2/19-2/26

Tuesday afternoon, I came home to this...

Jacob and his friend Mohonri (also known as Kichan) had gone somewhere in the Mohonri's car and the car key was inadvertently locked inside.  It was his only key.  There was a broken chain link fence near by so the boys wiggled a piece of wire free and made a hook on the end.  They spent two hours in the pouring rain trying to jimmy the lock.  They couldn't get it to work so they decided to try to snag the keys off the steering wheel where they had been left hanging.  That didn't work, they knocked the key to the ground.

They then decided to cut their losses and break one of the smallest windows, but still couldn't reach the lock (pulling the handle didn't unlock the door, meaning the two hours spent trying to jimmy the lock were spent in vain).  The secretary of the building they were locked out in front of tried to help; supplying the boys with a variety of things while they were there: an umbrella, a door stop, a baseball cap and a hammer.  The door stop was used to try and widen the space between the door to jimmy the lock, the umbrella and baseball cap were given to them after the first hour in the rain.  After two hours in the rain, they used the hammer to break out another window.  I say "they" but it was actually a cute girl who walked by.  They asked her if she'd like to break the window out and once she realized they were serious, she said, "Sure!"  In the process of breaking the window, she cut her hand and started bleeding everywhere.  I'm sure she won't soon forget the boys she met that day but I don't know that they left a very good impression on her!

Once they got it unlocked, the boys came over to our house to clean up all the glass and fashion two new windows out of cardboard and black plastic.  When I mentioned that a locksmith might have been a good idea, I was told that they didn't have any money on them and besides, the plastic/cardboard window works just fine.

Mountain Biking
Saturday Dode took Isaac and his friends Douglas and Nathan Colburn mountain biking.  They'd planned to hit the Pilchuck Tree Farm, just a 10 minute drive from our house, but the high winds made riding in the tree farm too dangerous.  They went down to Seattle to a mountain bike terrain park called Colonnade.  Since it's in downtown Seattle and located under the freeway, it's a "mixed use" area.  There was a homeless guy sleeping right in the middle of the bike park the entire time they were there!

link to the map for an close up viewing

It is built under the elevated freeway where they were safe from wind and the sleet/snow/rain that came down all morning.  The map above doesn't show where the freeway overshadows everything.

Dode was in scouting for ten years.  In that time with all his outings he never once had rain nor did anyone ever need to use a bandage.  That blessing is long gone.  He managed to send Nathan home with a banged up knee.  He missed the wooden 180 degree banked turn after the "viaduct" on the map.  Instead of making the turn, he sailed up and over it.  After getting up from the crash, he remarked that he was thankful to have a helmet on.  The ironic thing was that he would't have gotten hurt if they had left the park on time.  Sometimes Dode isn't very good at keeping track of details with last minute changes.  Since going to Seattle was an 11th hour change, he mixed up the return to Arlington time.  I'd told him I wanted him home by noon and so had the Colburn boys' mom.  Somehow in Dode's head, they were supposed to be home at 12:30.  Nathan got hurt in those last 30 minutes.

"merely a flesh wound!"

Douglas didn't let his broken chain slow him down.  He kept riding his bike as a coaster bike.    He was especially good at the pump track,  a bunch of bumps about one foot high set in a row where you can pump your handles and bike up and down over and over to get speed.  Douglas was a master at it.

  Once they got home, the boys' mom posted on facebook, "Trailing mud and blood into the house... my boys are home."  Sometimes that happens when you're having fun with the Dicksons!

Isaac worked to master his bunny hop over and over again

little van + four bikes = our hillbilly look

Injuries and broken equipment aside,  the important thing is that they had a great time!

School changes for Elizabeth
Thursday Elizabeth started taking a class at the same middle school Anastaya attends.  She is there for 1.5 hours taking a reading/writing class.  She was equal parts excited and nervous about going.  One thing that made things easier for her is that the teacher has a therapy dog in the classroom.  Elizabeth loves animals and was quite excited to meet the dog.  I drove her in on her first day.  As we walked up to the school, I reached down to hold her hand and she batted me away for the 1st time ever.  I think she was feeling pretty grown up and didn't want to be seen walking in to the school holding her mom's hand.  It didn't hurt my feelings; later that day we were walking somewhere else and she grabbed my hand.

Friday she rode the bus in with Anastaya.  She's been jealous for a long time that she's never been on a school bus.  It only took one ride for her to realize that bus riding isn't the paradise she thought it would be!

Another one bites the dust!
Dode is a really handy guy when it comes to fixing things around the house.  But, when it comes to work vehicles, he seems to be bad luck.  Once he borrowed a Tulalip van only to return it needing the transmission replaced.  He brought that van back and exchanged it for another.  It ended up with a flat tire.  His survey rig has had the heater core replaced three times.  He tried to avoid the curse of a broken vehicle when he went to the Tri Cities for a conference last summer by taking our van, only to have it die on the way home. 

