http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=1755139666841541603 about a dream: August 2011

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

and since i never blogged about nina's birthday

here's a few photos of that!

blowing out her candles.

and here's a close-up of the cake. we didn't take enough photos!

first day of school photos

Here they are!

ready to head out the door. she's so cute!!

the 4 of us went to wait for the bus together


nina is a first grader!!!

her first day was "good," she said. nina is not one for giving details about school, and i ask a lot of questions, but still it's hard to get information out of her. the highlights were that her teacher, mrs. spaulding, read them a story in the morning, and that they had gym class. she also really likes a new girl in her class, hannah, who is meredith roberts' neice. she and nina had dance together 2 years ago, so they remembered each other.

i would have first day of school photos to go with this post, but i downloaded them onto the other computer, which is having some difficulty starting up (the old gateway. the screen of which, by the way, is now in full color again. how weird is that?). so here i am using nick's computer. but mine looks to be starting up properly now so hopefully by the time you read this, pictures will be up and this paragraph will make no sense. haha!

speaking of "haha"s, i have been remiss in blogging about the girls' cuteness. so here some of it is, in no particular order:

maggie, after listening to me recount her wakings up at night: "but then i fell asleep and slept with all my might!"

nina, in the car, when we were discussing a large caterpillar in a junior high classroom that will grow into a very large moth: "what's the difference between a moth and a butterfly?"
me: "uh, i don't know."
nick: "i think butterflies are prettier than moths."
nina: "oh, i think it's that moths come out at night and butterflies come out during the day."
me and nick: "wow, we're dumb."

i'm not sure if that's even the technical definition of the difference, but it's obviously far, far better than anything nick or i could come up with.

also, maggie says "ridiculous" like "ruh-dick-lee-ous" and it's just too cute.

ok i'm gonna switch to the other laptop and see if i can put up the photos.

Friday, August 26, 2011

busy busy busy!!!

where to start? well, we still have our last company of the summer, though nina is especially ready for them to go. she's having trouble mostly with the 3 year old, who doesn't listen to her as well as maggie does (i guess i never noticed that as strong-willed as maggie is, she listens to nina very well. she actually listens to me pretty well too, compared to other 3 year olds). so, nina's pretty frustrated. yesterday day she told me, "i'm at the end of my rope. i've used up a thousand ropes!"

it's cute, but i feel bad that nina is so stressed. i'm doing as much as i can to give her a break from everyone, but she just wants them gone. and now there may be a hurricane headed here in a few days! it's looking promising that it'll veer far enough west of us that we don't get much, so please keep your fingers crossed!

plus, my washing machine broke. however, both sears and lowes are offering 10 - 20% of washers this week, so i'm in luck!

so as you can see, busy busy busy here. i will try to write more often though. unless of course we lose power for a week!!

Monday, August 22, 2011

botanical gardens today

what a fun, exhausting place. we spent most of our time in the children's garden, as usual, but also go to the garden of the 5 senses. saw frogs in the ponds, some tadpoles still (must have been some late egg laying?), and of course lots of plants.

yesterday we went to a concert at the congo church that sam schwehm put on. he's such a great piano player! then we took the girls to get some ice cream. we only stayed for 4 or 5 songs, the girls were being so good but i didn't want to push my luck, and i wanted to leave before they got bored, so they don't develop negative feelings about piano concerts.

saturday we did the tidepooling class at the aquarium, but i think i wrote about that already. so then, all caught up!

i can't think of anything they've done or said lately that made me chuckle and i have to share. oh yeah, maggie was annoying nina one night (probably whining because she was over-tired), and nina said, "that's it, you're not my sister anymore! you're fired!" which was pretty funny. she's never even seen the apprentice!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

i guess the blog has become more of a weekend update

my good intentions go so quickly by the wayside. oh well.

but we've been busy this week because our friends the mascias are visiting! they're the ones with 2 little girls (all 4 girls are now giggling hysterically over some potty talk. at least maggie isn't whining to nuuuuuuuuurse!)

this morning we did the tidepooling class at the aquarium. so fun! we caught a bunch of crabs and hermit crabs in our nets and put them in a bucket. then they were going to tell us all about the animals we caught, but we had (foolishly) left the house before eating breakfast II, and we were all too hungry to listen. nick had gone to the grocery store for a few things while we were tidepooling so we waited outside for him to come back and promptly devoured a half-dozen muffins upon his return.

yesterday we had a fun day of hendrick's head and swimming at mom's house. before that is starting to be a blur.... i'll try to back update over the next few days, especially to tell about nina's 6th birthday. she's six!!!

