Halloween

Look at this cutest little fire crew. It's Fire Chief Oliver and his trusty dalmatian, Elliot. We managed to stretch Halloween out over two days. We had a Halloween carnival and "trunk or treat" at our church on Saturday night and then on Sunday we did a quick spin up and down our our block to say hello to our neighbors. We met some neighbors we hadn't talked to before, including a woman who works for Ghirardelli chocolate (score!!). Elliot apparently got "runner up" for cutest costume at the church costume parade. I say the contest was rigged, these boys both deserved first place!

I had to consult the internet for a "puppy face painting" tutorial. Unfortunately, even though we bribed him with Skittles, he didn't want to sit still at all so this is as far as I got.

We've been everywhere, man...

To paraphrase the late, great Johnny Cash, we HAVE been everywhere this summer. It has been a whirlwind. We've made great memories that we wouldn't trade for anything, but honestly it's been totally exhausting. We are now ready to stay put and not go anywhere for a long, long, long time.

Here are some highlights from our trips, from most recent, moving backward. And again, I curse my laziness for resorting to taking pictures exclusively with my iPhone. It's so easy but the quality (at least in my hands) is total junk. I need to start using our real camera again.

October 5-12 Hobe Sound, Florida (Anna & the boys) Visiting my dear Poppop with Abby and my mom. Getting to listen to Poppop's amazingly vivid stories about growing up during the Depression, being the first one in his family to go to college, meeting my Grammie, and going to World Series games at Ebbets Field. Playing on the beach with cousins Amanda, Beau and Lola. Hosting an impromptu birthday party for Poppop (he turns 98 at the end of October!) with cousins Sharon and Juanita. Abby swimming with the sharks (that could have ended badly...here's a tip we learned: don't swim near sport fishermen...they bring in more than pompano). Elliot stripping off his bathing suit and running around the beach squealing "I NAKED! I NAKED!!"

  

We got into Florida really, really late so we stayed at a hotel near the airport for the first night. The boys got a little bit crazy. This is them at 2:00 am. Fortunately they were still on West Coast time (making it only 11:00?!?) but that was small consolation to the hotel guests around us!

September 3-7: Raleigh, NC (Anna & the boys) Seeing old friends back in Raleigh. Ahhh...I don't have any pictures of this amazing weekend. It was SO MUCH FUN!! I love, love, love the friends we made in Raleigh. The trip was way too short but I felt like I really was able to reconnect in a meaningful way with a lot of our old friends. Lots of great conversation and catching up for me and lots of rough and tumble play for the boys. We packed a TON of activity into 4 days. The kids didn't eat or sleep (only slightly exaggerating) the entire time, but we all survived.

September 2-6: Memphis, TN; Oklahoma City, OK; Amarillo, TX; Historic Rte. 66, the Painted Desert, Petrified Forest National Park, Santa Fe, NM, the Grand Canyon, Barstow, CA, Visalia, CA (Ryan) Ryan's road trip with Lance Kammer to drive out to our new home in the Bay Area.

   

 August 20-24 New York City and Unadilla, NY (Anna & the boys) Impromptu last trip home before moving to the West Coast. My mom took us on a memorable behind the scenes tour of the Metropolitan Museum on a Monday (when it is closed to the public).  We also drove up to Unadilla with Abby and Adam to surprise my dad. He doesn't love surprises and, although undoubtedly was glad to see us, was sort of confused about what we were doing there.

    

I love this sculpture. These sleeping boys remind me of fleshier versions of my own little cherubs. This mother looks so serene...I wish that were how I felt more often! But I, too, feel almost swept away by love and peace when I look at my sleeping boys. They look like angels. I just want to kiss their little rosebud lips and inhale their sweet baby scent. Maybe this marble mama's serenity is fleeting, too, if her little alabaster rascals were to wake up she would take on a more harried expression!

When my boys are sleeping they certainly don't look like the kind of kids who would lock themselves in a dog crate.  But alas, when they are awake, they can find all kinds of mischief. 