On Thursday he borrowed a 15 passenger van to drive with his department down to Lacey (a 2 hour drive).  When they got in the van to drive home, he noticed a bit of trouble with the starter not wanting to disengage.  He had to drive it home that night because they were getting home after the motor pool had locked his truck in their lot.  In the morning when he started it, the van started but the starter wouldn't stop grinding.  He tried different fixes but in the end, he had to disconnect the battery and leave it here, taking another car back to work.  A few hours later, a tow truck showed up to tow the Tulalip van in.  When he told the motor pool employees (all two of them!) that another of their vehicles was coming in broken, they asked, "Can't you just drive your survey rig when you need a Tulalip vehicle?"  He asked Dode to write up his experiences in hopes that it could convince the tribes that they need new cars in their motor pool.

It was funny when they came to get the van.  First the tow truck arrived, then Dode in our 12 passenger van, then his co-worker Steve (pictured above) driving Dode's pick up.  Elizabeth came to me very worried, having only noticed the pick up to say, "Dad's truck just pulled in but he wasn't the one driving it!" 

Kent Prairie Open House

On Thursday night, the elementary kids had an open house at school.  Miriam's class had a musical performance.  The music teacher sang about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while the kids shook maracas and pounded on rhythm sticks.  The song went on and on and on.  It reminded me of the "99 bottles of beer on the wall" song.

waiting for her turn to perform

up front with her maraca

The things kids say
We were treated to a late winter snow dusting on Saturday night.  Sunday morning when Miriam saw what was outside, she had one question, "Will church be cancelled today?"  When I told her that it was still happening she asked hopefully, "Will it be only one hour?"  Sorry honey, church was on its regular schedule!

Sunday at church I was teaching a lesson to seven year olds.  The topic was "Jesus once was a little child like me."  We were having a discussion about things that are different from when Jesus was a child and things that are the same.  The kids weren't even a little intrigued when I told them that back then, everyone wore dresses.  The thing that really got them thinking was the lack of indoor plumbing.  Then, when we talked about the kinds of toys Jesus would have played with, they couldn't come up with any.  I tried prompting them, "Well, think of the kinds of toys you have that don't take batteries or aren't made out of plastic..... Can you think of anything that Jesus might have played with?  What types of toys might he have had?"  After much contemplation, a little girl in the class said, "Old toys?  Dusty toys?"  They are such concrete thinkers that they can't imagine what else the toys from so long ago could be.  I mentioned that there were balls, dolls, stick games back then.  Ohhh!

Back from the veternarian
Last month, Miriam and Isaac were wrestling in the living room.  Isaac went flying across the room and banged into Miriam's wooden rocking horse.  In the collision, the horse got the worst of it.  One of the rockers split in half.  Miriam was so worried and immediately called Greg to tell him what happened.  When my mom and Greg came up for dinner, he took the horse back to his veternary office/workshop for repairs.  It was a time consuming repair because he had to take the entire rocker off and replace it with a new piece of wood.  A few weeks later, (with Miriam asking me every few days if I thought it was ready yet) he returned it to our happy little horse lover, good as new.

Our much loved (spoiled?)  little girl!

She's wearing a jumper my mom sewed for her that is covered with Disney princesses.

Her American Girl amoire is in the background on the right.

Limping for a new reason

The foot is getting better all the time.  My friend who is learning to be a massage therapist had finals this week.  She needed a "body" for her test.  I got a 15 minute leg/foot massage and then spent another 15 minutes being her anatomy visual aid.  Her instructor would ask her to identify different muscles, then say where they attach, what muscles work in opposition to them, what kinds of massage strokes to use on specific muscles, etc.  It wasn't a very long massage, but I got to have my foot rubbed some more by an expert.  It works so much better for her to rub it that for me to try to contort myself around to get to it. I still have days where is swells up and hurts (especially if I wear shoes with a thin sole) but for the most part, I'm doing ok. 

does anyone else put photos of their feet on their blog?  (not to mention bloody knees!)

90% of the bruising is gone, my scar is thin and pink

There is numbness between my 3rd and 4th toes and soreness on the botton ball of my foot but I'm still glad I had it done.

that's better!  freshly painted toes

such a daring color choice!

I am walking a bit stiff and slow though.  Anastaya and I got trained on the weight lifting machines at the YMCA on Friday.  Part of our training was a strength test to determine what weights we should start with.   On Saturday morning, I spent an hour using them.  By Saturday afternoon, I could tell I was in trouble.  My legs were so sore!  By Sunday morning, ouch!  Dode is such an expert in "Stephanie" that he can tell when I'm limping because I'm wearing dress shoes to church and my foot isn't happy and when I'm limping because my legs are so sore that I can hardly walk. 

2.6 inches of rain in 24 hours

What will 2.6 inches of rain in 24 hours (3.6 in 48 hours) do to our small stream?

flooded!

this culvert goes under our driveway, usually the water is only about six inches deep, in fact when the salmon swim up in the fall, most of their bodies are out of the water!

other side of the culvert under the driveway, the upstream side

 here is where the stream goes under the road in front of our house, on this day it's going over the road and flowing down another street and into the Haggen parking lot

one day later, the stream is still high but it's within the stream bed

At least once a year, the city comes out and digs out this area, trying to create a deep pool to allow for extra water.  The stream is bringing down so much sand and gravel that it quickly fills back in.  We have a culvert under our driveway but have never had to do anything to keep it clear.  Hooray!

the city built a temporarty earthen dam to try to keep the stream from flowing down a side street to the businesses there.

the dam helped the stream back up towards our driveway!

