Spring Tease

Tomorrow school starts again... spring break is over... A week-long teaser of summer break makes it all the harder to return for six more weeks of school, state testing, and projects.

But it was a fabulous break. We left last Friday for Oregon to visit Aaron and Em. On the way to Central Point, we stopped by Sacramento to see baby Ada, all of two weeks old! And I admit, I did chuckle a little as Weston was describing how Ada was so much different "when she was younger..." How much younger can she get there, Daddy?!?  But it is true that our little ones change so quickly, even before our very eyes...

Anyway, after dinner and baby cuddling, we got on the road again and arrived at 2:30am at Rabun Way and plopped our kids--and ourselves--into bed.

And no more than 5 hours later, a parade of Pokemon loving cousins were running laps around the house having battles, trading posts, and quizzing each other on HP and EX's and etc. And a couple hours after that, we all hit the ground running to our first adventure: and... I can't remember the name of the place--will update later... A little drive, a short hike to the right, and we arrived at a beautiful huge waterfall!

And then back to the left, was the Valley of giant boulders (or something like that--update to real name later...) Lots of fun climbing, exploring, and even sliding to do!

The boulders surrounded a little beach by a raging river of death! ... or some beautiful rapids :) There's something about rivers and rocks and sticks that can keep kids entertained for hours!

And on the same day as that beautiful sunny hike through the woods, we continued up the mountain until we hit SNOW!! Lots of snow! Crater Lake was our lunch destination!

Ever since I saw Emily's post on Instragram, I wanted to do this!! I got to roast hot links in the snow!! I LOVE their little portable fire pit! Dream come true!!!!

Something fun for everyone at Crater Lake! Dawna and Adele busied themselves building a snow fort/palace/mansion: 

Jade found plenty of snow to taste (one of my favorite pictures of the day):

Apparently, snow comes in many delightful flavors... much like ice cream! 

Jon, Adele, and I raced little snowballs down the slope and over the ridge overlooking the lake! Super intense racing...

And to top it all off, we harvested the largest icicles we could get off the roof of the resort! Jon won.

And Jade and Malachi will tell you that icicles also come in many delightful flavors...much like Popsicles! 

And after all this, we weren't even done with our first full day of vacation! Once we returned home from Crater Lake, Aaron and Jon went off to indoor soccer and long distance running, respectively, and Emily and I ate more food :) 

Sunday we slowed down... a little... but still stuffed in as many Easter delights as we could. I got to play in a trio with Adele and Emily at church. Adele and Dawna dyed eggs with the kids while we hid plastic eggs in the house. Then we had a delicious lamb dinner. After that, we did the Easter story in eggs and the kids followed clues to find their Easter presents... yeah, that was our "slow" Easter Sunday...In the midst of all that, Dawna and Adele found a few minutes to serenade us on their instruments:

...a more grown up reprise of their original hit:

LOVE THOSE GIRLS!!! Then and Now... 

Anyway, back to spring break... 

Monday dawned bright and early once more for the big kids. Aaron and Jon, who had originally planned on taking the older kids backpacking but changed plans when rain came, took each of their older three kids on a caving adventure. They had a wonderful day, and hopefully my other contributor to this blog will fill in the details of their adventure... Emily and I had a very relaxing day at home with our little ones. It was a little nostalgic of our Lansing Court days, when all we had was little ones. We almost forgot what to do with them... but they reminded us of what they love to do. So we went to the park, read stories, played music... all the little kid things we miss sometimes with the hustle and bustle of active older kids.  

Tuesday was a celebration our our seven-year-old Xochitl! (Even though she wasn't officially 7 until Wednesday... but really, what kind of birthday is driving home from vacation??) We caught an early matinee of Beauty and the Beast starring Hermione Granger... I mean... Emma Watson :) then headed straight over to the Rrrink for some exciting ice skating! Xochitl is a quick study with anything involving balance, so with a little guidance from Aunt Emily, she was swooshing around the ice in no time! Jade and Larry made good use of the plastic "helpers" and Dawna did quite well after having roller bladed a lot this year. And it's always fun to see what Adele has been working on in her ice skating lessons... and try to copy her... mostly Aunt Deeb just ends up looking foolish... but having fun! 

