Satori Smiles » Cool Stuff

Not Back to School Picnic

Angela — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:49:46 +0000

We attended this on Wednesday, and just thought I’d share a few photos. This Not-Back-To-School (NBTS) picnic was for our Colorado NICHE group. We had a blast and both Satori and I met so many new friends! The food was delicious, they even had an entire gluten-free table alongside the normal food table.

What a fun park to host a big picnic! When we got too hot, we’d cool off in the splash area.

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RMNP and Carousel of Happiness

Angela — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:11:22 +0000

The past few days we’ve had Gramy and Grampy visit us from Wisconsin, and we all had a great, relaxing time!

The weather was perfect, sunny and 70′s. We drove to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park and then down the western side of the Rocky Mountains and around back up the eastern slope where we live on the Peak to Peak Highway.

We enjoyed this refreshing stream, Satori played in it quite a bit. Grandpa and I learned about the geology of the area while she splashed with Grandma. This was the site of the Lawn Lake Flood in 1982 which had a flash flood from a dam that broke. It rushed down the mountain as a 30 foot high wall of water, creating an alluvial fan in this area and the meadows below. Huge boulders were deposited in the meadow. It reached Estes Park.

Here we are driving up through RMNP and Angela stopped to get photos of our Flat Kids we’re hosting this week. If you look just to the top left of my hand, you’ll see the line of bare area where the Lawn Lake Flood rushed down the mountain, and where we were in the above photos.

We then drove down and did a loop around the mountains, viewing the ugly damage the pine beetles are doing to our Rocky Mountain forests. A few of the trees on our property are already dying.

The next day we visited our quaint neighbor town of Nederland, where the Carousel of Happiness just opened this summer!

Every stop to get groceries now necessitates a ride on this beautiful carousel.

If you’re ever up our way (Rocky Mountains above Boulder), be sure to stop in Ned to take a whirl!

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While Mom works, Satori plays with puzzles this week

Angela — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:44:23 +0000

I have been working non-stop getting our school year scheduled, preparing for a visit from Gramy and Grampy, and organizing my 20-year class reunion. So we aren’t getting to all our lessons except for reading/phonics/handwriting. To keep Satori intellectually stimulated while I’m organizing, she’s been on BrainPop and playing with jigsaw puzzles!

In fact, she quickly ran through our selection at home, so these came in the mail last week. The Geopuzzles just rock, Latin America GeoPuzzle completes our set. They were easy enough for Satori to do at age 4, yet still fun for David and I.

Try as I might, I couldn’t stay away from the puzzles. When times are very stressful, taking the time to do a puzzle forces me to stop and breathe and take my mind off things. So I helped out with one…

And when David came home, he joined in on this 300 piece Dinosaur puzzle. It’s beautiful!

Because we all had a blast, we picked up this one specifically made for families to do together. This line of puzzles by Ravensburger is called their Family Fun puzzles.

They have three different size pieces – huge ones for PreK-K children, regular-sized ones for K-3 children (or so) and tiny pieces for older children/adults!

Our local toy store had one Family Fun Puzzle in stock for $19.99, but we used a $5 coupon. Amazon has them at $15.99 though, and their Ocean Marvels puzzle (380 pc) is an additional 25% off. We’ll be doing this together soon, maybe with Grandma and Grandpa who are visiting this week!

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Vocabulary Power Flip-books

Angela — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:34:15 +0000

This morning over breakfast, Satori asked if I knew what “I’m at the end of my rope” means. I asked her where she learned that phrase from. She then brought me the little vocabulary flip-books we just started using last month. This phrase was in one of the books.

I saw these little flip-books at a local Barnes and Noble and knew that they would be a hit at our house. I purchased from Amazon and used their 4-for-3 and started out with the Vocabulary Power Grade 1 and Raining Cats and Dogs idiom book. Satori is so thrilled with them! She even tried packing them with us on our summer vacations.

They are little flip books that stand up by themselves, each book contained 200 words selected by professional language specialists for the specified age. They’re cute and colorful and fun to use. We’ll definitely be getting Grade 2-3! There is only one idiom book, so we only flip to a new page a few times a week, while the First Grade 1 we flip over everyday.

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Flat Satori’s travels for July

Angela — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:45:46 +0000

I got these photos of Flat Satori’s travels when we were on vacation in Wisconsin, and haven’t had a chance to post them to the blog. Here they are now!

Abingdon, Virginia

Satori first travelled to Abingdon, Virginia, where she explored the Virginia Creeper Trail.

The Virginia Creeper Trail links present day mountain biking and hiking enthusiasts with nature and history buffs as they travel along an old Indian path through some of southwest Virginia’s finest countryside and highest, most gorgeous mountain scenery.

Rome, NY

Next, she stayed with a family in New York, and visited a beautiful sunflower field in Rome, NY.

The first shovelful of dirt was dug for the Erie Canal in Rome, and Satori stood next to a real canal boat.

Here she is “firing” a cannon at us in Fort Stanwix.

Here she is with “Flat Shannon” in the Officer’s Quarters along with her host family.

Pompey’s Pillar in Montana

Flat Satori then took a long trip even further west than we are as she visited Pompey’s Pillar in central Montana.

Pompey’s Pillar was visited by William Clark on his return trip from the west coast on this day 204 years ago (July 25, 1806).

While there he carved his name and the date in the rock.

Stay tuned for her next three adventures. We already have photos of her in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as well as just hearing from her host family that she arrived safely in Idaho Falls, Idaho!

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