Isaac's Quote of the Day

Me: "Isaac, please help momma and pick that
stuff up off of the floor."

Isaac: Carefully folding his hands behind his back,
"Momma, I can't. My hands have disappeared.
I don't got them no more. See, wook at me!"

SHEESH...

OHMIGOSH! Have you HAD this?

WARNING: Hide it from you children and spouse.

Admittedly, we're ice cream snobs.

Eli has a t-shirt that says,
"Friends don't let friends eat
grocery store ice cream."

BUT Haagen Dazs' New Flavor
is FABULOUS!

Sticky Toffee Pudding...try it...REALLY.

Skater Boy

Isaac found over in the corner of the garage,
a treasure, a prize, the best thing ever!
Daddy's old skateboard from when he
was just a kid. WOW! He was a little
shy about trying it out so Daddy had to help
at first...

ALREADY? One for the sponsors...

Then, Gus gets an education. Eli comes
over and it's all about "trucks" and "bearings"
and flips and where to ride and so on...

As you can see, it didn't take him long.
Check this last shot...Gus Hawk.
OH, and he wanted a picture
of gum in his mouth and so...

Spring Break and Birthday Bikes

So, it's Spring Break and Eli FINALLY decides
to part with his birthday money and spend
it on his new bike. Thanks to all who
contributed to the wad of birthday cash
(his favorite present) so that he could shop.

A boy and his Diamondback...

WELL...it is a 21 speed and dad HAD to adjust gears.
This is Eli's first bike with gears and Matt couldn't
resist the "old-timer" lecture about HOW HE
was in HIGH-SCHOOL before HE HAD a 10 speed...
yada, yada, yada...get off my bike dad and let me ride!

AND...he's off!

Okay...there's several things here...
FIRST, he's not hurt. That's the first thing I checked.

SECOND, why, oh why, are girls the ones with the dropped
cross bars? Somebody tell me!
Eli has now fondly dubbed his cross bar the "crotch bar".

THIRDLY, the child laid in the ROAD and rolled around
holding his, pardon me, BALLS (well, what do you want me to say?)
for half an hour. SERIOUSLY...It CAN'T hurt that bad...
He was giggling the whole time, especially after
I told him that instead of mud bustin' he's just been
ball bustin'. :) WHAT? Again, what term do you prefer?

FOURTH, he had more than fair warning that I had my camera
and that if he continued to lay in the road I was TOTALLY
gonna take pictures of him for posterity and future ammo.
Don't think I won't use them!

Isaac's first big-boy bike courtesy of bubby.
Dang hand-me-downs! WHATEVER,
It's like new as Eli outgrew it in a single season.
He's a little intimidated by the bike, go figure,
nothing else slows him down. He spent more time
on Matt's old skate board this evening...just wait
until I get those posted!

The Late Easter Egg

Back when I was a kid and my cousins and I
still had LARGE Easter Egg Hunts out
at my Grandma and Grandpa Needler's Farm,
sometimes come May or June, we'd find
a beautiful, late, and smelly egg that
had been missed from Easter. It was
always such fun, I'm not sure why, to
find those...for some unfathomable reason
it was like a treasure. I guess because it was
unexpected and did I mention SMELLY?
Of course, we only hunted real, dyed eggs then
which accounts for the STINKY, SMELLY part.

Anyways...found these Easter pictures the other
day that I had forgotten about. It was a similar
experience except for the stinky part....

The rest of these are of Eli
on the Easter Praise Team. It's so
great to watch him lead others in
worship and much more meaningful
than the Sudoku game in his Easter Basket,
which he also enjoyed. OH...but what
really surprised him and brought him GREAT
joy was the presence of his friend Mykenna
from school. She's currently his best gal pal
and a sweet, sweet young lady. He's got good taste!
You can TOTALLY see just how much it meant to
him to have her there in his sweet, shiny face. :)

Tigger and Turtle

Tigger and Turtle are important gibets for
Isaac's crocs. Turtle is "left" and Tigger is "right".
They are his happy friends - always on his little feet.
These guys are our new Tigger and Turtle because the old
Tig lost his tail (which wasn't so noticeable) BUT Turtle LOST
his head. Isaac was very accepting of the old Turtle's
decision to "go inside his shell" as he would tell
folks when he was questioned (crack me up)...BUT
was loud and JUBILANT the day Turtle decided to
poke his head out again! (I had replaced
old Tigger and Turtle and had forgotten to
tell him.) It worked out great...now he
just thinks Turtle is back.

