Anniversary & Spanish Immersion

It's May 29th.  Nine years ago today Myke & I tied the knot on the absolutely stunning and beautiful Hawaiian island of Kauai.  It was amazing.  I close my eyes and just wish myself back there.  Even if just for a moment.  It was such a fun week and 1/2 trip.  We rented an ocean front house with a pool for friends and family to stay with us at.  You could snorkel right off the back yard.  There were sea turtles RIGHT there.  My favorite.  The guests consisted of such a fun crowd and mix of different people from different parts of our lives.  We basically invited all friends and family to come.  Put out the Save-the-Dates a year in advance so if anyone wanted to save up for the trip, they could (that's a long trip from the east coast, where most of our friends and family were located).  We ended up with a great group of people from all different parts of our lives.  Apart from both of our immediate families we had some aunts and uncles, a few cousins, some college friends, a co-worker from a past job in Virginia, a grandmother, some San Diego friends (we had been living in San Diego a couple years by the time we got married), two friends from Australia, an employer, etc.  Everyone flew in at various times and most had their own accommodations set up.  We spent a lot of time with the guests both before and just after the wedding.  We had a cocktail pool party at the rental house to welcome everyone to the island, Myke's parents took everyone to a luau for the "rehearsal dinner", a bunch of us went on a snorkeling boat tour a couple days after the wedding, and quite a few people went to the rope swing and cliff jumping area together.  The weather was perfect the entire time.  I can almost feel the refreshing ocean breezes on my face right now...ahhhh.  Snap back to reality....not that I can complain too much about reality when reality is San Diego.  What a fun trip though.  Then Myke and I returned for our 5 year anniversary and renewed our vows.  Maybe we'll go again next year for the 10 year anniversary?  It is tradition now, isn't it?  Who wants to step up and take care of 4 small children for a week?  Anyone?  Hello?? :)

Well, I can't type for long.  Need to get ready to head out to Chloë's future elementary school's Open House Night.  We've had some exciting news happen to us in the Chloë-is-going-to-elementary-school arena.  Backstory:  back when Chloë was in T-ball (last Fall?), I was speaking to a mom about schools and she mentioned she was going to apply for her twins (same age as Chloë) to go to the Dual Language Immersion (for Spanish) program at their school for next year.  Well, as we are relatively new to this area, I didn't even know a thing about this program but I had started looking at one down where we used to live back before the move happened.  Anyways, in an attempt to make a long story short: I looked into the program, put Chloë's name in the lottery for it, and then all but forgot about it.  The chances of her getting accepted were quite slim from what I was hearing.  First of all, the programs were not offered at her home school (which is right up the road from us, very convenient, has a beautiful campus, great parent involvement, great test scores and supposed to be a GREAT school, overall....which is part of the reason we moved to this area).  So this program is currenlty only offered at two of the other eight elementary schools in our district.  The programs only accepted 48 children at each school.  24 of those children need to be native Spanish speakers.  24 need to be native English speakers.  Of the 24 native English speakers, 70% of the chosen children will come from that home school.  As in that, they would already be attending the school where the DLI program is offered (each grade has two DLI classes and two "regular" English-taught classes).  So we were in the 30% of kids that were applying from different "home" schools.  They only were taking 7 or 8 students "like Chloë" at each school that offered the program.  So pretty small chance, depending on how many people actually apply.  Anyways, I all but forgot about it until a letter came in the mail earlier this month saying "Congratulations!!"  and that Chloë's name had been picked from the bucket to attend the DLI program at one of the schools that it was offered.

So here we are, a few weeks later.  A few weeks of thinking about it, weighing pros and cons (this school is a further drive, won't go to school with neighborhood friends (5 of which are starting kindergarten next Fall)), talking to the principles from both our home school and the possible new school with the DLI program, chatting for hours on the phone with parents of children in the program currently, googling and reading about the 90/10 immersion model that is used, researching success rates, lots of discussions between Myke and myself, etc.  As NONE of the cons have outweighed the pros, or come even close-we've come to the final decision that we WILL put Chloë in the program.  We're super-excited about it the further we go and more we find out.  Today I had a chance to visit the school and see both a 5th grade DLI class and one of the first grade ones.  I was blown away with how well the first graders were speaking in Spanish and how wonderful the teacher seemed.   We're all going back tonight for the Open House.  I'll post more about it later!

