She Knits Shizknits

Teacher appreciation day

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reading and dreaming

Do you any of you remember the joy of receiving the JCPenny or Sears catalog in the mail?  I seem to remember getting a new Penny's catalog twice a year: once in Spring and again in the Fall, before the Christmas rush. My sister and I would spend hours poring over the toy section of the Penny's catalog.  The pages were dog-eared and the toys we long for were circled in red crayon. 

I was reminded of all that reading and dreaming today when Little Man came in from the mailbox with a new Lego catalog. He immediately sat down to go through the whole thing in detail.

And since he can now read, he eagerly pointed out all the features of the new Indiana Jones sets to me.

He's already making a wishlist of the sets he wants for his upcoming birthday.  I might have to get a new job to pay for all them all!

Monkey Boy's birthday party...

We *finally* had a birthday party for MonkeyBoy last weekend. His real b-day is at the very end of December, just a few days after Christmas, so it's really hard to plan a party for him. No one wants to have a b-day party right after all the Christmas festivities (and I *really* don't want to plan one!). Poor MonkeyBoy has only had one official party in three years. 

So this year I decided that we were going to wait till later to throw him a birthday party and May was perfect- the weather is usually nice and there aren't many big holidays before or after his party day. Little Man's birthday isn't till July so that gives me time to take a breather in between the two.

For MonkeyBoy's party, we got a big jumper and loosely followed a "Star Wars" theme (since MB is completely obsessed with all things Darth Vader). And of course we had to have a pinata....

Luckily it was one of those pull-pinatas- the kids all get in a line

Then they take turns grabbing a string:

It's not quite as much dangerous fun as the "swing the bat wildly and smack everything besides the target" pinata, but the kids still had fun.

The anticipation involved in picking *the* string was quite evident!

It even turned out that MonkeyBoy got the exact string that opened the pinata:

And the usual crazed candy rush occurred:

The cool thing about this particular pinata is that it can be reused as a decoration....or a mask!

We put out a good spread, since the party was at lunch time. The Dearest BBQed some delicious tri-tips, and I made fruit skewers...

Which MonkeyBoy kept calling 'fwuit sabers'.

I also made faux Hostess Cupcakes:

The cupcakes were *so* fun to make! They tasted a lot like the Hostess ones, except better/fresher.  And there was real whipped cream inside with chocolate ganache on top. YUM.  I also made a Gigantor CupCake:

That's all real buttercream icing on top of a chocolate cake filled with real whipped cream.

Seriously.

Good.

Here's the birthday boy standing next to Gigantor CupCake, just for scale...

From the looks of things, everyone had fun!

Now I have a month or so before I have to start planning Little Man's party!

date night

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shawl growth

Remember when I posted about starting the Kimono Shawl from "Folk Shawls"?  I had this much done:

Well for the past few weeks,  I've been working on nothing else but this project- so much progress has been made.  How much progress? Take a look:

My Kimono Shawl is about 40ish inches long in its current unblocked state. I joined the second ball of yarn about four repeats ago, which means the first ball of 640yds produced approximately 36 inches of knitting. The entire shawl is supposed to be 72 inches long so I guess I'm right on track.

I'm loving the color and feel of this yarn. And after fifteen repeats (each repeat = 24 rows), it's becoming almost mindless knitting. 

new smile

Little Man is officially a big kid:

He has been showing us a wiggly bottom tooth for some time, and one day last week he finally lost it!  He was at school when it happened, and they sent him home with the tooth in a little plastic tooth-shaped necklace.  Our neighbor picked him up from school and he was so excited when he saw me- he was clutching that necklace like it was the holy grail. Then he ran straight upstairs and put the tooth under his pillow for the tooth fairy to find.

The one that fell out is the same one that grew in first when he was 3 months old, which I guess is pretty common. He's proudly been showing everyone his new "missing tooth".  The Tooth Fairy brought him a $1 silver certificate (to save) and another dollar (to spend).  He was very happy to find that money under his pillow!

'keep your tongue from evil'

Monkey Boy learned a new song in nursery school:

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing - Photo Books

It's hard to hear, but he's singing "keep your tongue from evil, keep your tongue and lips from speaking lies"! Do I need to mention that his 'nursery school' takes place during my MOPs meetings at the local church?

too much going on

Oh my.  I've been such a bad blogger lately. Usually I find time to post every few days, but so much has been going on in the past few weeks!  I feel like I have so much to post that I don't know where to start...

How about a quick recap of April?

