Into Spring

Happy Spring!

Here are some of our adventures of late.

We got to see some of the Kenners (Scott's sister's family who live in Idaho) who were visiting for their spring break.  It was fun to see them.  We also got to see Scott's sister Alycia, but alas, no cousins that time.

MATTHEW

Matthew turned 16 last month.  I guess I am having a hard time with this - I feel like my kids are getting too old.  Matthew has plans to take his driver's test soon.  He has been practicing his driving a lot and gotten a lot better at it.  

We jammed so many candles on this cake.  Too many.  Why do you keep growing up Matthew?  He got so tall this year.  He is about 6 feet tall now.

He did this matching game to "earn" his presents.  I feel like this was just torturing him more than anything - he had to match pictures from all of his previous birthdays with the correct year.  Maybe I will stop this kind of cruel and unusual punishment for next year.

Opening gifts - a lot of video game or dungeons and dragons things.

Matthew took the PSAT so now gets lots of college mail from different schools.

We went out to dinner for Matthew's birthday.  Here we are at Gustav's.  We hear the Gustav's in Vancouver, the last one remaining, will close soon.  We're sad about that.

Matthew had a little birthday party with some friends - they did an escape room and had pizza and hang out time at our house.  This was less than 24 hours after my appendix surgery so Scott really took care of all of it while I rested upstairs.  One friend gave him this giant chocolate bunny as a gift.

Matthew did stage crew in the school play of Anastasia.  He was in charge of the projections (images projected onto the different stage areas.  It was a new responsibility for him and he enjoys participating in the plays.

We got Matthew a suit recently and got it tailored.  Here he is all dressed up.  He also convinced me to let him grow his hair longer - his hair is so fine that I have concerns that it won't look the way he wants - again I'm having trouble letting my kids grow up I guess.  So he's very shaggy now.

ANNA

Anna is always busy with school, singing in the school choir and taking violin lessons.  Soon she will start up a spring soccer season.  She is taking AP Environmental Science this year which has been a lot of work.  It's an area of study she is really interested in but I think this class has taken some of the fun out of it for her, although she is doing great in the class.

Anna likes her room to be just a certain way so sharing with a somewhat more free spirited little sister has been a challenge.  In our previous house in Utah they didn't share a room.  Anna has been debating if she wants to swap rooms with Matthew (the only kid with a private room now) which would cause a lot of moving around.  We decided if she wants to switch Grant and Matthew will share a room and John and Emma will share a room.  But Anna's somewhat loath to give up the larger room for a smaller one.  So for now we aren't moving people around.  Here is Anna giving Emma a brief violin lesson.

Anna and Emma arranged this St. Patrick's Day fruit tray.

And Anna has been encouraging me to practice braiding so I can braid her hair better.  I know how to braid but not french braid so she is trying to teach me how to do some different braiding.  Here are our practice braids.

Anna told me her funny way to play Wordle with her friends where you guess 5 random words for the first guesses and then actually try on the last guess.  She says she and her friends always get it on the last guess using this method.  We tried it too.  You may end up guessing a wider variety of letters using this method which could be helpful.

I help Anna with her weekly vocabulary for English class.  When I encounter one of her vocab words in the wild I sometimes take a pic.  I saw "mollify" several times in the news this past week.

GRANT

I don't have a ton of pictures of Grant for the past month.  He is the middle child of 5, same as Scott, and flies under the radar a lot of the time.  He is the only kid in middle school this year and making some new friends there.  There are a bunch of boys his age on our street and they run around the street in the evenings throwing footballs and playing in the wild area behind the houses.  He's pretty independent, the least squeaky wheel in the family and usually eager to make peace with all the older family members.

Here he is at his school open house.  This was a group project he worked on.  It's a "penguin house."  They were supposed to make some kind of house that could keep a penguin (an ice cube) cold for a long time - so they tried to make it insulated.  I was concerned about the large opening for the mouth but they went with style over substance for that.  :). They had fun working on it.

