Kid's Marketplace

Drew's 3rd grade class went on an awesome learning adventure this week that we (me, Jeff & my mom) were so fortunate to be a part of. It's called Kid's Marketplace and it's meant to be a tool to introduce the skills required for money management and it was SOOO cool! Each student was randomly given a job and an amount they made each month (Drew was a fire fighter who made $200). They had a list of expenses that they would incur each month that they had to budget for; things like housing, clothing, food, and fun, among many others. Each student got to make choices on what they would spend their money on and in what order, but they had to go to every possible table at least once. It was really interesting to see where each student went first. Mom has helped out many times in the middle schools doing a similar activity called "Reality Town" and she said the major difference between the 3rd graders and the 9th graders is that the 9th graders first choice to spend their money was always the sports car, where the 3rd graders all high-tailed it to buy a pet! They'd settle for a bike and a room mate if it meant they could have a horse!

Jeff and I manned the real-estate table. Notice the cool Lego house and family decorating our table; Drew and I spent the evening building it (well actually I just searched for the right color and type of Lego, and he built it... Will helped with the landscaping and family). We had several offers from the students to purchase it, but we had to turn them down:) Here are some other observations that I made that really made an impression on me:

1. There were many other parents volunteering at this activity as well. What was interesting was the way the kids took advice from their parents. One girl yelled at her mom "It's my choice! Don't tell me what to do next!" while others were constantly checking back for advice... It's clear to see the analogy with this scenario and life. (Drew was one who was more than willing to take our advice which made me happy.)
2. Some kids thought that they had to spend all the money in their envelope so they were going around to the tables buying extra houses and cars just to spend it. Others were content that their needs were met and that they had a little spending money left over. (Again, Drew was the latter; he really wanted to keep his money! Although it is funny to note the areas where he skimped a bit and the areas where he splurged; he went easy on furniture, healthcare and food, but bought the most expensive clothes, a bunny and a motorcycle.)
3. Some kids didn't quite grasp the concept that the things they were required to pay for were adult needs that needed to be met. One kid got angry at me and said "Why are you all trying to take my money?" He didn't quite get the reason that he needed a house... guess he thought he'd live with his parents his whole life? (I think I know some adults who still haven't grasped that concept.)
   

Overall I think it was such a rewarding experience for these kids! I bet they'll remember this activity for a LONG time! A lot longer than if a teacher had stood at the front of the classroom and simply explained economics. What a treat for these kids! And you know me, I'm such a sucker for an awesome learning experience, I was on cloud 9 all day long just remembering how fun it was! I'm such a nerd!

Drew's 9th Birthday!

For Drew's Birthday party this year he decided he wanted to have a huge party where he could invite all his friends & family to come and play and be crazy and there's no better place to do that than at Bouncin' Off the Walls. It's this great place with a bunch of inflatable slides and bounce houses with plenty of space for craziness.

He chose a Star Wars theme (but you don't really get a theme at this place, other than your cake and goody bags) so it was basically just total mayhem. He invited his entire basketball team as well as friends from school, old friends he hasn't seen in a while and all his cousins too.
Here's a fraction of the group...
















With this big of a group of kids comes this big of a pile of presents... 90% of them were LEGO's so of course he was in HEAVEN!


We decided not to go the LEGO route (which is always a tricky thing... you never know if he'll like the present you got him as much as he would if we had just gone with LEGO's, but seriously, the kid has more LEGO's than we know what to do with!)... so we got him an acoustic guitar and a book to teach yourself how to play. I promised him years ago that if he took piano first and really learned how to play well, then we'd get him a guitar and lessons (I told him every really good rock star learns the piano first). Well, he's been doing great at piano, but we still think he has a few years of it to go before graduating to guitar lessons. But we still thought the guitar would be a good thing in the meantime. He seemed happy with it and looks darn cute playing it.


The day of his actual birthday we went out to dinner at Olive Garden with Grandma & Grandpa Peterson and my nephew Devon. It's always fun to go out to dinner with the grandfolks:)

Also, in his class at school he was the "Super Star" for the week of his birthday so we made a fun poster all about him to display in his class. Then on Friday Jeff, Will & I went in and read his favorite book to the class and played a game of "All about Drew BINGO". It was really fun. I made a BINGO card full of fun facts about Drew with his photo in the middle as the free space. We went through it as a class and anyone who shared the fact in common with Drew got to place and "X" on that space. It was fun for everyone to see how much they had in common with him. All in all I think all in all he had a great birthday!

