Christmas Trip

So, we went to Arizona for Christmas to see my family. I posted most of the pics on my facebook page, but here are a few. On Tuesday the 22nd, we drove down to Bakersfield and stayed with Liz and Greg. We visited with them, then left early the next morning for Phoenix. On the way, we saw Bob's Big Boy. I haven't seen one of those in years, so we stopped for breakfast. So, which Boy is Bigger?


Pretty uneventful trip, and we made it to Tempe just in time for the 53rd Annual Fuller Family Christmas Eve Eve party on the 23rd. We've had this party every year since before I was born, always at my mom's house. It used to be a Christmas Eve party, but as the grandkids grew and wanted their own Christmas Eve traditions, we've moved it back a day in order to get more of the cousins there. We have a short program and a pretty wild white elephant party. Although not as wild as Amy's. No live animals, etc, here. These shorts were a pretty hot ticket item, Chris opened them, but I think Sue ended up with them.



My sister Julie's kids:


Christmas Eve is Meghan's birthday. She turned thirteen, which scares me to death. Ryan was a pretty easy teenager, I don't think anything we learned with him is going to apply in any way to Meggie. Anyway, we started off opening some presents from her parents and grandmas. Money and clothes. What more does a 13 year old need??



Then we went mini-golfing with Meg's cousin, Dawson, and Susan. We had a great time, then went out for lunch. That evening Mom and Aunt Keri had a great dinner and cake.



We went and saw the Mesa Temple lights, afterward. Sam got some great pics!



Christmas was Christmas....gifts, food, food, gifts, visiting the sibs, food, etc. Christmas evening, after dinner, we had a big Hand and Foot (card game) tourney. We started out with six teams. Last two teams standing were Sue and I and Kate and Jeff (sister and brother in law, although not married to each other). I haven't been able to beat Kathryne at anything since she was about five, and Jeff uses his big black hat to intimidate the competition. They creamed us. Oh well....next time!



The next day, we drove down to Tucson to see my niece Emily and her family. We went to the Sonora Desert Museum. It was a really nice day and the museum/zoo was great. Dad says I've been there, but it must have been a zillion years ago, because I have no recollection of that. A few of Sam's pics:





After the Museum, we kidnapped Emily's Sarah and headed back up to Tempe. Sunday night, Sam's cousin Vicky invited all the Baileys that were in town for the holidays to come over for dinner. It was fun to see Dan and Laurie, Kerra, Kevin (although he's in trouble for not bringing Em and his baby), Vicky and her family. Emily and her family came up from Tucson, also. It was a great visit and we hope it's not forever before we get to do it again.

Monday morning we headed home, or at least to Bakersfield, where we got to go to Izumos with Mark, Cherie, Liz and Greg and Mom Bailey. We then spent the evening hanging out at Liz's with Andy & Amber and kids, Sami and Lysander and their cute Jonas and Mark and Cherie. We had a fun visit, then headed home this morning. Sam's already back to work..he gets to work at home this week since Apple is closed.

A post just to have a new post....

Ok, Halloween's WAAAAY over, just haven't had the time/desire to post anything. I've been crazy busy, as I usually am this time of year. I wrote/played for a Relief Society Christmas lesson the first week of December. That involved four different groups singing four different songs, so rehearsals for that. I'm also the pianist for the Stake Choir, which had a big Christmas fireside on the 13th. Besides the choir on that one, I played for most of the small ensemble pieces. Then, one of the girls who sang for me in the RS program called, said her hubby was in charge of Sacrament Meeting on the 20th and wanted to do the program I wrote. No biggie, except about a 1/3 of the people aren't going to be here, so I had to practice with a bunch of new people.

We're on the tightest budget I can remember for Christmas, so we're having to be very creative, which takes time. No Christmas cards this year....which I swore I would send out because I didn't last year... just can't spend the stamp money. I do have a couple of very cool gifts in the works that I'm excited about, and not having any money makes the actual shopping part MUCH faster. I got lazy in the Christmas decorations department, too....only put up the tree this year. And the giant Christmas star, which actually never got taken down because it was a pain to get up there in the first place.

