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Up!

Last Tuesday was L-day … as in Launch Day. The kids had been looking forward to this for quite some time. It was the day we would set off the air rocket they built with daddy.

The concept of an air rocket is pretty simple. Rather than having some sort of slow burning onboard fuel, an air rocket is all the initial thrust. You use a cylinder to capture air at high pressure. The pressure comes from a standard bicycle pump. You then release the pressure suddenly, expelling the air straight up and into a rocket made with paper and reinforced with painter’s tape.  NASA has a good description of some of the physics.

Continue reading “Up!”

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Easy Reader EBooks

Tabby is getting to the point where she needs more to read than just sight words, but finding her books that are age appropriate and worth reading – let’s just say I’m not big on Fairy Princess Barbie books – is pretty darn hard. So when I saw Playdough to Plato’s great idea of making your own Easy Reader books, I knew I had to give it a go. I thought of going with the paper model, maybe putting it together in InDesign and printing it out, but then I thought that maybe I could make a Kindle Book! I’m techie, how hard could it be?? Turns out, happily, not very hard. Here’s how you do it.

A couple of notes: first of all, I did this on my Windows based PC. It looks like it would work for a Mac, but I don’t know and I don’t have a way to test. Also, from what I’ve read, the resulting file would work on a variety of eReaders, but since I only have a Kindle Fire, that’s all I’ve tested the file on. This is the method that worked for me and I’ve had no problems with it, but mileage may vary, etc. I am happy to have any feedback from you and I will try to help if I can!

Continue reading “Easy Reader EBooks”

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Where’d that week go?

What a week we had. Not only was it one of the busiest on the calendar, but it was just … weird. I received two pieces of very bad news … a divorce, a diagnosis. Neither belong to me, but both affect dear friends will continue to for years to come. It was hard and kind of depressing. You hate to see the ones you love in pain. Continue reading “Where’d that week go?”

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Digital Scraptitude

So long ago I used to do the paper scrapbook thing … sorta. But I’d already been doing the digital image thing for long enough that the messiness of paper scrapbooking really bugged me. I also never liked the “overhead” involved in picking up and putting down a project. Digital is just my thing. So when Tabby was born, I tried to do some digital scrapbooking and I didn’t get too far. It was a good idea, but a few things plagued me. 1. I went too crazy and I got discouraged. I wanted to have all the photos and when I couldn’t find one, I’d get frustrated. And I wanted all my layouts perfect and super creative like the ones I saw online.  2. I got overwhelmed by volume – too much to catch up on!  3. I really didn’t have the time. Continue reading “Digital Scraptitude”

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♥ Weekend

Is the weekend really almost over? It went by so fast!

The mercury was pushing the high 90s so Friday we went to the pool and stayed for hours. It was the only outdoors place to be, that’s for sure. It was so much fun hanging with our friends. That evening my family came over for Pizza and Downton Abbey (a great combo if there ever was one).

Saturday morning we had our friends’ boys with us. The kids played for a while and then we took them on a short expedition to IKEA where Matt and I looked for this and that and mostly didn’t find it. I did get a great new bin for Ben’s train tracks and some shelves for Ben’s room. The kids were hungry early and we took them to the restaurant for meatballs which they practically licked off the plate.

Saturday afternoon we had a birthday party for our friends’ kids. It was a nice low-key BBQ and we all enjoyed ourselves. Afterwards my parents picked up the kids for a date at Larkburger and a showing of Ice Age 4 – both were well-received. Matt and I meanwhile headed off to the 5th anniversary party for my gym, another nice lowkey BBQ affair. We hung around with all of my fab classmates and their spouses and celebrated Robyn, our awesome coach. We got to spend the rest of the night relaxing sans kiddos.

In the morning, Matt and I slept in REALLY late – I think that’s the first time in years I’ve slept past 9. Then we did stuff around the house – cleaned out the fridge, worked in the garage and hung Ben’s shelves. Then we hit the grocery store and went to get the kids. We ended up going out to lunch with my mom and before we knew it it was time to head home. Tabby had afternoon swim lessons. We had to rush to get there on time and as soon as we showed up, the pool was closed for lightning. Boo. Lessons rescheduled for later this week.

So now we are doing the Sunday night thing – getting ready for the week and doing just a bit more relaxing. It is quiet and nice.

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Working for the Weekend

It has been such a long week! And it’s only Wednesday! I think it’s partially because I brought my work home with me Monday and worked into the wee smalls. Our sitter is also off for the week, so we are juggling around three different sitters over four days and some craziness that goes along with that.

So I am looking forward to the weekend. It is not CRAZY busy. We just have two parties to go to, and some little visitors on Saturday morning. And maybe a third party, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. Not too bad, right? So I’m looking forward to a little time to get some things done around the house. We need to make a run to Good Will. A few weeks ago we did some purging of toys from the kids’ rooms and held onto the spoils until we made sure they weren’t going to miss them. They are going away this weekend along with some clothes, books and magazines and other random stuff I’ve been gathering.

I’d also like to tackle one or two projects around the house. There are some that are already in the queue, like fixing Tabby’s shelf and making Ben’s decorative shelves, and cleaning out my office and some others I’ve only been dreaming of. I saw this awesome backyard sign featuring places you’ve been on Pinterest and I really want to make one. Matt and I also want to cover a corkboard with a map of CO so that we can add pins to all of the camping/vacation destinations we’ve been to around the state.

There are also a couple of stores I’d like to check out. Apparently there is another great fabric store in the area, Fabricate, that I would love to check out. I’m toying with the idea of covering our camper’s dinette cushions with oilcloth or similar since (ahem) kids eat there. Athleta, purveyor of my favorite clothes also just opened a retail store in Denver and I’d LOVE to check that out.

