thewallises

Steve left on a bus this past Saturday morning. He loaded up with a group of high school teenagers, to take them up to Woodleaf (a Young Life camp up near Sacramento). As I saw Natalie clinging to his leg, I knew more than ever that when Daddy heads off to camp to let teens find out about Jesus, Natalie and Jacob are as much a part of the ministry as Steve is. This is a ministry we are a part of as a family. It’s an absolutely exciting ministry to be a part of! The lives that I have seen tremendously transformed by the awareness and acceptance of God’s existence is absolutely invigorating. Whole life courses get altered when teenagers for a whole week get to experience the love of Christ, 24-7, away from the distractions and hurts of home. I am praying with all my might that lives are being changed for all eternity this week. Please join me in praying for the teens to be in awe of God’s love for them and for the leaders who are going all-out with their energy to be non-stop active up at camp. May God’s love be lavished this week and may hearts be gripped and lives changed forever!

I call her Mami and sometimes Madre. The kids call her Omie (pronounced: Oh me). She gets to celebrate her birthday on the same day our country celebrates its independence. When we were little my sister and I used to think that all the fireworks were from people celebrating her birthday.

Well today we got to celebrate her 74th birthday. It’s difficult for me to imagine she’s really 74 because she acts 20 years younger than her age. Natalie was excited beyond belief that she got to face paint Omie’s face today! My mom had never experienced the fun of having her face painted before so she thought it was real fun. Natalie explained to Steve: “yes, when Omie was little face paint wasn’t invented yet”. 🙂 Which led, of course, to a conversation of things that she got to experience in her lifetime. She recalled how when her family would want to make a phone call, they would pick up the receiver of their phone and wait for a woman’s voice who would ask what number she could connect them to. They would tell her and wait for her to push/operate buttons on her end and then wait for what seemed a really long time before the phone would begin ringing at their friend’s house. She told us about her neighbors who invited her family over to watch tv with them. It was in the 1950’s…..she was around 12….and she remembers her mom baking cookies and their family walking over with a plate of cookies to watch a show at the neighbors. She remembers seeing pictures in magazines of an American family sitting around on the floor watching a television. She told us about how there wasn’t any plastic or scotch tape. Sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper and a rubber band was put in place. A man would walk down the street once a week shouting out to announce his arrival. He walked, pushing a car with big wheels, collecting potato peels and any other food scraps that people had. It was an early form of composting you could say. But, he was collecting scraps to feed to his pigs.

Lots of stories……lots of hilarious laughter as she opened up her presents! When Natalie had called her asking her what she would like for her birthday, my mom mentioned perhaps a new animal statue for her patio. Well ‘lo and behold she got a giant reclining frog statue and a bejeweled metallic blue peacock. It made her laugh soooooooooooo hard. But that’s what you get when you have a 4-year old go shopping with mama. Natalie loooooved getting to pick them out!!!!!

My heart melted when the kiddos decided to spend money from their own wallets to buy this glass dolphin statue for Omie. A present from them to her. Truly from them- their own saved money.

And my mom loved the present we made her. It made her cry. Tears of joy. And tears of feeling special, I think. We wanted to say thank you to her for the hours and hours she has spent with Jacob and Natalie- teaching them the beauty of art and music. She has instilled a love of the arts in them. And for that I will forever be grateful. So it seemed fitting for all of us to gift her in the same language. An artistic expression of thanks. We each made flowers and then adhered them to canvases. And then spread mod podge over it all. She couldn’t believe that even Steve was a part of the project. That alone I think made it extra super special. 🙂

I love my mother. She is more special to me than words can adequately express. Ever since I had children, I’ve learned to appreciate her more. I’ve experienced now the love and sacrifice she gave to me when I was a child. But she continues to shower me with love- encouraging me in my motherhood. Her words of affirmation and compliments to me as she watches me be a mom, mean the world to me. It is so nice to be noticed and told that you’re doing a great job as a mom. It’s a job where you never know if you’re doing it quite right. I love it that she notices details of our lives and brings attention to them. I love it that she knows my kids so well. I love it that they can have a relationship with her. I am so grateful for my mother. My heart is getting full of this intense mushy feeling right now and I feel the emotion rising in my throat. I better start posting some pictures before I begin to cry.

I’m blessed to have the relationship I do with my mom. Thank you God. I know that years ago she and I went through a rough patch. Times were tough for our relationship and it wasn’t always like this. So it makes me all the more thankful that we have these years now.

