Four fast years

She's four.  I'm certain now that I'm joining the ranks of parents everywhere in my disbelief of how fast time flies.  Here's a picture history of our girl.

On May 7, 2009, Elsie made her debut.  She was adored by all.

Our new little family on Elsie's birthday

At a year old, we made a transition to a new house, and Elsie was about to be a big sister!  She had no idea what she was in for.

Housewarming and 1st birthday party--Wizard of Oz

At two, she started her year with a full-on tantrum, upstairs in her crib screaming while all the party guests arrived.  That was the precedent for the whole year.

Family of four on Elsie's 2nd birthday--Cowgirl

At three, we began to see sparks of reason, but this little one started to develop passion and perseverance in everything she did, particularly when it came to being upset about, well..anything.

Elsie's 3rd birthday--Charlie Brown

And, at four, she's come to the other side of reason.  Every now and again she'll have a really good tantrum, but she mostly is able to be reasoned with.  She can stop, back up, and try again.  Usually asking nicely.  On the second try.  She's smart and imaginative, and she still has that perseverance that will hopefully turn into a work ethic.  We're still working on that.  She's fiercely independent and extremely friendly--she doesn't know a stranger, and wants to know everyone's names--shoppers at the grocery store, children at the park, people walking in the neighborhood, people sitting at the next table in the restaurant--and she's not afraid to ask.  She loves to change her clothes and would do it a million times if it were humanly possible, and she loves all things girly.  She's also very imaginative.  She loves stories--she loves to tell them and loves to hear them.  She eats everything and is always hungry.  She's growing like a weed.  At the beginning of the year she had to jump to flip the light switch, now she just stands on her tiptoes.  She and Oscar do much more laughing together than fighting, and they race to buckle themselves into their car seats.  Elsie loves to  be outside, and she'll tell you that she loves to play in the rain.

Elsie's 4th birthday--Strawberry Shortcake

Party at Miss Kay's house

Strawberry Girl

She's our girl.  Pride and joy.  Happy 4th birthday, Elsie. 

Cheers.

May 2013 Debt Update

May 2013
Third 10K Chunk, started 1/1/13 Fundraising Thermometer

Slowly but surely, we are making progress.  Not as quickly as we would like, but the longer it goes, the harder it gets.  I have quite a few gigs lined up this summer that are for pay, so this "extra" income will help a little bit.  We'll see.

Opelika's public preschool is by lottery, and since the K-2 school for which we are zoned does not house a program, we are eligible for the lottery in both the other K-2 schools.  Unfortunately, E did not win either lottery.  Doubly unlucky, I guess.  But also a blessing.  So, yes, we are out the money for daycare for another year (which would have been a huge chunk toward loans), but, on the flip side, E & O will get to be together for another year to strengthen their sibling bond, and in putting off the formalized school experience, E & O will maximize their learning by play and development of their imaginations.  All is well.

Cheers.

What I Learned, Puzzle Party 2013

This last weekend was one with most nerdy fun that I've had in a long time.  Well since last year, anyway.

Sometime last spring, a friend from church sent an e-mail to both Eli and me, asking if we would be interested in joining her team for this puzzle competition.  She thought and thought about everyone she knew who would be geeky enough to want to do it, and well, she thought of us.  The crux:  she only needed one of us.  I thought for sure that Eli would make me arm wrestle for him for it, but he let me be the one to go. 

So, one Saturday morning, we met at the student center on Auburn campus, and our team was given a packet of puzzles to solve during the course of the day.  We stayed at the student center and barely remembered to eat and go to the bathroom, we were so wrapped up in the puzzles.  At the end of the day, the scores were added up, and we came in second to last--but we had such a ton of fun.

Fast forward to October -- the organizer of the puzzle parties sent out an e-mail announcing his party for spring 2013.  I immediately e-mailed him to sign up a team.  Then, I silently recruited other middle school teachers to participate with us as the pink team. 

Saturday, April 13, 2013.  Eric's 13th Puzzle Party (EPP13) -- Your Lucky Day -- started at the thirteenth hour, lasted for thirteen hours, and teams were given 13 puzzles to solve.  I, along with four of my colleagues and one's boyfriend's little brother, travelled to the Auburn campus to participate.  On the way there, MM confided that she was nervous we wouldn't even be able to solve the first puzzle.

