We Are Their Good Luck Charm, Duh

Too School for Cool

For all the amateur and professional photographers out there,  everyone's desire to be creative and artistic in their photography and to "capture the essence of the person," there's still nothing quite like the classic school photo.   

The mottled, multi-colored background.  

The sitting straight on a stool.  

The head tilted just so.  

It's all perfect.  

This year's crop of photos did not disappoint.  They also happened to have arrived about the same time as parent/teacher conferences.   

Allow me.

JBird

5th Grade

Model student.  In the advanced reading and math groups.  Loves school.  Is loved by his teacher.  She put her hand over her heart and let out an audible sigh when attempting to describe what it's like to have him in class.   One thing he could work on: Not socializing so much during class.  It doesn't help the situation that his BFF is in his class, but he promises to work on it.  Conference ends with more accolades and descriptive words such as "joy," "adore" and "amazing kid."  

TBone

3rd Grade

Doing well in all subject areas.  Mrs. Teacher is aware that, despite his two trips to the principal's office this year, he really is a good kid and just had some unfortunate circumstances (and reaction to those circumstances) come his way.  He is fun & creative.  "What's his room like at home?  Because his desk is atrocious.  You can't walk past it without something falling out of it."  Needs to work on organization skills.  Mrs. Teacher recommends a large exercise ball for TBone to sit on during class (rather than a chair) to help with the "extra energy issues."  She would much rather have a little bouncing all day than large outbursts of energy later.  I walk out grateful for a young, energetic teacher who really seems to "get" Tbone.   I know I won't always be this lucky.  ::writes "exercise ball" on Walmart list::

Beebee Girlerz

4K Preschool Class

Her teacher called for a telephone conference a couple of weeks ago to check in and let me know how Beebs was doing.  She is great with her letters & numbers.  She's in the early stages of spelling (she can spell the names of everyone in our family plus the pets and has my & Gty's cell numbers memorized). She plays with everyone and is kind.  She loves "school days" (Mon-Thurs) and loves her teachers.  One thing that Mrs. PreschoolTeacher said that she can work on: helping clean up after their various activities.  Apparently she & Sarah try to get out of cleaning up all the time by "needing to go to the bathroom" or hiding in a different room until the clean up is over.   When I mentioned this to her she gave me a look like "Um, how do you know about that?"  and then could not get over the fact that her teacher knew her telephone number and could call her house.  She promised to help from now on and it's her goal for Mrs. PreschoolTeacher to deem her The Best Cleaner Upper by the end of the school year.  We'll see how that goes.

Smashing Pumpkins

Every Halloween I walk a fine line between what I want to do (not celebrate Halloween/pretend it doesn't even exist, not find costumes for the kids, not carve pumpkins, not buy $50 worth of candy to pass out to the neighborhood brats, not pick up wrappers for weeks afterward because my kids think the space between the couch and the ottoman is a garbage can, etc.) and what I really don't want to do (cause permanent psychological damage to my children surrounding the celebrating of this pagan holiday).

I think this year I managed to balance it out pretty well.

Due to Gty being out of town the week leading up to Halloween, and my extreme to intense hatred of carving pumpkins, I figured out a way to do pumpkins this year with out having a sore arm afterward.  We painted pumpkins and then the kids stuck on some foam pieces in the general configuration of a face.

(Note: We don't get the paper.  So I had no newspaper to put down on the table.  I decided to stick a couple pieces of Press-n-Seal down in front of each kid.  Yeeeeah, no.  I still have some residue on the top of the table from that stuff.  You've been warned.)

Here are the final products.  

You can't see but the "pumpkin princess" does have a nose that you can't see (pumpkins are heavy, you gize!).  That balloon is supposed to be her blowing a bubble gum bubble.  Oh, and that line of circles is a necklace.  I'm sure that was obvious though.

I'm guessing we will be doing this again in the future.  The kids loved it seeing as I can count on two fingers the number of times I've let them paint something in the kitchen.  And no scraping out pumpkin guts.  Ding!  <---- bonus sound.

Some People Wait A Lifetime...

... for a moment like this.  

--Kelly Clarkson, American Idol Champion, Season 1

Some facts to consider:

• The last time the Giants won a World Series it was 1953.  They were the New York Giants at that time.
• The Giants moved from New York to SF in 1958.
• They hadn't won a World Series since.
• Gty was born in 1971.... so, you do the math here.

Other items of note:

• Gty's email address (since email first came out) has been gagiants.
• Every year, Gty, his dad and the boys go to SF to see a couple of Giants games.
• Last year, JBird was Tim Lincecum for Halloween.  
• Gty's grandma (now 93 years old) has loved the Giants FOREVER and has missed watching very few games.  She's the reason his entire family are huge fans.

So, that is why there was much whooping and hollering in our house on Monday night.  The boys acted like they too had waited 39 years for the Giants to finally win a World Series.  Tbone was particularly boisterous in his cheering even though he had been rooting for the Phillies in the the series before just to tick Gty and JBird off.  Thank goodness he came around for the last 20 minutes of Game 5.

Here is what they wore to school the next day.  Tbone earned it, I think.  Those twenty minutes when he cared were stressful.

A re-enactment of the aforementioned whooping and hollering.

Any guesses on who our favorite player is?

Gty wore his jersey around today too claiming he had waited his whole life to wear his team's jersey the day after a championship win.  He felt he had earned the right to collect congratulatory remarks from passersby.  The older people volunteering at the voting place today did NOT disappoint.  They were very impressed by Gty and his ability to wear a Giants jersey and hat and laid it on real thick.  He could not have been more pleased.

All Hallow's Eve

So have you all tried the Pumpkin Crunch recipe?  Cuz apparently I didn't want to do another post until every. last. one. of you had tried it.

So you loved it?

Good.

I figured I'd better post what the little goblins dressed up as for Halloween this year.  We had an eclectic gathering of characters & time periods.

First, Al Capone:

Next, cowboy/TBone's Frontierville Character:

That's his "This town ain't big enough for the two of us" look.

 

And finally, Dorothy:

The Toto in the basket prop was the deciding factor in what she wanted to be.

Due to Halloween being on Sunday this year, we had less candy this year than we've ever had which is perfect.  They had their class parties at school, of course.  Then we had the ward Trunk-or-Treat on Friday night.  We also went around to a few members' homes on Saturday night.  We thought the kids would complain about not being able to go out on Sunday night but they actually really liked handing out the candy to all our "customers" (as Beebs called them).