**I didn't put much detail about the program in this post, but to sum it up, it's a K-6 program in which you are taught in Spanish (90% of the time in K and first, and then less each year on up through 6th). The goal is to have the students bi-literate in both English and Spanish by middle school.  I wish I had done something like this when I was in school!  Not sure if anything like this was even offered where I grew up...

Focusing on the Positive...(Thanks, Dad!)

***My Dad wanted me to note the things that HAVE gotten done while they have been here:

*New hardware on all the doors upstairs.  Chloë is super-excited that she now has a door that locks.  Luckily for us, we can easily un-lock it from the outside just as fast as she can lock it with a small pin we keep above the door.

*Garage was completely swept and shop-vacced (is that a verb?).

*Car was washed

*Clothes have been folded in a timely manner so that our couch hasn't been a mountain of clothes ...and I haven't folded one item of clothing in two weeks...Thanks, Mom!

*Silverware tray has been wiped out...haha...but the little things do add up!


I'm really not that negative and only complaining about what hasn't happened....my point in the previous post was that I just want EVERYTHING on my list done.  Now.  I have to start looking at the good.  The stuff that HAS been done.  Not the stuff that I STILL need to do.  But life moves on.  Moving forward....

Rambling....(This could be the title to EVERY post I've ever written)

Life is going fast.  It always seems to zip by just a little bit faster when we have guests in town.  I've realized that it's because I set myself up for a state of being overwhelmed when we have guests in town.  I'm just not Martha Stewart and I don't apologize for that...but I do feel a little bit bad that my dad probably loses 10+ pounds on every visit to our house.  He is NOT used to not only our vegetarian/some vegan/some gluten-free diet BUT also the fact that we don't necessarily get around to making meals for the adults.  Things get so busy busy busy in the day that when the kids take a rest, we all take a rest.  Then they wake up from naps and are READY to eat NOW....so you end up throwing something easy and convenient together for them.  Mac N Cheese, vegetarian chicken nuggets, grilled-cheeses, etc.  Not always the healthiest...and definitely not what my parents want to eat.  So the kids are eating that around 5pm and then my dad asks, "What are the rest of us going to eat?".  Well, the truth is, after the chaos of dinner, hearing the complaints/crying/refusing-to-eat-what-is-served-and-then-being-cranky-due-to-low-blood-sugar, often I've just about HAD it.  Whenever I take the time to prepare healthy, nutritious meals the kids don't want it.  Why do I waste my time on them.  We end up throwing away a lot of food off their plates.  So, lately, once the kids are done eating we just DON'T eat ourselves.  Or we make a quick frozen dinner.  Let me just throw in there that when it comes to gluten-free & vegan sometimes a frozen dinner is the best bet.  There is just NO easy meal that you can throw together.  That diet takes a considerable amount of preparation.  I'm not opposed to that.  I actually (believe it or not) enjoy cooking to some extent.  When it's quiet and I can focus on what I'm doing.  So almost never :)

Okay, so this post definitely went somewhere that I didn't intend for it to go...but that's how a lot of these posts are.  I just open the laptop and let it start flowing.  Pair that with a glass of red wine (and no dinner.  See above.) and you never know what I might ramble about.

On another note, while my Dad LOSES weight whenever he visits us, I GAIN weight.  Not fair!  It doesn't help that my mom arrived at our house with a giant bag of M&M's for us.  Well, they were SUPPOSED to be for the boys as incentives for sitting on the potty, but tell that to a chocolate addict.  I.Have.No.Control.   Not when it comes to chocolate.  On top of the M&M's my dad bought a giant bag of fancy truffles at Costco while he was here.  I've had two tonight so far.  With a glass of red wine.  And no dinner.  Who needs dinner?

Okay, so I guess what I started rambling about in this post was the fact that I set myself up for a state of being overwhelmed because I try to fit way TOO much into the time that we have visitors.  I start compiling a list of things I want to get done while people are here a couple months in advance.  Things I just can't seem to get done when it's just Myke and I and the kids.  For instance, while my parents were here I wanted to:  1) Visit the Children's Museum downtown.  We have an annual pass.  It's not easy to go there alone with 4 kids and I don't want to go to places like that on weekends when they are crazy busy.  Taking the grandparents would be a great idea.  Have not done this.  2) Take the boys to California Adventure for their 3rd birthday.  We have been planning this for 2 years.  3) Get flowers planted in the back garden 4) Take tubs of too-small baby and kid clothes to the resale shop to sell/trade. 5) Prepare for the yard sale we're supposed to have next weekend.