For part of the morning, while they were working on their dam, we were trapped at home.  Isaac was one the other side of the closure at seminary (early morning religious instruction) expecting me to pick him up.  When I realized that I couldn't get out, I started calling the building where his class was.  My goal was that he'd find someone who could drop him off at Haggen and he could walk home.  I let it ring and ring but no one picked up.  I called his instructor, cell phone was off.  I tried Sharon since she lives just up the hill, phone off.  I tried Grandma Dickson's house, phone off.  I tried one of my friends who sometimes picks up her kids from seminary, not that day.  I was making all these calls at 7:00 am so I had to be careful who I called!  In the end, with repeated attempts to contact the building, I was never able to get notification to Isaac.  Isaac figured I'd forgotten about him and the seminary principal gave him a ride home.  The kids thought it was exciting to get as few hours off of school.  The intrepid UPS man walked a package in to us.  How's that for service?!

3rd week of February

Monday fun and dinner
One of Dode's co-workers is big into RC airplanes.  He told Dode that a church in Smokey Point opens up their gym one Monday a month for people to come in and fly their electric airplanes around.  Since Elizabeth really loves her little RC helicopter she got for Christmas, Dode thought she'd love a chance to get together with other people and fly.  He put the date on the calendar but kept what they were doing a secret.  She loved/hated the anticipation.  They started their "date" with a trip to Elizabeth's favorite fast food restaurant, Taco Bell.  She always gets the same thing, a soft taco, cheesy nachos and a fruitista freeze.  After Taco Bell, they headed to the church.  Elizabeth was quite excited to get inside and see all the people with their airplanes.

After a while, she quietly said to her dad, "I'm the only girl here!".  In fact see was the only female and one of the only ones younger than 65.  After watching her skill with her helicopter (she can land it precisely on a small spot), one of the men offered to let her fly his airplane.  She now knows what she wants for her birthday!  Elizabeth says, "fun, fun, fun!"

One of these please mom and dad!

While Dode and Elizabeth were out playing, my mom and Greg came up for dinner with my nephew Gabriel and their dog Ramirez so she could see the kids and to pick up her produce.  I'd bought Ramirez a dog toy I'd seen on sale.  (My mom gets things for the kids all the time, it was time for me to get something for her "baby".)  It took him about 10 minutes to pull it apart.  He impatiently waited for my mom to stitch it up so he could have another go at it!  Ramirez loves coming over.  He's got the kids to play with him, a never ending supply of stuffed animals to seek out and destroy (not welcomed by the children!), and lots of veggies.  He gets so excited for green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots!

she's still trying to sew it while he grabs it away!

Foot doctor says, "Good to go!"
My Valentine's gift this year was a visit to the podiatrist who told me I was cleared to do whatever I want with my foot.  He told me that part of the healing process was for me to increase activity, have my foot swell up and hurt and the next day I'd be able to do that amount activity without pain.  He told me that if I try to avoid pain and swelling, I will just prolong the healing process.  I was really glad he gave me the "all clear" because on Wednesday Anastaya and I started a three month exercise program at the YMCA.

taken 2/20/21, 5 weeks post surgery

Still a lot of bruising and a weird peeling thing going on

ACT program
The YMCA in conjunction with Children's Hospital of Seattle have a program called "Actively Changing Together (ACT)" for teens with high BMI's and their parents.  There is a weekly exercise and nutrition session for the teen and parent to participate in together.  The program also comes with a three month family membership that the participants are encouraged to use as much as possible.

Wednesday was our first session where we met everyone, filled out paperwork and got to play some movement games.  Friday I picked up Anastaya from school and we went down and exercised together again, 40 minutes of cardio followed by 30 minutes of strength training.  We still had some sore muscles on the following Monday!

Our weekend
On Saturday, I was stuck in a meeting all day (7:30 am-5:00 pm) to learn how to be a more effective teacher.  I had to take the training in order to teach at National Camp School for day camp this year.  I wasn't very excited to be going and Dode picked up on it.  He asked me the night before what was wrong.  It was held at Fire Mountain scout camp.  I've been up there before in the off season and know that the buildings are not built for people to sit around in this time of year.  I was dreading spending a cold day in a cold room.  I got to Fire Mountain and a parking attendant asked me to park as close as possible so that they could accommodate the 300-400 people they were expecting that day.  I asked, for the training?  No, for an orienteering meet.

Great!  I was going to be stuck in a boring training while outside people would get to participate in one of my favorite leisure time activities.  When I got to the building the training would be held in, I saw that I would be facing the large windows, giving me a perfect view of the staging area for the orienteering meet and the finish line.  I'd get to simmer with envy all day!  It ended up that I was happy to be inside.  The wind and rain came hard all day and I could see people who looked miserable outside.  We were uncomfortable inside the building but at least we were dry.  The participants were sitting around with coats, gloves, and hats on, curled up as small as possible.  After freezing for a while, I remembered that I keep a sleeping bag in the car with my emergency kit and after retrieving it from the car I was a lot more comfortable, but not warm by any stretch of the imagination.