Happy Birthday Madre! May you have many many more. Would love for you to get to see what Natalie will be like when she’s really 17! She’s dreaming of it now and already pretending to act that age. I’d love to share those days and conversations with you. Okay now I’m going to really start to cry. Here’s hoping and praying for another 12 years! Okay now I did start crying. You’ll only be 86! That’s still a young chicken. 🙂 I can’t and don’t want to imagine days without you. I love you too much to think of that.

I’ve come to realize that my kiddos have a lot of endurance. Well, is that the right word in this case? I’m not sure. What would you call it when kids are willing and able to sit through something for long periods of time? I’m just so proud of them!!

Yesterday we drove to the Anaheim Convention Center to watch the Fencing Nationals. The particular fencer we were going to cheer on was scheduled to fence at 12noon. We arrived at 10:45 to give ourselves plenty of time to find parking, locate the venue and find our way through all the different fencing bouts looking for Forrest Macdougall, from the fencing gym that Jacob went and tried out. We watched bouts of all three different types of swords: epee, sabre and foil. Learned the differences of technique and speed of each of them. Sat on the sidelines trying to figure it all out as we watched referees assigning points. Turns out we were there until 3pm. That was 4 hours and 15 minutes of fencing! I came home feeling pretty spent. I realize that when I’m in a huge venue like a convention center and there’s tons of sounds and tons of people-watching opportunities, all of that visual and auditory stimuli really wipes me out. I’m guessing it wipes my kids out too. But there’s fun that comes from it all. Fun of getting to learn about a sport we knew nothing about. Fun of getting to meet Miles Chamley-Watson who is a fencer headed to London in three weeks for the 2012 Olympics! He was a such a friendly guy and was so sweet to the kids. He swooped them up in his arms to take a picture. And the dude is tall! 6 foot 5! He had neon lime green shoes on and his hair was bleached with hydrogen peroxide. He definitely stood out in the crowd and we loved getting to meet an Olympian! But more than anything I loved that my kiddos had the ability and desire and happiness to sit through 4 hours of fencing. They’re such troopers and such good sports at going on adventures. Here we were watching Forrest fence with a young man from Korea- who is the #1 jr. fencer in their country. His footwork is incredibly fast!!!

And just recently they were troopers sitting in their car seats for our trip to Shaver Lake. The trip took 8 hours. Yup 8 hours up and 8 hours back. That’s 16 hours of car time that they handled amazingly!!! And that was the week after we had made a 6-hour drive up and 6-hour drive back to Stockton to visit friends. We don’t have our van outfitted with tv/video capabilities, so it was all about reading books, looking out the window, taking naps and just being silly together. When I think of their ability to sit for such long periods of time it just makes my mama heart so proud. And beautiful things come out of their enduring such a long car ride- a week of super fun family time camping together. This year was our 4th time up at Shaver Lake; it has definitely become a family tradition. We all look forward to it……bike rides, hikes, swimming, kayaking, making s’mores, playing games with friends (these were the hits this year: Bananagrams, Cootie, Blink, Pictureka, Battleship, Animal Sequence, Uno). But one of my all-time favorite memories of this trip was the two of them lying on their tummies, tucked into their sleeping bags, their cute faces propped up in their hands, with their elbows on their pillows…..and their intent faces listening to me read aloud stories from a library book we had called “3-minute stories”. Some of their favorites were: “Elephant Big, Elephant Little” (about a big elephant who boasts about being able to do everything better; but really the smaller elephant outsmarts him at a running race, a water spouting race and an eating contest), “The Five Peas” (about the life of 5 little green peas who get shot out of a pop-gun- one of them lands in a crack of a windowsill and brings joy to a little girl who has been sick in bed, the other peas have tragic ends. Love it that the whole story was written from the perspective of the peas!!). Awwwww these are joys to a mama’s heart- watching my kiddos captivated by every word of a story, hanging on with excitement to the tones and expressions of the storytelling. That’s pure joy. And it makes me thankful that they can endure long car rides so that we can have special moments like that in our tent trailer.

I think of the time a couple months ago when the new Penguin Exhibit opened at the Long Beach Aquarium. Jacob and Natalie watched penguins in one exhibit for over two hours. How is that possible?! I love that about them!!! It is not a big exhibit. And yet their attention was grabbed and held for two hours, in that one itty-bitty area of the aquarium. I love it that they can look for details and see new things in each moment. They have the ability to not get bored easily- and I seriously loooooooove that. Endurance just doesn’t seem like the right word to capture it. But whatever I can call it- I love it about them and am thankful for it.

Awhile ago Jacob started a quarter collection of the 50 states. It was a brilliant idea of Grandpa Wallis to introduce the idea of having a collection; specifically this kind because Jacob loves learning all about money! Thank you Grandpa!