I apparently have no charger for my Canon 20D, so no pics either. Sam takes loads of pics, I just don't ever get them. His old 5D used the same charger as my 20D, apparently we only had one charger and he sold it with the old 5D to pay for the new 5D Mark II. So, I'm scouring ebay for a charger. When we find one,or when I can pin him down to get me some pics, I'll post a REAL post. I sort of have a weird issue about posting without a picture.

Halloween 2009

Meghan is fascinated with all things Egyptian, so she decided that she wanted to be Cleopatra this year. We recycled the collar and belt from her 1ST GRADE costume and just made the dress part. I only added about 1 1/2 inches to the belt, if you can believe that....she's only that much bigger around than she was in 1st grade...geez. I'm not sure where she got those genes, but they weren't from me. I was a skinny kid, but not THAT skinny! The hardest part of the entire project was finding her something to wear under it. Nobody sells a slip for a 12 year old stick, lol. Or any other 12 year old, for that matter. She had a camisole, and I made her a half slip out of an old slip of mine.

The pics are little grainy...Sam forgot that he had the ISO set really high when we were taking pics at the beach.

Sunset at Moss Landing....

We went down the street to the beach to watch the sunset tonight. It was spectacular...here are a few pics. There are more on my facebook page...

Can't believe it's the end of October...

It seems like Christmas was just last month and now it's time to start thinking about it, again.

No pics this time, just an update. Sam's computer is being retarded and we don't have the money to replace it yet. He downloads the pics to his external drive so we don't lose them, but it's hard to search, etc because the stupid computer keeps crashing. Being broke sucks.

In August, the company that contracts Sam said they couldn't pay him as a contractor anymore due to IRS issues. They offered him a salary lower than we've made in over ten years, but it's not like there's anywhere else to go at the moment. So we took it. We got insurance (pretty marginal insurance, but it's better than nothing) and paid vacation out of the deal, but otherwise it's a lousy deal. They still have him contracted to Apple, though, and we kind of like that. They have a shuttle that runs up there from Gilroy, which saves us about $500/month in gas. They rarely want him to work weekends or nights, a rarity in Silicon Valley. I'm guessing they're still paying the contracting company by the hour, so they don't want to go crazy with his hours. There are people at Apple that, I swear, live there.

So, we've had to be on a really strict budget; something we're not great at. But, we're getting better. If we'd been on a strict budget for the last two years while we were making good money, we'd be in better shape becuase we'd have more stuff paid off. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I guess the Lord needed to rein us in a bit and make us be more responsible. I'm trying to learn what I need to from this, so we can move on to something else.

On the upside, if you have to be broke somewhere, this is the place. We got a beach five minutes away, great friends, a beautiful place to live where most people just get to come vacation. I see the cruise ships in Monterey harbor and think, "Ha! WE get to live here!" (Even as I'm trying to figure out how to sneak on and get dinner, lol). As Sam dreads the end of DST, which means it'll be dark when he gets home from work, we ramp up our beach visits. We go nearly everyday, as soon as he gets home, to watch the sunset, and hang out until it's just too dark. The sound of the waves reduces my stress level significantly and we always see a few "critters"; usually seals or otters. Last week, we were treated to dolphins, a rarity in the Bay.

This week is Halloween costume week. Meg wants to be Cleopatra...not surprising, considering her current love of all things Egyptian. This year, though, she will get to sew most of her costume herself. She's not a bad seamstress and seems excited about the prospect. We have almost everything already to make it, so we won't have to buy much, which is good. I'm a Halloween scrooge...I hate spending money on Halloween junk. Sam's pirate costume that I made last year got put away somewhere "safe", which means I'll spend my week looking for it.

Lastly, I have to announce that Sam is, officially, the best husband ever. He spent the weekend catching up the laundry that I've been getting behind on. I haven't felt great for the last couple of months and a lot of things have been sliding. He did all the laundry, and put it all away. I hate laundry and dishes becuase they are never done, and when I don't feel well, they are the last things to get done. Granted, he may have been desperate for something to wear, but rather than complain, he just washed it all. I LOVE that guy. Besides, he's cute. :0)

Adventures in Homeschooling

So, it's been nearly a month since I updated. Life goes on, but I just haven't felt like blogging, I guess.

