Ben's First Day of Kindergarten!!!

But not at the school we thought Ben would be going to!!!

Portland has a transfer lottery, which means you can apply your kid to go to any school in the district (if it has space). There are a several charter/magnet schools in Portland, which are 100% based on the lottery. We had applied Ben for the lottery way back in March, for the Creative Science school, which is a math/science/technology focused school that teaches using the constructivist method. It is perfect for Ben (and our family) and we really, really, really wanted him to go there. But he did not get in.

We were okay with that, because we live in a great school district so he could just go to our neighborhood school. Anyway, Ben was supposed to start at Laurelhurst today. We were all set... met the teacher, his supplies were there, we'd been talking about it all summer... and then yesterday morning I got a voicemail from the school district saying that a spot had opened up at Creative Science School and Ben was next on the waiting list!!! The spot was ours for the taking!

So, we hopped on the bike and rode over, got another tour of the school (since we hadn't been there since February), met Ben's teacher, and registered him. It took pretty much all day for Ben to wrap his mind around the new plan. But by the end of the day, he was excited to go to Creative Science. We spent the rest of our last day of summer hanging out, going to Ben's favorite video arcade, playing Sorry, and playing with Laura and Amelia.

This morning, I made Ben a special pancake breakfast. Jason went to work late and so he got to have breakfast with us and come along to drop Ben off. I made Superhero Star pancakes for Ben. The star didn't work out so good...
But he liked them anyway.


I packed him a special lunch, complete with strawberry milk, peanut butter and honey sandwich (his favorite!), a peanut butter panda bar, cashews and a little bit of chocolate covered raisins. Maybe not the healthiest ever, but hey it was all organic and made with "good" sugar, so whatever. It was the first day.


On our way...

Brothers

Fighting pose, of course.

G.I. Joe backpack!




Waiting for the bell...


Room 6.


Signing in


Getting settled


Bye Ben!!!!

Gotta hug the brother, too


I made chocolate chip cookies to give him after school. He was super excited... He said "You made me these? You're AWESOME! High five for THAT!"

High five mom!


I think he had a great day... he said he made some friends, and two girls from his preschool are in his class, so that's pretty cool. He loved recess and eating in the cafeteria like a big kid.

I'm so excited that he got into Creative Science! Even if it was last minute and a little crazy. Hooray!!!

Crafting Daddy

Manly woodcrafting, that is.

(I just realized I've probably blogged more in the last three days than I have all summer. Hooray for free time!!)

This Saturday, Jason took Ben over to his friend's house, and they built a really cool wooden walker for Liam. Ben had an awesome time using his tools, and even brought his toolbox that my dad built him. And Liam loves his little walker!! He's pretty good at it already too... It went too fast for him, so we put a bunch of weights in it, otherwise he pushes it so fast he can't keep up. And then he falls on his face.

Building the walker


Jason's friend who helped them.















Liam enjoys the finished product -

We had to fill it with weights, or he'd push it so fast his little chub legs couldn't keep up. And we still have to kind of keep it from shooting out from under him. He loves it though, and has gotten better at doing it just in the two days he's played with it!

Biking Bikers who Bike.

I am car free now!

Well, Jason still has a car. But I sold mine this week, and bought a spiffy new bike. Jason's friend Ross had a trailer that he doesn't use and let us have for free. I'm so excited about it! Ben has been biking with us on his own bike for "short" rides if we're on this side of town. He rode about 6 miles with us on Sunday to breakfast with Laura and Jake, then to Hawthorne to wander around and then back. He's pretty fabulous.

Anyway the trailer holds both kids plus lots of room for groceries/random crap/whatever, and I got a bike basket for a little extra storage. And I am going to have some seriously awesome legs hauling 70 pounds of kids around all the time.

I love my new bike, and I am so excited to just bike everywhere.

Big Fancy Craft Day

I saw an adorable scarf at Urban Outfitters last week and totally wanted it. But it was just some jersey and some random chains, so I thought it would be pretty easy just to make one! So Laura and Aziza came over, and we had a big ol' craft day.

All you need is an old t-shirt, some chain (either buy it at a craft store or use an old necklace) an exacto knife and something to cut on. Maybe a ruler if you're into exactness. The original scarf was just a really big circle, but we didn't want to have to sew, so we just cut the shirt horizontally into rings and then tied them together.

Cut the shirt into rings the width you want:


Slice the shirt at equal intervals all the way around, so it looks kind of like a ladder:



Hack up your necklace/chain. We just poked one loop through on each side, in between the t-shirt strips:







Then we stacked 3-4 of the cut-up rings on each other, tied at the back with a piece of t-shirt and... ta-da!


They turned out pretty cute. Now we just have to make sure we don't all wear them somewhere at once.

Making play dough with Ben

Since the bar is over, Ben, Liam and I have been doing a lot of swim lessons, going to the park, and going to the library. But other than that, it gets a little boring hanging out at home, so I tried to come up with some sort of crafty thing Ben and I could do. He was asking to watch movies all the time, and I don't want him watching so much tv. So I asked him what he'd want to make. He said he'd really like to build a robot, out of metal. I told him we had no metal and I had no idea how to make a robot. He said that I should let him watch Iron Man, so he'd remember how to make metal. Then I told him even if he knew how to make metal and a robot, we had nothing to make metal out of. So he said we should take apart the car, and use that.

I told him maybe we should just make play dough, and he could make a robot out of that if he wanted. So that's what we made. No robots though.

Play dough is a good easy thing to make with kids... simple ingredients (flour, water, salt, food coloring) and quick. Ben likes to pour things into the pot!



Stirring... CAREFULLY!



Done!



We mixed the food coloring in after it was made, because I wanted a few colors but didn't want to have to make it in batches. Definitely not the best idea, it was kind of a pain and made our hands very colorful. It worked out though!



Pretty.



Cookie cutters to make shapes



5 year olds are weird....