The Nutcracker...on Ice!

For a little girl who has never had dance lessons, Willow is a pretty dance-y person. I decided she was finally old enough to go see The Nutcracker this year, so I bought tickets as soon as they were available. Tonight was the night, and as it turns out, Portland was hit by a big winter storm, with snow that actually stuck to the roads. Usually it just mixes with rain and becomes a slushy mess. Thank goodness for Tri-met, the local transit agency. We didn't have to deal with chaining up the car, avoiding other drivers and finding parking downtown. We just took a quiet ride on the train and street car with a couple of blocks walk at the end. The show was beautiful and it was really fun to see all the other little girl in the audience in their pretty dresses. Because of the nature of our trip, Willow had a pretty dress with long underwear, tights and snow boots :) I felt bad for all the teenagers and adults who couldn't bring themselves to do the same and were freezing their little tootsies off in pantyhose and pumps. We were very lucky in many ways, the show had a live orchestra (Willow spent intermission down at the pit checking out the instruments) and we met one of the dancers on the train back home. She showed us her shoes...pretty cool. All in all it was a wonderful holiday experience, and the snow and ice just served to make it seem extra winter wonderful.

Zane has a crazy laugh

We have tried so long to catch his crazy giggle, and this is the best we could get...but trust us it gets much, much crazier when we don't have a camera pointed at him.

who is raising whom

Isn't it amazing to realize that as you are helping your children learn and grow, they in turn are helping you do the same? Through marriage and establishing a household part of me felt like I was getting away with something, and inside I still saw myself as young, on the cusp of adulthood. Even for a while after Willow was born, I still felt like I was playing grownup to some degree. I think Grandma Barbara knows this, because when we speak on the phone, she always asks "how is your dolly?" But somewhere along the way I realized I had become more bold, more assertive (still need to work on that, but I have improved) more patient, more thoughtful...when i have a moment to think again :) In short, they have helped me grow as a person, and I finally feel like a real adult. Thanks, you two. Now if you can only stop making me feel old!

P.S. Thank you Joe for finally explaining how to properly use Who and Whom. How sad that it took me till 32 to learn that.

Girl Scouts

I must be crazy.

I went to sign up Willow for girl scouts, and ended up volunteering to be a leader. I am so nervous, and holy cow, there is a lot of paperwork and training to be done, and also excited, because I had a great time in girl scouts, and had a really great leader, Penny Solomon. I had no idea how hard she must have had to work on our behalf. Thank-you Penny! I hope I can do as much for my girls. I've met a very nice woman who will be my co-leader and with luck we can convince some of the parents of our troop to step up and help out with some of the jobs or maybe even join us as leaders. We have 14 girls interested now!....did I mention being nervous? I'm sure there will be more rantings from me on this topic as the troop gets up and running. Wish me luck!

Halloween

Willow was a cute Zebra this year. She worked very hard to paint the stripes on the costume and I think it turned out fabulously! We decided to make Zane a lion to go with the theme. He really liked wearing his little lion vest and kissing the head. Willow may want to go as Dorothy from the Wizard of OZ next year (I got lucky and got a costume on clearance after Halloween) so maybe we can get another year out of it with him as the cowardly lion. We lucked out on the weather this year, rain in the AM, but nice and dry by trick-or-treating time. Zane doesn't have the concept down yet, he just wanted to run! We ended up letting him stay home with dad while I took Willow downtown and around the neighborhood. She is at a really fun age now!

Yeah, why don't we see the Onceler's face?

Well, I hope that Sara gets some time to do another catch up. I'll try to get some time too. China was great, my new job is going well. But I'm not here to talk about that now...

One of Willow's homework assignments is to read to us for at least 15 minutes each day. She is a fantastic reader. I used to wonder if she was simply reciting the words or if she really understood what she was reading. This homework assignment has help answer that. She really does usually understand what she reads and can formulate some really good questions.

Earlier this week Willow chose to read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. As she was reading, she would often stop and ask some really thoughtful questions. The question she asked that I found the most profound was:
Why don't we ever get to see the Onceler's face?