Here he is after getting a loaner computer from school - his computer broke.  :(

Grant can be a bit of a goofball at times - he's so much fun!!  Here he is after rubbing a bunch of balloons on his head to make them static-y.  He didn't want me to fix his hair.  He never wants me to fix his hair.

JOHN

John has been on a winning streak lately - or he's had a lot of great accomplishments

He got an award at school for optimism

Here he is getting the award.  He said he was embarrassed to go up on the stage.

John is supposed to read 20 minutes a day from a chapter book - this is his daily school reading requirement.  Lately he has been fighting me on this and finally told me he wasn't interested in any books and was "not a reader."  I wasn't sure how to make him read, he's quite stubborn,  but per the teacher's suggestion I decided we would sit and read it together (I read a paragraph, he reads a paragraph).  He refused even to pick a book so I picked Harry Potter book 1.  By the end of chapter one he was kind of hooked and has been excitedly reading the book on his own now and updating me on what's happening.  This makes me very happy.  We only ended up reading it together two days before he wanted to do it on his own again.  Phew.

Regarding all this, Anna said that a sure way to make mom (me) upset is to say something like "I'm not a reader."  So I hope John continues to enjoy reading.  And Scott and I both love Harry Potter so we are excited that he is loving it too.  Here he is trying to find a part in the chapter that he liked.

John recently moved up a level in swimming.  He is now at the highest swimming  that any kid in our family has ever taken.  His classes are all about working on good form for the 4 major strokes (freestyle, breast stroke, back stroke, butterfly).  I'm super proud of him.  John has had issues with low muscle tone and motor skills his whole life.  One doctor we saw in California recommended swimming as a good sport for him.  And he's doing great.

And then there is bike riding.  Along with his motor delays has been difficulty in learning to ride a bike without training wheels.  I have been working with him since we lived in Utah (over 3 years now) to learn to ride without training wheels and yesterday, for the first time, he rode on his own.  Along with having some trouble with coordination sometimes I think John just doesn't think he can do it, which makes it even harder to progress.  Just before spring break John had a biking break through!!  Here are some videos of his very first rides on his own.

 

I helped John get started this time - this was maybe the second time he was able to balance and ride on his own and a lot longer ride than his first attempt

First time getting started on his own

And Emma was so inspired by John's success.  I haven't been working with her much to ride without training wheels because I've been focusing so much on John - but she was very motivated to learn once she saw him doing it - and she picked it up right away.  Here is one of her first rides.  Now we can all ride a bike...phew!!  I have put so many hours into working with John and part of me felt like maybe he would just never get there...not because he couldn't do it but because he really seemed to think he couldn't do it.  So I am so happy for him...and Emma!!  And now they want to go biking around the street every day, rain or shine, which is great!

Emma getting started on her own for the first time.  I went over to help her get started and she shooed me away.  She was determined to keep up with John.

Some evening walks with John and Emma

Making St. Patrick's day treats

These two like hanging out together most of the time

John and Emma made a picture about their brother sister friendship

John had been having a little trouble with a kid saying mean things to him at school - we got it all resolved - I talked to his teacher and she was so helpful and helped John know it was ok to report it when people were picking on him.  I think he feels more empowered now.  The kid told John he would have no friends if he told a teacher he was being picked on.  Now (after talking with me and his teacher) John runs to immediately tell if there is a problem and it magically resolved the issue.  I think its the appropriate course of action for his age.  Emma drew this to show her support to John during that tricky situation.  John is so much happier when he comes home from school now.

EMMA

Emma is super into birds lately.  And she absolutely exhausts me with her appetite for crafting things.  I've started keeping a box of interesting garbage for her to craft with (old toilet paper rolls, plastic inserts etc.). She made this bird outfit a few days ago complete with cardboard bird feet.  She keeps a watchful eye on all the birds that come to visit our yard.  

She made this goldfinch out of perler beads

She's been selling girl scout cookies - another thing that exhausts me - but its been ok

I think I understand how to do it better this year

And there was another cookie shortage this year so not quite as much to sell :)

Emma loves the Junie B. Jones books and a local theater troupe did the Junie B. Jones musical a few weeks ago.  Anything can become a musical these days.  Emma LOVED it!!