Friday, August 12, 2011

the kids ran off to grandma's house

so i'm blogging.

what a day it's been. maggie got us all up early, but then the 3 of us girls took naps this afternoon. i turned on the old laptop (the one i use, not the one we finally got rid of), only to find that this one's screen is suddenly broken too! not cracked, but the blue color is gone, so it's all in shades of pink and yellow. kind of pretty once you get used to it actually.

but before that, nick and i had a little issue hat needs some airing out.

what happened was, there were 7 bread and butter pickle chips left in the pickle jar. nick took 4 of them for his sandwich and "generously" said to me, "I left you some pickles. finish them so we can throw out the jar."

so i grabbed a fork, and do you know what i saw? three ends. that is, pickle chips cut from the ends of the cucumber. i (of course) immediately opened up his sandwich and saw that he had 4 lovely pickle chips cut from the more tender center of the pickle.

i said, "gee nick, thanks for leaving me the ends."
and he said, "what? i didn't notice."
not one to let things like this just slide under the table, i responded, "yeah right."
and he said, "no really, i must have just happened to get the good ones."
and I said, "you really expect me to believe you just happened to pick out the 4 good ones?"
and he said, "yes. i didn't pick them out on purpose, i swear."
and i said, "maybe subconsciously you grabbed the good ones."
and he said, "no."
and i said, "fine, but do you know what the odds of that happening are?"
and he said, "no."
and i said, "small."
and he said, "whatever, why are you still talking about this."
and i said, "it's the principle."

so what are the chances that nick accidentally got the 4 good pickles? they're smaller than you think. i'll admit i didn't do the math in my head, but knowing more about probability than nick, i was setting him up a bit by asking him if he believed it was pure chance, since i did know that the odds were much smaller than he would guess.

but quickly, let's just run the math. we had:

4 "good" pickles
+3 low quality ends
____________________
7 pickles in total


what are the odds of pulling the 4 good chips?

(4/7) x (3/6) x (2/5) x (1/4) = 24/840 = 1/35

which is just under 3%

so, there's just under a 3% chance that he took the good pickles by chance. not impossible, but not likely either.

in conclusion, we're kind of at a stalemate right now. i can believe him (and buy a lottery ticket tonight), or i can write sarcastic blog posts while my children are (probably) over at grandma's.

isn't math fun?

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

been busy with guests, having fun

today we took the gregorios to ocean point. the kids had a great time throwing rocks in the ocean, climbing on the rocks, and playing with the little crabs in the tide pools.

as we were leaving though, a man came up to me. he said, 'i was standing here, watching the kids play, and reminiscing about my kids when they were little. and your little girl (gesturing to maggie) caught my eye, and i was watching her. and i guess she caught that little boy over there's eye too (gestured to a little boy on the beach), because he went over to her with his bucket and told her he caught a crab. and she said to him, "who cares?" and walked away.'

oh my gosh, i laughed so hard! that is so maggie. she's gonna be a man-eater!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

let us all remember that cotton candy gives the girls tummy aches

today was the family fun festival at camp knickerbocker, and the girls had a blast jumping in the bounce houses and eating their hamburgers. then, we had to finish the day with some cotton candy, and they both got tummy aches. :-(
no cotton candy next time!!

nina had a big day today though, so she deserved the cotton candy. she finished her first grade workbook! it has 156 pages, so that was a LOT of math. go nina!
she also finished her first goosebumps book, the werewolf of fever swamp. she loved it, and checked out another one: piano lessons can be murder (she keeps pronouncing it 'mudder')

ok now we're watching horders on netflix, so no more typing!

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

we're into playing Wii again

and today nina and i were golfing before bed. neither of us are especially good, and we continually hit the ball into the rough.

well, one time nina hit it out there and said, "oh, i hit it into the ruffles."

haha!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

it's august already?

where is the time going?! unfair.

we had a lovely visit with our friends the wengs. the kids played beautifully and we adults has fun too. nina and maggie really wanted gabriel to stay, and so did he. hopefully we'll see them again soon.

the girls are exhausted today though, and nina seems to be fighting off a tiny little bug. she's felt ever so slightly warm all day, has had a bit of a tummy ache, and has still been sneezing and dealing with the runny nose she's had for a while. i'm thinking her allergies might have bred a small infection, or she's just picked up a little bug.

then we're all tired from a classic halter family night's sleep. the girls went to bed late because the kids were having so much fun playing on their last night, so i ended up putting them both to sleep in my bed (and of course, falling asleep myself in the process). at about 11 i was too squished with them, so i got onto the floor bed with nick. not more than 10 minutes later, maggie rolled out of bed onto the floor. she hit with such a thump that nick and i both jumped up. she was ok though, didn't even wake up. i had tucked the blankets under the mattress to try to prevent her from rolling off the bed, maybe that broke her fall enough that she didn't get hurt. anyway, she stayed asleep and i put her back in bed.
then, there was some very, very bright lightning from a storm so far away that we couldn't hear the thunder. so it was almost midnight by the time i got back to sleep. i woke up at 5 am to maggie crying for fresh pajamas, since she'd peed in hers. gah! so i changed her and we went back to sleep until 7 in nina's bed.

yup, classic halter night. the girls are going to bed soon though, and hopefully we'll all feel well-rested and healthy in the morning.