Now that isn't a question about the words on the page, but as with most Dr. Seuss books, the pictures are an important part of the story. Not only had I never given it any thought, I hadn't even noticed that we never saw the Onceler. I want Willow to be a diamond reader*, so I tried to discuss the question with her without simply telling her what I think the answer is. I think that by the end she did grok that there wasn't one right answer. Some of the ideas she put forth were:

• Because he is shy
• Because he doesn't like going outside. (This one we dismissed because in the story he does go outside.)
• Because he feels guilty

The last one impressed me. We discussed the question and her answers for a while. If it hadn't been so late I might have attempted to see what she thought about the idea of the Onceler being a "stand in for faceless corporations." I'm not sure I could have explained it in simple enough terms, though. And I definitely wasn't ready for that discussion just before bed time. I was tempted to keep her up talking, but I didn't want her to be too tired for school in the morning, though.

-JEEP
After much searching, here is the quote I was referencing above. I really like this quote and I fear that I'm not a Mogul Diamond. :(

Readers may be divided into four classes:

1.) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.

2.) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.

3.) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.

4.) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~

China

As I've tried to write down my impressions of the china trip, so many stories and details come up that it is difficult to decide how to put it all down. I don't think I can do it justice, it was such a amazing experience. What follows is just a small sample of my impressions, and even so it is very long. We have too many pictures too, you can see them at

http://picasaweb.google.com/sara.peterson/20080822ChinaTripAugust2008#

As many of you know, Joe and I have a friend who organized a trip to China this summer to coincide with the Olympics. Grandma Candy and Grandpa Bill generously agreed to watch Zane and Willow for us so Joe and I could attend. Zane is really, really into everything at this point so that was particularly brave of them. I did my best not to freak about being so far away from my kids, and generally did ok, though long car rides were particularly difficult for some reason. This was my first experience abroad and it was a real eye-opener. I've mainly lived in suburbs and small cities in the US and Beijing was huge, Shanghai was huger and Harbin (the smallest city we visited) was still gigantic! The country worked really hard to be welcoming to all the tourists, and generally people were friendly. I ended up in a lot of Chinese peoples' family pictures. I don't think I was notably tall compared with some of the other tourists, but for some reason I was popular to pose with. We did a lot of touristy stuff, seeing the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Ming emperor tombs, a jade factory, a silk factory...my favorite in Beijing was Beihai Park, It is astoundingly beautiful, cool and relaxing while the rest of the city is hectic. Shanghai has an even more worldly, busy energy. If you've seen Bladerunner, Shanghai feels like it could become that in about 20 years. Harbin was super interesting. It has a strong Russian influence due to its location so far north. When you come from the airport, it really seems like you could be in Nebraska....acres upon acres of corn! The corn grown there is more similar to US commodity corn than sweet corn. It is very starchy and stiff (they say it is good for your teeth) The produce in general was strange to me. The peaches were large and beautiful, but even when ripe had the texture of an apple and an under ripe flavor. I wonder if the Chinese are weirded out by our fruit when they visit here? Fruit, especially watermelon was served at the end of dinner almost everywhere. Joe says it is a signal that they are almost done bringing the food. We were treated to many meals by Snow's friends and the food was always amazing and delicious. It probably merits it's own blog. I have been a fan of a couple of travel network shows that feature adventurous eaters, so I had gone with the goal of trying everything offered to me. Some of the new experiences were, tripe, raw beef, congealed duck's blood, roasted bone marrow, fish heads, whole shrimp, pork liver, duck neck, watermelon seeds, beetles, silkworm larva....All of it tasted pretty good, though the beetles have a definite "buggy" flavor. If you have to eat one or the other, go with the larva.:)

We got to see a few Olympic events. We watched the opening ceremony in a private room at a spa after having dinner and foot rubs. Originally we had tickets, but they turned out to have been fraudulent. No worries, we got our money back, but I don't know if they got the guy. We saw two soccer matches, Nigeria vs Japan, and US vs The Netherlands. My favorite Olympic moment was singing the national anthem before the game, loudly and off key. When they played the Netherlands's anthem next, their countries fans tried to sing their anthem, but apparently didn't know the words:) Go USA! I felt very proud and patriotic. We also got to see some women's beach volleyball, US b team vs China, and Australia vs Brazil.