On the way home from ice skating, Xochitl picked out two ice cream cakes from Cold Stone. Yum!

And we all know the Koberstein tradition of car trouble when traveling I-5... running over the moving dolly with the Quest, tire blow out, car being backed into, hitting a deer... so when Wednesday came and our vacation was almost over, Fate had to hurry and squeeze some car trouble in. Eva's battery was quite dead and decrepit on Wednesday morning. We weren't going nowheres. The car wouldn't start at all! So I called roadside assistance and they offered to tow us to a garage... but I thought it would be easier to just have them replace the battery on the spot. Only problem was... we had to get the battery. My manly main man Jon got on a bike and rode to the auto parts store with a backpack, bought a car battery, and biked home again! This is not an activity for the feint of heart. Those batteries are HEAVY!! He made it back to Rabun way just in time for the mechanic to get to work! And with only minor damage to clothing and sidewalks...All in all, it's one of the kinder car trouble experiences we've had.  All the kids were happily playing with cousins, safely parked in front of Aaron and Em's house :)( ALMOST something to smile about... 

So we got home. And on Friday to finish off our spring break fun, we all enjoyed Larry's "field trip" to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium! Paul and Becca et.al joined us and now we all have annual passes to the aquarium! Many thanks to the thoughtful people there who made the "Family Pass" include two adults and ALL their children! All too often a "family pass" is for two adults and two children, which is pretty much useless for us...

Maybe the Jellyfish are cousins too!

Squids will be squids... We loved the "Tentacles" exhibit!

Playing with light settings on my Pixel XL. I liked this picture of Zyna!

Happy Spring Break!

Snow way!

Our 12th anniversary was spent in the company of our favorite people: Dawna, Lawrence, Xochitl, and Jade. Traditionally, Jon and I have ditched the kids for anniversary fun, but we were feeling generous this year. 

On Christmas, Santa left a suitcase full of new snow clothes, a little toboggan, and a giant card explaining that we'd be spending 3 days in beautiful snowy Yosemite! Day One was really just an evening tour of the valley, with one short stop to touch the snow and admire the view and the previously assembled snowman (see above...). 

Day Two dawned beautiful and icy! We even got to use the snow chains we've been storing for a decade! Nice that they felt useful! We drove up Glacier Point Road and found a little turn-off where we could get some sledding in! We were out in the snow for over four hours running up, sliding down, throwing snowballs, playing games... lots of people came and went in the time we were there, but one particularly memorable person came sliding down the hill, stood up, looked at my oldest daughter, and said, "Hey there!" in a somewhat alluring tone. I was about to punch the kid in the face for flirting with a 10-year-old... but then, to my surprise, Dawna said, "Oh, hi Jonathan!" Wait, what?? Turns out that this kid is on the climbing team at The Peak with Dawna. How incredibly random that we ran into him and his family on an unmarked turnout up Glacier Point Road in Yosemite... 

On the way out that night, we enjoyed pizza at Half Dome village (who knew you could get pizza at 8pm in the middle of a national park??) and went to bed dreaming of our next-day's adventure... 

Day Three dawned bright and early as we headed back up Glacier Point Road to the ski and snowboard area. While the downhill slopes were still closed, the cross country and snowshoeing trails were open and groomed and ready for adventure! 

I could write a book about our day out there, but I'll spare you the length and just give you the table of contents: 

The Kobersteins Go Cross Country Skiing! 

Chapter 1: In which there is much giggling and excitement in renting cool equipment! 

Chapter 2: In which it takes a REALLY long time to get ready (snow clothes and bathrooms don't mix...)

Chapter 3: In which Mom and Dad set a way-too-ambitious distance goal 

Chapter 4: In which the skis go on and it takes half an hour to get to the trail... 

Chapter 5: In which we find ruts to put the skis in and actually start moving!

Chapter 6: In which most of the snow clothes go into mom's backpack

Chapter 7: In which we stop for lunch

Chapter 8: In which we go downhill for a while... NOW it's fun!

