planes. The historical information on the ship's namesake and WWII service was spread out through the lower decks and gave a lot of interesting stories about that time, the ship and related vessels. James and I liked the history, but Zack of course breezed by most of it. In every area, he was ready to move on before everyone else, then me (because I'm not as much of a museum-sign-reader as someone else in my family), and then James at the end, craning his neck to read every word before he had to leave one room for the next one. By the time Sammy had enough of everything, we made it through the whole ship. It was a great experience and one we'll want to do again when the kids are older.

The Nina

Zack has taken a recent interest in Christopher Columbus. I'm sure what started it. I think maybe he thought the rhyme was fun, but then when a reference to Columbus' sailing showed up in his reference book about pirates, he was drawn in to listening to more information.

We found a variety of picture books about him at the library that we've been enjoying. Columbus is an interesting figure, in that much about him is heroic, and much... well, not so much. It's been a learning experience on the Mommy side of things too. If today had more time in it, I'd like to write more about that. Too bad today is already stretched a little thin.

Anyway, we were at the coast this weekend and discovered that they have full size replicas of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria on display in Corpus Christi. They are accurate all the way down to the forests in which the wood for the ships was cut. They were even built in Spain and sailed here (I think in the 1990s). We didn't have time to go to the museum where you can tour the Pinta and the Santa Maria in dry dock, but we did pop down to see the Nina. It's a lot smaller than I expected! You can see from that "No Trespassing" sign that shows up in both photos that these pictures are showing the whole ship. Not the size of vessel I would imagine for an ocean crossing of unknown length and difficulty! We'll be continuing to learn about this, and maybe we'll get back down to Corpus soon to tour the other two ships.

Sink or Float?

I realized I really haven't been doing many crafts and such with Zack this summer. We've done some running around and some organized activities, but at home we've mostly been doing chores; so, this week we picked out some projects. At the top of our list was an experiment: what sinks and what floats?

We wrote a list of things we wanted to try the night before, along with a hypothesis about whether it would sink or float. Then we gathered up a bunch of items and gave them a try. It was a little messy and pretty fun. My ideas of stuff to try were things like a metal washer, a leaf, a piece of cork, cottonballs; Zack's ideas were more like "a chunk of peanut butter".

It was fun to talk about what makes us decide something will sink or float. Well, what was fun was my thinking I was doing some science instructing. No, no, I kept my inner science lecturer under wraps and we just played around. Well, played around and discussed the meaning of "density".

[After seeing these photos at molly irwin, I was inspired to try the photo format. Aren't I such a big copy-catter? Hey, it's an accepted scrapbooking practice, really.]

Wow

These videos are so cool.

http://jennifermcguireink.typepad.com/my_weblog/

I must must must make something. Right away. But my Hobby Room has become an Unfiled Papers Room. Grr. I guess I need to work on that first. After realizing last weekend how much undone tasks were weighing on me, I decided to devote this week (which has a bit of extra time with Zack at VBS) to checking off my list as many annoying items as possible. I'm making some progress.

Update

Remember these?

I really thought they were seed pods. And I didn't think they could be the result of a wasp, as Susan suggested in the comments, but guess what? They are!

This is called Oak Apple Gall and is an abnormal growth that happens when a wasp lays its eggs on the tree. I saw three on the top of a little oak sappling on a training run. Between seeing that they were from an oak and the information Susan gave me, I was able to find out the full story. Thanks, Susan!

I'd like to take Zack to show him the little tree, but we tried to get out on a run together, me with the jogging stroller and him on his bike, and it didn't work at all. Or rather, it worked fine if I wanted to walk briskly for .7 miles and then poop out (not exactly my plan). Maybe a family walk with a stop-off for swinging on the swings halfway there would be better, eh?

Pioneer Farms

On Saturday we went out to Pioneer Farms, a living history farm, for their May Day festival. We saw sheep shearing, wool spinning, some pioneer music, a cute Charlotte's Web play, a blacksmith, and gunfights. I wanted to see cheese-making (well, of course I did!) but we ran out of time before the Biscuit Brothers, who film their show at Pioneer Farms, were scheduled and we had to hot-foot it back to the main stage for that.

Most of the demonstrations were of only mild interest to Zack and of course beyond Sammy, but it was neat to see and we enjoyed being out and doing something (on what would have otherwise been for us a sluggish day with Daddy out of town). Zack liked the fire in the blacksmith hut, and was very excited to be given a pounded nail which he declared his sword. For those in Austin, if you are thinking of going be forewarned that there is an admission charge, and it's a bit on the high side. We could have made much more learning and exploring out of it than we did, but it was a good outing.