Grandpa, Grammy, Dide, Grandma and Omie have all been handing him quarters over the past few months. With excitement he has gone running to that blue booklet to see if it’s one that he needs.

A bit ago Jacob asked if he could have a lemonade stand to try to continue collecting quarters. He got some that way.

But now we’ve hit an all-time amazingness of the way friends have come through to help him achieve his goal of completing this collection. My mom had shared with Jacob that when she was in high school, she and a close friend of hers would write plays together. After they wrote a play and rehearsed it with one another, they would invite their parents’ friends to come to the house and for a quarter they could have an evening of theater. As soon as Jacob heard Omie’s story, I could see the wheels turning in his mind. “How about if I invite my friends? How about if they pay a quarter to come listen to me play the piano??!?!?”

And that’s how the idea was born for today’s piano concert. Jacob and Natalie sent out invitations to family members, teachers, friends from church and a few of Mama & Daddy’s friends. In the invitation we indicated it was a free admission event, but we invited people to bring a quarter to add to his collection if they could. We included a list of all  the quarters he was still missing. Let me tell you- those “P” quarters minted in Philadelphia sure are hard to come by out here on the West Coast!

Today our sweet friends showed up with quarters!!!! Jacob was able to add 19 veeeeeeeery hard to find quarters to his collection!!!!!!! Oh yay yay yay for friends!!!! The look of pure joy as he would shout with incredulity “NEW YORK P!!!!! Hawaii D!!!!!!!! Florida P!!!!!! and on and on….” as he opened envelopes and found these amazing surprises awaiting them from our friends. Wow. This is love.

Thank you to each and every one of you who spent hours of your precious time scouring your purses, wallets, coin collections all for Jacob. That is love. Amazing love. Jacob’s heart is full, full, full with all the love of your presence here today. Thank you for coming to listen to him play the piano. Thank you for helping add all of these quarters to his collection!

Nebraska P, Maine P, Texas P, Hawaii D, South Carolina P, New York P, Georgia P, Connecticut P, Mississippi P, Pennsylvania P, District of Columbia P, New Hampshire P, New Jersey P, Maryland P, North Carolina P, Florida P, Oklahoma-Chickasaw D, America Samoa D, Puerto Rico D

We know that each of you who came and gave lovingly of your quarters were sitting somewhere in your home doing something just like Kevin is pictured here below. Kevin Koga this is SOOOOOO telling of your dedication to making people feel special.  You have an incredible gift of encouraging people with your time and attention!!! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to Sherryl for capturing this dedication in a picture so that I could catch a glimpse of the intense quality of friendship I have with you both! Thank you for giving me this sneak peak into the meticulousness of the devotion that you and everyone who came today, gave to my son with your gifts of quarters.

Tonight Natalie had her end of the year music concert. She sang, played instruments, danced a bit and played a silly part of a monkey being snapped at by a crocodile. She did great! On the way home I commented about how well she sang her solo line in “Dancing Matilda.” As I stood in the back of the auditorium I could hear and see Natalie clearly, crisply enunciating each syllable of “Ma-til-da loved to sing songs e-ver-y day”. 

At home she asked if we could download the pictures and videos I had taken of her. Sure! When we got to that song, I again commented on how clearly she articulated/sang every word. She asked me: “Mama do you know why I did that?” “No, why Natalie?” “Because I wanted people to understand what I was singing exactly. And because Mama if there were any deaf people in the audience I wanted them to be able to read my lips and understand too.”

Wow. Okay. Right there my heart exploded. I wanted to lavish her with kisses and hugs for that super sweet compassion!!!!! And do you know where she got that thought from? Just earlier this week the kids’ music school (Music Rhapsody) posted on their Facebook site, a short YouTube video of a 29-year old woman who had been born deaf, who was used to reading lips, who all of a sudden through the miraculous use of a certain new type of technology, was able to hear her own voice for the first time. It was recorded and was online for all of us to see. The caption that accompanied it, from our music school, is how blessed we all are with the gift of our hearing. And, truly, watching this woman cry, cry, cry, cry at the beauty of sound as she listened to herself laugh, to the voice of the woman who was helping her, to her husband’s voice…..I couldn’t help but cry as well. It was hugely compelling. Being able to hear sounds, enjoy music, listen to each other’s voice…..these are gifts and blessings each and every day. So, yes, I had shared this video with my kiddos earlier this week. We sat together watching this woman cry as she heard beautiful, rich sound for the first time. I had asked the kids “Why do you think she’s crying?” And Natalie immediately responded with “Mama, she’s crying because she is so happy.”