Transportation was done mainly by cab, though a few times we had a hired van and driver. You could not pay me enough to be willing to drive in china! Lane markings seem to be a suggestion at best, and it is quite a shocking free for all. The drivers have to be super aggressive to get anywhere, and while it is scary at first, you just kinda get used to it. We rode the subway in Beijing a few times and that system works really well, although it is crowded. Walking was fun, but crossing streets with the crazy drivers all around is terrifying. If you make eye contact, then they know you saw them and it is up to you to avoid them. Best to learn to look out of the corner of your eye. It was amusing to realize that we Americans were the only ones waiting for the lights to change to cross the street, everyone else just went when they saw a gap. Meals were provided on all the internal flights, even though they were pretty short. Very different from the US!

One of the people who went with us is a very experience traveler, and he said one of his favorite things about travel is how good it feels to go home. I was certainly happy to get back, even though we had such a great time. The worst part was getting to the hotel where the kids were and having Zane not come to me. I was hugging Willow and crying, and I don't know if I scared him, if he was mad at me, or God forbid had forgotten who I was, but he wanted nothing to do with me for a whole day. That was really hard, but it makes me really appreciate it when he clings to me now. Willow and Zane both had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa and we are so grateful to them for the opportunity to travel.

H.C.C. part Deux!

(edit: um....it is now October and I am just posting....sorry! Bad mommy, no biscuit!)


Umm, I know I said in the last post I would do this tomorrow....today is a tomorrow too! So, sorry, and on to July!

The Fourth was a ton of fun. I got Willow up early to go to the kids dash event of the Hillsboro CAT walk and fun run. That girl loves to run! Then she got a balloon hat, face painting, and successfully talked me in to staying for at least a little of the parade. Little did I realize that I had parked where I would have to wait out the entire parade and the clean-up crew in order to leave. We ended up being way late to visit my Cousin in Vancouver, but she and her family were gracious as always, despite my bringing along the world's grossest potato chips. I was suckered in by their really cool red white and blue color scheme, but good lord people, avoid the Terra chips. Ick! We had the kids do sparklers, then as it got darker we went out to the street to fire off a few fireworks. Now, before I go any further, one thing you have to understand is that in Washington state, or at least Clark county, just about any kind of firework is legal. So as we lit our little numbers, the beverage enhanced neighbors were lighting their big honkin' boom-booms. You could look in any direction and see some very impressive explosions. It was simultaneously cool and a bit intimidating.

The next week we started going to the parks & rec's all comer's track meets. She had fun at the one we went to last year, and this year there were more and they were much better organized. We went every Wed this month, except the first. She loves it all, the races, the field events and especially the relays. At the first meet we attended, she got first place in shot put! (it subsequently became her favorite event!) She also shocked us by choosing to run the 1500 (this is almost a mile) She stuck it out, and was the youngest running, so she got a blue ribbon for her age group! I've been very impressed with her spirit her summer.

The last two weeks of July were the most hectic. Willow had a week of p&r rockclimbing and two of swim lessons. She had fun at the rockclimbing, but as a parent, it was hard to watch because she really struggled. She would get a little way up and just freeze. Nothing could coax her higher. Fun was the point, so by that measure it was a success. Swimming was a different story. We had her assessed, and placed her in the class they suggested, but it really seemed too hard for the first week. She just kept trying though. The parents of the other kids in the class reassured us that she was correctly placed, they had had children in the one level down and thought that it would be too easy for her. She really suprised us in the last few classes by swimming the length of the pool and doing it quickly. She ended up passing the class when we had expected her to have to repeat it at least one time. That's one thing about Willow, she just dosen't give up.

Holy Cats Catch-up!

Well, we've been having a really great summer, and consequently have had no time to blog about all the fun we've been having. So prepare for a long catch-up post with a lot of pix, a pause for the Olympics, and another long catch-up post. Lets get to it!

We've finally figured out that REI can be a great resource for fun (after having been members for, like 9 years now). I took a mommy's day off to go to their paddle demo day up at Vancouver Lake. They haul out a bunch of their kayaks and canoes, hand you a paddle and a PDF and turn you loose, more or less. It was awesome, and I am now scheming for babysitting jobs so that I can buy my own ocean kayak. No pix for this adventure as I was blessedly on my own for a while. While there I picked up a list of other events, one of which was a kids rock climbing class. I signed Willow up and we trekked by MAX train into Portland's pearl district where the REI has a two story climbing wall. (a note about the MAX: Drunken ladies at 1pm on a weekday are a bit of a hazard, but I guess it's never to early to talk to your kids about drugs) Willow only made it about four feet up the wall, but kept on trying at every opportunity. I was really proud of her. She said she had fun despite being afraid so I've signed her up for a parks and rec class to start on the 21st.

