Last weekend was actually quite cool! We spent two whole days having a great time with the kids and spent absolutely no money. I lurve that.
On Saturday, we got to go to John's company's picnic, even though he's still a temp. It was GREAT! They had games for the kids, cotton candy, snow cones, pony rides, a lake to go wading in, and more food than I've ever seen in one place in my life...and that's saying something. They rented out the Boy Scout Park and had a shuttle bus from the parking areas to the event area. We stepped off the bus and the first thing we saw was the 4 or 5 HUGE BBQ grills they had going. I mean HUGE. They took cast iron oil tanks and cut them in half and put grills on em. Burgers, hot dogs, chicken, two different kinds of pork, corn on the cob, all kinds of salads and giant trays of cookies!
The first thing we did was go over to the kids area to see what kind of activities they had. We were a little bit early, so the kids went on the pony ride first. (There are more pics and a couple vid clips over at My Space.)
There was a poker chip hunt first, pretty much an easter egg hunt with poker chips. And when they found the chips they took them up to the volunteers and cashed them in for quarters. Aidan seriously raked in the cash on that one. LOL There were a couple of teenagers in there grabbing all the chips, which rather annoyed me, but the volunteers kept throwing more chips out so the little kids could get some. Then they had a potato sack race. I didn't get any pictures of this one because Ian was racing and I was a bit nervous about how he'd do following the rules. Turns out he did great! He didn't get an early start, he hopped his little heart out and he won his heat. The other kid fell down once, but it was still pretty close. He got to go pick out a prize. Aidan wanted a prize too so she went to get in on the race. She didn't do as well. She held the bag too tight and kept falling over. She got a second place ribbon though. Then she got in on the Chain Relay, which is where you have a group of kids and one starts running down and back then picks up another kid and they run down and back etc. until the whole group runs down and back. Even though the littlest kid fell over on the last lap her team still won, so she got to get a prize. And Ian was watching the race and cheering her on the whole time! It was so cool.
Then they got some cotton candy and snow cones and watched the pony rides for a while and then it was time to eat. The food was excellent and there was a guy singing Karaoke who was actually pretty good. He played guitar and sang and I think he had the entire Lynard Skynard catalog on that machine. :D After we ate and had some cookies the kids wanted to go wading so we went down to the little shallow area by this bridge. Some folks were fishing off the bridge. There was an open area with rocks and along the sides there were grassy areas with cat tails and whatnot. Ian stayed more in those areas looking for critters. He actually caught a little toad and we looked at it for a bit then put him back. Aidan found a clam still in the shell so she put him back too. When it was time for them to get out, we realized they found a couple more little critters. Ian had two little leeches on his leg. He wasn't real thrilled about it, but aside from some whining he handled it pretty well while John got them off. Aidan had one on but it hadn't attached yet so we just brushed it off. SHE had a mini heart attack. LOL
After they got dressed we went back for more cookies and another pony ride then packed up and got back on the bus. All in all a pretty good day. That night we had a wicked big wind storm that knocked out the electricity. It went down about 7:30 Saturday night and didn't get back up until about 6:30 Sunday night. HOWEVER, this was apparently a fortuitous event because Sunday morning when the kids got up and realized the electricity was still out they decided to go outside. Now I didn't tell them to do this, they just up and went out and when they saw all the branches blown down by the storm they decided to pick them all up and put them in a pile. I had no idea they were doing it until they came in and said "Come see the stick pile we made." Now I'm thinking a little pile of little sticks, but my children are nothing if not efficient. This is their pile of sticks.
Aidan has a little flower crown we made on her head there. Around lunch time, John brought the cookstove out and we had a picnic on the porch of M&M pancakes. Then the kids decide they're going to make a clubhouse out of their pile of sticks. This whole time, I'm sitting on the porch reading a book and listening to my IPod in between talking to the kids and watching them do stuff when they hollered at me. They completely came up with this stuff on their own.
This is "Club Stick": And they've built it up a whole lot more since then. Hee hee The landlord was up this weekend and he thought it was cute. His wife actually got out and helped them work on it for a while.
In the afternoon, when they'd decided to take a break from building Club Stick, Aidan came and sat on my lap for a while so I gave her one of my earphones so she could listen to the music I was listening to. We got started talking about keeping the beat, tempo, emphasis on 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. She really does have a natural talent for music. After a couple songs she could tell where the emphasis was and she was keeping the beat with most tempos. At one point she said, I'm just copying the drum. :D This weekend she and I were watching Sound of Music, well, she watched some of it with me anyway. During the part where Maria is teaching the kids to sing they sing the Do, Re, Me song, and Aidan loves that. At the end of the song, Julie Andrews hits that high note and when it's done Aidan belts out the same note on pitch. It wobbled, but for the most part it was there. Dang she's got a good ear.
