Bye Bye Trampoline

*Sob!* We no longer have a trampoline.

The boys came home from school with several friends, and as usual, the first thing they do is jump on the trampoline. They were on it for about 20 secs when it collapsed on one side.  They all jumped out quickly, and no one got hurt.

With all the rain we get here, the frame rusted all the way thru in the places where the poles attach.

Mike came home and dismantled the entire thing.  Our backyard is so bare now. 

 I am keeping my eye on Craigslist for a new frame. The kids use it so much.

Even Christina and her friends use it. It has gotten almost 10 years of almost daily use. Next time I will buy a pad that covers the outside frame. That might save it from rusting.

Caleb and Zachary were very happy to get a dollar from Gramma Ann and also Gramma and Grumpa for Valentines Day. The boys took their dollars to school and each bought 2 scented pencils.

I made spare ribs the other night and Elektra ate and ate ate! I think she ate 7 ribs.

She probably would of eaten more, except it was all gone!  Look at that full belly!

She loves to read her books. Here she is reading to her Princess Barbie.

We made chocolate chip cookies the other night, and the kids got to lick the beaters.

Elektra is really concentrating! MMM! Oh, by the way, Good News! Elektra has out grown her milk and egg allergies.  She has been drinking regular milk for a month now.  And she has eaten quite a bit of eggs and I have seen no problems whatsoever!  She is still (and may always be) allergic to nuts.  In fact, she is very aware that she allergic to nuts. She always asks, "Does this have peanuts?" "I can't eat nuts" And the things she knows doesn't have nuts she says, "I can eat this because it has no peanuts".  This is great that she does this, so if someone offers her a snack, she knows to ask if it has peanuts.

Today we went to a Chili Cook Off at a near by restaurant. The kids chased bubbles,

and jumped in a Princess Bounce House.

And we ate chili. Lots of chili!  I think I will enter next year.

It was only $5 a person (kids free) and that went all to a Homeless Charity.

They had a DJ, Raffles, and a  Bean Bag toss.  It was a lot of fun.

There was only one chili that we didn't like, it was more like chicken torilla soup consistency and taste.

The rest were all good and all different.  Christina and Ben voted for a different one than us.

Their pick was for a traditional mild chili.

 We picked one that was made with duck.

 It wasn't traditional chili, but we liked it the best.

Yesterday morning we were abruptly awakened by our House Alarm going off at 8 am when Caleb opened the door to let the cat in.  The funny thing is, we didn't even know we had a House Alarm!

We knew there was alarm pad in our laundry room, however, we were never given a code for it, and we didn't want to pay to turn it on, so we have never dealt with it.

Friday night our power surged and the alarm pad started beeping. Mike pushed a bunch of buttons on it until it stopped beeping. Some how he must of Armed the house!  We pushed and pushed and pushed buttons for over 10 minutes while the alarm was blaring.  I was worried the neighbors could hear, but when I stepped outside and walked to the end of the driveway you really couldn't hear it.

Finally Mike found the power box and found the wire, and snipped it. 

Now we definitely do not have an alarm!

****************************************************************

Tomorrow is Calebs birthday! I can't believe my baby is going to be 6!

We have a very fun day planned.

Daytona 500 Week!

 Our 3rd Annual Daytona 500!

Our spot could not get any better unless we were up against the fence. Its the same spot we had last year, and unless a spot at the fence opens up, it will continue to be "our" spot every year.

We are on the inside of turn 4. From our platform we can see the race cars after they come out of turn 2,

go into turn 3, and watch them fly around turn 4.

We had a great time at the race, even tho it was FREEZING!  We are all wimps having moved to Sunny Warm Florida from Sunny Hot Phoenix.  The highs all week were in the 40's and 50's. The lows in the low 30's, high 20's.  YUCK!  We bought a small space heater (tent safe) and you could still see our breaths at night and in the mornings. We bundled up in layers upon layers. I personally wore sweatpants, a t-shirt, 4 (yes 4!) sweatshirts, and then my suade jacket, beanie hat and gloves. It was also too cold to spend much time outside of a race on our wonderful platform that Mike built. (And I dare say that ours was the most awesome platform there. It fits like a puzzle, and didn't take hardly anytime for him to set up, and secure it for us and the kids.)