And now I think I’m going to cry as I head off to bed……thinking of how sensitive of a heart Natalie has. She was sensitive to the emotion of the woman on that YouTube video. Somewhere deep down inside of her she internalized that message of being grateful for our functioning ears. And now, days later, her mind somehow tapped into those thoughts while she stood in line waiting her turn to sing her solo line. She wanted any deaf people in the audience to be able to read her lips. Awwww that seriously just grips my heart and makes me want to cry.

Thank you Lord for Natalie’s sweet compassion.

I’m smiling. Today was great!!!

Started off with getting Natalie ready for Pirate’s Day at preschool. Can I tell you how I stoked I am that just a few weeks ago while I was in the toy shop in Solvang, I bought an awesome set of face paint! A year ago I was in that same shop and contemplated the purchase, but decided against it. But today I was ready and super happy to have face paint on hand. It was sooooo much fun painting Natalie’s face!

Check out the aluminum foil hook we created.

I spent hours and hours putting together an appreciation gift for Natalie’s preschool teacher. Don’t have a picture to show for the album I created. It had beautiful poems I had collected from each mom, sweet drawings each student had made for Mrs. Varey and hundreds upon hundreds of pictures I had taken over the course of the year, all with captions highlighting the awesomeness of her creativity and amazing thematic units. That was a H-U-G-E project! When we presented it to her, you could see it meant the world to her. That made my heart happy.

Also made this framed picture of the students as a gift to her.

And then the night ended with a phenomenal music concert! The caliber of the music that Jacob and his peers can now play is simply amazing to me. I have to say my heart swelled SO full with pride when I opened the program and saw Jacob’s name in print for a solo in the opening piece. The recorders began playing their notes. Jacob sat at attention with his fingers in place on the keys of the piano. He waited for just the right moment to take the cue from the conductor. As he played his way through “Star Spangled Banner” and nailed all the left and right hand chord changes, my heart seriously swelled to a point of bursting. Tears came to my eyes. God has blessed Jacob with musical talent- that is a for sure! Thank you God. Thank you. I am SO thankful for his music teacher who has taught him so much. Music is going to be a significant part of Jacob’s life- I just have this hunch.

This morning Jacob was trying to figure out the best order for the program for his upcoming piano concert. A mini concert that is. In his piano class he just gets to play snippets here or there of the pieces he’s learned. He is so excited to get to play the pieces he knows in their entirety for an audience of family and friends. Anyway, so here we were talking about songs…..Minuet in G……Für Elise……Ode to Joy…..and a bunch of blues songs he loves. Well, this morning I also saw a Facebook post from his music school, showing a YouTube clip of a 29-year old woman who was born deaf but through the use of amazing technology was able to hear her voice for the first time. Well it’s a clip of a woman taken by complete surprise and intense, intense emotion sweeps over her. She starts crying. And you can tell from the tears that she is just overwhelmed with joy at the beauty of sound. So, of course I had to show it to the kids. It made for a great illustration about how grateful we can be for the ability to listen to music. Well, then, of course since my brain works wonders at spider-webbing and being all over the place, I brought the conversation back to Jacob’s music playlist. We had a conversation of the great composers: Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. I asked Jacob if he knew which one was born deaf. Yes- the answer: Beethoven. So we talked about how he could “hear” music in his mind and then would compose those pieces. Amazing! Well so then we looked at his playlist to determine which pieces in his program were written by this deaf composer. So then we began looking at the other pieces and writing in the names of those composers. On Saturday Natalie will be announcing each piece to our “audience”- so she was taking extra special note of this conversation. Well this is where the kids seriously started cracking me up. These are the kinds of memories I want to hold onto. 🙂

Me: “Who wrote Minuet in G?”

Natalie: “Martin Buser”

Me: “Huh? Martin Buser?? Where did you get that name from?” 

It didn’t ring any bells for me.

Jacob: “Mozart”

Natalie: “Noooooo it was Martin Buser”

Jacob: “Nooooooo it was Mozart”

Me: “Well let’s look it up”……”oh that’s interesting…..it says here in wikipedia….that up until 1970 Bach was credited for it…..but now it is universally attributed to Christian Petzold.”

Me: “Guys who wrote ‘Scarborough Fair’?”

Natalie: “MARTIN BUSER!!!!”

Me: “There you go again with Martin Buser. Where is that name coming from??”

(and then it dawned on me)

Me: “Ohhhhhh Martin Buser was one of the mushers in the Alaskan Iditarod. Natalie you are soooooo silly!!!”