I just wish there was some way we could get her to music lessons. Maybe when we move next summer it will be easier, but right now we're just too far out to drive her around to that kind of thing. I really wanted her to get to go to art camp this summer, but we just had no way to get her there.
But I digress. When we were settling down on the porch that evening while John was making dinner, Aidan said the day we spent in the back yard was more fun than the day before at the park. Go figure.
They've been back to school since last Wednesday and aside from Aidan having a bit of a problem being chatty one day they've both been doing really well. I've been getting emails from Ian's teacher and his case worker and so far he's been settling in very well. And when I ask him he says he really likes 3rd grade so far. He says his teacher is really nice. She's had kids with Asperger's before so she's familiar with the issues. They had an "incident" at the school on Friday where there was a call that there was an armed individual loose on or near the property so they had a lock down until the situation could be secured. Turned out to be nothing, thank the gods. But the power went out during the lock down and the power company said it would be a couple hours before it came back up, so they just called it a day and sent the kids home. For the first time in his young life, my son declared he was sorry for early release because he was looking forward to working on a class project they had going. I almost had a heart attack. LOL
Because of the "incident", however, three of the areas on the playground that Ian loves to play in are now off limits for safety reasons. They're a bit too remote. He was having some trouble with that, so his case worker made a deal with him that if he had a whole recess where he didn't get "talked to" once, he could send me an email telling me he did it. Well, I got an email today!!! I was just thrilled. So as a reward, I made him an iron-on of his favorite dragons and we ironed it on a t-shirt so he can wear it to school tomorrow.
On a "dang this is gonna get expensive" note, he had his dentist and eye doctor appointments recently. The dentist says he's going to need braces when he gets a bit older. He has a canine coming in but his teeth are too close together for it to come in properly. The eye doctor says that the glasses he wore all last year have, indeed, fixed his convergence excess. But that being gone, we have discovered that he is naturally farsighted. So he will need a new prescription in his glasses this year to see the chalk board. UGH!
We finally took him down to the bank and opened up a passbook account for him. He now has chores he has to do every week and if he does a good job, he gets $5 to put in his account. He hasn't been consistent with it, but he's getting better. Honestly, I'm starting to be cautiously optimistic about his future at this point.
Alrighty, I need to pack it in. I have to go in to work tomorrow and get my annual review so I can get my 4% cost of living. Yippee skippee. Peace out.
And I thought my company picnics were good. Course free beer will make anything seem better (in moderation of course ;) All they usually have for the kids is pinata's. Not that giving a 2 year old a wiffle ball bat isn't funny... This year there was a "clown" who did face painting and balloon animals. But it sounds like you had more fun. I'm always glad when I visit the page and find out that the universe is treating you and yours the way you deserve to balance out the bad that seems to sneak up on you!
There was a poker chip hunt first, pretty much an easter egg hunt with poker chips. And when they found the chips they took them up to the volunteers and cashed them in for quarters. Aidan seriously raked in the cash on that one. LOL There were a couple of teenagers in there grabbing all the chips, which rather annoyed me, but the volunteers kept throwing more chips out so the little kids could get some. Then they had a potato sack race. I didn't get any pictures of this one because Ian was racing and I was a bit nervous about how he'd do following the rules. Turns out he did great! He didn't get an early start, he hopped his little heart out and he won his heat. The other kid fell down once, but it was still pretty close. He got to go pick out a prize. Aidan wanted a prize too so she went to get in on the race. She didn't do as well. She held the bag too tight and kept falling over. She got a second place ribbon though. Then she got in on the Chain Relay, which is where you have a group of kids and one starts running down and back then picks up another kid and they run down and back etc. until the whole group runs down and back. Even though the littlest kid fell over on the last lap her team still won, so she got to get a prize. And Ian was watching the race and cheering her on the whole time! It was so cool. 
Aidan has a little flower crown we made on her head there. Around lunch time, John brought the cookstove out and we had a picnic on the porch of M&M pancakes. Then the kids decide they're going to make a clubhouse out of their pile of sticks. This whole time, I'm sitting on the porch reading a book and listening to my IPod in between talking to the kids and watching them do stuff when they hollered at me. They completely came up with this stuff on their own.
at 9:55 PM :: ~#~
StSquirrel, at
3:16 PM