Look at the mesh wire fence securely stapled in so tight that nothing or noone could fall from it. Mike builds the platform with 4x4s attached to the truck, Calebs putting green for a floor,

and then 2x4s for the railings. He then bolts everything together.

No nails!

The kids cars,toys and dolls couldn't fall thru. They loved being up there. As long as they were bundled up.

The boys really liked THIS view from the platform. 

The people directly in front of us hung up this towel.

I was wondering why they were giggling so hard and not watching the race.

We had so much stuff this year that we had to rent a U-Haul trailer to transport it all in.

We had learned from last year when a freak wind came out of nowhere and destroyed our tent and canopy setup, that we needed to secure it much better.

So Mike got HUGE stakes that you twist into the ground that secured the bottoms.

Then he tied up all the top corners to our truck, so that there was no way that it could blow away.

 It was strong and sturdy.  

We had 3 rooms. It was warm in the rooms. At least as warm as it could be.

One room was our tent which has 2 bedrooms and a open area, another was a storage room for our extras, and the other was our kitchen and table area. We had all kinds of yummy BBQ food like steak, brats, sausages, hotdogs and hamburgers. Lots of snackies like popcorn, cookies, chips, dips. Breakfasts was either chorizo, bacon or sausage and eggs on bagels or in burritos. Cereal for the kids. Lots of good food!

We bought these marshmallow Peep Frogs. Elektra was kissing hers. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "Trying to turn him into a Prince."

 It was due to rain, so we had brought 5 large tarps that we draped over all the rooms and tied them down to the stakes and the truck. Tarps aren't shown here. But we were competely dry, and safe from the wind.

It was Strong and Sturdy.

 Friday afternoon the wind and rains picked up. Mike and I were sitting in our kitchen area in our chairs sipping coffee and cooking our hamburgers. The kids had already eaten their burgers and were in the tent watching movies on the TV or playing Play Station.

 (Yes, we are THOSE parents that bring a TV,  DVD player, a portable DVD player and PlayStation for the kids entertainment.  I brought my DSi and Zacharys DS. Although I did talk Mike out of bringing the Wii. We were there for 6 days after all) 

We were talking about how very proud we were of our Strong and Sturdy setup. *sigh* This is something you should never do. Never pat yourself on the back until it is over.

Our setup was doing just fine until all of a sudden a big crash sounded on top of us, and all the ceilings and walls caved in. Suddenly there were screams from inside the tent where the kids were. 

We had to crawl in the tent to pull the kids out.

They were crying and freaking out. Then we heard voices from all over screaming, "Are you OK? Is everyone OK? Anyone hurt? OMG get this thing off their stuff!"

Someones platform had blown away in the wind gusts, picked up someone elses tent and blew them on top of our structures. The platform poles literally flattened the kids bedroom in the tent. Thank God, they were in the open area and missed getting hit by mere inches.  Then people were pulling the covers off of us from inside our area. We had a dozen or more people trying to get to us to get us out. We quickly put the kids inside the truck with strict orders to calm down and stay put.  We then set about trying to get all the stuff off of ours. Our grill had tipped over throwing our burgers out, thankfully the fire had somehow been put out.

   I should of taken pictures, but it was so hectic. The wind and rain were strong, and all of our stuff was now vunerable to being blown away since our canopies roofs had collapsed and the walls snapped in half.  It took the better part of an hour for all of us to remove the others stuff. Then we had to try and salvage what we could of our stuff. We gave up trying to rebuild what we had.  It was getting dark and the wind and rain were still going strong, so we threw everything that we could in the U-Haul trailer, resecured the tarp over our tent and tried to sleep. Mike and I never did get to eat dinner.

  Saturday was calmer with no rains, so we were able to set up the broken canopy over the kitchen area.

We spent alot of the day trying to decide what to save, and what we should toss. 

(We ended up tossing the canopies).

But Mike being the awesome man that he is, got a little area secure again for the kids to play, and we were able to spend the late afternoon and evening watching the race and playing with the kids.

They have a big collection of NASCAR diecast cars.  They race them, crash them, and make art with them.

