December 2010 – Page 3 – Andelin Adventures

RAD Kids Graduation

At the school the second graders participate in a program called RAD Kids, where they have a police officer and some helpers come teach them about self defense against ‘bad guys’. You know people that go around picking up kids that don’t belong to them? I don’t know very much about the program actually, but Ethan’s teacher called me last night to invite me to the ‘graduation’. So I took my 3 little kiddos and went to the school to see what I could see. The helpers had set up a bit of a course with three points. At the first stop the kids had to block these big soft things as the helper tried to bonk them. Then at the next stop they kids had to beat up on a dummy. The last stop was the most tricky. The police officer was all dressed up in red pads from his head to his feet, and his job was to try to ‘attack’ or stop the kid from getting to their teacher. The kids then had to do whatever self defense moves they could to get away from him. The kids went through the course one at a time and there was actually only one that got past the officer without him catching them. I thought it funny that it was a little girl.

Before going through the course the kids had to get all geared up with helmets, gloves, knee pads and elbow pads. Ethan was doing just fine sitting and waiting for his turn. But as soon as it became his turn he just seemed to become limp and didn’t want to do it. Here he is getting geared up and REALLY not looking happy.

So they didn’t make him go through the course. Here is Ethan’s whole class after they all went through the course. Ethan is still not looking happy….

I must be going crazy!

Or at least that’s what my kids must want me to think. Yesterday, since we were planning on going to Temple Square, I KNEW I was going to want my camera. So while the kids were at their primary activity I started looking for it. I couldn’t find it. So I had to look at my computer and see what the last picture I copied over was. Ok it was the rice stuffing, which means the last time I used it was the other day when I posted the picture of the rice stuffing to the food blog. WHICH MEANS that the camera should still be right here on my dresser, since that is where I was sitting when I had it last. I searched, my dresser and both desks in my room over and over. Ok I admit my house is quite messy, well actually the main part of the house is looking better but my room is still a disaster! I looked behind the picture frames on my dresser and I looked down behind my dresser and under my dresser. I looked under my bed in case it had somehow fallen and got kicked under there. I was starting to wonder if I had left it on my dresser or if I had taken it away from one of the kids and put it somewhere up high. I really could not remember what I did with it. I didn’t want to blame the kids if I just hid it really well, but after looking everywhere that I would normally have stashed it I still couldn’t find it and I just had to wonder. When the kids got back from their activity, we started asking them about it. Nobody seemed to know anything about it. Then later Ethan said that he had seen Dinah with it and took it away from her and put it under the couch. So each of the couches got lifted and then the kids bedrooms were searched. Still couldn’t find it, and when we asked Ethan WHEN he saw Dinah with it, he said back in November. Uh ok that was useless. Eventually I got mad and said we weren’t going to the temple without the camera. Amazingly it turned up very shortly after that. It was tucked down between the cushions of the couch.

This morning as we were getting ready to leave for church, I went to grab my little hand held computer. I always take it to church with me so I can jot down any announcements that I haven’t received an email for, and so that if I sign up for something I can make a note of it. When I went to my dresser, it wasn’t there. So I thought that maybe I had taken it out to the kitchen and set it down out there when I fed the kids. But it wasn’t there either. I was walking all over the house looking in the usual places that I would have set it down. I saw it this morning which means it would be on TOP of the rest of the mess right?! Well I wasn’t finding it, and I was getting really frustrated. Of course this made me feel like I was again, losing my mind, since I THOUGHT it was on the dresser and now it’s nowhere! I went out to the van where the kids were all loaded up waiting. And I asked them if any of them had seen it this morning. They all looked at me like I was crazy and said that they hadn’t seen it. I looked at each of their faces, and as soon as my eyes met Dinah’s I KNEW where my little computer was! As I looked at her I knew that if I ran in the house I would find it under my bed. I had gone down the hall earlier this morning to find out why Dinah ‘disappeared’ and I found her crouching on the floor on my side of the bed. She quickly bounced up and came out of my room with me. At that point I had no idea what she was getting into, but I didn’t see any sort of a mess so I figured she was just playing hide and seek with me, but when I looked into her eyes later when asking where my computer was I instantly knew that that’s what she had been messing with!

