Our First Spring Celebration

     Starting with this year's Spring Equinox I'm making an effort to have kid-friendly and fun activities to celebrate the seasons.  And luckily since stores have been selling Easter stuff for over a month now, I had plenty of options to choose from for Springtime.

Fun facts about Easter:

• It always takes place on the Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of Spring.  That's why it's on a different date every year.
• The origin of the name Easter comes from the Saxons in Germany-- their goddess of Spring was named Eostre, and rabbits and eggs for them were symbols of rebirth.  Christians later incorporated those into the celebrations surrounding the resurrection of Jesus and they changed the name to Easter.  But that's why Easter is still associated with rabbits and eggs, because those are traditionally parts of western Spring celebrations.

     Well, we started off Friday night with decorating cookies with pastel frosting and bunny sprinkles.  My first mistake was making sugar cookies.  Sugar cookies, while delicious by themselves, become sugar overload when you add frosting.  In the back of my mind I knew that while I was making them, but I didn't fully realize it until I took a bite of my cookie.  Lesson learned.

Little One decorating his cookie... 

... and the results.  My second mistake was thinking he could

control the outflow of sprinkles by himself.  ;)

Baby Girl decorating her cookie...

... and the results.  Not bad for her first time.

Mc decorating his cookie.  He looks so serious.

     My third mistake was doing this cookie thing so close to bedtime... the kids were pretty hyper for a while and they didn't get to bed until late.  I learned all kinds of lessons that night, haha!

Then on Saturday morning we let Baby Girl wear her butterfly wings from Halloween.
The elastic wasn't working well and the wings were flopping to the side,
so Daddy improvised (it's a retractable ethernet cable).  ;)

We gave them their baskets and little bunnies.

Mc hid 5 eggs in each of the kids' bedrooms and each kid got to find the ones in his or her bedroom.

They had a lot of fun with that!  And they enjoyed the few jelly beans in each egg.

     That afternoon Mc and I went out for a while and the babysitter helped the kids make candy necklaces with Spring colors and decorations (that's why I don't have pictures of them).  She said Baby Girl did well but that Little One just shoved the candy into his mouth.  Even when she showed him slowly how to put the candy on the string, he then slipped them off the string and plopped them into his mouth.  He's a funny little kid.

     Then for bedtime I read the book A New Beginning: Celebrating the Spring Equinox to Baby Girl and I explained what Spring is and what changes it brings to the Earth.  Some of the concepts in the book are a little advanced for her for now, but by next year she'll understand about the tilt of the Earth in relation to the Sun and all of that, and she'll be old enough to do some of the activities in the back of the book.

     This was my first time celebrating the seasons and it was okay; they'll get better as I do it more.  This was fun though, and I think the kids will look forward to celebrating the other seasons as they come.

Self-Defense Class Completed!

     Well, I just finished teaching my self-defense class.  We've been trying to schedule it for almost 3 months now and it's finally worked out.  It feels good having it done, although now I can't sleep because I'm thinking about what I said and what I forgot to say and how I could have done things better.  ;)

     It's been over 4 years since I've taught a self-defense class.  I felt a little rusty for the first 45 minutes or so even though I was prepared, but after that I felt more comfortable.  I had let my instructor certification for the R.A.D. (Rape Aggression Defense) program expire a few years ago because I was in my childbearing time and I wasn't in a position to organize and teach classes.  So tonight I didn't teach from that manual or give the women the official R.A.D. student manual, but I did go over the research that I had done on my own and that I had gotten from different sources over the years, and I think most of the women enjoyed the class.

     Teaching this class tonight has reawakened my passion for teaching self-defense.  I'm considering getting my certification renewed and pursuing teaching these classes on a more regular basis.  I'll have to give it some more thought.

     If you don't have time for a self-defense class or you can't find one in your area but you're interested in reading about the subject, here are the books I recommend to my classes:

1. The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.  This book teaches you about intuition and how to rely on and trust your intuition to keep you safe.
2. Talking Back to Sexual Pressure by Elizabeth Powell.  This book teaches you how to be assertive in expressing your wants and needs.  It applies to men and women because both men and women can be pressured sexually and they both need to know how to assert their rights and how to ask for what they want and how to reject what they don't want.  This book offers many scenarios and it provides times to practice for yourself and to come up with replies that feel natural to you.
3. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman.  This book will help you learn to understand how you express and interpret love and affection.  It might seem a little out of place at first, but I recommend it for my self-defense class because if you understand how you receive and show love, it will help you understand people's gestures toward you.  For example, let's say someone tickles you or pokes you playfully.  If one of your top love languages is physical touch, you might interpret that as the person likes you and is interested in a relationship with you.  However, they might just be teasing and being playful.  If you understand that your love language is physical touch, you can be more aware of that in your relationships and your interactions with others and you might save yourself a lot of confusion and misunderstanding.

     If you have read these books or if you do read them in the future, let me know what you think of them.  :)

Enjoying Washington While We're Here

     Our family isn't quite settled down yet.  The reason this time is because I'm very against Common Core; there are only a few states that have rejected Common Core for their schools, and unfortunately Washington isn't one of them.

     The only states that haven't adopted Common Core are: Alaska, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Indiana, Virginia, and Minnesota (MN accepted the English part but rejected the Math part).  Of all of those states, the only ones I'd want to live in are Texas and Minnesota.  Texas would be a new experience and it's much more affordable to live there!  A house out there that would cost $250,000 could easily cost $600,000 here in the Seattle area.  We lived in Minnesota for two years and it wasn't that bad; people out there know how to dress for cold weather, and housing is also very affordable.  I wouldn't mind moving back there.

     Before we had kids, Mc and I could move anywhere and only think about what we needed and wanted.  But now that we have kids who are school-age, we need to consider schools when planning where to live.  The Montessori school that Baby Girl is in right now is a good one and I really like her teachers, and although they teach Common Core at the upper levels, she's still only in preschool where that won't come into play yet.  Little One just started a preschool for kids with developmental delays, and I feel really good about his school; I think it will do him a lot of good.  So he graduates from this little school when he turns five years old and is ready for kindergarten, so we'll be staying in this area until that happens.  After that, though, we'll probably look elsewhere.

     Those are our rough plans for now.  Even if we could find a private school around here that doesn't teach Common Core-- or even if I decided to home school my kids-- the housing market is just too expensive and the traffic is just too terrible (and it will get worse over the next few years) and it takes Mc way too long to travel to and from work each day.  Texas and Minnesota would still be much better options for housing and for commute time.  Mc will work at Amazon for as long as he wants to, and if he decides to get another job while we're here, it'll likely be closer to home.

     The weather up here is great though, and there's a great diversity of nationalities and cultures here, which I love.  The Sunday newspaper every week lists events going on in the area, and so I'm looking for places where we'll start exploring.  There is a Birding Festival up near the Canadian border in a couple of weeks, there's a Tulip Festival during the whole month of April, and there's an Apple Blossom Festival that we'll go see on our way to visit my family in Idaho in the beginning of May.  There are museums and gardens and lots of outdoors activities we can do.  Mc has a lot of fun with his D&D group, and he and I have started playing a board game with some of his D&D friends.  I'm also going to take language classes at the local community college, starting with "Chinese Conversation and Culture", and I'm excited about it.

We're doing well, and I'm planning to make the most of our time here.