Golden Autumn

The trees are all nearly bare now, with a few straggler leaves hanging on here and there. We enjoyed the color and the nice crisp weather while it lasted. Today we had our first snowfall. I did get some pictures, but I thought I should post some autumn pictures first. These were taken a couple of weeks ago.



When we passed this tree on the way to school one morning, I said, "Look, Kate, it's like a yellow sea!" and she said, "Quick, let's run through it before the yellow shark gets us!"

Our complex has such a great variety of leaves--islands of gold under some trees and red under others, and great big maple leaves that cover the sidewalk along the street.

We had some fun with the camera at our favorite picture corner:











Doesn't this make it look like my kids actually get along and enjoy playing together? It's an illusion. (Yeah, they're doing better... some!)

painting, so far

Making slow progress on the train table backdrop.

I've got things down to a science. I can fit two of the big boards on our kitchen table at a time, hanging off the ends. I keep my brushes in a jar of water and don't bother to wash them in between. I have a bunch of little containers with colors mixed up so I don't have to keep messing with that. The actual painting part has been pretty hit-and-miss, though. I can paint while Andy's asleep, and after he wakes up I can keep him contained in his highchair with a snack and a video. Some days it just doesn't work out. Andy hasn't been napping well this week, and seems crankier than usual. I think I've gotten about one hour of painting done all week. This is not good.



I've discovered the overdrive audiobooks at the library. I don't know how these had previously escaped my attention. Since my painting-outside-idea didn't work out so well, I've just been listening to them on the computer while I work. I enjoyed the first six Artemis Fowl books. (Doug says they seem to be full of techno-babble and overly detailed action sequences. I suppose this is true, but the narrator is very good.)



The sunset was looking pretty cool but there was something about it that wasn't quite right, so I've been re-working it.

We had a talent show at church last Friday. I took my unfinished painting. This was the first time I'd had all the pieces together. It was kind of disheartening to see how much I still have left to do.



(This was right at the end, after they started setting up chairs for a training meeting the next morning.)

Yeah, I'm a little stressed about this. But I think it'll be very cool when it's done, and it'll look great on the train table.

Kindle(s) in the house

A few months ago I started thinking that I might want a Kindle. This was kind of a surprise, as I had never really considered it before. When we went to Idaho in July I bought an audiobook (The Tale of Desperaux) from Audible.com to listen to in the car, and then realized it wouldn't play on anything that we had. Later I was checking out their list of compatible devices and saw the Kindle listed. "Ooh, that would be cool," I thought, "I could listen to audiobooks and read ebooks! Multi-purpose!" My friend Jeanette (in our ward book club) has a Kindle and loves it. I think the thing that really sparked my interest was when I read that the new model would support Korean. A couple of other factors also pushed me in that direction:

Having been in Korea and strapped for reading material more than once, the idea of being able to carry around an entire library in one small device was undeniably appealing.

A couple of years ago I read an unabridged edition of The Count of Monte Cristo that was 1600 pages long. The story moves along at a good pace but the book was really too big to comfortably read in bed.

Plus, it's a cool gadget. And cool gadgets are cool.

So I started researching (found the mobileread forums, which were very helpful), and decided to take the plunge. As it turned out, Kindles were not shipping right then, so instead I used the money in my paypal account to get an mp3 player so I could listen to audiobooks while painting. I ordered the Kindle a couple of weeks later.



When you buy a Kindle you have thirty days to decide if you want to keep it or return it. I spent a while exploring my new toy, checking out the features and figuring things out, but of course the real evaluation is in reading. The first book that I read on my Kindle was Connie Willis's Blackout(a time travel story set during the London Blitz, in the same universe as Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog). It really isn't like reading on a computer screen. The pearl e-ink screen is very nice and the contrast is good. The biggest adjustment was just figuring out comfortable ways to hold the device, but I got used to that pretty quickly.

Now, I love books as much as anybody. Not just reading but books. There are some really gorgeous books out there. Ebooks are not gorgeous. (Though I can see how one might find an aesthetic pleasure in the sleek design of the Kindle itself.) I don't see paper books going away any time soon. But the story is the same, the words are the same, just the method of delivery is different.



My first Kindle had a small spot in the screen, so I called Amazon and they sent a replacement. (I've seen a few posts from other people with the same problem--fortunately the return process is quick and easy!)



The second Kindle also had a minor screen problem--a thin white line that would sometimes show up, depending on how it hit the text on the screen (but not, oddly, on the screen saver images). It was really only slightly annoying, but I called Amazon and they said I could return that one too. So I got another replacement. Since I had thirty days to return the defective one we ended up with two Kindles in the house for a while. Doug used the other one, breezing through a large chunk of the D'Artagnan Romances (The Three Musketeers and sequels.) Maybe when I upgrade to a future model I'll pass this one on to him and we can share an account.

It turns out that the Korean font on the Kindle is really awful, and Amazon doesn't carry any Korean ebooks anyway, but at least they're starting to think about the global market. Their site says "Our vision for Kindle is to have every book ever written, in every language, available in 60 seconds from anywhere on earth." (I doubt that this is even possible, but it leads me to believe that they will at least have some Korean ebooks in the future.)

It has occurred to me that there isn't really any particular reason for me to have Kindle right now. I could see it being really handy for someone who travels a lot, or someone who works out of the home and likes to read on lunch break, neither of which I'm doing at this time. But I'm enjoying it anyway. I like the way it saves my place, and goes to sleep by itself, and I like the way I can download sample chapters from Amazon to help keep track of books that sound interesting.