Was the training worth it?  Let's just say that I left with very high blood pressure and stewed all the way home.  This was training to teach people how to teach effectively.  You'd think they'd use their best trainers for the event.  They were teaching us how to teach, while not modeling any of it.  Speak loudly enough to be heard, they'd murmur.  Modulate your voice to maintain interest they'd tell us in a monotone.  Keep your power point slides simple and uncluttered they'd read off a power point with hundreds of words on it.  I could deal with all that.  I know that for some people, teaching is not their best talent.  They knew in their heads what they were teaching but it just couldn't make it to their heart.

The thing that sent my blood boiling was the presentation at the end of the day.  One of the things we were taught was that lecture was one of the least effective ways of teaching (delivered to us in the lecture format!).  When it came time for our group presentation, we were assigned a topic and given 15 minutes to prepare a 10 minute lesson.  We wanted to show that we'd learned a lot so we included as much of the things covered during the day as we could.  We started with a hook to get their interest, did the "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them" method, used power point slides of photos that related to our topic, asked for audience participation, and decided to use a skit format to get the topic taught in a interesting way.

Things did not begin well.  When the group in front of us finished up their evaluation, the instructor said, "Your clock starts now".  We were still in our seats and weren't sure what he meant.  "Now, your 10 minutes starts now!"  Ok, time to get going quickly!  When we finished, the instructor in charge angrily challenged us, "Did you even understand the assignment?"  "Yes, to give a presentation"  "What I just saw was not a presentation and did not meet the requirements."  I countered that we were taught many different types of presentations and skits were one of the ones mentioned.  What he wanted was a lecture format (he hadn't specified that in the assignment) so that the four of us could show the group how we taught.  He was literally red in the face angry with us.  His idea was that after each presentation,  every person in the group would stand alone in front of the group and be evaluated by him and the fellow students.    He didn't believe in "leading with strengths".  Nope, he'd just start right in with criticism.  He also commented that we began a bit frantically and that was off putting to him.  We were frantic because we hadn't been informed that we'd have zero time to even get to the front of the room.  I was livid at this attempt to publicly rate people in a totally unreal setting.  I would never teach a subject I knew nothing about with 15 minutes of preparation.  How can you expect to evaluate me on my teaching skills with that?  And, to tear a person down in front of other people?  No thank you!  That kind of thing needs to be handled privately.  It would have been much kinder to let everyone write their comments, with a format that encouraged starting with strengths, then suggestions for improvement and let the person read them later.

That was the final activity.  Once the last person received their so helpful feedback, they said, "Here's your training card, time to clean up".  There was not any, "thank you for taking time today to attend this training, think of how many people your training will affect".  No offer of continued support in our efforts to improve teaching (another thing they taught us to offer participants but didn't model!).

We use a similar final presentation at National Camp School but it is implemented so differently.  What we're looking for is that the participants understand the things taught.  There is no attempt to grade individuals and provide negative individual feedback right there.  During the evaluation at the end, we praise strengths and mention ways they have shown an understanding of the material.  I have to believe that BSA did not intend for the evaluation to be handled the way it was in my training on Saturday and that it was a misunderstanding of the person leading the activity.  Can you tell I'm still a bit mad?

Presidents Day
Monday was our play day.  We went to Everett and did a "divide and conquer".  Dode dropped the four youngest and myself off at the Children's Museum while he took the Isaacs to Vertical World, an indoor rock climbing gym.

We were not the only ones with the idea to go to the museum.  The place was packed and the noise level was crazy.  I was a bit envious of a mom who had come prepared with the kind of ear protection you usually find at a heavy construction site!  After enduring a lot of noise, we went to the roof top playground until we were popsicles and had to venture back inside.  We ate a brown bag lunch in the lunch area and spent the rest of our time in the basement, first at the carpet sliding room (think roller skating rink with carpet sliders) and then in the construction room where the kids had a great time building and knocking down towers.  It was much quieter in the basement than in the rest of the museum and I was so glad they wanted to stay there.

making music on the roof

doesn't she look warm?!

She's trying to finish the Hunger Games series.  She's just started the last book.

digging for dinos

how's that for a tower?

a comfy chair!

a bed built for two

 Dode was a belay slave for the boys (someone who holds the rope but never gets to climb).  They lasted about two hours until they called it quits.

They came back to pick us up and we took advantage of our family membership to go swimming at the YMCA.  Miriam has gotten so brave about putting her face in the water.  It used to be if she got a little splash in the face, she was done.  Now she's putting her face in on her own.  Hooray!

we took up 1/2 the free play area of the pool!

Once I took this photo, the lifeguard came up and told me no photography was allowed.  I'm always such a rule breaker!

