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!