Day 30: A Single Moment Today

I am grateful for the moment today of decorating the Christmas tree.  We put on some Christmas music, got out the ornaments, and carefully spread them across the (upper 2/3rds of the) tree (because Ivy).  Our family has a tradition where each member picks out a new ornament each year, so it's fun to reminisce about years past as we put the ornaments up.  We also have a few that are sentimental for other reasons - I have a Geo Metro ornament from my friend Katie that brings back good memories of high school, we have some homemade ornaments from Joshua's preschool years, and I have one that contains a baby picture of me.  We also have some ornaments with words like "peace" and "hope", and I am such a sucker for inspirational words.  The kids get really excited about it, which I know will not always be the case, and it's fun to do a family project together.  I'm grateful for the mix of nostalgia, holiday cheer, and anticipation that goes into decorating the Christmas tree.

Gratitude Series 2018, Day Twenty Nine: A Current Song on the Radio

I am grateful for this artist (Lauren Daigle), these lyrics, and this song ("O' Lord").

Gratitude Series 2018, Day Twenty Eight: A Game

I am thankful for Minesweeper.  There was a stretch during my first year of college when I spent a LOT of time in my dorm room.  I had dislocated my knee in a track meet and was on crutches for awhile, so I stayed put as much as possible.  And then, on top of that, I somehow contracted mono.  So even when the crutches were gone, I was dorm bound for several more weeks, and feeling miserable the entire time.

You can only spend so much time sleeping, even with mono.  But when you're feeling that bad, you need something that's just engaging enough to be distracting, without requiring much physical or mental exertion.  Minesweeper was perfect for this.  During those long weeks, I spent hours each day playing this game, and it helped me get through.  My Minesweeper times were amazing, and sometimes I would fall asleep with Minesweeper playing in my head.  Once I was feeling better and able to get back out of the room, the Minesweeper playing tapered off dramatically, but I will always have a special place in my heart for this game.

Gratitude Series 2018, Day Twenty Seven: A Travel Destination

That outfit tho

I'm thankful that I had the chance to visit Peru.  My youngest brother Mitchell was a foreign exchange student in Peru 10 years ago, so my family took a trip to visit him.  Our trip included both mountain time and beach time, as well as a day in Lima and a meal at a fantastic restaurant called La Mar.

My favorite part was the mountains.  I'm lucky enough to live in the Sierra Nevadas, and spent a year living in the Colorado Rockies, which are both spectacular in their own right.  But the Andes are some next level shiz.  You can't believe how high they reach, and how straight up they stand, almost like skyscrapers.  I'd never seen anything like it - so beautiful, so majestic.  It was also very interesting to see the Incan ruins (most notably Machu Picchu, but there are several in the area) and think about how older societies functioned and how surprisingly advanced they were.  (Like, a modern construction crew would have trouble figuring out the logistics of building Machu Picchu given it's remote and high altitude location, but the Incans figured it out without airplanes or excavators hundreds of years ago.)

It was interesting to get the chance to visit a culture that was so different from my own, and to try to navigate in a place where most people spoke Spanish.  These are the kind of trips that only come along a few times in a lifetime, if ever, and I'm so grateful for the experience and the memories.

Crafting with Kids for the Non-Crafter

I'm writing this post for any of you parents out there who are NOT crafty, but who nevertheless are (cautiously) (ambivalently) interested in crafting with your kids.  Words cannot describe how bad I am at constructing things with my hands.  Furthermore (and not unrelated to my huge lack of skill), I have always resented the idea that just because you're female, you'll be really eager and able to craft.  I was always jealous when, for church events, boy's night out meant a sports activity or eating junk food and girl's night meant crafting.  Even just the word "crafting" makes me cringe.  I'll stop on the hating now, as I know many of you who are my good friends love to craft and are awesome at it, and I'm not meaning to denigrate your talents (in fact, i'm mostly just jealous).

But, if you have kids, chances are good that crafting will be part of your life during the preschool and early elementary years.  I was hoping that the kids would get their fill of art projects at school, but I've got one child who would do craft projects all day long if she was allowed and who really feels loved when we do a craft together, and another child who likes crafting well enough and can really use the extra fine motor practice.  So, around once a week, we do crafts up in here.  When we were first getting started, I really could have used some guidance from someone who had started from square one (meaning, they did not already own a glue gun / have a DIY pinterest page / craft for fun in their own spare time).  So I'm giving that advice to any other non-crafty folks out there.

What supplies do you need?

One of the things that's intimidating about crafts is that you find a cute idea, and then it costs a fortune to buy all the supplies that would go into making it.  Especially for little kid crafts, you can get by with a bare bones set of supplies.  I would start with construction paper, markers, kid scissors, and glue.  You can make TONS with those basics.  Some other things I've bought to add variety are googly eyes ($1), popsicle sticks ($1), yarn ($3), pipe cleaners ($3), and glitter glue ($3).  There are other things you already have around the house that can be incorporated into craft projects (paper plates, coffee filters, straws), or trash that you can save to incorporate into projects (empty egg cartons and empty toilet paper rolls - and I DONT EVEN KNOW MYSELF ANYMORE).

There are two supplies that your kids would probably love, but that you should first take into consideration the mess and how that will work in your space:  paint and glitter.  I'm hoping we can do some outdoor painting projects this summer, but paint on carpet is just a disaster.  Ditto with glitter.  We had this sensory calm down jar with glitter that busted open, and the glitter is still in the carpet years later.  If your child *loves* sparkle (and they all do), glitter glue is the least messy way I've found to add a little bit of sparkle without it ending up in every nook and cranny of your house.