2nd week of February

Co-op
Well, it's three weeks post surgery and the co-op went more smoothly than two weeks ago but still had more hiccups than normal.  I was so worried I'd sleep through the phone call from the truck again that I hardly slept all night.  I didn't know there was a different driver so when I checked my alarm for the umpteenth time and saw that it was 5:15 am (1/2 hour later than normal), I got so worried I checked to make sure there was a dial tone on the phone.  There was!  The driver showed up at 5:30 and Isaac and Dode transferred the produce to the trailer.

We had plenty of volunteers that I supervised from a chair with my foot up on a stool.  One of the volunteers brought a bin with a lid and stop sign on it for small bulk items to go in and we didn't loose any this time.  It was only as checkout was winding down that I realized there were a few problems.  I have to create an order for myself manually each time.  The other orders go through google checkout and are downloaded into my database as a CSV.  When I printed out the checkout sheets Wednesday morning, my order wasn't on it.  I thought that was weird because I remembered entering my order but when I checked there was no record of it.  So, I created an order and all was well.  When I went to see who I'd need to call to come get their produce, I noticed that there were two orders for the same person, another Stephanie.  Dode built my database to sort by first name and when I'd created my order, I'd accidentally assigned it to her.  It worked out for the best though because one person had ordered that didn't show up on the checkout sheet and I still had a basket for her.  The problem was that I'd ordered two conventional, one organic and one Asian pack.  I didn't need double of everything and suddenly was faced with $60 of produce that no one had paid for.  I was able to advertise their availability on my Facebook page and within 5 minutes, they were all spoken for.  Relief!

this should eliminate the honest mistakes

The 2nd problem that I realized too late to fix was that the volunteers weren't very careful when they distributed produce.  When we're distributing big things like lettuce, pineapples, bags of carrots, it's easy to know if someone got missed by how many are left over.  Small things like apples, oranges, avocados, and cucumbers come in boxes that are sold by weight not item count.  When I hear how many are left over, it's not obvious if someone has been missed.  Several people commented on missed items this week.  I'm going to have to try to think of a way to prevent this.  Maybe as we finish up the baskets I can hand out a list of what they are supposed to have and ask different volunteers to each take a row and check that everything is there.   We're always done long before people start picking up so it shouldn't be a problem.

One thing I struggle with is how to motivate people to help out.  The same people generally help week after week while others pick up week after week and never help.  In fact, I have a stellar volunteer who showed up today to help even though she had missed the order deadline and wasn't picking up any produce!  In my reminder emails about ordering produce and pick up produce I always include the following information...

"As a participant in the co-op, please remember that this is not a business, it is a volunteer effort. I am facilitating this co-op as a volunteer.  If you choose to participate in the co-op, please plan to help in some way at least once for every four times you receive produce.  There is a list of volunteer jobs on the web site under “Sign up to Volunteer”.

I know that there is no way that everyone will help, it's just not human nature, but we definitely need a few more to commit each week!  I wish there was a way I could get people to feel that they are a part of a co-op, not that they're just taking advantage of a cheap way to buy produce.

Saturday work day
Some Saturdays are for fun, some are for laziness, and some are for projects around the house.  Today was a project day.  Dode and Anastaya worked together (well Dode worked and Anastaya kept him company) to build her some hurdles.  She is planning on being on the track team again this year and she really wants to be one of the students selected to run the hurdles.  She thinks that by practicing at home, she's got a chance.  Dode bought some conduit at the hardware store, bent it, welded it, and created two competition sized hurdles.

I'd decided that it was time to freshen up the front door.  Our house will never have much curb appeal, but I do my best to make it a welcoming and fun place.  (We're doing pretty well on the fun aspect!).  Thinking about it, we actually do great on welcoming too.  The UPS man, the mail lady, friends coming over, small children have no problem opening up the front door and coming right in.  I think it's because it has a clear window you can see through.  I want every house I ever live in to have a door like that (the old farm house did and the apartment we lived in before that too) so that people will feel like we're an informal kind of house where all are welcome.

Getting back to the front door, it was painted barn red when we first moved in.  Nice and safe.  I decided to be bold this time.  I choose a robin's egg blue.  While I love our welcoming front door, I hated all those windows that I had to tape off.  I started on them and then headed off to the hardware to buy the paint.  When I got back, Anastaya had completed the job for me.  What a kind service!  Once I painted the front of the door, I realized that the back of it was looking pretty worn so I taped off all the windows on the inside and painted it and the trim around it too. I used the same paint I used in the girls room on their doors.  When Miriam saw it she said, "Chocolate!"  My thoughts exactly!

before, with the windows taped

love the leaning tree!

Dode bought me the wall plaque on the left of the door on the due date for our 1st pregnancy, which ended in a miscarriage at 17 weeks.  The plaque has hung next to the door of three homes now.  Even though we're blessed with six children now, my heart still remembers the pain of that loss.

during

(You can peek into the packed useless room (our pantry) through the open doors behind me.  Doesn't everyone need a wall of food?)

finished

Isaac says it makes him happy to see the color of the door.

Jacob loves the color so much, he wants to paint one of the walls in his room the color.