(thinking to myself….how in the world does a musher’s name get stored in my little 4-year old daughter’s mind?!?  That was 6 months ago that we followed the Iditarod race! She is sooooooo hilarious!!)

Me: “Noooo, Martin Buser did not write ‘Scarborough Fair’. Who wrote it?”

Jacob: “It was Ben and Jerry!!!!”

Jacob said this with COMPLETE confidence he had arrived at the correct answer!

Okay at this point I was seriously almost rolling on the floor with laughter. Natalie this whole time had been laughing her head off each time she shouted out Martin Buser’s name. She was TOTALLY doing it for comedic value. But Jacob on the other hand said “Ben and Jerry” with a total straight face. Somewhere in his mind he remembered that the song had been written by two guys. But hooooooow in the world it pulled out the names of the two guys who made ice cream…….oh my goodness I was roaring with laughter. We all were. Laughing. Laughing. Laughing.

Finally after being able to breathe again…

Me: “No it was SSSSSSSSSS………..”

Trying to give them a hint. They were looking at me with puzzled faces.

Me: “Simon and……..”

Natalie: “GARFUNKLE!!!!”

There she goes. Martin Buser girl……getting the right answer. Natalie surprises me like that. Sometimes I think she purposefully hides her brilliance and then just out of nowhere shares it with us to catch us all by surprise. I can’t figure out if she purposefully hides her knowledge or just waits for the opportune time after she has all of us laughing with her silliness. She is a riot!

Me: “Ding. Ding. Ding. Yes!”

Oh the joy of laughter. I love these kiddos to pieces!

This afternoon there was a “Poetry Jam” that the teachers at Jacob’s school organized and held at our local Barnes & Noble Bookstore. Many, many students walked up to the mic with confidence and recited their poetry. If I think back to myself as a 6-year old, I don’t think I would have walked up so bravely and recited poetry in front of a large audience in a public location like that. I love how at DaVinci these students are learning the art of public speaking at such a young age. What a cool thing!

Jacob recited two of the Haiku poems he wrote. He loved being able to count out the syllables of each line, making sure there was a 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable pattern in the lines of the poem.

“Natalie’s Owee”

Natalie’s screaming

She fell down off the scooter

She’s really upset

“Obnoxious Jacob”

He blows fart kisses

He does not handle sugar

He’s out of control

I was only able to snap a picture of Jacob waiting in line. His turn was next after this girl who is on the mic. As soon as she was done, I turned on my camera to video mode. I wanted to capture his every utterance on video for posterity’s sake. He was beaming in his blue shirt. My happy boy.

It’s amazing how much can happen in two months. It feels like forever since I’ve sat down to unload my thoughts; it feels great to be back again, typing away, enjoying the silence of my evening. The kids were tucked in bed by 6pm. Steve is at Young Life tonight. The silence of our home right now is golden. I love it. I treasure the silence.

Seriously I have become so sensitive to the overload of sound. Kids’ feet pounding on our wood floor as they chase each other through the house…..markers falling to the ground from the table as we do artwork….our dogs barking at the back door saying they want in…..Jacob strumming his out of tune guitar….Natalie bursting into hysterics because the egg she cracked for her cookie recipe slipped out of her hand and fell all over her foot….the washing machine running….the dryer running….Steve’s fruit-protein smoothie being made in the roarin’ loud, manly “Ninja” blender he bought…..the coffee grinder grinding beans loudly…..the fan blades of the bathroom exhaust fan whirling around trying to extricate the foul smell of someone who just used the toilet…..a neighbor’s car alarm sounding…..the honking horn of another neighbor’s relative who is too lazy to go knock on her family’s door, but instead lays on the horn to announce she’s ready to pick someone up…..it’s just all too, too much sound for me during the day.

And so right now the sound of my refrigerator humming and my hard drive whirring is golden. They are the only sounds I hear right now. The dogs are asleep. The kids are asleep. The house is all mine to let my thoughts think out loud.

Here are some highlights of the past two months.