After rules were explained and directions given, we left were told to begin.  We were given the grid to a logic problem, but the clues were hidden all over the Haley Center.  We were in luck.  A bunch of teachers (most of whom graduated from Auburn) running around the School of Education.  We even had an inside scoop to some quiet seating areas where we could work through our puzzle.  It took an hour, but we finally solved the puzzle.  When we went to submit our answer, we saw that we were ahead of about half of the teams.  Sweet!

We retreated to MM's house where we looked as some of the puzzles.  At the end of the long night, we were able to solve six puzzles.  At the wrap-up party on Sunday, we found that we came in seventh out of thirteen teams.  We were thrilled.  And we even got the highest score on a maximization puzzle.  Heck, we'll take it.  And now I'm so ready for next year.

Some things I learned:

1.  There are code cheat sheets available, like this one.  (This one was provided by the party coordinator.  I thought it was inclusive, but that's because I didn't know.)
2.  There are codes that are not on code cheat sheets (at least, not ones I could find).  Say, for instance, pigpen cipher.  And if you have no idea what they are or where to start looking, well, it's going to take you a lot longer to solve puzzles than a team of math graduate students.
3.  In coding, a letter followed by a number usually indicates a Caesar shift. This information would have been VERRRRRY helpful for the Angel's Antiques puzzle.  Next time.  Next time.
4.  Braille dots are numbered 1-3 down the first column, and 4-6 down the second column.  I was on the right track, but had them numbered incorrectly.
5.  I learned what a Polybius Square is and how to use it. Watch out.
6.  A substitution cipher is not necessarily the same as a ROT cipher.  This was unexpected, though I'm not sure why.
7.  There are pentomino puzzle solvers that people, like math grad students, use, like this one.  Cheaters.  Okay, so I'm a sore loser about that one.  So what?  Now I know.
8.  A tare is a noxious weed.
9.  There is so much that I don't know, but I'm still pretty dang smart (even with the brain cell degeneration that has resulted from having children).
10.  Solving puzzles is much more fun when fellowship and friends are involved.

So, that was my weekend.  If this at all strikes your fancy, you should visit the website of the creator.  Eric Harshbarger is a Lego sculptor and a puzzle maniac.

Cheers.

April 2013 Debt Update

Well, I've been behind for a couple of months on the debt updates, so I figure I should just pick up where we are starting with this month.


 Third 10K Chunk, started 1/1/13

 

Fundraising Thermometer

 



I'm not gonna' lie.  For me, it feels like things are slowly unraveling as we get down to the nitty gritty.  I'm going to go ahead and complain--it's SO hard to stop spending money.  We are this close || to having our loan totals drop below $30k.  Everything will be easier once that first number becomes a 2, right?

I've also thought back to the plan to have everything paid off by the time Elsie starts kindergarten.  That's 17-ish months from now.  We have slowed down from our original momentum, so we'll need to step it up a notch.  We'll see how that goes.  Until next month..

Cheers.

Zoo & Easter (Picture Heavy)

First of all, I just want to say how much I love that we upgraded our high speed internet.  I just uploaded 25 pictures in no time (under 1 min.).  Used to be that I had to be very selective so that I didn't have to wait so long--it would take an hour to upload 10 photos.  Oi!

So, anyway, on Thursday before Easter, we went with some church friends to the Montgomery City Zoo.  And when we were there, we ran into my neighbor that I've never met.  She parked next to us, and when we got to talking as we got the kids out of the car, she had noticed one of the license plates numbers of another mom in our group (they start with county number in AL) and knew we were from Lee County.  Turns out we live one street away.  Small world.  :)  We left from the zoo and drove to Mobile to see the grandparents.  We were there all day Friday, and left squirrely in the morning on Saturday to return home for a birthday party.  

Flamingos

Hanging on the rail

Mama!  The ducks have one leg! 

Zebras!  (in the background)

What's that?

Far!

Tiger!

Group picture of friends!

Tuckered out on the way from zoo to Mobile.

Long day.

Swinging at the Spanish Fort playground.

Balance beam

Don't push me, Oscar!

Across the bridge!

On the rope bridge--what balance!

Easter Sunday

Don't touch my eggs, Daddy!

Did somebody say chicken dance?

Do something silly.

Smile!  Okay, make a silly face, then!

Egg Hunt

Do you see it?

Here it is!

And there you have it, the end of spring break.  :)

Cheers.