Grandparents & Special Friends Day

Howdy howdy!

Sorry for not posting yesterday.
All I'd have really wanted to say was: Happy 4/20!
The day was mainly spent volunteering at CWS (for today's event) while Dash manned the grill at Beaver Bowls -- a local dispensary that he does all the design work for :)
We love the family that runs it, so it was partly a socializing occasion and partly charitable too since a number of homeless folks came by for the free eats. Good for them!

One of the visitors Dash had :D

Today was the Corvallis Waldorf School's "Grandparents & Special Friends Day" which is a day for beloved friends and family to sit in and observe the classes, get treated to a delicious meal, and hear from teachers and admin about the mission of the school and how they can help to support it.

I got to do a little bit of chalk work on the boards to greet the guests~!

I was one of the volunteers who helped with coordinating with teachers to collect samples of the students' works, and then help set up and do kitchen prep the day prior.

Just a small example of the baked goods brought in!

The lady in charge, Miss S. Kavur, pulled off this amazing event almost entirely single-handedly and she did a remarkable job!! She decided on the food being all home-cooked, not catered, and the main dish was an incredibly delicious potato tart. With homemade pie crusts and everything!

I really must get the recipe from her. It was so good!! She also made a giant spinach salad and berry salad using almost all local ingredients. Talk about awesome treatment for our beloved grandparents and special friends, yeah? ;)

I really wish I could've done more, because it was so fun to be a part of such a big event that really helps our school and makes it shine brightest for visitors from near and far :) I will definitely let the folks in charge know that I'd like to be even more involved for next year.
Here are some things we had featured:

A table and wall of art from all the grades.
And this is even before the Handworks teacher added the more 3D examples of the kids' work

Isn't that a lovely table spread?

And every place had its own little square of bees wax for the attendees to knead and work with while they enjoyed the Grades' performances and the speakers. What a great way for them to experience first-hand what the kids at Waldorf do too! :)

And then there were the gorgeous centerpieces.

Done pretty much all by Ashley R. as far as I know. Good job, Ashley!!
The woodland/rustic tone is so fitting to CWS, and these will also double as the centerpieces for next month's "Spring Fling" which is an evening for CWS parents to enjoy each other's company with food and dancing and music. Very cool!!

I'll be helping out with that too, and my goal is to make a bunch of origami stars to work into this woodland theme~ I'll be using that giant 30-lb ream of paper, so no expense on my part!
More updates on that later I guess.

Granted, they'll all be white ;)

So there you have it. How we spent 4/20 and 4/21.
Hope you've been having a great couple of days too.
Until next time, take care and Happy Grandparents & Special Friends Day!!

Waldorf in the Spring

Hey again~!

So yesterday and today it feels like I was at the kids' school quite a bit.

Yesterday it was for William's in-class celebration of his birthday. Hurray!!
Dash, Ella, and I were all invited to partake in the celebrating which consisted of telling stories about William's babyhood and adventures he's been on in his life. We brought grapes and apples to compliment the pumpkin(?) muffins provided by the class. Miss Wendy did a little puppet show for him, and gifted him a beautiful silk cape as well! It was very lovely and I was so proud of how William was observant and paid attention, rather than partaking in the ruckus that other little boys were all about. I get it, that's how little boys roll, but I also know how frustrating it can be try to run a class with kiddos like that, so I was glad that William was not making it harder for Miss Wendy than it already was. Phew!

After school, we then attended a Parent Meeting for Ella's 1st Grade Class.
It was very positive, with Miss Bedirian emphasizing what good work the kids are doing building a fort outside and preparing for their playing coming up in May. We also got to create a wet-on-wet watercolor work which was very enjoyable, and bask in the richness that is potluck dinner! Everyone brought something delish, and our contribution was garlic bread and brie. Mm-MM!

As for today, the weather was super lovely so after my usual morning routine of holing myself up at McD's to get some work done, I spent from 12:30 to 2:30 enjoying the school's grounds with William as the temperature climbed up to 80+!

I took the opportunity to also take a ton of snapshots of the outside area where the kids play because the sun was shining, the flowers are blooming, and it was just so beautiful out there.
So without further ado, the grand tour!

Outside shot of the 1st Grade Fort with a child crawling in for scale

Apparently the kids have been doing it with zero adult help and constructing it to make sure it's sturdy enough to hold weight on top and keep out rain from inside, etc etc. Such busy little beavers!

Another angle of the entrance

I should mention that all this material came from stuff lying around on the grounds. That is, the giant logs are from some trees that had to be taken down over the summer and had been left out for the kids to play on. The dry grass was gathered little by little over time from the huge field that had been mowed, and they used the very thick clay-like soil to stick it all together.

