I got a new mattress for my bed and of course, the girls are now vying for chances to hang out in it.

The other morning I let Bean climb into my bed before I said she had to get up for the morning. She came in to the kitchen, later, and said, "Thank you for letting me rest in your bed. It was superb!"

Superb!

What 10 year old talks like this?!

Ours. Ours does.

And that's what reading to your babies early, regularly and ongoing will get you, too. A love of reading for themselves and your children will have huge vocabularies.

It's Leap Day, and it's also OBOB regionals at the International School! We all had to get up early to get to the International School by 8:30 am.

 A great team photo before competition begins!

In their first battle (below), they scored 60 points during their battle against the team from Rigler.

Which along with their three other battles, helped them to rank 3rd over all...

...and advance on to the Sweet 16.

BTW, Access Academy is the Talented & Gifted school for PPS.

The kids went to play on the playground to get their wiggles out after lunch and before the Sweet 16 started.

Unfortunately, the St. Ignatius School team knocked the Ewoks out of the race.

But everyone had a great time and the team celebrated with big bowls of candy with a little frozen yoghurt, shortly there after!

What a great way to go out of the PPS school system, huh? 

So proud of all of them!

I took Bean to her OBOB battle, having never experienced on with either of the girls before.

Here they are at their first battle of the night:

Here they are getting ready for their second:

Once their battles were over, everyone gathered in the library to await the nights final results. What you can't see in this photos is that there are kids RUNNING AROUND like crazy (as if they were on the playground) in the library. But our kids (Bean with her teammate Richard and Richard's sister, Reese) were just chilling and reading! So proud.

The Ewoks won their earlier battles and with their winning scores between the two, ended up placing 3rd out of the final four teams to continue on to vie to represent the school at the regional competition!!! We were just thrilled that the Ewoks did as well as they did on the main battle night!

The next morning during school, the four remaining teams battled to see which two teams would battle to go onto state.

The Ewoks were one of the remaining two teams!

Eddie and I went to the final battle, held after lunch in the auditorium, three days later.

I hadn't planned to go, truth be told. But decided to as an after thought. We walked up to school, really not expecting a whole lot of anything other than being proud of what Bean and her team had accomplished on the whole. To make things even crazier, one of their team members wasn't able to be at this deciding battle because her family had long-standing vacation plans that they couldn't change.

Basically, no one ever thought the Ewoks would get this far so (collectively as team parents) we were all a little shocked and surprised to be in the auditorium that early afternoon. And with Lilly out of town, the Ewoks would be battling with three team members instead of four.

All the other RCP teams who hadn't advanced were excused from class and able to come and watch the final competition. The other competing teams family arrived and they needed to pull extra chairs for their rows because of the extended family that showed up to support their team. The those parents had on team shirts that matched the kids team shirts. Serious stuff! Oh yeah, the team the 4th grade Ewoks were going up against were 5th graders.

Eddie and I didn't say it out loud, but we both believed the other team was going to be heading on to regionals. I think the other parents of our team members thought pretty much the same thing, too. It's not that we didn't have any belief in our kids, you could just see that the other team (and their parents) to everything much more seriously than we had.

Bean wore her ears for the occasion.

The two teams battling it out on stage!

After the Ewoks won, they got to battle the teachers, which included the librarian. Eddie was a timekeeper!

The Ewoks beat the teachers, too!

Bean with her certificate for participation. All the kids who participated in OBOB this year got a $5 gift certificate to a local frozen yoghurt shop, too!

Next up...Off to compete at regionals just a week away!

Last year Bean did OBOB (Oregon Battle of the Books) for the first time. Her team, the Ewoks, had an additional member last year who chose not to participate again this school year.

This photo below is from February 2019.

Eddie took Bean to the last practice session before the big "battle" event on Tuesday evening. One of the parents snapped this shot. Bean looks like she just saw a huge spider on the ground!

I LOVE that Bean is literally wearing all stripes: striped shirt, striped pants and striped socks and shoes. Just call her Stripes Camarillo!

Bean's teacher wrote this on her most recent report card. We are not surprised in the slightest, this is what she embodies, regularly. Still though, it warms your heart as a parent to know and have acknowledged you have added such a kind and compassionate addition to the world. We can't wait to see what Bean grows up to accomplish! (Her report card grades were impressive again, too!)

If you can't read it and don't want to click on it to make it larger is says:

"Josephine brings a very kind and caring presence to our class. She is always looking out for others and finding ways to help classmates when possible. She is an avid reader and very focused team member during group projects. She puts tremendous amount of effort into her math work, asking for help when needed and then helping others when she finishes her own work."

Earlier in the week I thought I'd make some cheese quesadilla's for lunch. Since Agatha is packed away in pieces, I've taken to using a smaller cast iron skillet on the gas burner.

I had my quesadilla's all ready to go on the skillet, and after what felt like forever on the first one, I decided to turn up the burner a little more to help things along. It's a cast iron skillet, so, no harm, right? I should mention, when I use the cast iron skillets on the new gas stove, I always use one of the handle sleeves so I don't burn my hands on the cast iron handle, something we always did if we used cast iron pans on her hobs or pulled any pan with a handle from out of the ovens.

So, I go back to the computer, my back to the kitchen, and I get a little caught up in my email response I was writing. A brief thought goes through my head, "You should check on your quesadilla..." but it was quickly dismissed with a second thought of, "It's in cast iron, it will be fine if I leave it a little longer than usual...".

My next thought is, "What is that smell??? Is my quesadilla burning?" and when I finally get up and turn around to go into the kitchen, no, my quesadilla is not burning, but the handle pot holder sleeve IS burning!

In fact, it's entirely on fire, on the cast iron pan handle.

Somehow, I remained calm and turned the burner off, which was the easy part. I still had a handle on FIRE! I reached for the fire extinguisher we have had in the kitchen for forever, and while it was still good, I was going to figure out how to use it. But then, the thought of messy foam everywhere made me quickly decide to try to find another solution.

I couldn't think of anything I had in the kitchen that would smother the flames without A. catching on fire itself, too, and B. not burning me in the process, too.

Ugh!

Meanwhile, the flames were about what seemed to be 5 inches high as it consumed this handle pot holder and was also a little mesmerizing, if I'm being completely honest.

It then occurred to me to use the metal kitchen tongs! I could only find the metal ones with the silicone tips but it would work. I grabbed and slipped the flaming handle cover and with the flames licking the silicone tips, calmly walked on to the back porch. I remained calm and walked down the stairs before dropping it on the wet gravel next to the patio, yet away from our painted wood deck. Didn't want to get that set on fire, too!

It still kept burning where I dropped it, so I filled an old watering can and doused the flames. A crispy, completely black burned holder remained.

Inside, the house had an bit of a smell from the flaming holder. I made sure the stove was still off, and slid another handle holder over what I assumed was a very, very hot cast iron pan handle and left it all alone for a few hours. I also made sure to share my cautionary tale of woe with Eddie and the girls that night.

In hindsight, it makes sense in turning up the burner, the heat and flame could easily catch the handle holder on fire. Also, I should have remained in the kitchen and paying attention to what I was doing. Lesson learned! I could have also put the flaming holder in the sink and put water on it in there, but we had dirty dishes in the sink and I didn't want greasy water catching on fire. That would have been an even bigger disaster! I also didn't want to scorch the kitchen sink. We are getting ready to try to sell our house starting next month, after all.

We miss you Agatha...

Lulu came up with a great word the other day: Confuzzled.

Yep, it's the combination of the adjectives "confused" and "puzzled" and I love it!