Drew is such a joy in our lives! He's smart, creative, thoughtful, happy and so much fun to spend time with. I am proud and honored to be his mom! Happy Birthday Drew! We love you!

Winter Sports

Who says there's nothing to do in the Winter? Here's a bunch of stuff that's been keeping us busy these cold winter days:

Gymnastics: The boys both graduated for the last time from the Little Gym program (Will has been going since he was 14 months old...). They had their final performance in January and have officially out-grown the Little Gym.


Tubing: We took the boys to this cool tubing place near Park City. There's a "tube-lift" where it pulled us up the hill on our tubes, taking away any possibility of us getting any actual "physical" activity out of the adventure. It was WAY fun and going up the hill was almost as much fun as going down it!

We all held on to each others tubes and the guys who work there spun us as they shoved us down the hill so we really got twisting as we were going down. It was super fun!

Bowling: I signed the boys up for "off-track" bowling since they had the whole month of January off school (gotta love year-round school).
They loved it and on the last day they had a tournament where Will won first place out of his table group so he got to take a bowling pin home! Joy!! (Now they each have one... Drew won one too when he was Will's age.)

Basketball: They've both been playing Jr. Jazz this season and they are both doing awesome! Drew has all his buddies from school on his team and he's really getting good! They were struggling as a team at first, but now they're on a winning streak! Will and his team are hilarious to watch! Will gets right in there and takes the ball and dribbles it across the court and makes baskets all the time! It's amazing! (Granted he double dribbles, travels and breaks many a rule on his way, but he's still up in there playing and getting excited about it so that's all I care about.)

Things that are cool...

I just thought it would be fun to not only update on what our fam has been up to lately, but to make a list of the cool things we're enjoying right now... I think a few of you who read this might find it interesting for your kids who are the same age... So here goes:

1) The Library - I think this is one of my favorite aspects of our democratic government! First of all I LOVE to read and learn new things so I'm constantly finding new books I want to read and some I love so much I decide I want to buy them. So I here's how I work it: I look on Amazon.com for the book I'm interested in and then they give me a list of several book suggestions that are similar to the one I was researching. I write down the titles and get on the library website and put them on hold. Then the library emails me when my books are ready and I go pick them up. It's awesome! I bet I make trips to the library 3-4 times a week. I get to try the book for free!! How cool is that!

2) Mary Pope Osborne (the author of the Magic Treehouse series) - I love the way this woman writes! If you haven't discovered her historical fiction for kids, you need to check them out! Then you can branch out to some of her other works... Our favorite right now is her "Tales from the Odyssey" series. If these books had existed when I was in college I would have enjoyed reading Homer's Odyssey so much more!! We've been reading several chapters together every night and we are all loving the adventures! These stories have had such an influence on modern literature and it's wonderful to be able to read them together and have them make so much sense to the boys.

3) Family Dinner Monday - Friday (courtesy of Jeff's new work schedule for 2010) - For the first time since Jeff's worked for the FAA, we've been able to have dinner together every school night! I've always had a sit-down family dinner with the boys, but Jeff has always had to work. But since January that's all changed and I'm so thankful! Now he works Saturday and Sunday nights only, leaving the week night for us! We are all so happy!! This is where we all touch base and talk about our days and discuss what's going on in each of our lives. Every time I see one of those Swanson TV Dinner commercials where they talk about how important family dinner is and they say something like "kids who eat family dinners every night are less likely to do drugs" or something like that, I just start feeling all smug because WE DO! So hopefully it will do all the things for our family that the commercials say it will:)

4) The Rhyming game - One of my favorite things to do is sit and snuggle with my boys but they don't always want to sit still to talk, and sometimes we run out of things to talk about... so the rhyming game is the solution to this little dilemma. After I pick up Will from school, we always snuggle on the couch and talk about his day, and when that's finished (usually about 3 minutes later) we play the rhyming game where one of us says a word and the other has to say a word that rhymes with it. It's so simple but this can last for a LONG time which means a LONG snuggle time-- Score! Sometimes we'll shake things up and make it the opposite game instead. But either way, I'm happy because we're snuggling:)

And that's what's cool in our life right now:) Now seriously, go check out the Mary Pope Osborne books if you haven't already!