Chapter 9: In which we have to turn around... and go back uphill

Chapter 10: In which Jade can run faster uphill than the kids skiing uphill

Chapter 11: In which is shouted "I Quit!" 

Chapter 12: In which skis are removed and carried over shoulder back to rental office. 

Chapter 13: In which mom and dad decide to come alone next time...

Epilogue: In which, on the drive home, all the kids decide it was fun after all :) 

(Total distance skied: 2 miles... )

Summer Fun, Something's begun!

Our first week of summer was filled with fun and excitement on all fronts.

Around the house, it was fun to watch American Home Renewal work hard replacing all our windows and our sliding patio door!

 Scaffolding had to be used to reach the upstairs window and trim. Jade was particularly tempted by the low bars and potential for climbing...

Goodbye old door!

Fun to see one by one the old windows go and the new slick windows go in!

And now there are bedroom windows that my kids can actually open! And they're up to code and fire safe and all that jazz...

But as any homeowner knows, one home improvement project begets another... so yes, as you can see, we now have a painting job to consider... yay...

For our Cub Scout, the first week of summer was filled with loads of learning and crafting and shooting at Cub Scout Day camp!

 Lawrence's den performing the classic "JC Penny" skit ("Where'd you get that jacket? ...shoes? ... watch?" etc. "From JC Penny." Last scout runs by wrapped in a towel. "Who are you?" "JC Penny!" haha...)

In spite of a rough beginning to the week with the scout trailer being burglarized, the leaders pulled off a great camp for the boys.  Lawrence was particularly proud of a wooden box that he made and the gold bead that he earned for making a bulls eye on the archery range! On the last day, I treated the kids to McDonalds for lunch and had a picnic lunch at the park before watching each den perform their skit. 

Back at home in our garden, we thinned out the carrots and enjoyed nibbling on the little ones, making room for bigger ones to grow.  We're trying some multi-colored fun this summer in the garden, including purple/white/yellow/orange carrots, green and gold beans, and yellow/red/purple beets. 

The only big downside to the week was that daddy was gone at Zion's camp all week.  He had a great time helping the boys do some climbing and serving with the youth, which is a good thing, but the evenings are always harder when daddy's not home... and clearly, my photography is not very good when daddy's not home... 

Week one of summer fun: done. 

Pinewood Derby!

Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats! The race is about to begin! But before the cars are lined up and the lever is pulled, let's journey back in time a bit to see how we got here...

As any scout mom knows, a pinewood derby event begins long before race day--in our case, months before. Lawrence got his car kit back in March, but there was no date for the race set. Even so, we took initiative and started to get to work on his car. Back in April, the same weekend as the quarry climbing in Sacramento, we brought that pinewood derby car kit to Uncle Weston's house... for he is endowed with many woodworking tools, yea, saws of all kinds hath he in the garage. 

 Lawrence sanding his axles on the drill press! Perfectly safe, I assure you.

 And here's Lawrence cutting his car shape out on the band saw, which is a significantly scarier instrument...

But don't worry, daddy's fingers are there to take the fall if something should go wrong...

The sisters of the cub scout hanging around that day could not resist trying to tell Larry what he should do to make his car fancy and awesome! Larry was not particularly interested in their wild ideas. But thanks again to Uncle Weston, he found scraps around the garage and helped each of my girls design and cut their own cars. 

Dawna made an awesome pickup truck. Xochitl designed a classic race car with fins going up the back and everything. Jade wanted a little truck, and so she got a little half-sized flat bed to call her own. The cars got painted; we ordered extra pinewood derby car wheels for the girls' cars, and waited for a date to be set for the big day!

Finally, June 3 was date decided upon. But there was just one minor problem... our troop had no pinewood derby track. 

Somehow, I volunteered myself to find out what track the other troops around the stake had used and where they were stored and figure out how to get one.  My phone scavenger hunt led from Becca S. to Jeff A. to this guy named Larry S. 

Larry S. was an electrical parts store owner in Fremont, getting ready to retire and downsize his shop. Way back when, he was involved in cub scouts and had stored in his shop for many years a pinewood derby track.  