Homeschooling has been kind of fun most days. We only have a meltdown (hers or mine) about once a week. Those days, I just try to kind of back off and we make it up somewhere. We usually start around 9 am, and finish about 1 or 2. She does some work in the car when we have to run errands, or when I have to be somewhere else. Or we use that time to discuss her social studies or science. I have a friend with a degree in creative writing that is coaching her with some other homeschool kids for her writing assessment. Another friend, who is an artist, is having an art class at her house once or twice a month. We have PE at the park on Tuesdays (when it's not raining). Meghan taught them how to play her funny little "poppy ball" game and one of the moms is teaching some of them how to play tennis.

So, a few pics of our adventures so far.



We went to a beach where the ocean is chipping away at a cliff, exposing seashell and sea critter fossils. You are allowed to pick up stuff that's already fallen, you aren't allowed to help the ocean erode the cliff. We got a few great samples, then Meg did the research to find out about them. They are about 2-3 million years old and were probably deposited after a storm, then covered in mud/silt/sand which hardened into rock.

She was studying the ancient Roman Empire in social studies. So, we did a little research on what the ancient romans ate and had a toga party, ate reclining on the couch, mostly roman (ish) food. Since the Roman Empire was pre-pasta, pre-tomato, etc, it wasn't as easy as you would think.



Don't you love our Roman Empire-era purple plastic cups??? And Meg's paisley toga.


Meg (and Bodie Hardy) making like Jackson Pollock in her art class. (See here for actual Pollock paintings) Frankly, I think she's better.


Last week, I played piano for the Hidden Valley Institute of the Arts Elderhostel. Retired people (mostly over about 70) come and spend a week in Carmel, learning choral music and a bit of dance, and they have a concert on Friday night. Meg went with me, of course, and was doing her schoolwork while I played. She even got to practice her piano on that gorgeous Steinway during the breaks (which she LOVED). A couple of days in, the director asked her if she wanted to sing. He had brought in some of his college students to help, also. I think she had a good time, and now has all kinds of extra grandma friends.

Oh, and we used Jenny's Hunger Games competition as our reading project last month. Our Educ Svpr was impressed by Jenny's bookclub, blog and contest. And, that we tied for first.

I've had lots of people tell me how "brave" I am to homeschool, but frankly, it's easier than I thought it would be. It certainly beats the crud out of begging her to do her homework every afternoon. I'm learning stuff, too, which is kind of cool. The Educ Svpr is very helpful and my other homeschooling friends have banded together for some fun classes. All in all, it's been a pretty positive experience. Someone asked Meghan if she liked homeschooling and she told them she did. Of course, I was sitting there, but it's not like she's tried to spare my feelings before. :0)

Reduce stress??? Yeah, right!

It's not been a great couple of weeks. Saturday before Labor Day, I woke up with heart palpitations and my handy dandy pulse monitor on my exercise bike said 110 bpm. What?! I felt like crap, just totally beat. We don't have insurance until the 1st of October, so I didn't do anything for a few days. But, by Tuesday, I was REALLY feeling crappy, so I ponied up the cash and went to the doctor. She said, "yep, it's fast!", found that my blood pressure was high, did an EKG, said "hmmm...mostly looks OK", and then told me that I couldn't wait until October 1st, I needed to see a cardiologist. She then sent me for bloodtests ($$$), got me an appointment for the cardiologist on Thursday ($$$$$$$),and a prescription for beta blockers (fortunately pretty cheap).

So, last Thursday I went to the cardiologist (did I mention $$$$$?) and my blood pressure was even HIGHER (no surprise there, considering that I have to pay for all this!). He listened to my lungs and heart, listened to my sob story about no insurance, informed me that my heart sounded OK but my blood pressure was too high. He upped the meds, and gave me a bunch of free samples. If I'm not significantly better when I go back in mid-October, then we'll do the really expensive tests. I'm supposed to avoid stress (yeah, right!), limit my sodium (yuck), moderate exercise daily, and lose weight. (No surprise there).