  

 

Oliver helped Grandpa with his garden and Grandpa introduced him to the wonders of penny smooshing. Abby and I used to do it all the time. We put pennies on the train tracks that run behind his house and then when after a train goes by we'd search for the smooshed pennies.

    

Aug 19-22: Costa Rica (Ryan) While I was in New York, Ryan was in Costa Rica attending the wedding of his friend Tatiana. Ryan met Tatiana on his 2 year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He taught her about the doctrines of our church and she  was baptized when she was 14. She subsequently served a mission herself in Honduras and was married in the temple in August. Ryan had a great time visiting some of the places he lived and reconnecting with old friends.

Aug 5-8: San Francisco, CA house hunting trip to the Bay Area

June 2-9: New York City and Unadilla, NY Abby & Adam's wedding (I already posted about this in considerable detail :-)

July 3-4: Atlanta, GA Georgia Aquarium, Coke Museum and visiting Bianca & Mark Bell. We weren't the only ones with this plan for the 4th of July! The museum/aquarium were PACKED and they don't call it "Hot-lanta" for nothing. We escaped the crowds and the heat and had a relaxing afternoon swimming with the Bells and their twin boys who are Elliot's age. 

July 23- Aug 1: Overland Park, KS; Parker, CO; Springville, UT; Bear Lake, ID Looooong road trip to awesome Cornell friends reunion at Bear Lake. We took our time getting out there, so it wasn't too bad, but we had to haul on our way home. The minivan earned its keep...when one of us was driving the other could lay out flat (OK, curled up somewhat, but not entirely, comfortably) in the third row. We visited friends and Halverson siblings on the way out and then had a wonderful 3 day reunion with some of our best friends from graduate school.  We hung out at the beach all day, went waterskiing (not my pregnant self obviously), had picnics at the park each night with the whole group (about 40 adults and a gazillion kids) had lots of late night laughs. 

 

The view from the minivan for most of the trip.  Flat, gray, boring.

The boys with their cousin David.

Ollie and Ryan chillaxing on the deck of Aaron's family's house where we stayed for the reunion. Can you see the reflection of the lake? It was so beautiful!

May 28-20: Overland Park, KS Memorial Day weekend with the Halversons (Brad & AM and fam, Kurt & Kirstin, Kim & Clark, Richard & Kathy, TJ and Blake). We stopped at the St. Louis Arch on the way out. What a triumph of architecture and engineering! Neither the kids nor we had the endurance to wait in line to go to the top but I bet the view is awesome.

       

Whew! That's the end of a marathon post, but I'm glad I finally recorded some of this.

Gender Stereotypes

Did you know that there are Barbie movies? Back in my day there were only Barbie dolls and Barbie Dream Houses and hot pink Barbie convertibles (oh, how I coveted those!!). Unless you have little girls, you probably wouldn't know that the Barbie franchise has moved into animated feature length films. I, however, also know this because Oliver is really into Barbie. He saw this one recently courtesy of some of one of his (girl) friends.

Ryan is a little concerned. I am not. Here's why. This is the conversation we had about Barbie:

Oliver: Mom, why are girls so pretty?

Me: Well if they are good and kind they have a beauty that comes from inside them and shines out from their faces. [How's that for an answer?!?]

O: But why do they wear such pretty dresses?

M: Girls like dresses.  Do you like dresses?

O: No! I like trucks. When I grow up I will drive a black pick up truck. It will have missiles on it and I will draw rocket ships on the sides. It will transform into a fighter jet. I will call it "Speed Rocket". But I think girls will really like my truck.

 

New News

So to those who have loosely been following our comings and goings it may seem like we just moved...yeah, we did. We sold our house in Raleigh, NC in February and moved into this awesome west Nashville farmhouse. In May a tree fell on the awesome west Nashville farmhouse and we had to move, rather suddenly and unexpectedly, into a somewhat less awesome house in Belle Meade. In late July we moved out of the Belle Meade house back into the farmhouse. And now, in less than three weeks, we will be moving again.

