My Jacob turns 6 today!
Enjoy the warp-speed trip through memory lane:
Jacob at age 1 month:
At age 3:
Just about age 6 (school picture):
Today was Timmy’s first day of preschool at a church up the street from us here in Bellevue.
He was great going right into the classroom, picking up his nametag and getting involved in the centers scattered about the room.
Then it was time to say “Goodbye”.
He became a terrified wreck and it took his teacher peeling him off me and off the doorway to get him into the room.
I was pretty emotional after that… believe it or not, I hadn’t experienced that with Timmy in a very long time.
But if past experiences serve as an indicator, I’m willing to bet he will have had a good time when I pick him up about an hour from now.
Then it’s off to Toys R Us to go lightsaber shopping!
PS: Like the shirt? The kids wear their preschool shirts on Thursdays.
“What a strange number…”
Yep.
I’m one of the Box Top assistants for my son’s elementary school PTA. Aren’t I Little Miss Involved, huh? This was a good program to get involved in since I have a deployment in early 2009 that would mess up my being a room Mom or a PTA officer. Maybe next year.
Actually the group of us does a lot more than just the Box Tops for Education Program ($0.10 per label). We also help with the Campbell’s Soup Labels for Education (earn points, use points to buy supplies for the school), Tyson’s Project A+ ($0.24 per label), and Land O Lake’s Save Five for Schools ($0.05 per milk cap).
The school calls the entire program “Trash to Treasure”.
Every month, on the last school day of the month, each class turns in their accumulated “Trash” and the totals are tabulated. The class with the most labels/caps earns an incentive of some sort.
Jake’s class won for September, whoo hoo, with 534 items turned in.
Anyway, this week I picked up my sack of labels to clean up and organize. My task is to trim the Box Tops for Education (less excess around the label = less postage weight) and bag them in groups of 100. The sack I picked up was a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled to the brim with labels. Whoa.
Yesterday I set Timmy at our kitchen table with Play Doh and other crafts while I sat with him and trimmed labels. You can see the untrimmed on the left, the trimmed on the right.
So I ended up with 813 labels trimmed and bagged. They range in size from 2″ x 3″ (like on a box of Toaster Streudel) to smaller than a fingernail (Pillsbury Crescent Rolls). My hands will be paying me back for this come wintertime — my hand pain has been a 24-hour cold front forecast for the past 3 years.
Trimming the labels I learned about the wide variety of products that have the labels, from Huggies to Caribou Coffee granola bars.
And I have to admit, today at the grocery store I was keeping an eye out for products with the labels…
…which is a corollary benefit to this program, huh? General Mills, Pillsbury, Kimberly Clark and Betty Crocker are steering us Moms-of-kids-in-school to their products.
So here’s the side yard. It’s quite nice.
See? There’s an apple tree — and the apples aren’t bad, either. Quite tart, I see a pie in our near future.
And here’s Timmy marking up the fence to the right of the apple tree. He did this with some sidewalk chalk, thankfully it’ll wash right off.
I’m so proud of my little guy learning to write his name…
…but I have visions of one day Timmy writing his name on a highway overpass or railroad boxcar. Thought I’d share this before I hosed it off.
Well…I’m trying to bring it back! I can’t even remember the last time I blogged about a craft I’ve done with the boys…
Timmy and I interrupted our crayon-peeling session to pick up Jake from school. When Jake got home he was excited to get to help out. I told the boys we could make multi-colored crayon “muffins” and they thought that was cool.
I used my oldest muffin tin, which I wasn’t really using for real food anymore anyway.
So they chose which colors to put together, I tried to ensure the color combinations weren’t too ugly (i.e., no teal and bright red together). And into the oven they went.
So here’s the before:
And after:
And a close up of one of the “muffins”. Note the white top to the crayon. That’s essentially clear wax and it separates from the coloring in the cheaper crayons. Crayolas don’t do that, but I had mixed in a number of Quizno’s, Bahama Breeze, Fazoli’s, Cracker Barrel and Rose Art crayons in with the Crayolas.
Finally, some shots of the boys coloring (Jake’s making a rubbing of a yo-yo string) , and look how cool Jar Jar Binks looks with red and yellow stripes! That’s all from one crayon!
