NaBloPoMo and Reading

Posted on November 2, 2013 by cpeezers

I’ve decided to participate in the NaBloPoMo challenge. That stands for National Blog Posting Month I think. It runs concurrently with NaNoWriMo (a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month). That would be cool too but –

a. I don’t know what I would write about, and

b. that’s a lot of words!

So here lately, I have only been posting about once a week. The days just disappear before I can get a chance to write my blog. Hopefully the challenge will help me keep on track. Not that I need to write every day, but I thought it would be fun to try.

I just read about this about midnight last night, so I missed November 1st. So I am attempting NaBloPoMo -1.

And then – I am having so much fun watching Davey take off in his learning to read. He is learning his lists of sight words faster each time as he really gets the hang of sounding out words. It’s amazing and so neat to see.

I saw him reading Eric Carle in his room a few minutes ago. I think it was Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? He can read it all by himself now, and I loved listening to him read through it.

It’s Sunday again.

Posted on October 27, 2013 by cpeezers

Lately it seems like every time I sit down to write a blog entry, another week has passed! And so it happened again this week.

It’s been so pretty here this week. The leaves were in full color and now they are falling like crazy.

We drove over to the art building today to try to get a few more pictures of the shawl. I have not sent it to my friend yet. It’s still in my possession. I am having trouble letting it go. No no, I am ready to send it off, but I wanted to try to get just a few more pictures!

I took a picture of the campus on our way. It was a cloudy kinda dreary day today, but it made the trees all “glowy” and I thought extra pretty!

We really didn’t do much better this week on taking pictures of the shawl. David took a couple of nice detailed shots that I liked.

It’s such a pretty pattern.

We tried hanging it on the wall, but it was looking all dark, edgy and very “Batmanish” so that didn’t work all that great. We got some shots of it inside on the concrete floor, and I do like how those turned out. It’s a little dark still, but the details show up pretty nicely.

Last week was apparently the annual gnat invasion. They are maybe mayflies or something? I need to research this, but they are not biting bugs; they are just everywhere. Makes for cool photo opportunities though! The dots = gnats!

And finally, we got a total surprise in the mail this week. A friend sent Davey a quilt she made. It’s so pretty, and Davey is just in love with it. It has a flannel backing, and it’s just so warm and cosy. He sleeps with it at night, and then he brings it to the couch in the morning.

Such a nice gift!

Mission: Photograph “Regrowth”

Posted on October 20, 2013 by cpeezers

“Regrowth” the behemoth shawl is done! I think it is the largest thing I have ever knitted.

I began it back in April. I knitted it through 6 seasons of “How I Met Your Mother”, a couple of seasons of “Justified”, couple of seasons of “Hell on Wheels”, couple of seasons of “Longmire”, a season of “Homeland”, and then just lots more evening knitting. I took some breaks from it to make some baby things and a couple of other projects, but they were mostly pretty quick, and then I was back to this shawl.

It’s beautiful. Our mission today was to try to figure out how the heck to get a photograph that might somewhat do it justice. I made it for a friend and will be sending it to her soon, so I wanted to get lots of pictures before I sent it off. We are going to miss it around here!

David and Davey tried to hold it up for me so that the beautiful patterns could be seen.

David had fun with this.

I tried draping it gracefully over a chair.

Then we decided to go walk over to have some frozen yogurt and to look for possible photo op places on the way.

We tried some steps behind city hall (this was to give Davey some added height by getting up the steps).

Then we just enjoyed our walk because it is just so darn pretty out today!

Lot of pretty colors in town.

We decided to walk around campus to see what we could figure out for picture possibilities.

There’s lots of concrete around, so we found a clean spot, swept the leaves off and tried again.

We decided that we needed a little more angle on the picture.

Davey may have been getting a little weary of the pictures at this point.

We took one final picture of the shadows cast by the shawl. We thought this was pretty cool!

This is really a nicely written pattern which was actually a combination of several different motifs that the designer liked. I had a lot of fun knitting it. I never grew weary of it except maybe when I had about 1700 stitches of purling to make my way across the row! I’d love to make this again though sometime!

Popcorn Words!

Posted on October 6, 2013 by cpeezers

We are hard at work learning “popcorn words”. Davey’s teacher sent home his first list of sight words a couple of weeks ago. It is incredible to me how much he has learned in just a few weeks of school. Three weeks ago this was absolutely new to him. Three weeks later, it’s all getting so much easier. When he is comfortable with the words, he will go over them with her, and then she will send home another list (I suppose kindergarteners the world over do this, but it’s all new stuff to me!).

I, Like, Go, To, On, Me, My, A, The, Is. This first list of words may be forever etched onto my brain.

We have played several games to help him learn these words. I now have a whole Pinterest board devoted to sight word games. Pinterest is Amazing. There will be so many great ideas there to help me teach someday as well.

The magic word game was a big hit. Thanks to my friend Carol for showing me that one (she was my teacher too when I was in elementary school!). I made sentences with his sight words and worked them into a treasure hunt. I took a white crayon and wrote the sentences on a white piece of paper. Then Davey colored over the letters with a marker. The coloring got a little tedious for him (he has never been a big coloring fan), so I helped him color after awhile, but then he figured out the words.

He very much enjoyed figuring out the clues. He also got to where he was figuring out words by a combination of using the context and sounding them out abit. For example, he figured out the word boy in that way. It is an amazing process really – this learning to read thing.

Another fun one was a word treasure hunt. I hid words around the house and he looked for them. Every time he found one, he checked it off on his list, and he told me what it was. He liked that a lot too.

Every time we played a game, he’d continue it, so for example, he spent quite abit of time writing out his own clues and coloring over them.