Yeah. We just can't get enough of the thrill of packing up boxes and misplacing key components of furniture and electronic equipment that has to be disassembled each time we move. Actually, this time we are moving much farther than our previous moves. We are moving to California over Labor Day weekend. Good times. We are actually pretty excited about living in the Bay Area, but less excited about being so far away from family and uprooting ourselves once again.

We are so sad to be leaving Nashville. It has been such a rich six months. We have completely fallen in love with this city. We have become friends with the most interesting and cool kindred spirits and packed our time here with unique-to-Nashville experiences. We knew that we probably weren't going to be here for very long but we had no idea it would be so short!!

We really have no regrets. We made the most of our time here and lived it up to the fullest. We're leaving "wanting more" which is a good thing I suppose. We are moving with Ryan's job, so a new position with the same company.

We are not going to start Oliver in preschool in September but hopefully we'll be able to find or form a Joy School group. If not I plan to keep the boys busy with swimming lessons (Oliver is a fantastic doggy paddler already), speech therapy for Oliver, and hopefully teaching Ollie to read and ride a bike. Those are my pre-baby goals. We'll see how those go. I realize I don't have any goals for Elliot...potty training seems still really far out on the horizon. He is not even a little bit ready. Hmm...maybe I will just indulge him and let him make the most out of these last few months of being the baby in the family.

Speaking of babies...the other news is that we are having another BOY!! We are really excited. No firm ideas about names so we welcome any suggestions. I found a doctor out in Walnut Creek who is actually also a certified nurse/midwife. Although she has an MD she practices a midwifery-centered model of birthing. Which means that she is very pro-natural birth which is something I'd like to try this time. She also was finishing her medical training at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1976, when I made my grand appearance at the hospital there. There's a chance she even observed my delivery since my mom said there were A LOT of students and residents at my birth. In any case, I thought that was an auspicious coincidence.
So that's what's going on around here. A lot of change. Hopefully relatively painless transitions. Elliot is screaming his blessed little head off so I better go give him some "nuggles". Why won't that kid go to bed?!?! Why is there always such bedtime drama?!?!

Happy Birthday Abby!!

Happy Birthday Abigail Alice Daisy Ford Winkel, MD! We love you! We also want to give a warm welcome to the newest member of the Ford/Winkel clan. Folks, meet Kermit:

Fresh from Michigan --whence all Winkels hail--, this little woodle (part Wheaton terrier, part poodle) is hypoallergenic, cute as a button, and probably as close as the Halverson boys will ever get to having a pet. Sad but true! We'll have to renegotiate in a few years but for now that discussion has been tabled. We can't wait to meet Kermit in the flesh and see his antics for ourselves.

Speaking of antics...Oliver learned that he could operate the elliptical trainer and has been really going to town on his new workout regimen. Ryan teases me for what I wear to the gym (you mean my Umbros and nasty old t-shirts from college don't look cute?!?) but I assure you I have never worked out in saggy Lightning McQueen underoos.

Friday Art Group Projects

One of the highlights of our summer has been our Friday morning art play group with my friend Suzy and her three kids. We take turns coming up with a project and hosting. In addition to the art projects, the kids play and we fix ourselves a gourmet lunch (PB&J or mac and cheese for the kids :-). Not too shabby. Here is a round up of our projects so far.

Week 1: The gyotaku project I posted about earlier.

Week 2: Glow in the dark art. This project was more or less a bust from a finished product perspective, but the kids had a lot of fun doing it. I totally subscribe to the theory that art should be about process more than product anyway, so it was still a cool activity. The *idea* was to draw a picture with neon crayons and then paint over the entire picture with black tempera paint. In theory, the drawing in crayon would have resisted the black paint and the picture would have "popped" out from the black paint. We just had the wrong materials...turns out real neon wax crayons are pretty hard to find. (A google search turned up just one source...ebay, below.) 

That is what we should have used. Instead we used the Crayola Twistables Neon Crayons, which are much less waxy, closer to colored pencils than true crayons. So they didn't work as well in resisting the tempera paint.