Book Club May - "Into the Wild' Jon Krakauer

I've joined a great group of ladies
who meet once a month to discuss books.
We all share a LOVE of reading and so it is fun!
It's also interesting to step outside of my typical
reading patterns and experience new authors
and subject matter. I've read another of
John Krakauer's books, "Into Thin Air" and
enjoyed it a lot. This one I enjoyed a little less
but is was still intriguing. I hear that the movie
is simply fantastic.

Oak Trace Elementary School - Kidtown

Creative Cookies, Inc.
Kidtown 2008
"Sugary Fun for Everyone"

Before I begin this post, allow me this one off topic comment...
Leave it to MY son to happily be on a team of ALL girls
and somehow end up managing the money...he's JUST like his father :)

OTES, 3rd grade, has an annual tradition of a large,
thematic economic unit which leads up to the SUPERBOWL
of third grade, Kidtown, where the entire school comes and
shops the businesses generated by the 3rd grade. They spend
MONTHS on this unit preparing for this big event. They devise
business plans, obtain business licenses, develop a product or a
service, do breakdown analysis, comparison shop, actually shop,
have business meetings, solicit investors among a myriad of other
unbelievable things for 9 year-olds to do. Anyways...they must
pay back their investors with interest and they have to calculate
start-up costs as well as projected earnings and EVERYTHING.
It is a really cool experience.

They drug ALL of the parents in for
a mandatory meeting and spent 90 minutes telling us all about it
and mostly emphasizing that our role was specifically to keep
our traps shut and stay completely OUT of our kids' mini-business
venture. They would succeed or fail on their own.

SO...Eli is on this team with a cracker-jack group
of little women and they develop their idea for
personalized sugar cookies (Eli's idea, his teacher had to jump
in a bail him out because the girls were just about to
cast their votes toward a manicure service. ELI ABOUT DIED!)
where they'd provide a frosted cookie product and then
have the consumer choose from a variety of sugary toppings.
It was a hit.

As a whole, the 3rd grade made HUGE amounts of money.
I don't think that there was one business that did NOT
make back what they started with. I know we were
paid back our investment with interest and the rest of the
earnings went to two things:

(I'm so proud of this) a few thousand dollars went to
a school in Mexico to buy supplies and help with improvements
to the school building. And the rest took all "business owners"
and their investors out to lunch at Outback Steakhouse,
where the restaurant was opened just for Oak Trace and
included a tour of the kitchens.

HE LOVED IT! He's my little entrepreneur anyways
but now that tendency in him is on overdrive.

The Gus Gallery

Isaac Schantz
Self-Portrait - age 3

This artist's attention to detail is astounding.
He literally captures his own essence at three with
the cobalt blue eyes, the curly hair (one curly hair), and
somewhat snarky grin. The intrigue of this work
is the addition of three red crimson splotches about
the subjects face suggesting, on the surface, a bout with chicken pox
or measles neither of which the artist has experienced to date.
Perhaps, the artist is eluding to the depth of which the
three fundamental influences in his young life Cars, chicken nuggets,
and sugar have impacted his art. We may never know as
Isaac Schantz rarely submits to interviews in an effort to keep
his art pure and free from secular influence. He is, in his medium, a
marker board visionary. It is a crushing blow to the art community,
as a whole, the temporary nature of such work. The artist MUST
wipe board clean, literally and figuratively, to create anew.

Eli Dishes it Up!

Eli has developed a new interest thanks
to The Nana. He and she have been cooking
it up on the down-low whenever they're together.
He's got special spatulas and over the shoulder towels
(read 'guy aprons') and everything. He's making me nuts
wanting to scramble eggs all the time.

NOW...he's got an online recipe box and a gig
to plan and cook dinner once a week at our house.
We'll let you know how that goes and what our reviews
are. His first dish selection...Tingas! Recipe above:



Tomato Chopper!


He looks just freakin' like Jack Nicholson
in The Shining...I'll probably have nightmares...


Ah, whew...there's my sweet fella, flippin' Tingas.

Our first experience at Chez Eli.
We all liked the Tingas A LOT.
We all agreed as we were munching them up
that we were glad we modified the recipe and
used green chilies instead of jalapenos, added cheese
and fried them lightly flat instead of rolling them into
tubes and deep-frying them. We all also agreed
that we'd like some spicy dipping sauce for them
next time. We gave them four out of five stars!

Eli is a brilliant little chef. We had lots of fun.
He listened carefully. Followed directions and
didn't fuss when momma had to step in a help
a little. Look for posts of our future culinary adventures!

OTES News!

Well...our big guy has excelled this year passing both
the school's accelerated reading and math challenges.
We're SO proud! Can you tell?
Eli S. in the 3rd grade...that kid's a winner!

Terebithia

The Bridge to Terebithia is a great book
a good movie and has captured
the imagination of these two.
We went on a hike today just so they
could play Terebithia.