I was also working on fixing the door to the useless room.  It's right next to the front door so everyone sees it when they come inside.  It's a cheap hollow core door that had a hole knocked in it from before we moved in.  I'd looked on craigslist to see if I could buy a new door but it's a non standard size and I couldn't find anything.  So, I bought myself a mesh drywall patch and some wall compound and fixed up the door.  My fix isn't perfect but I think that now people won't notice the door instead of seeing that ugly hole.  I painted that door chocolate brown too.  Then I realized that it was a project that just kept going and going.  All the doors and door trim are pretty beat up after living here for seven years with six kids.  Less than a foot from the useless room door is a closet, a few yards down the hall is a bathroom door.  Every door needs paint.  My foot wouldn't cooperate today but it's on the "do someday" list!

Once Dode and Anastaya finished up the hurdles, he got to work assembling a tumbling compost bin I bought at Costco.    I figured Dode and Isaac could use the time spent assembling it for Isaac's "handyman" class.  It took them 3 1/2 hours!  Dode gives it a big thumbs down for ease of assembly.  It required specialized tools that your average homeowner wouldn't own but there was no mention on the box of that requirement.  Now that it's assembled, Dode agrees that it's built very sturdy and should work well.  What it won't work for is food composting.  It's made of thick plastic.  For food composting, which I'd love to do since I create so much veggie waste, I'm going to have Isaac build me a plywood worm bin.  That way, the squirrels and other rodents won't have such an easy time gnawing their way through.

Speaking of rodents
I don't know if any of you remember the fun we had last week with a rat in the house.  I was never able to trap him and assumed that he'd left the way he came.  Friday night we were sitting in the living room when William wandered over by the piano.  He hurried up to me and whispered, "The mouse is over by the kapano (piano)."  We weren't convinced but when Isaac looked, sure enough, there it was.  It wasn't moving, it had died right there.  When Miriam saw it she said, "I guess he wanted to sleep next to the piano."  Dode got the fun job of disposing of it.  No more rodents (that we know of anyway!) is a good thing.

1,500 water meters down!

Dode has been working on a big project at work for months.  He's been finding and mapping the water meters on the Tulalip Reservation.  The water meters were put in years ago, but the tribes have been billing a flat rate for water so the tribes hasn't visited the meters in years.  They now want to be able to charge people by the gallon for the water they use but first they had to find them all again.  Dode has used this opportunity to add the exact locations of all those water meters to his water system database.  Dode used survey equipment to measure the location of each meter to an accuracy of about 1 inch.  Some days, Dode would be in an area with dense housing and clear skies (no trees) and would locate 40-50 meters.  Those days he could just grab the GPS and jump from meter to meter measuring the location of each one without any resistance.  The survey grade GPS has to have a clear view of most of the sky to get the survey grade accuracy.  Some days, Dode would be in areas of dispersed housing with dense trees and would be lucky to get 5.  Once he physically visited each meter, he had to go back to the office and import them into his master map.  Once he was completely finished, he had to go back out and visit a few again because they'd been assigned the same number.

carrying his survey equipment

getting ready at a water meter

Cracking open the meter to get its number (every meter has a unique number).

Isaac saw all the little white things and asked, "Is it filled with drugs?!"  They're Styrofoam packing peanuts to help prevent the water meter from freezing.

Some of you might have heard a rumor that Dode is a bit of a tightwad.  The picture above is a perfect example of his thrifty ways.  He's holding a spring puller from our $50 craigslist trampoline.  He used it to open 1,497 water meter lids to get the information inside.  Three water meters from the finish and it broke into two pieces.  They had a much more difficult time getting those last three meters open than the 1,497 that came before.

Another exciting thing happened at work this week.  He got to use his GPR (ground penetrating radar) for the 1st time.  The utilities people were digging and came upon a water line that wasn't on any records.  Dode brought out his equipment to show they were the line went.  It is the location where the federal government had an Indian boarding school and hospital over 100 years ago.

Tulalip Indian School, 1912

"The Tulalip Indian School began under the supervision of Charles Milton Buchanan, a physician who also served as Indian Agent for the reservation. The first year it had only one dormitory, but by 1907 both girls' and boys' buildings were completed and the school had a capacity enrollment of 200 students. The children ranged in age from 6 to 18 years and came from many different reservations as well as some off reservation communities. It was not uncommon for teachers at day schools to recommend certain students for the boarding school. Because Tulalip offered a maximum of eighth grade education, some students transferred to Chemawa for more advanced training."

The Indian boarding school movement was extremely unpopular to the tribes.  They had no choice if their children went, some people tried to hide their children from the government in order to keep them with them.  The structures have all been wiped out and there is no sign of what was once there. While locating the water line, he found the oldest manhole cover he's ever seen. It's now a foot underground!

oops!

Oldest manhole Dode has ever seen

Using the GPR to find the water line

He should have taken a photo of the screen he's looking at.  It just looks like a bunch of lines.  Somehow, he's able to see the water line in all the noise.

1st week of February

Enrichment Activities
At the end of every school quarter, the school the homeschoolers attend part time (an Alternative Learning Environment in official speak), has something called Enrichment Week.  It's a time for fun one day classes, field trips, and guest speakers.  This enrichment week we took part in activities on two of the days.