William crawling out of the 1st Grade Fort

You can really keep cool in there...if you're under 4' tall~!

Some older grade is also making a fort of sorts. I don't know which grade, but either way, it's pretty snazzy!

Another outside area the kids love

Ella's told me about this "mud pit" (in the rainy season) under a big pine further back from their fort. The clay-soil is perfect for sculpting things and you can see they've been digging into the earth to get the even better clay. Ha!

This hole goes particularly deep~!

A crooked shot of the back of the school from where we were with the 1st Grade Fort

The kindergarten playground is just beyond this fence, as we made our way back toward the school

Awesome little playhouse

I love this playhouse, and William and I spent a lot of time in here today imagining it was our own Tiny House: What would we need and how would we arrange it? Could William in fact just sleep in a hammock strewn across the length of it? Where would we stash our books? Do we really need a "living room"?

Trying to instruct William to take the shot while holding the pose = difficult!

I had to try my moves on the main playground gym's bars.
I can hold it for all of *gasp!* five seconds~! ;D

Our last stop outside: the preschool playground!

This is where William's class and the young kids play.
It has the perfect balance of sunlight, and shade, play structures and open space, and even a little garden there in the back!
Can you say sweeeeeeet?

Moving back inside, I wanted to show what the kids' classrooms look like:

The Golden Roses (PreK) classroom

Window side

The "house" corner

Definitely sweet and wholesome.
And Ella's classroom is so heartwarming too!

Beautiful blackboards

If memory serves me right, it was a parent at the school who handcrafted the blackboards.
And the content on them is beautiful too!
What a pretty way to learn math, right? Lots of colors, and pictures of nature along the edges. Mm-MM!

Just another example of a beautiful drawing accompanying a short 'n' sweet poem

Man, Ella's so lucky to be surrounded by so much beauty on a regular basis. And with the appreciation of nature being an integrated part of the whole curriculum. Gooooo, Waldorf! :D

Obligatory nature table in the corner. I'm pretty sure every classroom has some iteration of this~

I think that's just about everything from Waldorf that I wanted to share with ya'll today.
Oh! One last shot: of the volunteer board and random art board in the hallway!

Staples in the hallway

If even the volunteer board is this lovely, then you know this school loves art. ;)
And I love how the chalkboard to the left is always evolving over the course of the year: showing an apple tree shedding its leaves in the fall; a snowy landscape in the winter, and now a blossoming tree in the spring.

Tomorrow we'll be having the Early Childhood classes' Parent Meeting, so I'll let you know how that goes~!

Until then, I hope you take a moment to visit a Waldorf school some time. It's like stepping back in time and the amount that everybody cares, from the admin to the teachers to the parents to the kids, is breathtaking to say the least. :)

Well, in the meanwhile, take care and Happy Waldorf in the Spring!!

Enchanted Forest

'Allo 'allo!

So we are back from our birthday trip to Oregon's very own Enchanted Forest amusement park.

I'd been here once before, when Kathy visited some time last year (or the year prior?) but it was Dash's first time and felt like William's first too since he has pretty much no recollection of that prior trip :D

I was really insistent that we get there as early as possible (after church) so when we ended up leaving closer to 2pm than 11:30am I was pretty livid~! But I think I need to work on updating my idea of what an "outing" with the kids should be. From what I remember of my childhood, an outing to a place like an amusement park was an all-day affair where you milked every last bit of the place from dawn until dusk. But I suppose I should cut us some slack since the kids are still so little, so that even a couple of hours can be enough time for them to enjoy themselves at any given event. Granted, when I'm in charge of myself, I definitely opt for the "first to arrive, last to leave" model ;)

Anyway, yesterday the weather was perfect, especially in as a lovely environment as you'll find at Enchanted Forest.
No matter how "hot" it may have gotten, the abundance of rich foliage and trees constantly protected us from the sun's rays, and its location on a hill of sorts added a gentle breeze. I really can't imagine a more beautiful day to have gone :)

The first part of the park is themed with children's classic nursery rhymes and fairy tales, with animatronic figures in their little plaster houses and such. I'm going to be honest: it's a little disturbing. Just because it really doesn't feel like they've updated this part of the part since it originally opened and the audio's really decrepit and the figurines a little dead in the eyes @_@

Ella was unfazed but William felt the spookiness with me and refused to go in most of those first attractions. I didn't take any photos at this point. Sorry!