Where do you get project ideas?
Pinterest is a gold mine, but (like with everything else) it can make you feel overwhelmed in like 3 seconds.  Once you start doing projects with your kids, you will have a better idea of which projects will work and which won't, and you can pin accordingly (and then the magical algorithm will do a better job of feeding you the kind of thing you're looking for and not the crazy projects that require an advanced degree in fine arts).  If you want to keep it simple, look up "toddler crafts", even if the kid is 7 years old, even if it's you that's doing the project - if you just look up "easy crafts", the results are still sometimes overly complicated for the non-crafty.

There are kits or art projects you can buy, but for the super beginner set, I don't think is the best way.  I bought a crafting bucket from Costco for $15 which promised to contain 100 project ideas.  This was an affordable way to get a sampling of a wide variety of supplies, but many of the projects were way too complicated for my young kids.  So the Internet is the best bet for ideas.

What kind of expectations should I have?

This is our most recent project - these are turkeys.

When kids are first starting out, they will need help with everything.  They will need to have several sessions of practice cutting just to learn to cut a line.  They may need to be shown several times how to grip a marker.  They will pour 20 times more glue than needed, possibly in the wrong spot.  They will only be able to take one direction at a time.  It's a very hands on process for the adult.  Our first projects were just pieces of construction paper cut into whatever shapes they could manage, glued onto another piece of construction paper.  Now they have advanced to cutting out basic shapes and gluing them together to look like animals, or holiday decorations, or vehicles.  And then gluing on some more embellishments.  It's still super basic, but the more they practice, the better they get.

This is what the project looked like on Pinterest.

One thing that might be harder for those who actually are crafty, and is also hard for all the perfectionists among us, is that kids will do things (either accidentally or on purpose) that make the project look *way* different than the example.  At this point, it's so tempting to step in and fix it.  It's so important to remember that the kid will enjoy it more and take more pride in the final project if they get to do as much as they possibly can by themselves.  It might not look much like the example picture, or much like anything recognizable, but they will love both the process and result more if they are only given help when they absolutely need it.  So it's really helpful to choose projects that are at their level, and it's important to encourage any perfectionist children that if it doesn't look just like the example, that's what makes it creative and special.

(Also,  regarding expectations:  there is light at the end of the tunnel for those who never grow to enjoy art time! Once the kids get the hang of the basics, they will start doing some projects on their own.  Right now, our kids can draw pictures with no help from me, and create abstract pictures that involve cutting and glue with minimal help from me.)

Final advice:
Keep a sense of humor.  There will be a mess.  You will spend more time setting up and cleaning up than actually crafting.  There will be projects that turn out like the Pinterest / nailed it memes.  Remember that the goal is for your kid to create art, and in the process spend some quality time with you, and if this happens then you have succeeded spectacularly!

Are there any other non-crafty parents out there who have worked out this process?  What's your advice?

Gratitude Series 2018, Day Twenty Six: A Local Spot

I am thankful for Lake Tahoe.  I thought of writing about something more obscure, as there are lots of lesser known spots around Reno that are also super cool.  But if you're doing a 30 day thankfulness list that doesn't include your *actual* very favorite local place (and especially if that place is Lake Tahoe), then you're doing it wrong.

I'm thankful for this breathtaking blue water.  I'm grateful that my kids and I get to have the beach experience each summer, and that our beach includes the smell of pine and the view of mountains.  I'm grateful for all the trails around Tahoe that I'm hoping we will get to explore more as the kids get older.  I'm grateful for the world class ski resorts that maybe someday we'll learn to use, haha.  I'm grateful that such spectacular beauty exists in the world, and that we are lucky enough to live just a short drive away.

Gratitude Series 2018, Day Twenty Five: A Silver Lining

I am grateful for the silver lining of the life lessons I learned from being cut from two sports teams.  In high school, sports was a huge part of my identity.  My best friends were my teammates, my hours after school were usually spent at some kind of practice, and my goals mostly revolved around athletic success.  I attended the biggest high school in the state of Nebraska, where we had about 700 people in each class, so each and every sports team was competitive to get a spot on.  Although I was lucky to get a spot on some of the teams, there were two try-outs where I got cut:  freshman basketball and varsity volleyball.  Making it on these teams meant a lot to me, and both times it felt devastating to get cut.  However, the experience taught me some important things:

First, in the case of freshman basketball, it taught me to take that adversity, work hard, and try again.  I played on a YMCA team that winter, did some weightlifting, and came back and made the reserve basketball team the next year.  (This is not a Michael Jordan story - i was a bench warmer and that was my one and only season of high school basketball - but it still felt great to bounce back after that first year of getting cut.)

Second, in the case of varsity volleyball, it taught me that sometimes disappointing things happen, but life goes on.  I would have loved to be on that volleyball team, but my life did not cease to exist, or even cease to be good, when I lost the spot as a team member.  I still had my friendships, I still had a great athletic outlet with track, and I had college to look forward to.  I got to experience losing something that meant a lot to me while I was still in a very protected and supportive environment, so that when I experienced hardships as an adult, I had some practice coping with difficulty.

So while it was hard to get cut from those sports teams, I'm grateful for the silver lining of lessons learned.