Wednesday was a presentation for parents.  Bruce Campbell, a classroom teacher with 38 years experience, came to teach us about the latest understanding of how the brain works and how we can enhance learning.  He travels the world doing workshops for teachers and we are lucky enough to have him living in the area.  Back when I was going to college at Western, there was a program where they brought an outstanding educator in for a year and had them teach skills to prospective teachers.  I was lucky enough to attend his class one quarter.  When I saw that he was coming to our school, there was no way I was going to miss out. 

His two hour presentation was very informative.  He taught us about dendrites (part of our brain cells) and how we can continue to grow more through learning.  He shared research that shows that in order to learn and grow, our brains need continual challenge.  He also said that previous thinking about fixed intelligence (the idea that once you have an IQ score, that's what you'll always be like) has been changed to reflect current ideas that we can continue to improve throughout our lives.  I have several kids who seem to be developing on a different timeline than the "norm" so that gives me a lot of encouragement.

Thursday was a fun day for students.  We started with a presentation by the Reptile Man.   He brought about 10 reptiles which he showed the children and taught them about.  Elizabeth loved seeing the big turtles and having a chance to help hold a 12 foot long snake. 

Elizabeth is holding a rubber boa, one of two kinds of snakes native to Western Washington.  The other is the garter snake.

After the reptile man was done, the cooking class at the school had arranged for a Luau.  Before the feasting, they had games set up in different classrooms.  It was a student led activity where the kids in charge of the games were the only ones supervising what was happening.  One of the games they offered was "deep sea fishing".  Once we waited in line, I saw a small sign that said, "$0.25 a fish".  I wasn't excited to have to pay but it was a quarter so I gave Elizabeth the money.  She threw her line in and ended up with a tiny cheap notepad, not even worth a nickel!  The mom behind us also was a bit hesitant to hand over her money.  She only had a dollar bill and the boys said, "Sorry, we don't make change."  Not wanting to disappoint her child, she paid her $1 and let her child fish four times. 

Once the games were finished, it was time for the luau.  The students had made pulled pork, rice, coconut cream pie and punch.  They also had fruit and veggie trays.  I'd paid in advance not knowing if I'd find anything to eat.  I filled my plate with fruit and an orange and decided my real lunch would have to come later.  I noticed a mom sitting down in front of me with a similar plate and asked her if she was a vegan.  She was and said she'd noticed me drinking my green smoothie and wondered if I was a vegan too.  We had a fun conversation about our eating choices.  Elizabeth came up and sat down beside me, totally disgusted.  She'd found out that the boys in the fishing room were "free agents", they hadn't been told to collect money, they hadn't been authorized to collect money, they'd just found a way to collect money!  She felt like we'd been totally robbed, of our quarter!  I had to smile at the audacity of those boys.  Future entrepreneurs apparently!

After eating, we got to watch a professional hula dancer perform a few dances before teaching those interested in learning a hula dance.  I used my bum foot as an excuse for not getting in there and joining Elizabeth in the fun!  Elizabeth and I went home and Isaac stayed behind where his robotics class demonstrated the robot they've built to anyone interested in seeing it.


A quick trip to Portland
I was asked to teach at National Camp School for BSA again this year.  Although it's called National Camp School (NCS), it's held in Olympia at a scout camp.  The name reflects the fact that we are teaching a nationally approved curriculum.  All day camp directors and program directors (volunteers) are required to attend the three day training in order to run a camp.  It will be my third time teaching at NCS.  I love day camp and think it's one of the highlights of summer.  I love having the opportunity to share my enthusiasm with new volunteers.  I've also learned quite a bit over 10 years of running day camps, little things that help a lot, that aren't part of the syllabus.  It's nice to pass on my knowledge to help other camps.

All this introduction to explain why on Saturday I went down to Portland and came back the same day, eight hours of driving for a 5 hour meeting!  The NCS volunteer staff come from BSA councils (geographic regions) in Washington and Oregon.  There are 10 people on staff from 5 different councils.  Each camp school has a volunteer director who works with a professional advisor (a paid BSA employee) to run the camp.  This year the advisor is based in Portland.  The volunteer director lives near Renton, about an hour from me.  I drove down to Seattle and hopped in with her to carpool to Portland.  On Saturday, we all got together to meet each other, decide who's teaching which classes, and try to create a shared vision for camp school.

I was a bit nervous going down.  I knew I'd be in a car with a person I'd never met before for six hours.  I worried my foot would hurt.  I worried I'd be the youngest person in the group.  How did it turn out?  I'm really good at making small talk.  I've been told I have the gift of listening.  It's not really the gift of listening, although that's a part I guess.  It's the ability to ask questions that get people talking.  I kept the driver talking for 75% of the time.  Success!  My foot treated me pretty well.  Driving my van is really tough and by the time I'd gone 30 minutes, I was trying to find a comfortable place to rest it.  The thought of all the miles ahead of me was quite worrying.  Once I climbed into the other car, I was able to stretch out my leg and my foot felt much better.  Was I the youngest person in the room?  Almost!  The professional advisor looked like  he was probably in his young 30's.  There was one other staff member who looked to be close to my age.  Everyone else has many many years more experience in life and BSA.  I'm looking forward to the time in my life when I don't feel like the most inexperienced person in the room.

