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  • Obsessed with the planets

    Obsessed with the planets

    Monti has been obsessed with learning about space. She drew pictures of all the planets and taped them to the patio door. We went to the library so she could check out a book of every planet. At the park she had one of her friends play the sun while Dahlia was Saturn and she
    was Uranus. Dahlia was thrilled because she got a chance to demonstrate her ability to walk (orbit) around while hula hooping. Monti explained that she would spin her hula hoop on her arm because Uranus is tilted so it’s rings look different than Saturn’s which is convenient because Monti still can’t hula around her waist.

  • Monti’s new smile

    Monti’s new smile

    Two front teeth gone

  • date hike

    date hike

    My friend Sally watched our girls while we went out on a hike and out to dinner. We hiked for about 2 hours and climbed the 5 mile roundtrip hike up Little Si.

  • finally a nice day

    finally a nice day

  • What the heck is Bunco?

    What the heck is Bunco?

    I was invited to sub in for one of the ladies in a neighborhood Bunco group. My first question was ….What is Bunco? It ends up just being a game of pure luck where you roll three dice trying to get a specific number. You get a Bunco or 21 points when all three of your dice show the desired number. It is really just an excuse for women to get together to drink, eat and talk. I usually like some strategy in my games but I can’t imagine getting a group of women to focus on much more than rolling dice. Talking was priority one.

  • WAT bulletin board

    WAT bulletin board

    I was so done with promoting the walk-a-thon after working all weekend on the opening assembly but I had committed myself to also putting together a bulletin board. My goal was to keep it simple and get it done quickly. There was little overall plan for this project hence the
    multiple shades of light green that drive me nuts.

  • The Blues Brothers come to IVE

    The Blues Brothers come to IVE

    Joe and Gary did great at the assembly. The kids laughed and screamed at all the right moments. Best of all Joe really enjoyed being up on stage. I felt like I had dragged him into the show and I knew he was initially dreading the whole event so it really was important to me that he had fun.

    One of the moms tripped over the audio cable and broke the cable so when I tried to play the audio for the last song there was nothing. It took us about 4 minutes of dead space to figure out we could do the final act if someone literally held the cable in place. I hated it not going off perfect but overall the assembly was a big success.

  • Walk-a-thon t-shirt model

    Walk-a-thon t-shirt model

    I needed a picture of a kid in their walk-a-thon t-shirt for my slide show. Dahlia is always there to be my model.

  • Practicing for the assembly

    Practicing for the assembly

    To kick off the school walkathon they hold an assembly to pump up the students and to explain their role in the fundraiser process. We recruited Joe and another dad, Gary, to be our Blues Brothers. The opening act included singing “Sole Man”. The ‘sole’ spelling was our small tie in to anything doing with walking. The last song was “Everybody Needs Somebody to Pledge.” Once Joe had his lines memorized he started having fun with his role. I loved seeing him doing a little acting again and his Chicago accent was very good especially when you are in Seattle. In addition to doing all the talking he had to put dance moves together for 6 different songs (each only about 60 sec.). Liz’s son Josh was helping Joe and Gary come up with different moves for each song. We also had a group of moms who were the “sole sistas”. They were the backup dancers for the opening and closing acts. I was glad to sit this performance out because Kerri outdid herself with the fancy footstep choreography.

  • Dahlia’s game

    Dahlia’s game

    Instead of playing any of the many games they had at the coffee shop Dahlia created some game where chess pieces moved across the table on dominoes after you rolled dice. I never did get the underlying strategy behind her game but I think the object of the game was to let Dahlia win.