Sam's Got Boogie Fever!

Last night Sam's music class and the music class from another school put on a 70's Disco concert. This is for their group music class, not band, which is next week. Their music teacher asked them to dress up in 70's costumes. Some of the outfits were just downright hilarious. Like the giant afro wigs some kids were sporting.

We had to throw ours together at the last minute, because well, I was working this week a lot and it just wasn't a priority. We went to Goodwill and found a pair of plaid women's dress pants which had a nice wide leg, and a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. When we got home, I had Sam put the pants on inside out, and I pinned them down the sides to fit them and left the bottom of the leg for a nice bell-bottom. Then I just sewed right along the pins. It wasn't the best alteration in the world, but it would do. Then I put him in one of my silky-looking blouses with a nice wide cuff and wide collar.

I think he looked fabulous. Just fabulous. The only downside was his really short hair, but he would not wear the wig we have. It's a platinum blonde bob with bangs. It was just too girly.

Here he is at the school with his friend Nathan. Nathan's mom also used her clothes to make his costume. She said he'd been practicing his John Travolta moves all week.

A lot of the kids looked more 60's than 70's but their music teacher told them that hippy styles went into the early 70's and they could go with tie-dye.

Eh, it was cute anyway. And they had a live band playing on stage with the kids, which was kind of nice, but they were louder than the kids (they needed to turn down the guitar amps). Sam came on stage and read some trivia about the 70's, but they didn't have any lights on the front of the stage, so anyone in the front couldn't be seen. They're putting together a DVD of the concert, so maybe their camera got him better.

Anyway, I just giggle every time I see Sam in his outfit! And especially when he poses. I couldn't get him to strut right, we'll keep working on it.

Modesto Nuts Baseball Night 2011

On May 2, we had our school's night at the local minor league team, the Modesto Nuts (they're the class A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies). They have a reading program where if the kids read a certain number of books in a month, they get a free ticket to a game and they have a parade for the kids around the field before the game and they get a free hot dog and a soda. Our whole family looks forward to it every year. It's a lot of fun, because the kids know half of the people sitting in our section (right along the first base line behind the dugout in the bleachers), we get to see some teachers and meet other parents. It's a good time.

This year Squig didn't want to go, and we decided we'd probably all have more fun if she stayed home. So she did. And we all had a good time. We sat with our friends who used to live across the street and enjoyed chatting with and seeing everyone.

Sam learned to score baseball games at the Red Sox game last year. He likes it.

As many of you know, one of the best things about minor league baseball is the audience participation. There are all sorts of contests and giveaways. This year, our very own little Ruby was chosen as "Kid of the Game", and was awarded a clear green piggy bank with a $25 gift certificate to the gift shop! She was so excited--to get the piggy bank. She named it Cortny (she spelled it out for us).

In the picture below, you can see "Mike with the Mic" giving her the award. He said he picked her because he saw here there in her Red Sox hat and couldn't pass her up. You can see her with the piggy in her right hand.

Later in the game, when she started to get bored, we went to the gift shop to redeem her gift certificate. She picked a pink Nuts shirt, a pink mini bat, and a pink baseball. The cashier at the gift shop took a picture of her with her stuff.

On our way back to our seats, we ran into Al, the almond, one of the two mascots (the other is Wally, the walnut) and he signed her bat. He offered to sign her hat, but mom said no way, not the Boston hat!

We made it through the 7th inning stretch, and it was getting pretty late (nearly 9pm), and most of the other kids were leaving since it was a school night. Sam really wanted to stay, but they had a lot going on and needed their sleep.

Of course, Cortny is now a treasured member of the Ruby Menagerie. Just today she asked me if I wanted to kiss Cortny. I said, no thank you, not today.

Subbing Update

I thought I'd post an update on my subbing adventures.

First off, I thought I'd update the childcare issue. I ended up putting Ruby in the after school program. She likes it a lot and they like her there. She gets her homework done every day and gets a snack, and time to run around and play with her friends.

Sam just stays after school for math club, so he also gets his homework done, and that gives me about an hour and twenty minutes after he gets out to get back and pick him up. That's usually plenty of time, though there have been a couple of times when they canceled math club and he had to sit in the office and wait. The day that the teachers have staff meetings they don't have math club, so I either work half days, make arrangements for him to go home with a friend, or just don't work. Since math club is free, I can't complain too much.

Next year when he's in middle school, he'll go to their after school program, which is free, and Ruby can go to hers, which isn't.

So, our afternoons are a crazy mess of picking everyone up and dropping everyone off here and there and everywhere. It's the time of year when we have baseball, drumline, science olympiad, scouts, and piano for three different kids to shuffle around. CRA-ZY.

Back to subbing. I've started subbing for Special Day Classes and Resource classes. I like them a lot. Very small class sizes, nice kids, and at least one aide. One class I've been in three times has two aides for almost the whole day. I was worried about taking on special ed classes, thinking that I might not be able to handle all the needs of all the kids in the class. But, most of the kids that I've worked with are more along the lines of slow learners, rather than behavioral issues. Resource classes are all about keeping kids on track and making sure they're getting their work done. Kind of like being at home!