Up next was the family reunion, which was awesome despite traveling alone with two kids. I didn't have it as rough as my cousins, who had the sickies, and no husbands. The air conditioning was out in the big car, so I had to take our little Aveo, but this turned out to be a good thing. It averaged 33.36 mpg with the ac cranked and all kinds of stuff plugged into the accessory outlets. Willow was a great helper, and had such a great time with her cousins and of course my Aunt Diana's horses were a huge hit. Zane seemed convinced that they were big dogs and he got his first chance to sit on one to have his picture taken. The day after we got home, we went to the zoo and saw the anamatronic dinosaur exhibit...from a grown-up's point of view, eh. Willow was impressed, and Zane, non-plussed. Give him a year and a half and it will be a different story.

At the end of the month was Tualatin Riverkeeper's Discovery Day. The Tualatin is the a nearby river that is famous for being quite polluted, unfortunately. The Riverkeepers work to clean it up and raise awareness, and to that end, they hosted a 5.5 mile paddle down the river. I rented a canoe for Willow and I , left the boys at home and off we went. It was very well organized (and REI was there with free snacks and stuff, can you tell I am a fan yet?) It is kinda funny to just be turned loose with a great big canoe, a six year old and no idea what you are doing. My most recent memory of being in a canoe was some sort of test for girl scouts and it probably took a mile to re-learn how to steer. Willow was gung-ho about paddling at first, but since I didn't know what I was doing, I had a hard time explaining to her what I needed her to be doing up in the bow and it quickly lost its charm. It was really hot and she was totally worn out by the end, but I had a really good time. She waffles about going paddling with me again (I think she wants her own boat) Oh well, I guess I don't have to save for a tandem! Oh, and btw, everyone loved her hat!

I'll call that good for tonight, and catch-up July's events tomorrow. Love to you all!

Zane's 1st birthday

So our darling Zane is now officially one! His birthday was really hectic and we didn't even have a party. We went to the children's museam with the preschool I work with, so no am nap, then cake baking and karate, so no pm nap either. He was exausted and cranky but perked right up when we presented him with his angel food cake, strawberries and whipped cream. The cake went flying off the tray almost immediatly, but he did really dig the strawberries and whipped cream, as you can see. Then he got to open his presents. He thought it was a blast, especially the box of Kleenex. Sadly, the bike helmet is too big for his teeny tiny noggin. It makes him look like Rick Moranis in Spaceballs. I have to brag on my best friend Jenn, who made him a really beautiful quilt which he now snuggles happily every night. I'll post a pix when I can pry it out of his little hands.

Life Cycle of a Butterfly

As part of her kindergarten expedition, the kids in Willow's class put on a little interpretation of the life cycle of a butterfly. You got to see a couple pictures a little while ago, but for those who are interested, here is most of the production. It was taken with a digital camera, so forgive the shakiness.

you're driving me inzane!

Zane will officially be one next Friday. As a second child he has suffered the curse of fewer pictures, and the grandparents have suffered too, I suppose. Really, he looks just like Willow, who looks just like Joe. We can recycle photos! You'll notice he is a dirty, dirty boy. By the end of the day with him, I feel like I need a shower. That is pinecone around his mouth in the first pic.

Willow is Six

Our dear Willow just turned six and this is a big deal for her. She is constantly announcing it to store clerks, passers-by, door to door salespeople... the pictures of her with the flowers were from her birthday invitations, the others are from her recent school play about butterflies. Sadly, we don't have any from her party because I was so busy herding kids at the park the camera never came out of the case. Major thanks to "ellen" who filled many a squirt gun that day!

why "in cursive"?

Joe, Willow and I were trying to come up with a blog name and having a tough time of it. My cousins all have cool, clever names for their blogs. Thanks for the pressure ladies! We thought about using just Peterson Family blog, but it seemed too boring. Willow suggested we do it in cursive, because I suppose when you are six, being in cursive makes everything better and more interesting!

In any case, here we are....pictures and such to follow.