• Today Jacob’s front tooth came out! At school! This is the fourth baby tooth he’s lost, but the other 3 were all pulled out by Grandpa. This one was loose and then knocked out today by his dear friend Matthew while they were playing basketball at lunch.
• Natalie is excited beyond excited to start Kindergarten in the Fall. She can seriously hardly wait. Today she ran in puddles with girls from Jacob’s kindergarten class. She loves them to pieces!
• For “Blast to the Past” dress-up day at school, Jacob used Daddy’s afro wig to dress up as part of the 70’s. Turns out that his close friend Xavier came with the same idea. That’s what you get when both daddies are Young Life leaders! A closet full of skit gear. 🙂
• This was the first time I let the kids chime in for an online clothing order I made through Gymboree. Two hours later and after much deliberating about what they would like to order, we submitted our order. Turns out that Natalie is VERY opinionated about what she would like to wear. She originally asked to put into the cart, a cute pair of pink leggings with a fun snail design. But when she found out that the matching top in her size was not available, she wanted to remove those leggings from the purchase. She likes things to match. So her final decision was this hot pink mermaid top, blue leggings and a matching mermaid purse. She was ecstatic beyond ecstatic when it arrived in the mail! Every day up until then, “Mama, when is our package going to get here??”
• On April 21st we introduced the game of “Sjoelbak” to the kids. This has been a loooooooooong-standing famous tradition in Holland. It is a very well-known game there! I have very fond memories of playing this game with my grandmother when I used to visit her in Holland. Years ago when Steve and I traveled to Canada to be with my Dutch cousins, I introduced him to the game. He came back from that trip and made me my own sjoelen board (a sjoelbak). Turns out we haven’t played it for over 12 years. We had Dave & Kerry’s kids over for a game night and all of a sudden it dawned on me it might be fun to bring it out. And it was a hit with our kids! Love it that our Dutch tradition carries on. That next week my mom came over and broke the record with 106 points! If you get 100+ points, you get your name written on the back of the board. Woohoo Omie!!!
• This is Jacob’s first baseball season ever. I love seeing Steve and Jacob out on the field together.
• Natalie keeping score at the game. So cute. Her idea. Pure love.
• Like father, like son.
• I love it that I got to be in Jacob’s classroom! He’s studying “Plants & Pollinators” right now with his teacher Ms. Janette. For the homeschool portion of school, I had Jacob ask my dad (“Dide”) about his experience of working with a beekeeper. I was so impressed that my dad had such a vivid memory of working with the bees all the way from when he was 9 years old. Amazing! He told us all about the man who was the beekeeper (how he had been imprisoned by the Russians for many years during the world war), how he learned to be a beekeeper during his time in Russia, how he came back to Istria and made his living making honey….how my dad would help the man (who had the outfit to protect from stings) but he himself would get stung all over the face and hands and would swell up…..how at one time of the year they moved the beehives to fields of sage…..then another time of the year to the fields of acacia flowers….how they had an extractor machine that they would put the frames in, in order to get the honey out of it. My dad’s job was to turn the crank of the machine and then fill up the jars as the honey oozed out. Then my dad, Jacob and I went on an adventure to Whole Foods looking for different flavored honey. We also went to another shop in Huntington Beach in search of honey combs. Found them!
• We went back home to my dad’s place and had a honey sampling taste-testing and tried eating a piece of the waxed honeycomb. Oh how I love this kind of homeschool learning!!! That same week I offered to go into the classroom and let all of Jacob’s classmates try the different honeys. Printed out flowers of each of those specific honeys so that the kids could see that the type of honey that is made all depends on which flowers the bees fly to for nectar.
• Natalie’s newfound thrill and joy at preschool! Her success at the monkey bars. She learned how to pull herself up and tuck her legs into the bars. This girl has some SERIOUS upper body strength. It is amazing! She has experienced her first callouses…..all from her tireless perseverance through monkey bar fitness.
• Laughter, laughter, laughter……honestly that’s what so many of our homeschool days are filled with. Chortling laughter.
• Steve and I enjoyed a date night at Disneyland without the kids. That was fun. A time to just enjoy strolling through the park hand in hand.
• Steve continues to do an amazing job keeping our yards looking awesome beyond awesome! Can’t believe how tall our trees have become! I think back to the camfer tree, liquid amber tree and olive tree when we planted them several years back- they are so huge now!