This was Jake when I picked him up from school today. He had a great day and is really looking forward to tomorrow.
I can’t believe my baby is in school now!
Jake gave a nice debriefing about his day, to include even the details of how he gave 50 cents to the lunchlady for his milk and she gave him 10 cents change :-). He also made a couple friends.
For those blogging Moms who have been showing off their boys’ super-cool backpacks, I’m going to show this picture! This is the LL Bean Junior Bookpack and it’s a perfect size and a fun, unique pattern. Jake’s backpack was hung up among a sea of Spongebob, Speed Racer and Star Wars backpacks. His definitely stood out!
Got the matching lunchbox, too.
“So, besides the photo of a fire and an announcement about your weather station being back, you’ve been pretty incognito!”
Yeah, I suppose I have.
“Are you okay?”
Yes, I’m finally coming down from the incredible stress of this move. The car accident on August 2nd didn’t help, either. One might argue that one contributed to the other, but I won’t lay blame one way or the other. I’m very glad that the woman I hit was okay, and I’m pretty well recovered, too. I’m still a little sore in the shoulder if I try to scratch my back with my left hand, that’s all.
Dave and I have been crazily unpacking at a feverish pace. If we don’t put in the effort now, we tend to slowball things and we end up like in North Carolina: presenting our packers in July 2008 with boxes that weren’t even opened from when they were delivered to NC in August 2005!
Very little TV, very little Internet, very little interaction outside of the house. I’m catching the Olympics when I can (how about that Men’s Swimming Freestyle Relay Sunday night????)
I’m pleased to say that we’ve unpacked all but about 5 boxes…we have most of the rooms well-organized, and it’s mainly books and wall hangings that are still pending. We have bookcases scattered throughout the house, and I’m still deciding on which bookcases will hold which books.
Having a basement is quite wonderful, Jake’s layout and many of the boys’ toys are fitting in the basement very nicely. We also have ample storage for our camping gear, my craft supplies, and winter stuff.
We can finally free up our garage for its intended use: storing our vehicles!
Dave started at his new job on July 31st and is really enjoying things so far. The programs he got to work with for his PhD are relevant in this job and he likes getting to translate the research work to the warfighters.
This past Saturday, on Dave’s birthday, we had our first real day out, enjoying some of Nebraska/Iowa’s offerings. The IMAX theater at the Omaha Zoo was showing the film Fighter Pilot free for military families and it was very good. Timmy only got a little worked up at the very end at some air-to-ground training explosions.
Then we went to Quaker Steak and Lube in Council Bluffs, IA for dinner — where I experienced some of the best wings I’ve had in YEARS, followed by a trip to the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World next door. Outdoor World was incredible, with a shooting arcade on the 2nd floor! While I’m not condoning 5-year-olds wielding rifles, I have to admit Jake had a really good time attempting this. It has a really nice camping section, and I can see the family doing a LOT of camping while we’re here.
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The boys are definitely emotional about what they’ve left behind in N.C. Timmy still asks for his friends Daniel and Johnny, and Jacob has complained a lot about there not being much to do in Nebraska. It’s just that we’ve been so busy unpacking, we haven’t been out much except to go shopping for furniture, home improvement stuff and school clothes.
Which brings me to my next point: my baby (Jacob, my oldest) starts KINDERGARTEN tomorrow! This afternoon we attended a “Meet the Teacher” event and Jake teacher, Ms. Brockhaus, seems very nice and down-to-earth. Jake was told he could explore the classroom (it’s enormous, compared to his Penguin classroom at Resurrection Preschool) and we went on a scavenger hunt for his name. Items throughout the classroom were already labeled. Here’s Jake at his table:
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His name was already marked for his art cubby, his coat hook, his “circle time” spot, and his lunch marker, where he’ll put his name magnet on a poster depending on whether he’s buying lunch or bringing lunch.
I was sent home with a stack of forms to fill out (homework for Mom?), including PTA registration, publicity consent forms and Room Mom/party helper solicitations. Since I’m taking a trip to the Middle East in early 2009 (oops, I guess I haven’t blogged about that news, huh?), I’ll have to shy away from being a Room Mom, but I will volunteer to help with the Halloween events and Field Day at the end of the school year.
