Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Ghost and Guns..

as viewed from an 8 year old perspective.

I don't know if you remember, a while back - possibly over spring break - we went to Calico Ghost Town and shooting.  You can check out those blog entries here and here.

Well, guess what came home from school this week?  Son 2's personal narrative about his experience that day.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a great Mom and this is one of those times.  I gave my child a life experience and he was able to remember it and write a great essay about it.

Planning sheet
Let me go on record here that Son 2's teacher is probably one of the best I've ever seen and that includes my own time as a teacher.  The quality of work she gets out of her students is amazing.

page 1
 
I don't remember writing anything this good in second grade.

page 2

Since no one wants to try and read the scanned in pages of Son 2's personal narrative,  I've copied it below for your reading pleasure.

page 3

Ghost Town

Boom!  Did you hear that?  We are going to Calico and we get to go shooting too.

First my family and I drove to a shooting site.  It took a really, really long time to get there.  Once we got there we set up our targets.  They were a creepy, bloody pig, missing an eye.  I hit the pig on his eye, nose, one of his scars and the ear.  While my sister was shooting my brother and I dug a deep hole and built a rock wall in front of it to block the wind while we were working.  We worked really hard on the hole so I took a nap in the car.

After we went shooting we drove to a ghost town called Calico.  We saw the sign on the mountain.  It was big.  At Calico we went into a crooked house called the Shick Shack (he means Shake Shack).  It made my feet hurt.  In the rooms and outside everything was weird.  Things were built wrong.  Water went up ramps and balls rolled upward too.  I think I know the trick to that.  And when you sat in a chair you couldn't get up.  I know the trick to that too.  Finally, after the Shick Shack we panned for gold.  It was tricky.  But I got gold.  I got very disappointed when my brother told me it was fake gold.  Calico and shooting was fun.


Grading rubric

For those of you not familiar with how schools grade primary grades anymore, here is a sample of a rubric.

Times have sure changed, but one thing hasn't - the joy of feeling like you did a good job as a parent.

Happy Tuesday :)

Monday, June 10, 2013

HQ Quilt..

close up.

Here are the promised photos of my sister's HQ Quilt.

The quilt was started back in the 1980's, some of the quilt squares are original and the rest I embroidered over the past couple of years.

Squares on left are new, on right vintage

Some of the squares were partially embroidered, the lower right hand square was one my mother started and I finished.  This square was on the top of the pile during the years in storage and it is pretty discolored.  You can be rest assured that I still torture my Mom over this one :)

Top squares are new, bottom vintage

Some of the old squares had the design already drawn on them and I just stitched them up.  I'm not sure the last time I saw a kitten snow man holding a broom by a tree.

Upper right square is new, the rest vintage

Some of my favorite squares are the ones that the younger girls embroidered themselves back in the day.

Left hand squares new, right hand vintage

I wonder how many skeins of embroidery thread were used in the making of this fan square?

Top right is new and the rest are vintage

I find the family picnic square very interesting with its random drawings. I have a theory that this square was embroidered/designed by a person who did another square shown later in the post.  Let me know what you think.

Top left, bottom right vintage
This set of 4 blocks are all vintage.  I just added some writing.

All vintage
The quilt square by Custodian of Paraphernalia, Pam Brennen looks very similar in design and execution to the family picnic square.  I like this square too.

All new except for the top right square

I embroidered my sister's center square, I got a bit carried away with the roses.

new center square

Here is a close up of the center square, I added lots of knots to give it some dimension.

Close up of center square

Here is the finished quilt in all its glory.


Completed Quilt

My indulgent husband agreed to hold it up for me :)

Happy Monday!

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Date night..

..married style.

I remember way, way back before Nadim and I had any kids, before we were married, back when dates used to be romantic.

Dates like

..eating at the Cottage in Laguna Beach and kissing on the cliffs

..kayaking around Newport Bay

..a road trip to Las Vegas

Now our dates consist of shopping at REI then Lowes.

When confronted about our trend in date nights, Nadim responded,

"Well, their functional dates."

Functional dates?  What??

This is something only a man would say - functional dates.

Please.

At least I got to eat dinner at Zankou chicken.  I wrote a blog about Sarkis Pastry that mentioned Zankou Chicken here if you want to check it out.

Zankou in all its glory

So Zankou is in Anaheim in a heavily Middle Eastern area, so if you want to pick up a hooka or supplies to make Lebanese coffee, you are good to go :)

Order at the counter and wait for your number to be called

 Sometimes it is tricky to get a table in Zankou, once a whole soccer team came in at once. 

Here come the chicken plates

Part of the charm of Zankou is the wide range of people that come in to eat.  It's like the United Nations in there.  I don't know, but I think getting enemies to sit down at a table and eat some delicious Zankou, might solve a lot of the world's problems.

All this goodness is right underneath the Arabic bread

So on the chicken plate you get - roasted chicken, hummos, pickled turnips (the pink sticks), tomatoes, peppers, arabic bread and the garlic paste.  The garlic paste is UNBELIEVABLY good.
 
This is how you do it - Lebanese style :)

If you want to eat Zankou like a regular this is how you do it..

Rip off a piece of arabic bread (also known in America as pita bread), open it up and put in a pickle, some chicken and glob garlic paste all over the top.

Eat and repeat.