• CICLAVIA- love it that we got to participate in this city event once again. Amazing that only six months the kids could only bike for about an hour. This time they biked for just over two hours! It just amazes me beyond belief that my little 4 year old and 6 year old have this type of stamina and confidence to be in and amongst hundreds upon hundreds of adult cyclists! Love that about them! Had a great time with our friends the Seversons!
• April 14th- Jacob’s 1st time attending an orchestral concert. It was fabulous!!!! He did an amazing job sitting still and listening intently. He most certainly loves music. This was the best of all worlds- getting to listen to beautiful, live music while also watching clips of Disney classics, all the frames timed perfectly with the music pieces.
• Natalie’s love of keeping a clean room.
• Playing chase at the beach. The screeches and hollers of pure joy as I pursued them. Every kid’s dream- to be chased and found.
• Oh how much Charlie & Annie love to go camping with us!! And how much we love to have them with us, as part of the family.
• Natalie’s perfect rendition of the storm that pounded on our tent trailer during our Spring Break stay at Point Mugu
• Jacob adores Steve. My heart actually goes pitter patter and gets all mushy at the thought of Jacob growing up to be like Steve. He’s got the best role model in the world!
• Glorious fun. The joy that comes in the morning after a whole night of storming rain.
• Homeschool adventure at the Carlsbad Flower Fields. The joy of friendship with Emily & Hannah. The joy of a brother and sister who love each other. Thank you Lord.
• The joy of a 1st vending machine purchase.
• My sweet mama
• The joy of visiting Omie
• A morning on the patio at church
• Jacob’s 1st watercolor painting
• The joy of watching the tiny caterpillar…..turn into a beautiful butterfly. Patience. Lots and lots of patience in the waiting. And the tragic end of watching our resident backyard bluebird swoop down to the grass blades and snatch the butterfly up into its beak. Thank goodness Natalie was not watching! But that’s nature, right?
• Out to lunch with Dide. A special treat!
• Natalie- a budding Georgia O’Keefe. 🙂 She loves, loves, loves art. And when I read to her about the life and paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, she asked a few days later if she could try making some of her paintings. Love it!
• The joy of preschool children. If I ever forget about the joy and innocence and laughter of 3 and 4 year olds, I need to go stop by a local preschool or become a preschool teacher. This is the age group that keeps things real. The utter innocence and complete fascination of the smallest details of life is the gift this age group can give to all of us!
• Yes. Yes. The crazy, zany Marina is teaching her kids how to do hilarious things. 🙂 I read online that a dozen eggs can withstand the pressure of a small child standing on top of them. So, of course, we had to try it out! And the even more hilarious thing…..is that after Jacob and Natalie took at least 10 turns getting on, off, on, on, off without cracking a single egg…..I was curious beyond belief and wanted to try it myself. Ha! I didn’t even put all my weight on the first foot and crrrrrrraaaaaaaaccccccck was heard loud and clear. Definitely fun times!
• Natalie read her 1st book all by herself!!!!!!!!!!! Oh the joy and pride on her face.
• Jacob’s 1st Exhibition at his school DaVinci Innovation Academy. Here he is explaining to Omie what work he’s been doing in Ms. Janette’s K-1 class.
• Showing us his Picasso work from his art class with Ms. Cordula.
• And having just read his “Appreciation Flower” to us, he was attacked by a hug from Natalie. He wrote: “I appreciate Natalie, Mama, Daddy. I love Natalie because she’s funny. I love Mama because she reads to me. I love Daddy because he carries me upside down.”
• How I do homeschool. 🙂 Teaching while eating breakfast. Right? Don’t you think teaching about synonyms while eating cinnamon toast is a great way for the idea to stick? 🙂
• The meticulousness of Natalie’s fine motor skills!!!! She carefully oh so carefully placed 841 individual perler beads onto these pegs…..so that we could iron them together and give them as a gift to Matthew and Brianna from Jacob’s class. She sat here one morning for hours doing this while Jacob was in school. Her patience, perseverance, attention to detail and generous heart to make gifts like these for others seriously astounds me.
• Loving my life!!!
• The kids’ 1st big on-stage theatrical performance! Aladdin! Jacob played the 1st prince as well as a townsman. Natalie played a friend of Abu.
• The love of Lulu continues.
• DaVinci High School’s 1st Robotics Competition entry!!!!!!
• Steve reconnected with his all-time favorite teacher: Mr. Matsuoka. He was Steve’s chemistry teacher up at Saratoga H.S. Now he’s a superintendent and Steve is a principal- so cool!
• Week after week of music class. Can’t believe it’s already been 6 years of music class. That’s lots and lots of weeks of trips to Music Rhapsody. But man oh man does Jacob love music!!!
• Natalie seriously cracks me up! I read her a story of an Indian girl who dresses up in her mother’s sari. Natalie loved that story! So then she wanted her own bindi and made one using a teddy bear sticker. Oh she’s a hoot!
• I just love this picture of Steve and Jacob!
• Polka dancing at the Fameja Veneta dinner/dance. Happy times.
• My life is good. Very good. Thank you Lord for these days, for this family, for these happy memories.