“Thanks for the update, Patricia…I’m glad things are looking up for you guys.”
If you’ve noticed, I’m not jumping up and down celebrating Nebraska. It’s a nice state, I’m always game for a new place, new adventure, a new part of our great country to experience. But celebrating Nebaska…not quite yet.
For those who aren’t familiar with my passion for all things Penn State, my senior year at Penn State was that of the 1994 NCAA Football National Championship that should have been Penn State’s, and not Nebraska’s. And we’re in serious Cornhusker country here!
But I’ll give them credit, Nebraskans are the friendliest people! We’ve been presented with babysitting offers, plates of cookies and several “If there’s anything you need….” offers from our neighbors. Most of our neighbors are military, and there are a billion kids on our street. There’s a new family right behind us, and the Mom there is a piano teacher — whoo hoo! I was planning to start Jake on piano lessons around his 6th birthday. He can just hop our fence…
So with this extremely long post, I’ll close here. Stay tuned for photos of Jake’s first day of school. I hope I don’t cry.
“You’d better give the skinny on the Middle East, woman!”
Okay, okay…soon!
Out of nowhere, about two months ago, a Monkey Joe’s opened in Cary, one of those bouncy house centers. Incidentally, it’s around the corner from a place called Jumpin’ Beans, the exact same thing.
I took Timmy today to meet some of his former preschool classmates and he had a blast!! He was incredibly well-behaved, no hitting or any mal-behaviors. He bumped heads with another child at one point and Timmy was in tears asking “Can we go home now?”, but after a couple cookies, he was recharged and ready to continue on!
I’ve been showing a lot of Timmy pictures lately, tomorrow I’m hoping to visit the Ice House while Jake’s in his skating lesson and will try to get some photos of him. Today apparently Jake did a little obstacle course on the ice, I’m impressed!
Yes. That’s what he said when he got into my pile of laundry this
morning.
I’ll have to upload the other hilarious poses he did when I broke out
the camera.
Hi friends!
Okay, okay, I’m sure you’re growing sick of my super-brief postings about the nitnoid things that I’m doing to prepare the house for the move.
Not interesting!
Unfortunately, there isn’t too much interesting stuff going on during the week. This week, Jake is in an ice skating camp. It’s crossed my mind to sneak over tomorrow while he’s on the ice and grab a couple of pictures…he said he’s having a “pretty good time” and today he was skating on his own already, so I’m guessing he might have quite a bit of confidence by his last day, Thursday.
Every weekend has been full of family activities. As is typical just before one of our moves, Dave and I attempt to cram in as much activity as possible…in this case, we’re getting all the North Carolina we can! This past Sunday we went to the beach with the Goldmans. I also have some pictures from our trip, but they aren’t captioned yet. And as always, Maryann’s are much better!
Saturday was the Goldman’s annual “Patriotic Party”, which is placed somewhere in the 2nd half of June between Memorial Day and Independence Day. This is our 3rd year taking part, and as usual, it was a blast!
(Enjoy this precious picture I caught with Maryann’s camera of the boys sharing a Sit ‘n Spin…for once they weren’t fighting!)
This weekend, we’re joining the Warlicks on an overnight trip to the mountains and Charlotte. We’re planning a visit to the Linville Falls, then on to Charlotte where we’re planning a tour of Lowe’s Motor Speedway and then spending the afternoon at the Discovery Place museum.
And the following weekend will be our last Durham Bulls game (sniff sniff!). We’ll join the Warlicks for that too.
Dave’s dissertation work is in the final stages; after the Air Force gives its public release blessing, he gets to release it to the graduate school for official publication. That will probably happen next week.
He was excited to receive an e-mail today from the editor of the Monthly Weather Review, one of our field’s premier peer-reviewed journals (think New England Journal of Medicine for meteorologists!) asking to review an article related to weather phenomena in Korea. Wow! Dave, reviewing MWR articles!
I couldn’t be more proud!
So on tomorrow’s docket:
1.) Buy some bright-colored sticky Post-It Notes to start marking the “Do Not Pack” items.
2.) Schedule canceling utilities in NC
3.) Schedule turning on utilities in NE
4.) Keep Timmy happy. We might take a trip to the pool, maybe I can do the cancellations/turning ons from the pool deck? What a life!
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