And as it just so happens, our troop was on the hunt for one at the same time that he was trying to get rid of it. Perfect! And so it was that literally one week before our pinewood derby, I went to pick up a very fine hand-crafted track, along with loads of other goodies such as a winner's podium, cones, signs, and all manner of decorations. 

All in all, thanks to Larry, S., we actually had a very nice pinewood derby. Had it not been for this fortuitous meeting, our derby would have been much less fancy... or may not have happened at all... Our little troop of ten boys was delighted by the event. The following Sunday, one of the boys even gave the event a "five star" rating.

So, was this meeting Larry S. and finding a track at just the right moment a miracle? Well, that might be too strong a word to use. I sometimes like to call it a stroke of "guk," (rhymes with luck) meaning God Understands and Knows. He understood what we needed and understood how the parents and leaders of the troop were doing their best. And He knew how to align the timing to fill the needs of both parties. God indeed Understands and Knows what we need.  As we are obedient, He'll nudge, align, and arrange things to make our life just a little easier. And that's what happened with this pinewood derby track thing...

So in the end, Troop 197 got to have their pinewood derby. Lawrence, with some assistance from dad's YouTube research on how to weight cars and bend axles, got second place for speed out of the ten boys!

And after the event, many many races were carried on late into the night! Fun times on the race track! Can't wait for next year's derby... and this time, we won't have to go on a wild hunt for a track :)

Biology is Life... and Death...

The words of Dr. Gary Booth have been echoing in my head this week... "Behold, Biology IS life!"
Unfortunately, we have learned this week that biology is also death...

On the exploration of life, our little Wolf Cub Scout went on a delightful nature walk with dad in order to identify four different animals that live in our area. The two of them had a great time! ...

Well, a mostly great time... as long as the pokey weeds stayed out of their socks. But the boys were very successful in finding some beautiful bird life out on the wetlands, including...

Male Mallard duck taking flight.

A Snowy egret striking a pose in the mud.

A blue heron striking almost exactly the same pose.

Lots... and I mean LOTS and LOTS... of these little snails peppering the mudflats.

This little Marbled Godwit spells death for those little snails... watch out for that beak!


After coming home, Larry named these four birds and told me how to identify them--by their color, size, and length of leg or beak. It was very helpful that dad had taken pictures :) Call of the Wild, Requirement 3: COMPLETE!!

During our research we learned that the Bar tailed Godwit (the species on the Asian side of the Pacific) have been known to fly over 7000 miles non stop. One named E7 flew from Alaska to New Zealand in one flight! That such a small bird is the record holder for longest single flight is amazing.

I really should have learned how to swim!

**Fair warning: this rest of this post is kind of a downer...because biology is Also... Death...**

For Xochitl's birthday, we took on a month-long science project: trying to incubate and hatch quail and chicken eggs. We tried this about a year ago with four little chicken eggs... none of them hatched and only one had developed at all. This time, we had 12 chicken eggs and four quail eggs. None of the quail eggs made much progress, but as for the chickens, we were able to witness a lot of growth and learn a lot about the hatching process.

We tucked our little eggs into incubators like this on April 20, to await a hatch on May 11. We turned our chicken eggs twice each day at 8am and 8pm (I know there's a lot of different ideas about how often and when to turn the eggs... that's just what we did) and monitored their temperature closely, just as the incubator instructions said we should...

(The eggs are marked with X on one side and O on the other so it's easy to tell if they've been turned)

About 12 days after starting the incubation, we "candled" the chicken eggs, meaning that we held a bright light underneath them to see if any embryos were forming. It's really amazing!

We took this egg from the fridge to get a "control" and set the camera settings to get pictures of the eggs. This perfectly clear, one color egg is unfertilized...

...but in a fertilized egg, you see shadows, dark splotches, and spidery veins throughout (if you zoom in on this egg, you'll see the vein patterns on the right side of the egg.) What's really fun about candling is that you can actually see the embryos responding to the light and movement... the little chicks actually wiggle around in there! At least four of our eggs had strong veins and movement when we candled them on day 12. We were feeling excited for our little eggs and were hopeful for a few healthy chicks to arrive!