He was having a heck of a time remembering the word “the”. So I figured out a way to help I think. I’d write a sentence – oh and I bought a $1.00 dry erase board at the Dollar Tree. Best investment ever. We are using it constantly to practice. So I wrote the sentence: “Davey is a boy.” He could read that. Then I’d say “Ok wait. Davey is not A boy. He is THE boy! Davey is THE boy!” Davey found this hilarious and we did many variations on this. “Buster is not A dog. Buster is THE dog!”, and “Mama is not a Mommy. She is THE Mommy.” We added lots of expression and emphasis when we switched back and forth between “a” and “the”. I think it worked well because he is not having trouble with the word “the” at all now.

So he just about has them all learned. He just read through them with no mistakes and with very little hesitation. Yay Davey. 🙂

Whew!

Posted on September 24, 2013 by cpeezers

Busy weeks. Fun weeks. Davey was thrilled to have his Nanny and Pa here for a week. We had a lot of fun showing them around a little of the great Pacific Northwest. Davey enjoyed hanging out with them.

Davey started school on the 11th. It is the 24th now, and I am starting to get used to him being gone all day. He is loving school though. So far he can not wait for each day to begin.

His teacher supplied him with jitter glitter to put under his pillow the night before school started, and she gave him “ready confetti” to throw up on the first day of school. He loved this!

This picture is blurry but it depicts his excitement to get going!

We got to hang out with him for a little while at the beginning of his first school day. After about half an hour, she sent the parents on our way so they could start having some “real fun!”

Davey started soccer too. He’s playing on a co-ed team and is doing just awesome so far. He’s having a lot of fun.

It’s fun to watch him want to get after that ball and move it down the field.

We also have Fall/Halloween fever. We decided to ease into it by carving a pumpkin. Well it’s not really carving. We scooped out the insides and then drilled holes randomly all over the pumpkin. There are lots of pictures of this on pinterest. I could not get a picture of it at night. I need to figure out how to use my camera to accomplish this. I recommend lots of holes too. We didn’t have quite enough. The dry air here has resulted in a rapidly shrinking pumpkin. It’s already about done for.

I am starting back to school myself tomorrow. I am going to get certified to teach K-8. I actually did get to see Davey during the day last week because I spent 40 hours at the school observing a class. I went to see him each day at lunch. It was a great way to transition to his full days of school – yes more for me than him!

Pictures from our first Kittitas Fair

Posted on August 31, 2013 by cpeezers

It’s been a big fair weekend for us. We spent Thursday and Friday at the fair. Friday evening we also went to the rodeo (me and Davey’s first ever), and today was the big parade.

There was a great show for kids. They got to dress up and pretend to be in the circus. Davey performed in it twice, and David got chosen both times to be a “volunteer” participant.

Davey is ready for Cats!

The first time David was a helper. He was asked to show his muscles here.

The second time, Davey was a clown.

Who also wanted to do some disco dancing.

David was the “world’s strongest” man in the second show.

This morning we went to the fair.

The parade was basically a quest for catching candy.

Success!

Davey rode lots of rides at the fair. Over and over and over again. Thank goodness for the “pay once – all day ride pass”! We ate fair food. We looked at the animals and exhibits. I began planning my knitting entries for next year. There was some beautiful work entered.

Davey and the ducks

Posted on August 29, 2013 by cpeezers

A couple of days ago, we went back up to Cle Elum to fish.

My introductory sentence combined with the above picture makes it seem as though we walked to Cle Elum. That tickles me.

There is a Kiwanis lake that runs beside the river up there. That lake is designated for children and the handicapped, so it had really nice access. Unfortunately the fish weren’t biting. Davey tried fishing for a little while, and David tried out the river which runs parallel to the lake. David did catch a small trout in the river, but that was about it.

However, Davey was much more interested in these guys:

I don’t know what kind of ducks these are. I call them Labrador Retriever mix ducks because of their coloring. They were hilarious though. Davey was absolutely plotting to bring them home with us.

He very much enjoyed talking to them.

He ran back and forth from the ducks to me because I was translating what they were saying to him.

The ducks were funny too because they followed us everywhere. It was when they followed us back to the truck that Davey really decided that they wanted to live with us.

We had to say good bye with promises that we would return (I think the ducks were saying “bring food next time guys!”).

Quiet Weekend

Posted on August 25, 2013 by cpeezers

We’ve had a nice weekend. Yesterday, Davey and I spent some time at the park with friends. I went to the library and checked out more books than I can probably read before they are due (I always do that). Today we’ve been hanging out at home. I’ve been working on a new knitting/embroidery technique called Roositud. I’m making some fingerless mitts and have almost finished the first one. I love combining embroidery with knitting and I’m always looking for new techniques. This is proving to be great fun.

I enjoy lining up my yarn and taking pictures. I maybe like yarn a little too much.

Nah.

Davey has been doing lots of playing which includes lots of playtime with Buster.

But sometimes they have a little quiet time themselves.

A Little Fishin’

Posted on August 22, 2013 by cpeezers

We went exploring a little today. Drove up to Cle Elum along the river. David floated that part of it yesterday, and he wanted to show it to us. He also wanted to check out some potential fishing holes.

None of them panned out too well – for today anyway. He was a little limited as to where he could go since Davey and I were with him.

But we had a nice picnic lunch along the river. And as usual, there’s little Mr. Hider.

David fished a little, but he wasn’t really set up for water that big.

I was fascinated by this pretty little creek that was flowing out of the woods into the Yakima.

And I know the angle on this picture is whacky (I get carried away sometimes), but I was looking at those trees thinking this is going to be beautiful in the fall!