I may get a cover, later, but for now I've crocheted this sleeve to keep it in when I'm not using it.

One unforeseen complication is that I can't read it when Andy's around, because he wants to play with it. (But he actually does the same thing with paper books, too.) Mostly I only get to read at bedtime, and then I fall asleep within about twenty minutes. I've been spending Andy's nap times painting, or trying to. I'll be glad when this painting is done and I can read at nap time.

I've also just joined goodreads, to post reviews and check out what my friends are reading. Fun!

Kate's pumpkin

Kate's field trip pumpkin is now a jack o' lantern! She drew the face
and I carved it.






The inside needs a little more scraping out....




Kate shows off what her jack 'o lantern can do!



All lit up! (It's a lot more symmetrical than last year's.)

You may notice some letter stickers in that last photo. Kate thought her pumpkin needed some additional adornment.

"This is my ghost, Buster."

Kate made this ghost wind sock at our ward activity last week, and named it Buster. She has not, as far as I know, been exposed to the Ghostbusters, so I'm not sure how she came up with the name.



I use the term "wind sock" advisedly here, since there really isn't anything sock-like about it. Wind plate, perhaps.



The ward activity, for reasons unknown, was not a costume party. Kate's wearing her dragon costume for the third year in a row, but the rest of us have not had occasion to dress up.

Readin', Writin' and Rainin'

Kate's been in school for two months now! I'm experiencing that odd duality, where it feels like she just started but also feels like she's been going forever.

When we went to our parent-teacher conference, Kate's teacher told us that they tested the kids to see how much they knew already before dividing them up into reading groups. Kate went through all the kindergarten material, and then they pulled out the first grade word list. This is 200 sight words that the kids are supposed to know by the end of first grade. Kate only missed 13 of them. So they tried putting her with a first grade reading group, but it just wasn't a good fit. She's five years old, after all. So she's back with her kindergarten group.

She doesn't seem to be bored by the material, which is good. She gets excited when they learn a new cheer for a letter ("Monkey on a mountain! M M M!")

We're getting used to being school parents. It certainly is an adjustment for the whole family. Mornings are hard sometimes, getting Kate up and ready, but I'm developing some strategies. Kate really likes her teacher and has made some friends in her class. She loves P.E., too. I hear the teacher is really good.

We walk to school together, with Andy in the stroller. (Andy cries when Kate goes into the school and he doesn't get to go. I tell him he has to wait four more years. Waaah!) Kate sometimes complains about walking and says she wants to drive, but I tell her it's good exercise. It's only a couple of blocks and takes less than ten minutes. I've been enjoying the walks and the autumn weather. We had some nice misty mornings that burned off to sunny afternoons, and then we got hit by some hard rain and had to drive.

Everyone knows that it rains a lot in the Pacific Northwest. But it's not so much a quantity thing as duration. We have a lot of gray, drippy days with a steady drizzle or a light sprinkle. It doesn't often rain hard. So we just put up our hoods and walk to school in the rain, and Kate gets to use this cute little umbrella that Aunt Barb gave her. (Or maybe it was Aunt Betsey? I will have to check on that.)




This week we had so much rain that I ended up dropping Kate off and picking her up one day, and dropping her off the next morning as well. The dropping off was a lot easier than the picking up. There aren't enough places to park. We'll keep walking as much as we can!

Andy at 22 months

Andy's favorites at this age:

dancing
walking around with a blanket on his head
making faces at himself in the mirror
climbing up slides
typing
pushing buttons on anything
standing on tip-toe to see if he can pull the phone off the counter
crushed ice and pomegranate juice
freeze dried strawberries and mango from Trader Joe's



Andy managed to climb out of his crib a couple of days ago, and hit the floor with a loud thump and a wail. (We don't think he landed on his head.)



He's definitely going to be one of those kids who likes to take things apart to figure out how they work. He's also showing signs of being left-handed. Perhaps he'll be a left-handed engineer like my dad.



(He needs a haircut!)

Kate's first field trip (pumpkin patch)

The Kindergarten classes took a field trip out to the Schilter Family Farm on Wednesday the 13th. Kate was so excited about getting to ride a school bus for the first time. I figured I should document this momentous occasion, so I took Andy with me and drove down myself.

Andy and I beat the bus by about twenty minutes, so we had a while to wander around and look at things before Kate's class arrived.





Andy enjoyed seeing the animals, especially a family of kittens curled up together in a wheelbarrow. (Awwww!)






When the kids arrived they got to take a hayride around the farm in this tractor-and-wagon contraption.



We brought along Kate's pumpkin hat, but she didn't wear it very long. (It's a little too big.)








The kids got to pick out a pumpkin to take home. They have two fields there--one with bigger pumpkins, for families, and one with small pumpkins for school groups. Since they want the kids to be able to carry the pumpkin that they choose, they limit them to the small size. I'm not exactly sure how this size-segregation is achieved. Is that field planted with a variety that doesn't get as big? Are the pumpkins planted later so they don't grow as long? Do they actually sort the pumpkins after they've grown and strew them around the appropriate field? I suppose this could be. None of the pumpkins were still attached to the plants.



While Kate ate lunch with her class, Andy and I checked out this tractor.






"How do you turn this thing on?"

There were a few things that we didn't get to do, so we went back again on Saturday. It was SO CROWDED. Like Young's Jersey Dairy on a busy day, but worse. (And also very sunny, so not really good for pictures.) Kate really enjoyed the duckie races.

Purple Mountain

I've been trying to sneak in some painting time during Andy's nap. This is not easy, but I think I'm developing a system. Slow and steady!