Ok so maybe, my children just like playing tricks on me to get me to THINK I’m going crazy, but really I’m not crazy yet! 🙂

Temple Lights

Last week when we went to the temple to see the lights with cousins we didn’t get out of the car. And that made some of our children very unhappy! So we told them that we would come back and get out of the car next time. 🙂 All week we’ve been talking about going to the temple to see the lights. We decided to make a night of it by leaving early to go out to eat first. We went to Chuck a Rama since Ethan was very disappointed that it was too late to eat there last week after our temple trip. The kids were CRAZY. Our usual routine for a buffet is to get everyone seated and situated, then Kyle will take a couple of kids at a time to go get some, then it’s my turn, and then it’s Kyle’s turn. Every time Kyle left the table, ALL FOUR KIDS that were not strapped in a high chair, insisted on going with him. I had to sit there and guard the inlet to our booth to keep all the kids at the table! Dinah ended up not eating the food she told Kyle she wanted (actually I think he was kind of silly for believing that she would). I think we need to switch things up and *I* take the kids to get food. I mean I feed them every other day of the week, Kyle is never home, he has no idea what they will actually eat and won’t eat!

Tyra ended up spilling her slush (she is ALWAYS the one to spill). I looked at her and asked her why the lid was off the cup. She said “I was stirring it”. I just had to tell her that the lid was there so that if the cup fell over, the drink wouldn’t spill OUT! Jeremy only asked for a slice of ham and a roll, and he did a pretty good job of eating that. Ethan actually finished his first plate of food and Kyle took him back for a second plate. Tyra ate SOME of the food she selected, but really not enough to call it a meal. All in all the kids were also very rowdy. Kyle made the comment “I know we don’t take you guys out very often, but when we take you out, you remind us WHY we don’t take you out very often.”

Anyways an hour and a half later we were finally ready to leave the restaurant! We walked across the parking lot to the See’s store, and got chocolates and lolly pops for dessert, then we were on our way to Temple Square. There were actually a LOT more people there this week. Huge amounts of people everywhere! We drove around looking for a parking spot for at least half an hour. Dinah kept asking why we weren’t getting out to walk. We had to keep telling her that we had to put the van SOMEWHERE to wait for us! We finally just decided to suck it up and pay to park in an underground parking lot. At least that way we were able to finally get out and walk.

So pretty. It wasn’t super cold out, but it was drizzling a bit and we did get wet!

Dinah was SO happy to get to get out of the car and see the lights up close. I think she was the most upset last week when all we did was drive around the temple block twice.

Pictures are Here!

So Kyle picked up our disk of pictures from our session at JC Penny’s, yesterday. I popped the disk in my computer this morning and started saving them to my computer. They actually changed how they do the cds. It used to be that you pop the disk in and view the files then just select them all and copy all of them onto your computer. Boom, then you’re done. This time I pop the disk in and it opens up a program where I can only view one photo at a time. I can select whether I want to view it in color, black & white or sephia, but in order to save the photos I had to do it one photo at a time. And since I wanted to save them in color, black & white AND sephia, just so that I have them I had to save the picture in color, then select black & white, and save it then select sephia then save it. Talk about completely inconvenient. Anyways I’ve got them all saved to my computer now, and I’ve made an album in the photo gallery for all of the pictures, so they are all up for everyone to see.

Something funny that I noticed after I had them all saved to my computer (well actually it’s not really funny, but rather disappointing) the picture size is smaller than what my camera makes. So those huge fancy cameras that they use there in the studio have lousy resolution! Ok to be fair the resolution isn’t BAD (about 7MP) it’s just that you’d expect “professional” cameras like theirs to have better resolution than the camera that we spent maybe $120 for (which is 7.2MP)! It just makes me feel that instead of spending $150 for Penny’s to make me a cd (after spending an hour and a half or so trying to get pictures) maybe I should just take that money and buy a better camera for myself! The only issues I see with this though are that, I would still need someone else to take pictures of my whole family, since if I’m taking the pictures that means I’m obviously not in them. And I like that a studio has different backdrops to take pictures with. Oh well. I sense that there will be a change in our choice of photographers in the near future. Since the quality and the service of this visit just were not worth the money put into it. 🙁