The highlight of the day was the Biscuit Brothers concert. Zack sang along and followed every move in every song - he was more participatory than I've ever seen him, even more than at our church's monthly kids' productions (that he LOVES). He cornered the Brothers after the show with expectations that they would remember him from the last concert that he attended; they didn't, but that didn't stop Zack from talking their ears off. As our friend said as we bumped our strollers out of the farms, "Well, I give the Biscuit Brothers points for accessibility!"

Final Trip Sewing Project

Alright, people, surely more than just Julie could have ventured a guess on this odd looking item! Her list sounded a lot like James' guesses, but here's the answer: it's a hot dish carrier! My mom has one of these she's been using for years. I tend to take a hot dish in the car for potlucks, food deliveries, small group meetings, etc. And when I was home and remembered how handy hers was, we decided to use this very cute fabric to make one for me!

This is made of two layers of fabric plus cotton batting and quilted on the machine. The handles and all the edges are done with bias binding (purchased prefolded), which also made the spot for the drawstrings. It is made for a 9x13" dish, but other sizes fit nicely (that's a round dish in the photo). Now, what hot dish can I take where??

Oh, I meant to mention - I had never used bias binding before (yes, I know I have those little quilts started and quilts are finished with binding... but I'm better at starting things than finishing them). I found it to be really really easy. Even around the curves, it wasn't hard to make work. I used an all-machine method that was basically a single-line straight stitch and it was on. I have already almost forgotten than I was intimidated by learning how to do this!

Skillz

I've been working on my photography skills. I've never had any training at it (I know, neither have most) and pretty much just took snapshots that had people in them. After I had this great photographer come take shots of our family when I was pregnant with Sammy, I started wondering what made her style so appealing to me.

Lately, watching the beautiful photos on all your blogs roll by, I've been inspired to try to get better. I click around Flikr (apparently Mondays are bench Mondays. Who knew?) and see what people are doing. But, I tell myself, I can't squeeze in another online time sink. So I take a lot of shots. Sometimes I'm happy with the result; sometimes, not so much.

But hey, here are some I like. I shamelessly copied a look that a friend of ours used in a framed picture he gave us of Zack at two months old. We have it on our mantle and I never get tired of looking at it. As you can see, this current two-month-old is highly photogenic. I hope the printed copy comes out well, as it is all set to ship to the sweet parents!

What is it?

These seed pods must have blown into our yard during the windy weather we've been having. They don't come from any of our trees and I don't recognize them. We first thought they were mushrooms, but then turned them over, saw the little stem and leaf, and realized they weren't attached the the ground. Zack broke one open and it's filled with tiny, dandelion-like seed fluff. I don't know how easy the scale is to discern here, but they are a little bigger than golf balls. They are also surprisingly light.

Now that I've been thinking about Vintage Chica's Summer Unschooling Project, I've started thinking we should pursue these little mysteries. Unschooling is the idea that kids (and everyone?) learn best by pursuing interests in a more natural way. It's learning, but without traditional schooling methods. It is a type of homeschooling but Vintage Chica is working on it as a "summer school", a method of exploring and learning through the summer with her children (who attend public school). [There is a lot of unschooling information around. I hope I've represented it correctly, being new to the concept. But there are links on the site I mentioned above if you want to understand it better than I could explain it. I guess that was a disclaimer.]

Maybe we'll be able to track down what these are - hey, we might learn something!

Papaya Primer

The kids are loving papaya! It's been just recently that I've started buying and preparing this tropical fruit. Before then, my main association with papaya was way back when James and I were young-un's. We ate it each morning in our first course fruit plate at the bed and breakfast in Vancouver where we stayed for our honeymoon. The quirky host would describe how he found the varied and delicious produce at this little market or that one along the streets of the neighborhood. The first morning after we returned home we awoke to boxes needing to be unpacked and our workdays looming over us; James turned to me and whined, "I need my papaya!" We laughed, but we really did miss those lovely days!

Since then I've discovered that papaya is very high in Vitamin C - higher than oranges - and has a lot of other benefits. But mostly, it's easy to prepare, soft enough for Sammy to chew, and delicious!

I got the papaya above for $.88/lb on special (regularly $1.27/lb). These are big fruit - this was a smallish one at 3.6 lb. and it made seven cups of cut fruit! I try to get the smallest ripe one they have. To check for ripeness, look for one that is somewhat soft and has some yellow areas on its green skin. If you pay attention to how far food has traveled, I'll mention that they seem to all come from Mexico.

To prepare, cut in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Then slice into wedges. I lay the wedges on their sides and cut off the peel, just like I do for cantelope. I serve the wedges, or cut into pieces for the kids.

Since it is a lot of fruit, we eat what we can in a few days, then we drop the rest in the freezer to use in smoothies later. Yum!