So, this week, I'm feeling much better. I've exercised 30 mins every day on my exercise bike, ate saltless meals, kept my calories to 1600/day or lower. This morning I get on the scale AND I'VE GAINED ONE POUND! Argh! But, I'm not supposed to be stressed. Hmmm.... Someone told me that beta blockers slow your metabolism. I hardly have a metabolism to slow, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to lose weight while I'm on them.

Well, off to the Santa Cruz County Fair to get my Navajo Taco. The only place in CA where I know I can get one. And I don't care if it's salty or too many calories. I'll starve tomorrow. :0)

Random stuff and a parachute cake...

So, nothing earthshattering going on. Just home-schooling away, and Meg and I are doing our best not to drive each other nutso. So far, so good...most days, anyway.

We decided not to go anywhere for Labor Day. Bummer, but we have a ton of stuff to do around the house and we'll have a little fun in between projects. It'll be good to get some of them done. If anyone wants to take a last minute drive up here, the loft is open and we'd love to see you.

Oh, wait, the cake contest. THAT was earth-shattering, though I'm certain that wasn't the sponsor's (my niece Jespy) intent. She and the Smart Remarks Bookclub had a "Hunger Games" cake decorating contest. It turned into a hilarious soap opera and everyone did whatEVER they had to do to win. Jen got 800 hits on her blog with friends of bakers and friends of friends and then people we don't even know all voting. Lysa came over and helped me with my cake. I don't have any cake decorating stuff, so this was sort of necessary. This was our cake:


It was OK, the basket was upsy-down because it wouldn't cooperate any other way, but whatever. Sam engineered the parachute. We lost the popular vote because my other niece, Amy, has WAY too many friends, and I didn't think to recruit my Polynesian sister, Selai until the last minute. Selai has 1200 facebook friends, swears she actually knows them all. However, in the private vote, with just the cakemakers voting, I tied for first place! Cool, eh? Totally undeserved, there were are least three cakes better than ours. You can see all the cakes here.

Tonight we went up to San Juan Bautista (just up the road) to watch the full moon come up. There's an old cemetery on a hill that gives you a great view of the valley and lots of sky. We took a few pictures. This one is cool though. At first glance it just looks like three blobs. Actually, at last glance it does, too. HOWEVER, it's a picture of Jupiter with two of it's moons. Cool, eh?



Here"s the awesome shot Sam got of the moon. Look for it to be photoshopped into all kinds of things in the future. :0)

The Homeschool Thing...

So, after agonizing over this decision for several weeks between about April and June, we decided to homeschool rather than send Meghan to the gang-infested scary middle school. For more reasons, actually, than that it is kind of scary. However, when I got the list of what colors, brand names and sports teams she was NOT allowed to wear, it kind of sealed the deal. There was a charter school in Pacific Grove that we considered for awhile, it's a Waldorf-style school (which I won't explain here) and I wasn't sure it was a good fit for Meghan. And, it's about forty minutes away...we could carpool to some extent, but I just didn't want to deal with it.

We did find an excellent (so far) home/charter school organization to homeschool her through. I get an Educational Supervisor who helps me pick curriculum, etc. They had her take an online test to see whether she was a visual, audio or kinetic (hands on) learner. I was already pretty sure that she was a combination of visual and kinetic. She's never been great at listening. :0) Just kidding....sort of. So, my ES helped me pick a starting curriculum. We have a $900 budget every semester to buy whatever curriculum materials we can't borrow from the Charter's Resource Center, take enrichment classes like art, music, horseback riding or whatever, buy online courses, pay for tutoring...or just about anything else education-related. They have groups that go on field trips together just like a public school, etc. I had several friends already homeschooling their kids through this school and they all spoke highly of it. Another friend of ours is an ES, although we didn't get assigned to her.