Sundance 2010

So I just spent an hour writing a detailed review of my three years working up at the Sundance Film Festival but I can't figure out how to cut and paste it into this blog. So I figured that what you really want to see is all the celebrities I've had the good fortune to have been able to interview... So here's a compilation of the past three years of celebrities... Enjoy!

Time capsule's and Goals... I'm a believer!

So last night at the 2nd Sunday Bergstrom dinner we opened a time capsule that the majority of the ever-expanding family contributed to way back in 2000. Judy (my awesome Mother-in-law) had us all fill out a worksheet about our likes and dislikes and that sort of thing. I have to admit that I was worried about what I had written because I feel like I've changed so much from the person I was 10 years ago...

Ten years ago we were living in Georgia. Jeff was in the Air Force and I was Executive Director of Keep Lowndes/Valdosta Beautiful. We were struggling with infertility issues and poor and just scraping to get by. But we were in love and we had big plans for our future.

Fast forward to last night and I just have to say how happy I was to see that in spite of how much I've grown and changed, I am exactly where I wanted myself to be! Here's how I knew... to the question that asked "Where I see myself in 10 years" I wrote this:

Living in the west with a cute little family in a decent sized house with a good
sized yard. Taking summer vacations as a family and scrap booking like crazy.
Still madly in love with my Jeffy!

And that is just where I feel I am!! I attribute it to "Self-fulfilling Prophecy"... Even though I forgot I'd ever written that, subconsciously I've always known where I wanted my life to go, and I made it happen. So I say set goals! Make resolutions! Live in the now, but always ask yourself: "Am I living the life I want to be living?" "Am I the person I want to be?" Hold yourself accountable for realizing your dreams!

P.S. Man I hate that pic up top! But I just wanted to illustrate the change:)

Happy New Year!

Here we are 10 days into the new year and I'm finally blogging about New Year's Eve... That's cool, better late than never!

So I pulled out my bags of fun this New Year's Eve, a tradition I started years ago but stopped doing for one reason or another. I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled them out of storage and the boys both remembered them and were totally excited about them. Each bag has a clock face on the front specifying a time, and in each bag is an item and a message telling what activity we're going to do that hour as we wait up til midnight.

The first bag told had an apron in it and a message that we were going to start the night by making home-made pizzas. We invited Will's "Bestest" friend Mason to join us for our little party. He's a great kid and very funny! It was fun having a third boy there.

The second bag had an orange in it and a recipe for making cool bird feeders. We sliced oranges and added cranberries and birdseed to pie tins and filled them with water to freeze all together. After they freeze, they can be hung outside on the tree branches. (Note: We didn't have room in our freezer for all the pie tins so we set them on our picnic table in the backyard and I'm not gonna lie... they're still sitting there! We need to get them hung!!)

Anyway, the third bag had a giant chocolate bar and a message that it was time to break out the chocolate fountain! (My cute niece gave me one for Christmas and Will couldn't wait to break it out!)

It was definitely the highlight of the evening! We dipped everything we could think of in it! Jeff even tried summer sausage, celery and carrots! The carrots were actually pretty good!

The fourth bag had the DVD I made of our 2009 year in review. After we watched it, we made up charade cards with memories from 2009 and played charades. Mason didn't know many of the activities that we did, so when it was his turn he just acted out a memory from something that happened in his family during 2009. It was too cute!

The fifth bag had a small game in it and a message that we were going to play each of our favorite board games now. We played Hullabaloo, Clue Jr., and Jumpin' Monkey's. Fun, fun, fun!

The last bag had noise-makers and hats and fun things to dress up in to go outside and welcome in the new year (even though it was only 10:00 p.m.).

I just love this pic... check out Will's outfit! Not everyone can pull that off:)

And that was the end of our New Year's Eve bash! What a great way to start a new year!

Oh, one last thing though... earlier in the day we all filled out a questionnaire and found a personal treasure to add to our family time capsule that we put together. We plan on opening it in 2020 so we each wrote a letter to our 10-years-older-selves telling us what we hope we've accomplished by this point, and reminding ourselves that loving and spending time with your family should still be a priority in our lives (Drew will be almost 19 and a senior in high school, and Will will be 16 and wanting to drive, so this was mainly propaganda to remind them what they were like at 8 and 6... I hope it helps keep them close... only time will tell.).

Happy New Year to you and yours! May all your resolutions and goals be realized!