April 1st: Little Man's school had a Jog A Thon to raise money for next year's PTA programs.  First they had the kids warm up...

then all the kids ran around the big field three times. Little Man did pretty good running for the first lap:
but then he said he needed a break and he started walking.
All the kids got popsicles at the end of the jogathon, which seemed to be the highlight of the whole event.

April 6th: The Dearest's ice hockey team played at the Honda Center after the last regular season Ducks game. I posted earlier about the small men being asked to film an intro for the Ducks' web-show, but forgot to put up this photo of the sportcaster encouraging them to say the words.

The Dearest had borrowed a helmet-cam from a friend of his and wore it throughout the game, just to see what he'd get on film.   You can just see the camera on top of his helmet...

He got some good video, but unfortunately everything is ever so slightly crooked.  One of the other guys helped adjust the camera for him while he was in the locker room and bumped it so it wasn't quite level anymore. So everyone on the video looks like they're leaning sideways a bit!

April 7: The small men and I went to the local nursery to pick out this season's tomato plants. We stopped at the pond while we were there and caught these little turtles sunning themselves...

April 8: Disney trip!  We went to California Adventure first, since Monkey Boy really wanted to go on the Zephyr:



This ride is very wind-sensitive so they shut it down whenever the breeze kicks up too much. That means it's often closed when we get to CA, much to Monkey Boy's disappointment. In fact they closed it right after the Dearest and the small ones got off the ride.

We stopped at the Disneyland firestation on our way out of the park, too.

Little man also drew us a picture of our house:



April 9: Our trip to Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary, first of our Spring Break fun days.


April 13: Another Spring Break Fun Day at Legoland. We visited the new "Adventureland" section of the park, where Monkey Boy and I rode on the Indiana Jones ride for the first time. Then MB wanted to try the Beetle Bouncer, which lifts you 20 feet into the air and bounces you a couple of times before dropping you to the ground.



MB was fine till we actually got up into the air, then he grabbed my arm and kept saying "Let me off!"  I think he liked the Knight's Joust a bit more.


And of course we had to ride the Helicopters:
We even visited the new Pirate's Cove water park. They have a HUGE bucket that fills up and dumps all the water out every 3-4 minutes, soaking the entire water park. The water park will be perfect when it gets hotter this summer.

April 20:  We attended a birthday party with a snake theme:

They had a young man who brought all kinds of reptiles and bugs for the kids to hold. First there was the bearded lizard.



There was a lot of "I dare YOU to touch it first!"

then they brought out a ball python and everyone wanted to hold it.

especially Monkey Boy, who has decided that he is getting a snake "when I'm big- when I'm 4!"



Which is fine with me as long as he doesn't ask for one of these:

best viewed LARGE (that's an emperor scorpian BTW....uuck!)
Then there was a king snake (which is the type of snake the Dearest had as a kid).
LM wasn't so keen on handling the snake but was more relaxed when he sat with the Dearest and they held one together.


the kids really enjoyed this giant lizard, called a tagu:
the handler told us that this particular lizard doesn't hear well, which is a good thing because there was ALOT of screaming and squealing when it tried to crawl away off the lawn.
And what in the world would cause this reaction?
this:

it's Buddy the gigantic snake!  LM got to hold the head...
while some of the other little ones felt safer holding the other 'end'

April 20: We spent the whole morning baking cookies for the Great American Bake Sale. My baking produced this:




The small men did some mixing and 'baking' of their own in the backyard and produced this:

doesn't it look delicious?  The next morning we braved 96F heat and set up at the local park to sell our cookies.  Our whole neighborhood participated so we had brownies, cupcakes, snickerdoodles and more. LM was happy to be standing behind the sales table:

April 26: Member's Day at our CSA farm. Arrived a bit late so we missed the main tour but they were kind enough to take us on our own private walk around the farm.  This is where we get all our CSA baskets from so it was neat to check out the fields and see what was growing. The small men got to plant seeds and release ladybugs...about 5000 of them!

we had ladybugs everywhere, crawling on our shoes and clothes and hair:

they must have been thirsty too, because they went straight for the irrigation hoses and gathered there to drink


after our walk around the farm, we took a break in the shade:



Then we visited the farmstand and took home delicious strawberries as well as apples, celery and carrots.

All in all, a crazy busy month so far, which is why I haven't been posting much! I do have some knitting progress to show you all on my Kimono Shawl.  That'll have to wait for another post thought, since this one is getting epic in length. Now I'm off to pick up Little Man at school so we can hit Disneyland again....

filthy, but in a good way

squishy toes

squishy fingers

caveboy art

park day

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