So, school started a week ago today. So far, we haven't killed each other (which was a bit of a concern). We've only started Math, English and Science as we haven't received our books for Social Studies yet. We already signed up for the field trip to see the King Tut exhibit (which Meg is ECSTATIC about...being pretty sure at this time that she wants to be an archaeologist). She had a blast doing her science assignment online. She has to be up and ready by 8:30 in the morning. I'm a morning person...if something's going to get done, it has to be done before noon before I run out of "gas". We read scriptures together for about thirty minutes, she practices her piano for about thirty minutes. We have Math, then either Science or English. When we start social studies, that will be after lunch. She has piano lessons once a week, and soon I hope to sign her up for either Photography or Art classes. She wants to learn Italian, also. I may order, through the school, the Italian Rosetta Stone software and we'll learn it together. Since Sam already speaks Italian, it might be fun.

Meg likes some things about homeschool and isn't crazy about others. She misses her two good friends, but one of them went to a private school, so she's not at the middle school either. I'm hoping that we can arrange something so they can still get together from time to time. She didn't have a ton of friends at her last school, she's "different" (not a bad thing at all) and many of the kids were kind of mean to her. She has some good friends at church, and loves attending youth activities, so she does have a social life. I think she likes that when "school" is over, it's over, she doesn't have 3-4 hours of homework to do between 3pm and bedtime, because she has difficulty focusing for that many hours in one day. She can read almost as many hours as she can stand to read, which is a LOT. Mostly, I think we both like the arrangement, hopefully, we'll still like each other when it's over.

Unless something changes, I'm planning to send her to public high school. She has some mild ADD issues, and I think this will give her time to mature a little and learn how to manage her time and resources as she does, before she has to deal with multiple teachers/assignments. I had a great time in high school and I'd hate for her to miss those experiences.

Anyway, that probably more info than anyone wants to know, but there it is. I'll write about our adventures as we go along.

Sam Has His Movie Debut

So, a couple of weekends ago, we went down to Mojave to help my sister in law Liz, who was being "craft services"; feeding the cast and crew of my nephew, Andy's, new movie. (That is, quite probably, incorrect grammer...if you know how to fix it, let me know). Anyway...





Sam was very excited, he's always wanted to be a still photographer on a movie set. He had a great time getting to know the cast and crew and they even let him be an extra. He's part of a pseudo-military group...bad guys. Like anyone would believe that Sam's a bad guy. The story, called Phase Two is set in a post-apocalyptic world (filmed in the Mojave desert...PERFECT). There's a virus going around turning people into brain-dead zombies. (Wait a minute, I think I already know some of those....)

Sam took this pic of these actors who played part of the good guys; Jessica Erin Sylvia and Matt Thompson. She makes a great bum-kicking-babe, but is really very sweet. I kept forgetting his name and calling him Brad Pitt Jr. He seemed pretty nice, too. Actually, everyone on set was great. Other than it being just stupid hot, it was a lovely time and nice change of pace for Sam. He really wished we coulda stayed for the whole shoot, but real life goes on.

Meg goes to Girl's Camp

Ok, I'm never gonna have time for a real catchup, so I'm gonna do one story a day. At least that's the theory, we'll see what really happens. To add a couple of things to our list: 1. We finally have insurance we don't have to fork over $1200/month for but will we survive the price? 2. Grandma Bailey spent almost two weeks with us and 3. Ok, can't remember what that was, but I'll write about, I promise.

So, this installment is about girl's camp.


This was the first time she's left US home and gone off by herself for more than a night. It was weirdly quiet around here and we missed her. I don't remember the approximately six billion stories she came home with, but she had a GREAT time and made some new friends. Her camera is less than stellar, but here are a couple of pics.




They had a "Cope Course", also called a "Ropes Course" in some places. She LOVED it and did all kinds of things they'd have to drug me for. There was some accident with another girl when a zip line broke, involving a broken ankle. They closed it down after that. Meg said she was glad she got to go before the accident. I said I was glad she wasn't on it when it broke. She only weighs about 25 lbs though, so it would've had to have been seriously compromised to drop her. We can't afford broken anything right now, so I'm grateful.

Ya, I know.....

....it's been like a month. We're still alive and have even had some minor adventures. I'll try to get an update posted in the next couple of days.

Highlights:

1. Sam got to be in a movie.
2. Meghan went to girls camp for the first time.
3. My little sister is finally pregnant! With a boy!
4. We're starting homeschooling on Monday.
5. OK, I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of anything else.