I am NOTHING if not talented at jam-packing a weekend.

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Bazinga!

… and other things running through my head.

It’s all been just a little crazy lately. Yesterday we had to buy a vacuum, completely out of the blue. Our housecleaning faeries, as I affectionately refer to them, do not bring their own vacuum with them and since ours died and they were flying in today, a new vacuum had to be purchased. It gave us 10 years of dog hair removal so it probably doesn’t owe us much. Matt and the kids went to Sears to pick it up and the kids were thrilled with the whole process and fought over who would use it first. It really sucks, that’s for sure.

Suddenly there’s this mad race to do all these things … trips, parties, girls’ nights, dinners, weekends-away, etc … BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS. Though in all fairness, there are a few things on the calendar even after school stars, every weekend until SCHOOL STARTS will be filled.to.the.brim. We may even have to move our anniversary trip.

We’ve been cooking quite a bit, but it’s been all super simple stuff … meat on the grill plus nuked veggies with seasoning on them. Super easy and tasty but pretty boring. Life just hasn’t been lending itself well to the use of cookbooks. However, we are throwing our sitter a retirement/thank-you-for-putting-up-with-us-for-five-years dinner in a couple of weeks and I will be pulling out all the stops … or at least baking.

I have some really cool stuff I want to share. Kjersten asked about my digital scrapbooking which I would definitely like to share since I’ve been enjoying it and since I’ve actually been making headway (though less since we got back from vacation, I notice). I also made Tabby her own “Learn to Read” book in digital format, inspired by a project on Playdough to Plato, and put it on the Kindle which was a major hit, so I’d like to share how I accomplished that as well because it was fun and pretty easy.

I have not been running much, though I have been keeping up my bootcamp routine. There are reasons for the lack of running: being out of the routine, things at work being insane and some ennui caused, oddly enough, by a running clinic I took. But I am really wanting to get back into it. Tonight I signed up for a 5K to do with a big group and I’m really looking forward to it. Now to dust off my shoes and get back to it…

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Doodles and Such

While we were on vacation, Tabby and I spent some time doodling – in the Oodles of Doodles book to be exact. Doodle Books, in case you’re not familiar with the concept, are quite similar to coloring books but quite a bit more open-ended. Instead of a full picture for you to color, they provide a backdrop or a start to a picture and you fill it in with your own artwork. She is still very much in the learning-to-draw portion of things, but she and I were able to have a very good time filling up a few pages in the book. I plan to take it along again this weekend while we’re camping.

Yes, camping. Again. I am a bit exhausted just thinking about it, but we hadn’t taken Loki out in a while and we had the camper out to have it serviced, so it just made sense to go. No one was available to join us which was kind of a bummer, but also kind of good. It keeps things simpler and will give us time as a family. I’ve been downloading some books to read aloud to the kids and stuff like that.

I also have a few word games I’m planning to take with us. There’s a great site called Playdough to Plato (love that name!) that’s dedicated to fun learn-to-read games. Tabby is well on her way with the reading and can stumble through a lot of the early readers, but she’s been so into the whole thing that I want to help her make more progress. They’re also great because they can be adapted to the level Ben is at, recognizing letters. Most of them also only require some paper or notecards and some markers.

Here they are if you’re interested.

1. Climb to the top – kids roll a dice (made with a cube block and some sticky labels) with sight words or letters on each face and see which one of the six sides gets to the top of the chart first.

2. Same or different – a card is divided down the center with a line and then on each side of the line two letter or number combinations are written. The child then has to decide if they’re the same or different. This helps them to train themselves to visually differentiate between common words that are close to one another.

3. Showdown – you make two sets of cards with the same letters, numbers or words on them, varying in quantity and complexity based on the age of the child. You pick a card from your deck and read it. The child then has a few moments to shuffle through their pile and find the corresponding word/letter/number. Once he’s found it you say “1-2-3 SHOWDOWN!” and you both turn over your cards. If they match … YAY and if not, the child can go through their pile to find the matching one.

I also found this cute math game for addition. We regularly practice addition in the car with Tabby so I think she can handle it. Wonder if I have enough dice.

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Change? We fear change.

We have some huge changes coming up here pretty soon at Casa de Nichols. I am referring of course to the retirement of our long-term (5.5 yrs!!) sitter and the kids moving into official full-day schools. As a type-A control freak, I am not very big on change. But over the years I’ve both developed coping mechanisms for dealing with change, namely planning! I get to make lists and time tables and label things and suddenly even though I can’t control what else the change is going to do to us, I feel better because backpacks are labeled and the calendar is updated and I have a chart for making sack lunches.

So I am slowly but determinedly getting everything ready for the big shift. I have a countdown sort of going in my mind, not like 52 days, 51 days, 50 days … but practically every time I look at the calendar, I do a gut check of “Wow. Just a month until our sitter’s last day,” or “Wow, just 3 weeks until we do Kindergarten registration.” I’ve ordered Ben a nap mat – it arrived yesterday and let’s just say he hasn’t been this excited for naps in a loooong time – and some personalized stickers to label clothes and lunch containers. In all seriousness, I do have a file of links to lunch ideas. I’ve also been filling out mounds of paperwork and making sure all the things we need to do before school starts (immunizations, dentist appointments, shopping trips) are handled. And I am planning a small “thank you” dinner for our sitter.

Winston Churchill said, “There is nothing wrong with change as long as it is in the right direction.” I’m sure he was right. But I also like my change well orchestrated.