In all, it's been a positive experience and I think I'll look for more special ed classes.

Oh, and this week I interviewed with another district. They only have a limited number of positions open, and I'm sure I'm up against people with full teaching credentials (as opposed to a sub credential), who I expect will get the positions before me. I'm also overanalyzing everything I said in the interview. But I was on time, polite, made eye contact and complimented the district for the things I had heard about it (even though one of their middle schools keeps beating our drumline team for first place by fractions of points!)

And that's a little update on subbing and childcare.

Knitting Projects

I haven't posted much lately. We've been busy. Not busy doing too many things that are worth blogging about (some, though, and I'll get to them eventually), but one thing I have been doing is knitting.

If you've read my previous posts, you know that we just got four new babies in our family. I decided to get ambitious and knit sweaters for all of them. Prior to this, the most complicated thing I'd done was mittens. Flat knit mittens, not even the kind you knit in the round.

Anyway, I made some sweaters and I think they turned out quite nicely.

The first two I did were the ones for the twin boys, Calvin and Liam. Since they were twins, I expected them to come first. They didn't, they came last.

Their sweaters are both made from the same pattern using the same yarn in two different colors. They're pieced together, so I made the two front pieces, a back piece and then the sleeves and sewed them all together.

If you care, the yarn is Mission Falls 1824, it's a worsted weight superwash wool and very soft. They're knit in garter stitch. The yarn looks lighter than it actually is, it's a dark navy blue.

This is the first one:

And the second one, it's also darker than the picture, a dark teal:

Next up, is the sweater for my nephew Edmund. It's knit with KnitPicks Swish DK, a superwash wool, DK weight. For this one I learned something new: knitting a top-down raglan sleeve sweater. It's knit in stockinette, with a garter stitch button band, cuffs, hood edge and bottom edge. The sleeves I did in the round so there are no seams on this one, except at the top of the hood. The background is a chair at the yarn shop where I go to knit.

And last, but certainly not least, the cute girl sweater I knit for my niece, Ruth. She was the middle of the three births. For her sweater, I learned to knit fair isle/intarsia patterns. Ruth's sweater was also a top-down raglan sleeve with the sleeves knit in the round. The yarn is KnitPicks Shine Sport, which is a sport weight yarn. It's a Cotton/Modal blend and it's very soft and has a lovely drape. It's knit in stockinette with a Knit2/Purl2 ribbing at the neck, cuffs, button band and bottom edge. Since both the yarn and the needles were smaller for this one, it took a lot longer to make. And I had a lot of yarn left over, so I made a hat. I designed the pattern on the hat to echo, but not copy the design on the sweater.

Here's a close-up shot of the tulips on the sweater. This picture was taken before I blocked the sweater, so the stitches are kind of messy. They looked better after blocking:

One of my resolutions/goals for the year was to learn to knit socks. So I took a sock class at the yarn shop and made some socks for my sister. She likes them and they keep her feet warm in the cold New England winter. They're knit with a Dream In Color worsted weight, hand-dyed superwash wool yarn.

For her birthday, Ruby asked for some slipper socks, so I took her to the yarn shop and let her pick out her color and I knit her some slipper socks. I really like them they turned out cute. They're a dark magenta. They're done in a nylon/acrylic blend, nothing fancy. She loves them.

And then for fun one day, I threw together a couple of matching San Francisco Giants hats for my favorite little Giants fans, Liam and Calvin. These are done with bargain acrylic yarn, just for fun. They go for lots of walks, and need to keep warm on the streets of San Francisco.

Calvin was most unhappy with his hat, but Liam thought he was the bee's knees in his!

So, that's what I've been knitting lately.

A couple of definitions:

blocking-shaping the finished garment while wet

raglan sleeve-a sleeve that goes all the way to the neck with no shoulder seam

superwash wool-machine washable wool

worsted/DK/sport-yarn weights, worsted is the thickest of the three listed here, DK is thinner and sport thinner still

Today. . .

. . .it's been a year.

Double Trouble

Meet Calvin and William.

Calvin and William made their debut into the world this weekend after my sister's marathon 80+ hour labor at almost 39 weeks! Whew! Those two did NOT want to come out.

I got to be one of the first to hold them, which was one of the perks of sleeping in a lumpy pull-out chair and eating hospital food for five days! There wasn't a lot of sleep to be had over all that time, so it was a good thing they were so cute. I'm so glad I could be there, though, and my kids were good sports about getting shuffled around from house to house while I was gone.

The babies, of course, love me. And since they live pretty close, we'll get to see them grow up!

The Little Princess

This is Ruth. She's my new niece, courtesy of my sister-in-law Tirza and my brother James.

She's just too pretty, and with all her new boy cousins, I'm sure she'll be the little princess. And, lucky Ruth, she gets the little girl sweater I've been working so hard on. It's still not done, but I'm making it in a 6-9 month size so it will still fit by the time it's done. I'm a slow knitter and it uses a small needle.

Someday I'll get to meet Ruth (she lives back east), but until then I'll keep stalking the internet waiting for more pictures!