Emma has been doing swimming lessons too.  She is working up to swimming across the big pool but still gets a little nervous about it.  My older kids all swim pretty well now - so we just want to get Emma a little more comfortable in big water.

Waiting for swim lessons

Out in the hail - lots of crazy spring weather lately.  We had a lot of snow days or late start snow days in March.  When will spring come for reals?

Emma has been growing some marigolds from seed and she is very attentive to them.  They are doing great!!

Emma passed off a level on her speed math (addition) tests at school.  She has struggled a bit but we have been working hard at home to improve.  I was not super fast at the speed math tests either but went on to work a lot with math in high school, college and beyond.  So don't think math isn't for you just because you have trouble with the speed tests!

SCOTT

Scott and I went to Fogo de Chao in downtown Portland for his birthday.  It's a churrascaria (Brazilian steakhouse) where they walk around with different meats and things on skewers and cut pieces for you at your table. It's a very meaty meal but they also have a salad bar and some other things.  It was a lot of fun.  And we learned "fogo de chao" means "ground fire" in Portuguese which makes me smile.  Like BBQ for us I guess.

The meat is pretty flavorful...but so much of it.  You can turn down any of the meat choices of course.

Also for Scott's birthday we went to see the new Ant Man movie.  It was a lot of fun.  I'm glad we could all go together!

We had cake and presents and a special steak dinner

Happy Birthday Scott!!

And here is Scott blending into the background of our fireplace.  Scott will be retiring from the Air Force at the end of this year and we will be going on an epic road trip to Illinois in June for his retirement.  He's been in the Air Force, both active and reserve, for 22 years so it will be weird to close this chapter.  After 20 years in the military you are eligible to "retire" while retaining some military benefits and some retirement pay.  Since Scott did some of the time as a reservist (instead of all full time active duty) he will get some pay after he turns 65, not immediately.  The Air Force has been good to us, but juggling two jobs and family responsibilities is a lot, and Scott felt it was time to move on, as many service members do after 20 years.  We're so proud of you Scott!!

EMILY

Here I am just before getting my appendix out last month.  I'm all better now, but it was a surprise!!

I've been in a masters program in data science through CU Boulder.  About half the classes are more statistics focused and half are computer science focused.  I took a lot of statistics first and really liked those classes although they were quite hard.  Then I got to the first class where I would work with large data sets.  And I absolutely hated working with the super big data.  I have a physics background and physics, to me, felt like discovering and, in some small way, harnessing the mysteries of the universe - and same with engineering when I worked prior to having kids.  Cleaning up and crunching big data feels so very pedestrian by comparison.  I feel like I'm just cleaning up a mess that I then hand off to someone else. 

So I feel kind of silly because data science definitely sounds like a boring field, but I really thought I would enjoy it more than I did because I have worked with data a bit before in my engineering jobs.   And then I ended up hating it.  I guess I have learned something about myself.  I am currently taking some other engineering classes online - some in circuits, some in materials science.  I am really loving both of those topics.  It is possible for me to switch to a different program within the same school and have my statistics courses accepted and count towards the degree so I may do that.  I want to be sure I go in a direction that is really a good fit for me now.  

I have had so much trouble over the years deciding what I want to study or what job I might want to do if I return to work.  I really like helping my kids with their math homework - I am so excited when they need math help - so I considered getting a teaching credential to teach math or science - but I also am afraid to get up in front of people.  I don't want to deal with parents being mad at me either.

So the struggle continues. 

And Seth Meyers is getting me through life these days.  I record his late night show and watch it while I exercise.  It's getting me through the bleak indoor workout days.

And we moved some furniture around in our house and I am loving it.  We already had this furniture except for the love seat so we did a little musical chairs with the couches and I really like the change.  

Here's a before picture - this was from a while ago and a different angle, but you can get an idea.  This large sectional lives up in the loft now and fits really well there.

We don't all fit quite as well on these couches (above) when we have movie night, and we still need to get rid of a few things, but I love how the living room looks now.  So much lighter, and we need all the lightness we can get!!  Hoping sunny spring days are on their way!!