Moving on, the park enters a Wild West theme which had a shooting gallery, and a slide William went down at least a dozen times. It then morphs into a Medieval Village theme, where William and I went on the "Challenge of Mondor" ride. It involved shooting at spooky animatronic creatures in a deep dark tunnel as we rode in a little boat of sorts. William was definitely on edge but nothing terrible. No photos there because of the sheer darkness of the ride.
There was also "Pinnochio's Playhouse" where the kids experienced their first wacky mirror, so that was interesting:

Love me a good wacky mirror!

I'd say that the kids' favorite area was the Kiddy Rides area which had things like bumper cars and a child-sized ferris wheel like you'd find at most any carnival.

William likes to feel like he's in control so these Bumper Boats were right up his alley

They loved this slow-moving train~

So yeah, no exciting roller coasters or log rides, but I guess that's still okay for a 7- and 4-year-old.
Oh! It was super neato that we ran into a fellow family from Waldorf whose son is in Ella's class!! :)
He has a few inches on Ella which made a world of difference in terms of which rides he could go on, and it reminded me that it won't be long before our kids, too, can pretty much go on any ride at a park...some day!

For all my earlier insistence of getting there early, we actually ended up leaving before the park closed anyway, had TRB at home and an episode of GBBO, and called it a day. :)

Topped it off with a classic amusement park novelty lollipop!

I would highly recommend this park to folks with kids of any age, because there's something for everyone~! The fairy tale area (despite what I said about the animatronics) is sweet in its own outdated way, and I like how the park has retained a lot of its old-school charm rather than updating every little thing like other parks might.

Anyway, if you are looking for something to do with your family some weekend, consider Enchanted Forest! And tell me what you thought! :D

Well, until next time~!
Take care and Happy Enchanted Forest!!

The Past Two Weeks

Howdy hoooo~!


Hey, everyone.
Sorry for the long absence there.
My mind has a funny way of doing the exact opposite of what I resolve to do sometimes.
For example, I noticed that I have progressively posted less and less entries since January, when I first took up blogging again. This prompted me to promise to myself that I'd turn that all around in April...only to fail miserably~!

But I must also say that the past two weeks haven't felt like there was THAT much to report.
Mainly because of a slew of crappy weather days, and William being sick for pretty much a whole week straight.

But looking back through my calendar and my cell phone's photo folder, I realized there is actually a bit that I would like to record here for posterity ;)

So without further ado, here are some posts I could've/should've done these past couple weeks:

1) Taxes!!
We actually got them done early this year (the day after my last post) and as always it put me in a foul mood since I hate to think that my taxes are paying for military efforts I don't support, and because we are self-employed and never have taxes withheld and so always have to pay out a bunch of money. I have never received a "refund" during tax season so I think it's a particularly more negative experience for me than for most folks

2) Wacky Weather!!
After a great big week of grand weather, we then had a week of colder, rainier weather which also put a damper on my mood. Spring can really tug at my heart strings, getting my hopes up that hat-n-mitten weather is officially over, only to pull the rug out from under my feet.
Here is what some instances of nice weather looked like:

William practicing how to write his name once more~!

And then foul weather that kept us indoors...but which did lead to some nice creative time with the kids:

Look at that tower!

There was even a super windy-rainy day one Tuesday that resulted in a blackout that lasted at least 5 hours, from 5:30pm to around 10:30pm! That is very unusual occurrence for us in-town folks, and it found us eating cold leftovers out of the fridge for dinner and reading by candlelight! I loved it. I felt very much like we were Ma & Pa Ingalls, since I couldn't surf the web and put the kids down at 6:30pm out of the sheer lack of anything else to do.
It's funny because I always want to be prepared for a disaster...but here we were with just a few hours without electricity and I felt pretty paralyzed. Oh, well! It was a cozy evening for sure.

Snug in bed, reading my fantasy novel by candlelight. And a candle resting on our sconce in the background~!

3) Social Fun!!
We also had the lovely サンソム家族 over on one of the Sundays which was the first instance of entertainment we'd done in what felt like months. It was such a lovely time, Dash and I vowed that we really must do that more often. It forces us to really tidy up the home (always good!) and generally isn't as much work as we tend to assume it will be. Just good fun all around.
We just made it a big "burrito bar" style dinner with ground pork, homemade guacamole + tortillas, and all manner of toppings. :) The kids had a blast since the weather was still nice so they were outside a lot too.