On May 8 (day 18), Jade helped me set up the brooder with some shavings, food and water dish, and heating lamp for the chicks. After that day, we turned the eggs for the last time and set the incubators into "lockdown." At this point, the chicks are getting ready to hatch and they have to find their way to the air pocket at one of the egg to prepare to pip and unzip and hatch!

So we waited. Waited for the little chirps we were supposed to hear from inside the shells. Waited for the eggs to wiggle to and fro as the chicks positioned themselves correctly. Waited and watched for any little pip or crack to appear. Nothing. Day 21 (normal hatch day) came and went... as did days 22, 23, 24, and 25. Our eggs were just as still and quiet as they had always been.

Finally, at the end of day 25, it was time to call it quits. I put on my Biology teacher hat and prepped for the "egg-topsy" to find out if anything had developed.

I'll spare you any nasty details... suffice it to say that most of the eggs had not developed and some appeared unfertilized.

But then there were four... four beautiful fully formed chicks, dead in the shell, who had made it all the way to the last week, but for one reason or another, didn't make the hatch. Was the temperature wrong? Humidity too high? Too low? Not enough air flow? Not positioned correctly? I'll never know...

It was very interesting to examine the first little lifeless chick...but as the second and then the third appeared, I felt that Biology teacher hat falling off as I saw the sad faces of my kids and felt myself get teary-eyed for these little chicks that didn't make it. I knew from the beginning it was a long shot... it's a very delicate and intricate process to get eggs to hatch, but I couldn't help soaring up on the wings of anticipation, hoping for darling little fluffy chicks to appear... I felt invested in their survival, and felt that I had failed them to somehow.

But such is life. Sometimes, the circle of life is very small. Such are the ups and downs of the study of life...and death.

Kobersteinville Newspaper, Issue #003

Dawna, being inspired by the American Girl Kit Kittredge, has enjoyed writing a "Kobersteinville Newspaper" from time to time. Here's today's issue (some of which has been covered on previous posts, some of which is covered exclusively in the newspaper):

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Kobersteinville Newspaper

Let It Rain!

Rain has been pouring down on Kobersteinville these past few days. The wonderful rain will hopefully continue next Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Thankfully, Mom purchased two new umbrellas at Costco and Liz Tuitama brought us two fine rain jackets to use. Larry passed down his shark boots to Xochitl and uses his new snow boots in the rain. The duck puddle on the west side of the house is full and ready for some stompin’, splashin’ fun! Get on those rain boots and coats and open up those umbrellas to enjoy the rain!

Kobersteins Sweep Young Authors’ Contest!

    Dawna Koberstein, Naomi Koberstein, and Lawrence Koberstein all placed in the Lincoln Elementary Young Authors Contest! Dawna won 1st place in the fourth grade category. Naomi won 1st place in the kindergarten age group, and Lawrence took home 2nd place for the second graders. These winners worked hard and we would like to congratulate them for their hard work.  Their books are available for checkout at the Lincoln Elementary School Library or the Newark public library. Or, write in to the editor to schedule an in-person reading from the award-winning authors of Kobersteinville!

Snow is Falling

Dawna, Larry, and Dad went snow camping last Friday and came back on Saturday.They had so much fun! They made a snowman together after sleeping in a well made snow cave. Snow angels were abundant in the morning. They also got very cold and wet. Luckily, Dad thought ahead and had them bring extra dry clothes to stay warm. It was a long drive and a long night of snowfall, which made for some long lasting memories of love.

         

Scripture Reading

    Kobersteinville has begun a new tradition for scripture reading.  Each morning at precisely 7:45, one lucky Kobersteinville kid chooses a picture from the newly completed Gospel Art Kit. All enjoy a reading of the scripture story and talking about the picture. So far Kobersteinville has read scriptures each day in the month of March. We have been doing a pretty good job. Keep it up!

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We had a fun time delivering the newspaper to Nana and Papa :) Thanks for the news, Dawna!