Zankou chicken almost makes up for my functional date night, almost but not quite.

I think next date night, I'll be in charge :)

Happy Sunday!

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Road Trip to Sunnyvale..

Day 2!

When we are in Sunnyvale there is one place that I have to go - and that is Bean Scene.  Bean Scene is an independent coffee place on Murphy Street in downtown Sunnyvale.

I LOVE their wet decaf cappuccinos, the kids love their bagels so it is a win-win situation.

Bean Scene, best cappuccino in the States :)

The trouble with Bean Scene on a Saturday morning is it gets really busy, so if you want a table you've got to get moving early.

But with a drink like this waiting for you, its pretty easy to get motivated :)

Wet cappuccino!

 Part of the reason why Bean Scene gets so crowded is because of the farmer's market held outside.


I guess this guy isn't going anywhere.

I like this farmer's market, great products for reasonable prices - not like my local farmer's markets.
 
Checking out the produce

Right after breakfast we headed over the Bill Gate's Computer History Museum.

The main reason we decided to check it out was because the kids were free and it was close.  Actually I found the museum while browsing on Trip Advisor by proximity to my location.  I love Trip Advisor and Yelp - what did we do before the internet??

Entrance to the museum

So as you would expect the museum is pretty techy - we didn't even get tickets, we got these little metal clips that we put on our shirts.


an old computer

 Honestly, the kids were pretty bored by most of the exhibits.  Son 1 was interested in the WW2 Enigma code breaking section and also any of the targeting stuff used by the military.

Another old computer

Speaking for myself, I thought it was ok.  I might have enjoyed it more if the kids weren't complaining so much.  Nadim really enjoyed it.


Daughter playing Pac Man

Things got more interesting when the kids got to play "classic" games.

Of course, these games don't seem classic to me, but then I remember playing them at the roller skating rink.

Son 1 and Son 2 playing Pong

My favorite was Pong.  My Grandpa Johnson (my Mother's Dad) was very into technology and he had Pong at his house.  I remember playing the game anytime we went out to visit.  This must have been in the late 70's or early 80's - yes I am old.

Son 2 trying to figure out a game

Son 2, my naturally gifted gamer, tried to play this command game but couldn't get it to do anything.

Gaming was so tough before joy sticks.

3 generations of Kurani's picking lemons

After our excursion we got ready for a family BBQ, where a fun time was had by all.

The next day we left, but since Day 3 was really Day 1 in reverse I don't have anything new to say :)

Happy Trails!

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

17 Hour Field Trip

**Sung to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas**

On the Ocean Institute Field Trip

the 4th grade class gave to me

a big shiny bus

I drove my own car :)

bags and bags of luggage

classy trash bags

two hours of waiting

yep, still waiting

one tall ship


finally, let's get started

a multi talented cook

He is playing the recorder with his nose
8 children cooking


dinner preparation


a Captain giving orders

heave, ho - heave, ho


panning for gold

pytrite or leaverite?


climbing on the rigging

Son holding on for dear life


beef stew for dinner

this tasted better than it looked

deluxe accommodations


bunks and bags

 two nasty toilets

too bad you can't smell the stench

letters from home

my historically accurate letter was a waste of time

a view of the harbor at midnight

fresh air and a view

And a dead cell phone battery.








Monday, June 3, 2013

How much is too..

..much?

I'm not sure why some weekends end up having so many events in one day.  Sometimes I wonder if herd mentality has some basis in fact.

Anyhoo, any Saturday morning that starts out with a trip to Target at 8:30am is bound to be too much.

My local "old" Target

Why 8:30am?  Well, I had no other time to buy Daughter a bathing suit and she needed it for a pool party later that evening.

New bathing suit

Besides, I also had to go the Smart and Final right after Target to pick up the buns for a potluck at said pool party.  I should note here, that not one person at the potluck ate any of the buns except for me.  

Buns that nobody ate

The Doritos, of course, were gone half way through the potluck.  I guess the kids had their priorities.

American Legion

Right after I got home from the Target and Smart/Final run, the whole family was off to a Cub Scout service project at the American Legion.

Manual labor

We helped stuff envelopes for a large fundraiser the American Legion is doing on the 4th of July.  The kids actually had a great time stuffing envelopes.  There were so many people helping out that it only took about 40 minutes to stuff 6,000 envelopes.  Not bad.

A pizza lunch was provided courtesy of the American Legion and then we hit the road.

Ballet studio

Why the dine and dash?  Well, Daughter had a ballet rehearsal for Cinderella.

So we rushed home, got changed and headed over for an absolute mob scene.  The studio was pretty much standing room only, luckily Daughter found a spot watching some of the older girls practice while we waited.

Dance class

Of course, if there were tons of parents, it only follows that there were tons of ballerinas as well.

And there were.

Waiting to practice

Our final event of the day was an Adventure Maiden pool party.  I think there may be more toys than children in the pool.

Let's swim!

At the pool party, we closed the evening with a ceremony where Daughter was presented with this Expedition Princess Doll.  We were outgoing Princesses and while I was more than happy to pass the torch to our new fearless leader, Daughter was ready to stay Princess forever.

Adventure Maidens!

My favorite part of the evening was watching Daughter's face as she realized that the doll was for her. 

By the end of the night I had a migraine,

Daughter was tired,

and I'm pretty sure it was all too much.