This week Jacob’s Crocs broke. This boy has lived in them since the beginning of August. Seven months straight- no joke. Morning-noon-and night. Okay, well, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. He has worn his cleats to play baseball. And there may have been a couple times where I made him wear his black Sketchers for some event. But really other than that it’s been his blue Crocs. I tried to convince him to go shoe shopping a few times. “Why Mom? I have my Crocs. I don’t need another pair of shoes.” Okay. True. True. Why build into him materialism and greed for more if he’s content with one pair of shoes? That’s what I’ve had to tell myself over and over. Natalie on the other hand probably has 10 pairs of shoes and would be ecstatic beyond ecstatic if I took her shopping for more. I have a feeling that in life I’ll be trying to convince Jacob that his stuff is too ragged or broken and he reeeeeeeally needs to get something new whereas with Natalie I’ll need to be reigning her in and giving her all the reasons why we shouldn’t go on shopping sprees.

Well this week his Crocs broke. Yup. The right shoe now has this big gaping opening so that his big toe can just fall out. Time for a new pair. But today we had a scheduled field trip to the J. Paul Getty Center. I knew his black Sketchers were going to be too heavy and clunky for him to walk in for hours. So I let him wear his high-top shiny silver-colored basketball shoes. Hilarious! With these giant-long laces looped as though they looked like a bunny’s floppy ears hanging down. Off we went to the Getty with our friends the Ballards.

The kids were excited beyond belief to ride the tram from the parking lot up to the museum. That was definitely a highlight! But ‘lo and behold what quickly became Jacob’s favorite……as soon as we stepped foot on the great expanse of marble tiling everywhere on the Getty grounds, he discovered that if he swiveled his foot he could make the most obnoxiously loud squeaky sound! The soles of his basketball shoes on the surface of that marble flooring made for some hilariously fun squeaking (in his mind). And so there he walked…..pivot, pivot, squeaky, squeaky, step, step….pivot, pivot, squeaky, squeaky, step, step. At first I thought “so cute. so boy.” And then the squeaking got a bit tiresome. But he thought it was glorious and kept trying all kinds of pivot moves and swivels to find the right pitch and sound of the perfect squeak. I was laughing inside. At first I squashed all the fun of it and told him “NO.” But then I changed my mind to saying “Buddy, just don’t do that in the galleries while we are looking at the art. If you want to squeak down the stairs or by the elevator or as we walk from one pavilion to the next, that’s fine. Just not in the art galleries.” And that seemed fine to him.

Oh the joys of being a boy.

We had a splendid day at the Getty. I was so excited when a few nights ago I discovered on their website that they have archived all their pieces of art! So I did a search for “flowers” and “plants” and was able to look through all their art pieces and find out which ones are currently on display. Coolest feature ever! I was able to bookmark those pieces and then click on a map that showed me where those particular pieces were located in the museum. Sooooooo cool! So I made large, colored printouts of 13 pieces of plant-related artwork, showed them to the kids yesterday and told them we’d go on a scavenger hunt. I challenged them to commit them to memory and see if they could recognize any of them at the museum.

Sweetest thing ever…..as we were waiting for our turn to pay at the parking kiosk, upon our arrival, Natalie all of a sudden shouted out: “Mama! Mama! Mama! I see one of the art pieces already!!!!! Mama! Mama! Mama!” I looked out her window and saw that she was pointing at a huge banner depicting van Gogh’s very famous painting of the blue irises. Ohhhhhh my sweet darling Natalie! She had remembered that piece from yesterday’s viewing of my card stock printouts. I swooned with delight. My precious 4-year old daughter was able to take notice and remember the “Irises” painting. I’m not sure who felt more proud in that moment- she or I. 🙂 

We arrived at 9:21am. Found out they don’t open the parking structure until 9:30am. We were one of the first to take the tram ride up the hill. As we waited for the 10am opening we mapped out the location/plan to find our 13 pieces of artwork. We walked and walked until 1:30pm. When we finally found our last piece of grapes, 

everyone was excited to say we had successfully completed the scavenger hunt! I was proud of my kiddos…… 3 1/2 hours of observing and appreciating art…..talking about details of paintings…..using words like ‘landscape’ ‘still life’ ‘portrait’ as they referred to the artwork…..and being excited beyond belief when they “found” a piece of artwork on our hunt. It was so precious. We had established a quiet signal of clasping our face in a “ohhh! look!!!” wide-open-mouthed, surprised type of expression and then pointing in the direction of the find. It was one of the sweetest, cutest things ever to see Jacob, Natalie, Xavier, Tensaye, Millennium and Faith clasp their faces and mouth “OOOOOO” and point with their tiny fingers at a piece of artwork. A “Look! Look!!! This is sooooooo cool!!! It really is here!!!!” type of expression in their eyes. Precious beyond words.

I’d say it was a pretty fabulous day- getting to study our current unit of “Plants and Pollinators” in an art-appreciation kind of way.

A happy day.