It snowed a bit! Actually more of an ice storm, so it goes.
Here’s Aunt Mandy with The New Dog.
His name is Lewis and he’s our new best friend.
Chloe’s been working away on animations. As of 12/26/22, this one had more than 55,000 views! (and yes, it is incomprehensible to adults)
Click here to see more of her animations on YouTube.
Chloe felted up a storm for her school’s holiday market fundraiser. Check out all the things she made, all felted!
…and more!
This was part of her classwork, which believe it or not is Business Math. About time they taught this stuff to kids early. Here’s a breakdown of what they were working on, leading up to the holiday market where they sold their products:
11/29 Business Math begins with a focus on how loans work and simple interest calculations. Students will also be working on a business plan for a small market of their own. Here’s the tentative timeline:
12/2 Decisions made regarding what students will be selling
12/5 Estimate start up costs and applications for loans due. Begin working on logo/sign
12/9 Create inventory lists with estimated units for sale and submit pricing ideas
12/15 Market opens with student stores at 12:00 for 6th grade pre-sales.
12:45 Market opens to the general public
How did Chloe get that black eye? She got a stilt to the face! Here she tells the story:
Chloe has been busy felting up a storm! Felting is where you take loose fibers of something like wool, and turn them into something more useful or interesting. Here she’s made breakfast: toast, egg, bacon, plate and fork! All out of loose wool.
Here she’s made a holiday cake out of wool by felting. These interesting art objects will be sold during a fundraiser for her school
Time to mash the ‘taters!
Time to eat the taters! And the turkey, stuffing, green beans and cranberry sauce!
…and now it’s time to sculpt the mashed potatoes into a HORROR BUNNY!
Chloe decided to be a TeleTubby, as you can see.
Here she is with her friend Sophia, about to hit the streets for CANDY! It turned out to be a pretty terrible night for it with cold weather and torrential downpours. Oh well, that happens. They had fun anyway.
Here’s how the jack-o-lanterns looked on my porch.
Last year we started a new tradition. I guess you could call it “The Smashing of the Pumpkins”, which we do when they’ve gotten too rotten to really use anymore.
It’s almost Halloween, and that means pumpkins! First off, the Leaf Eraser Gun cleans up the front yard.
Sugar skull!
Carve, carve, carve!
Steve’s on the left, Lisa’s on the right.
Chloe’s two pumpkins. The one on the left is “The Scariest Thing Ever: Duck With A Knife!” and the one on the right is tiki-themed.
On the side of Mt. Saint Helens, you know, the volcano you may remember from 1980? It’s right up the street, more or less, from Portland. Volcanoes throw out lava, which makes lava tubes, which result in fun caves to explore. Chloe’s 6th grade class just had an overnight camping trip to explore this very thing! The “Ape Caves” – named after the Ape climbing club who discovered them some years ago, and a neat place to visit.
Oops. These shoes were new pre-lava.
Our explorers are ready to go!
Journey To The Center Of The Earth
OOOHHHH… AHHHH….
Above is a photo of the north side of Mt. St. Helens today – looks calm, doesn’t it?
(The kids were on the south side)
Here’s a view of the mountain during the eruption which destroyed everything for miles.
This is a photo from the north side looking south. In Portland, there are days when we can see the mountain firepot steaming away…
Here she is! Off to the first day of 6th Grade!
Here Chloe made dinner for us. That’s German Schnitzel, in this case chicken breasts pounded flat and breaded with gravy. Plus steamed broccoli.
At the very tail end of summer vacation, we managed to squeeze a quick camping trip out to the KOA outside of Astoria, right across the road from Ft. Stevens State Park. So many things didn’t go as planned, we lived a comedy of errors.
Here we are trying to put up my big tent:
Even though we’d practiced this in Portland, somehow we were incapable of assembling it on-site and ended up breaking two tent poles before we gave up. I slept in the back of the truck instead. Both our inflatable mattresses weren’t holding air so no padding. We all had sore bones.
Here’s the thing: it had been so scorching hot in Portland that none of the three of us thought much about cooler weather clothes, and sure enough it was nearly 30 degrees cooler at the beach. We didn’t freeze completely, but we were a little chilly.
Chloe had fun making s’mores over the fire. One thing we didn’t screw up was the food, we got that right. Except for the part where I forgot about the raccoons. They woke Lisa up three times the last night ransacking our camp. I didn’t think to secure my groceries and they made off with a loaf of bread.
At least Lisa and Chloe had better luck with their tent.
The KOA is chock-full of kid activities. An indoor pool, and outdoor pool, game room, mini-golf, movies, bikes other outdoor games and this thing that Chloe’s on. It’s a gigantic jumping pad that usually had 6-10 kids bouncing up and down on it at any time.
We did have a nice time at the beach.
That’s Lisa and Chloe way out there by the surf.
Chloe loves her crabs.
And she loves rolling in the warm sand.
In the end, despite all the things that went wrong we had a good time after all and most importantly, Chloe says she enjoyed it. That’s what we were shooting for.
I recently got to spend two full days with Chloe. Let’s check out some photos, shall we? Here’s Chloe making dinner for us:
This bit of craziness is a draft of the artwork Chloe provided for the flag her group at camp made. Pretty funny, eh?
What the heck, is this? It’s a little helicopter drone that takes off without you… if you’re good at it, you can get it to hover over your hands, but only if you’re good at it. We mostly chased it as it flew off.
Then we drove up the Historic Columbia River Highway for some short hikes to some of the waterfalls.
Waterfall!
We broke out the binoculars at the Vista House.
Here I ask Chloe to show me how bored she is with sitting in the car.
And we finish up with ice cream! What a fun trip!