 

Also the washable black tempera paint was more like a navy blue than true black. Even though I am so thankful for the innovations of "washable" art materials at many key junctures (thank you Elliot for choosing washable markers when you decided to draw all over our sheets and comforter!) they often just don't work as well as the real thing. So, this project is one that I would try again with better materials next time.

Week 3: Giant Self Portraits. An oldie but goodie. We traced the kids in "action poses" on butcher paper and then let them paint their life sized self portraits. This was a big hit from the process perspective. We traced the kids and handed out paint and they really took it from there. I was really impressed that Oliver decided to paint green and blue stripes on his shirt, which was what he was wearing that day. Other notable features he chose to highlight were his Sketcher sneakers that his friend Mark insists are skateboarding shoes (Mark's Sketchers may well be skateboarding shoes, Oliver's I picked up at a consignment sale and I think are just regular sneakers. Oliver thinks they are super cool anyway.) He also drew his leg bones, his underwear, and his penis...so, there you have it, all the important parts accounted for.  

Week 4: Eric Carle-inspired poppies. This was a fun lesson as well as a project. The kids are all familiar with author and illustrator Eric Carle's books (The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? etc.) Suzy showed them some examples of his work and explained how he creates his signature collage technique. Eric Carle doesn’t just paint his pictures, and he doesn’t just cut out paper to form his pictures, but he does both!  He paints beautiful pieces of paper and then uses those as his “palette” to cut out and create collages for his fantastic illustrations.  (Learn more about his techniques in his own words.)

The kids then used red and green tempera paint on newspaper to create their color palettes. They experimented with creating various textures by rolling spiral pasta, dragging toothpicks, and racing matchbox cars across the wet paint. We put their sheets of newspaper out to dry for an hour while we had lunch. Afterward, the kids traced and cut out petals and leaves for their poppies. Suzy had already cut out cardboard centers for the flowers. They glued the petals to the cardboard centers and then the whole flower to a stick they had each found outside. Lastly, they used a glue stick on the center of the flower and sprinkled poppy seeds on it. Viola! An Eric Carle-inspired poppy. Oliver was exceedingly proud of his creation.

   

Week 5: Faux Batik. This may be my favorite project yet. I came across this technique when I googled "batik for kids." This post on the Artist Woman's blog is two years old but some how is enjoying a minor resurgence around the web right now. In the past few weeks I have seen a bunch of other postings referring back to her original post. (Check out Teacher Tom's Tibetan Prayer Flags his class made...awesome!) Anyway, the Artist Woman link above describes the technique in detail so I won't repeat it. Suffice it to say, you'll need Crayola Gel Glue, acrylic paint and some fabric. We chose pillow cases but then when I saw how huge they were I decided Oliver would do better with a slightly smaller canvas. I cut a smaller square out of the pillow case that I will stuff and sew it back up into a little pillow.

This is a two-day project because the glue has to dry over night before you can paint it. So at first I gave Oliver the fabric square and a bottle of glue and told him to create a design. He is really into rocket ships and fighter jets lately so that is what he chose to draw. Drawing with the glue was a little tricky for him, so for the other side I had him draw his design with a disappearing ink pen (we also could have used a pencil) and then I traced over his drawing with the glue.   

The next day we painted over the fabric with watered-down acrylic paint. I was a little worried that it wasn't going to work because it looked like the paint had been absorbed into the fabric even where the glue was (where it was supposed to resist). But it came out beautifully. I guess the paint gets absorbed by the gel glue which prevents it from soaking into the fabric. The Artist Woman suggests soaking the fabric in a tub of warm water to get the gel glue off but the colors didn't run at all (since it is paint and not dye) so next time I will just throw it in the washing machine.

   

I adore Oliver's batik. I think the stars came out particularly well (he had a lot of fun with those!) and I'd like to point out his depiction of the moon and the planet Saturn (in orange). What a treasure!

Next week we are out of town, but the following week we are going to try making marbleized paper with liquid watercolors and shaving cream. I'll let you know how it goes!