It's a bit of a tradition that the kids put on a fashion show when our two families get together :D

Mei and William curled up on the sofa to read LoZ manga! William is quite smitten with Mei ;)

4) So Much Baking!!
I must say, now that we have this motor for our grinder, Dash has been baking more regularly than ever, and we also have a supply of freshly ground flour in the house!
I also took advantage of all our flour by baking some crackers with William for our neighbors:

Love using our star-shaped cookie cutters to make the crackers extra special

As I'd mentioned, he got a head cold all week so he didn't go to school at all last week. That resulted in my morning school commute routine being a lot faster (not so much dead weight to pull!) and really taking advantage of McD's as my work space with its free wi-fi and distraction-free setting :D
I got a ton of work done, both paid and otherwise, and am feeling very much on top of things.
Thankfully, William is well now so his in-class celebration will be Monday. So sweet!

5) William Turns Four!!
Speaking of William, he had his birthday just yesterday! The big ol' four years old :)
Crazy to think that Ella turned four once. I'd been so committed to making things for her birthday and holding a really big shindig for it. But perhaps it's my age, because now I feel like a small, sweet celebration is better. Less stress/effort, that's for sure. ;)
So for William, we stuck to our li'l family tradition and went to El Sol De Mexico Friday evening.

William fell asleep right in the middle of his meal! Ha!

On Saturday (the day of!) William got to open his presents. One of which is a nifty flashlight-light saber. Our family just adores flashlights, so yay!

Thanks, Nana!!

The weather finally turned a corner from the cooler stretch we'd had so we took a stroll down to the riverfront to enjoy the first day of the Farmer's Market:

The kids surprised me by insisting that they carry their notepads and pens to sketch nature on the way~

Tree climbing with a goofy face

Ella has become a master at finding four leaf clovers! Did you know, as a child I thought four leaf clovers were a myth @_@

Back at home, we enjoyed baking William's cake and making mini quiche for a potluck-in-the-park celebration our dear friends the Stalters put on for us.
It was such a good time!!!!!
I swear, potlucks are the way to go since the hosts don't have to be responsible for feeding 3x as many folks as usual which can be hard on the wallet and also take a bunch of time. Instead, the theme was "French finger foods" so that clean-up was minimal and the spread was delicious.

There was sourdough bread with balsamic vinegar, tomatoes and mozzarella, veggie burgers in pitas, and more! :D

Here's a shot of Ella since William and his friend Lucas were rarely at the picnic blanket with us, rather opting to make mud pies instead :D

It was held at Arnold Park, which has recently had an upgrade so that it's got awesome massive climbing structures, and the kids had a great time while we adults also got to connect and enjoy fun conversation. It was the Stalters, the Petts, the Collins and a friend of the Stalters whose names escape me now but were also delightful. ;) We were celebrating not only William's birthday, but also the good news that the Petts will be staying in town rather than having to move away, the Stalters are about to close on their first home, and also a little precursor celebration for my own birthday that is coming up~! So many good things to celebrate!!!!

Whelp, that's about all that is worth sharing from these past two weeks.
I really hope to do better about posting regularly because it feels nice to record these days, to some day look back on.
So far April has been grand, and I look forward to the coming warmer weather and that springtime feeling~
Today we'll be hitting up Enchanted Forest amusement park which is my non-material experiential gift to William. Dash will actually be joining us since he got all his usual Sunday deadlines done ahead of time. Hurray!!! :)

I'll be sure to report back in as to how it went.
So until then, take care and Happy The Past Two Weeks!!

Sunny Sunday :)

Hello again!

So last I wrote, I mentioned how Ella was having a sleepover with her buddy Beatrix.

As expected, it went fabulously!
Honestly, barely felt like anything was that different from usual, everything was just so absolutely seamless. :)
I really ought to have taken more photos, because they did everything from dancing ballet, to playing the yard, coming to Church this morning, and everything in between. William was even included in most of their play, making for a harmonious little trio of kiddos.

The gloriously sunny weather really helped facilitate that, as it just generally gave a light 'n' happy air to the place :)

While on one our our jaunts outside, the kids made these little daisy caterpillars:

I was considering videotaping them giving a tutorial on how to make them :D

Church, in particular, was very sweet because it was Family Service day, and Ella was really into it. She even requested a Hymnal to follow along with the singing. NICE!
And William signed his little name in the Friendship Booklet they have in every pew to see who's joining them that particular Sunday.
He did such a bang-up job, I asked him to recreate it when we got home:

"WILLIAM" or more literally "AIIWLLM"

Not bad, if I do say so myself! :D
Reminds me of when Ella was starting to copy little word, and her letters didn't obey the left-to-right orientation that the English language follows. Ha!