On Sunday morning we borrowed someone next to us infield passes (they owed us!) and went out and got Paul, the owner of Mikes company and his wife Donna, who are big NASCAR fans, and brought them to our camp site.  Paul who is of course also an engineer, was very impressed with Mikes platform.

They stayed and visited with us for awhile. They live in Maryland, but also have a house in Daytona.  Their seats were in the top grandstands, so after a bit we walked them out, and took the kids to the Event Center to buy some more cars (because they needed more).

Caleb, who is loving reading, also got a Daytona Book. He loves Transformers BumbleBee, remember he was BumbleBee for Halloween, so he was very excited to see the BumbleBee Car there.

Then we settled down and watched the Daytona 500. Although it took alot longer than a normal race due to potholes in the track. I didn't mind the long break tho because I was able to cook dinner and not miss anything.  It finished up at night, and we were all happy with the 1st time winner, Jamie McMurray.

It was quite the week. Lots of excitement! Lots of drama! Lots of things we could of done without. But over all, it was all good. We are already looking forward to next years Daytona 500! Maybe for once it won't be windy or rainy, or cold!

School News

We had Parent-Teacher conference yesterday with Calebs teacher.  The first thing that she said after we all sat down was, "So, do you know about the romance we have going on here?" We said, "Sofia?" She laughed and said that Caleb and Sofia are a 'couple'. She said that when Caleb and Sofia are talking their personalities shine. Apparently they are both very quiet kids that never talk in class, or out of place. They are very shy. She can really see their personalities when they are together, which is every chance they get. She lives in our neighborhood, so they have had several play dates.  Sofia wrote Caleb a letter.

It is worn because he carries it places around the house.

The teacher fills out a conference report that we get a copy of, and the school does.

 Here is what the paper said:

Caleb is making great progress in kindergarten! He is polite and respectful and always puts forth his best effort. Caleb has mastered all levels of the PASI though phoneme deletion and will receive instruction in substitution in SURF. The results of his DIBELS testing were reviewed. Caleb writes independently in  response to writing prompts, but spells some known sight words incorrectly due to mispronunciation. He  may need to be referred for speech testing at a later date. Caleb is working on reading SCPS word list B. He has shown mastery of all of the math skills that have been introduced and assessed this trimester.

So what do all those acronyms mean?  Your guess is as good as ours! She explained it all, but I could never even try to repeat what they are. They are the types of testing that assesses where each child is.  But we were assured that he is doing very well. If kindergarten were to end today, he would easily be ready for 1st grade. 

To move to 1st grade at the end of the year you need a total score of 35 on the PASI testing and he is already at 58. Another accessment needs a 25, he has a 34.  The third one he needs 40 he has 42.

She said she is extremely pleased with him. He is one of the top students!

The part of concern is the misspellings due to mispronunciation is with words like "with" he spells "wif"  Kind of sorta sounds the same, but not really. So since Speech Therapy is free, we are having him tested in March.  He may not need it, but since Zachary needs it and we see the benefits, it can't hurt.
Zachary got a Most Improved Reader Award this week.  He finished a Chapter Book with 80 pages.
Christina got an Honor Roll Award. She has a 3.0. She  has been applying for as many scholarships as she can.  Last Saturday her and I went to a tour of a college campus, and to get info on it.  Its not the campus of the one she is going to, (she was accepted to Valencia College-East) it was Valencia College-West.
She had to go to several College prep workshops and the parents had to go to their own workshops.  
Like, How To Let Your Child Go, Financial Aid. She should qualify for a Bright Futures Scholarship.
Its a Florida resident only scholarship for students with a 3.0 or higher. At 3.0 they pay 75% of your school and books. At 3.5 they  pay 100% of school and books. Christina's boyfriend Ben is going to college on a full Bright Future Scholarship.
Good week for the kids in school!
Elektra has also had a good week. She's pooped in the potty 3 times the last 3 days! She has gone in by herself and gone, and she has told me just before she needed to go.  She puts the Dora seat on and climbs up by herself.  It takes her a few minutes, but she won't get off until she has gone. 
She says, "I'm a Princess because Princess's poop in potty!" Its so cute.