Back in Arlington, Dode was left with a pretty empty house for the day.  The three girls had gone to stay with my dad for a few days.  Isaac had a school activity in Bellingham.  Jacob was doing his  own thing.  That left Dode and William with a free day.  It was a beautiful sunny day so they went to explore.  They went to a park, checked out an old campground and after much begging from William, they went on a bike ride.  Willian got about 100 feet and decided that he didn't want to be bike riding any more.  In fact, he was convinced that he'd never wanted to go bike riding in the first place.  When Dode reminded him that he'd been asking all morning to go, he countered with, "No I didn't."  After a while he admitted that it had been his idea but said, "Well, I don't want to go bike riding any more!"  So, they came home.  They also did the fun boy activities of going to McDonald's, the hardware store, and two auto parts stores.

Getting Pampered
I have a friend who is learning to be a massage therapist.  Last week was the end of the quarter so they have clinical experiences where people come in and they practice on them.  They were finishing off their "Spa" quarter so you could choose from lots of fun treatments: hot rock massage, aromatherapy, body wraps, deep tissue massage, and Indian head massage.  I looked up Indian head massage and decided it sounded very relaxing.  You get a scalp massage and they focus a lot on the neck and shoulders, the areas where I store all my tension.  I didn't know that part of what Paula needed to practice with the Indian head massage was also a foot soak with foot and leg massage.  I can't soak my foot for another two weeks so she offered a hot rock massage as an alternative.  It was very relaxing.  The hour went by much too quickly!  The podiatrist told me that massage is the best thing I can do for my foot and she wasn't afraid to dig in and really work around my scar and bruised toes.  It felt painful/great and I noticed a greater range of motion in my toes when she was done.  Does that mean I can justify the $30 I spent on the massage as have being done for purely medicinal purposes?!

The fun of heating with wood

One of the fun things of heating with wood is cold mornings.  Here is Anastaya dressed up for church, hiding under three blankets to stay warm!

Big improvement in my foot

Tuesday, two weeks post-op, I got the stitches out.  The process went pretty painlessly until the last stitch came out.  It ran the length of the incision under the skin with one knot part way up my toe.  The nurse had to slide it out from under my skin, not the most pleasant activity!  The doctor told me that my foot would be extremely sensitive for a while because of being wrapped up in the bandage for so long.  The best thing I can do to help the recovery along is to massage it.  He said if I baby my foot, I will just prolong the problems so all the way home from the doctor (Sharon was driving!) I kept rubbing and rubbing my toes and foot.  It definitely helped.

You can still see the faint mark where the doctor signed my foot to make sure he got the right (or left!) one.

I still have a lot of bruising and some swelling but now that the stitches are out, my foot feels exponentially better!  I get a weird tingling in my foot and toes but if I rub them, it goes away.  When it starts tingling and I first touch my toe, it tingles and hurts more but as I continue to rub them, the weird feeling goes away and I get some relief.  I think my nerves are trying to figure out who is in charge now that one of them is removed and get a bit over eager to take the job.  By rubbing them, they can calm down and realize what their proper purpose is.  At least, to my non-medical mind, it seems that way!

A mouse, a mouse in the house!


Tuesday morning, Anastaya and I heard a strange gnawing sound in the morning.  I tracked it down to a mouse in the bathroom.  We have a pocket door with a window in it between the bathroom and the laundry room.  The door was partially closed with about 2 inches of window showing.  Somehow, the mouse had gotten up to the ledge on the window and I saw the little head peaking out.  The gnawing we heard was the mouse chewing on the window frame, trying to get out.  I opened the door all the way (pushing it into the wall) and when I pulled it back out, the mouse was gone.

A few hours later I was sitting at the computer and saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  It was the mouse, casually strolling across the floor towards me.  I gave an "Eeke!", stood up and he disappeared.

Wednesday, I was once again sitting at the computer and once again the mouse made an appearance.  I followed him to the living room and Dode and Isaac gave chase.  We thought he'd gone under one couch but when we looked, he wasn't there.  We gave up but I looked under the other couch (a sectional) and saw what looked like a tail.  When I watched the tail disappear, I knew where the mouse was.  They dismantled the couch to tip it up piece by piece.  Dode had a bucket and was hoping to trap the mouse under it.  The girls stood nearby screaming "I'm so scared!".  I thought it was pretty funny because if they were truly that scared, they wouldn't have been crowding around Dode as he tried to find it!  Well, after chasing it around the room a bit, we lost it when it climbed inside a hole under the bathroom cabinet.  A little while later, I heard screams again.  It had ventured into the room where the kids were watching a movie and was hiding out under the couch they were standing on while screaming.     We put out a trap for him but could never catch him.  I think he's more scared of us that we are of him and hopefully he's left to find a more peaceful home.