Speaking of the kids putting pen to paper, I thought I'd take a little snapshot of a doodle Ella did today:

"The Jewel Pokemon"

That's right, Pokemon is back, in a big way for the kiddos! Particularly because Dash's birthday gift for Ella came in yesterday: The Pokemon Deluxe Essential Handbook!!!
The kids spent many an hour drooling over the in-depth analyses of every Pokemon, and I can foresee Ella incorporating it into her drawings now.


It really was just an overall lovely weekend, and a great way to start off the coming week.
I hope you all enjoyed your Sunday/weekend too and I will catch you next time!
Til then, take care and Happy Sunny Sunday!!

Birthday Week

Yahooooo~!


So this week we have not one but two birthdays in our household!
On Monday, Dash turned 44 (!) and yesterday Ella turned 7 (!!).

We conveniently misunderstood the first day back to school to be Tuesday, so the whole family got to stay home for the day on Monday, to celebrate Dash's birthday right there with him.

Dane came over first thing in the morning and shared some coffee with us, so that was a grand way to start the day.
Then I got to surprise Dash with the gift I got him:

Sleek~!

That's right!
Now our beloved grinder is motorized, saving us a ton of time and energy to grind our own flour.
Don't get me wrong, I love working up a sweat and keeping up my upper body strength, but it was a drag knowing that in order to make bread I first had to dedicate a good 30 minutes laboring just to get the flour ready.
Sooooo, this dandy little set-up has already made it possible for us to whip up two cakes, a big ol' loaf of bread, and a batch of tortillas. That's a lot more baking in one week than we typically see :)

Dash promptly spent most of his birthday baking a lovely cake with the kids -- such a DIYer!

So beautiful!

Keeping with Dashiell tradition, we ate dinner at El Sol de Mexico, and when we got back home, we were greeted with this lovely gift from the heavens:

Raaaainbooooow~!

We then got to enjoy his mega cake creation back, along with the Birthday song, blowing out of candles, etc etc.

No, we did not put 44 candles on the cake ;)

 Happy Birthday, Dash! We love you!!!

Oh! I also wanted to show off that nifty set of Legend of Zelda playing cards I bought from an artist back at Sakura-con:

So cute!

The kids love playing regular trump card games as well as using the cards as characters in their games of imagination. A win-win!

Anyway, four days after Dash's 44th birthday, we celebrated Ella's 7th!

Unlike years past, the general vibe in the home was not to have an elaborate "birthday party" with a bunch of friends or anything.
Partly because her in-class celebration at school was already going to involve most of the friends she wanted to celebrate with, and because I didn't feel like trying to coordinate with seven different families for a day that works (7 years old = 7 friends over, as the tradition goes).

So instead we made it a very special family-oriented day from the very beginning of the day, to the very end.

First, pancakes!

A mini fruit-n-whipped-cream island she created.

With so much fruit and homemade whipped cream!
While Ella was at school, Dash, William and I worked diligently on a cake of Ella's specification: red velvet with whipped cream, marshmallows, Oreos, and strawberries as a topping (!)

At school, we brought yet more fruit and whipped (coconut) cream, and got to share stories about Ella's coming into the world and notable stories from her early childhood. Then her classmates got to share what they appreciate about Ella and what they wish for her in her life. It was very personal and sweet. :)

Back at home, it was an afternoon of letting Ella revel in her gifts from the family, while I whipped my bike into shape. It really is Version 2.0 now, with a brand new jimmy-rigged basket and cleaned out bike panniers. Sweet!

Once again, we hit up El Sol de Mexico for a delightful dinner, and at home busted out the cake we'd created:

Look at that decadent beast!

The kids honestly weren't crazy about it. I blame it on how many sweets they'd already enjoyed throughout the day and the fact that their bellies were full to bursting from their Mexican dinner too.
Oh, well! More for Dash and me ;)

Aaaaand after that, we watched another episode of The Great British Baking Show (season 6, episode 2) and the kids went to bed without much fuss.

The weather had been so warm during the day, that it was still pleasant come sundown so I took a stroll to deliver curtains to the Stalters and take a nice chat-walk with Kathy-neechan. The second story we're writing is very close to having Chapter 2 done! Yay!!

Today, Ella is enjoying a looooong playdate with her good friend Beatrix who will actually be spending the night here too!
It'll be Beatrix's first ever sleepover, so I feel pretty honored that it will be at our house :)
I'm sure it will go smashingly well.

Right now, they are enjoying the glorious spring weather we've had all week, romping around outside.
Must get them good and tired~~~


And with that, that concludes this busy week of birthday celebrations.
Until next time, take care, enjoy the sunshine, and Happy Birthday Week!!