Those are just a few of the things on my list that I HAVE not gotten done yet.  My parents are only here 5 more days and already most of those days are booked and busy.  When parents visit I just try to squeeze WAY too much in.   I try to schedule every doctor appointment, dentist appointment, one-on-one time with each kid, often a haircut for myself, etc...just things that are easier to do with some grandparents to babysit at least SOME of the other kids.  I can only get done what I get done.  I need to stop stressing about crossing every item off the list   I just need to let it go.  LET IT GO...dahdahdahdah dahhhhh (Frozen. I couldn't help it.)

I need to lower my expectations and just realize that some things just won't get done.  And that's fine. I'm getting there.  I'm working on it.  It's a work in progress.

I have four kids.  At least one of them has basically told me that I need to pull in the reins and stop running around so much.  Owen has started telling them that he doesn't want to go and that he wants to stay home.  He's a homebody like Myke.  I kind of want to be a homebody for a bit.  I think I would have a lot more peace?  Not sure.  I'll definitely plan a day to just stay at home and play with the kids....soon....just as soon as I finish my never-ending TO-DO list.   Hmmmm

WildFires in May?!?!

Been an interesting week here in Southern California.  Everyone has obviously heard about the wildfires that we are experiencing here over the past few days.  Interestingly, I was informed of the fires via Facebook...sign of the times... maybe I need to "Look Up" (have you seen that viral video yet?)  Anyways,  I was sitting browsing through the newsfeed on my phone for a second (in a rare  "no-one-is-needing-me-urgently" moment in time) and saw that my next-door neighbor had posted a photo of our backyards (taken from her 2nd story deck) on her page.  I was confused for a second until I looked at the top of the photo and saw black billowing smoke in the distance.  Woah!  I ran upstairs to take a look off our deck...and sure enough, smoke was billowing up in the distance.  Definitely a HUGE fire.  Things took off from there with the fires getting bigger and starting up in different areas later in the day, as well.  After self-evacuating for a couple hours (we drove down south to Del Mar for lunch...JUST in case), we headed back to Encinitas an spent most of Wednesday glued to the TV whenever the kids weren't around.  The Carlsbad fire was just a couple miles north of our house and the "Cocos Fire" was about 5 miles or so east.  We were lucky to be in the clear.  The air has been really smokey and there is ash everywhere, but hoping the cooler temperatures and on-shore winds will help the firefighters to get everything contained.  They are truly heroes, out there fighting the blaze in these record high temperatures.  I can't even imagine.

On a happier note, today is Owen & Elijah's 3rd birthday!   Myke and I CAN believe they are three.  In fact, we are surprised they aren't older.  We feel like they should be at least 4 by now.  I hardly can remember life without them around!  They are the sweetest little boys.  I'm really looking forward to our trip to California Adventure next week, which is what we're doing for their birthday this year.  It will be JUST Myke, myself and the boys.  We will really get to have quality time with just them (with NEVER happens...never.. :(  ) and just spoil them and enjoy them.  My parents are in town and are going to stay home with the girls.   We had originally planned to go one day this week but ended up changing it due to the forecast of ridiculously hot temps.  I'm glad we did because the day we had planned to go ended up being over 100 degrees at the Disney parks!  Yuck!  At this point we are planning to go next Tuesday and the are forecasting 73 degrees as the high for that day.  Yay!

Well, the older kids are on their way home from preschool so I better get going!

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San Marcos ("Cocos fire") in to the east

View from our upstairs balcony

Carlsbad fire- Wednesday

Ash on my car

Thursday the fires flared up again in the "Cocos Fire"

View from the parking lot of a store I went to

the kids playing with Grandpa

Peanut butter & apple slices- Grandpa's favorite snack!

The kids love it, too!

AND...just to end on a COOL note, here is a photo from our trip to the Legoland water park last week before my parents arrived.  Ahhhhh!