McLellan Family Newsletter

Rather than brave the beach crowds, we opted to spend $15 to get into Crystal Cove State Beach for a day of peaceful beach-going activities. The water was clean, the sand was warm, and we enjoyed the day thoroughly!We found a great spot where we could lay out our blankets, chairs, and table of food. Just the necessities, folks! We voted Gabby as “Cutest Baby”, so we had to take lots of pictures of her because, well, she’s the cutest baby!Raine, Rio, Camille, and Jeff (Jr.) played their version of volleyball with Rio’s squisky orange ball thingy … until Gabby decided SHE wanted the ball.So they switched to baseball with driftwood bats and a small rubber ball.Jeff hit the ball into the bushes on the hill, so Raine was brave enough to fetch it back for us. Yea Raine!The cheering gallery …The kids made “ecosystems” in frisbees complete with sand, rocks, shells, and sticks.To see more fun pictures and download larger versions of each shot go to   http://picasaweb.google.com/mclellan.kate/20100531MemorialDay#

Just when things start to quiet down around here, we lose all sense of sanity and GET ANOTHER DOG! Why, you ask? We don’t know.  We met a lady who needed to get rid of her dog because she had a toddler who thought to dog was a toy, and she was already in labor (having contracts as she dropped off the dog!) with her 2nd child. Once I saw a picture of Tinsey I KNEW she was perfect for our little pack.So first things we did was take the kids and buy her a new dress and pink harness. We demand all our pets be both stylish and adorable at ALL times. Needless to say, the girls have fallen in love with her. She’s 6yrs old, weighs in at a whopping 5 lbs of furry (kidding!), and will cuddle with you as long as you’re sitting, or even standing for that matter.  Luckily, she’s not a barker (except when the doorbell rings, but I blame Freddy for that), gets along great with Freddy (mostly because he ignores her), and the bunnies have stopped thumping their feet and running away from her when she goes in the backyard.  Welcome, little friend, welcome.To see more fun pictures and download larger versions of each shot go to  http://picasaweb.google.com/mclellan.kate/Tinsey#

This morning we got up a bit early to join the Scouts and some families in the ward at the Riverside National Cemetery as they planted 1,500 donated flags on the graves of the veterans buried there. With over 185,00 graves, we made a small but impressive dent.We worked as a team with one person shoving a metal stake in the ground to make a hole for the flag, and the other person pushed the flag in.We had fun working together. 1,500 flags sure looks impressive once you’re done!We covered a large area of the cemetery and were quite proud of our service.To see more fun pictures and download larger versions of each shot go to http://picasaweb.google.com/mclellan.kate/20100529MemorialDayNationalCemetary#

Field Day is a time honored tradition at Sunset View Elementary where the teachers get a break for the afternoon while the PE teacher and a bunch of parents set up the field like a carnival of games. The kids run around playing the games and releasing boundless amounts of energy. It’s great!!One activity was a timed obstacle course through the jungle gym. Swing, Rio, swing!Then through a tube thingy …… more monkey bars …… over the hurdles and across the finish line. Record time!!Next over to the hoppy ball/squirt gun races where you hop around a cone and back all while another kid is squirting you in the face. On a warm spring day, this was a popular game.Rio’s friend, Sophie, got a super-soaker full of water from one of the parents.  I wonder who told him to squirt the girls … hmm … Then over to a picnic table where the object is to over the table as many times as you can in a minute. Kind of a random race, but the girls liked it.There were a lot of other games they played, and a fun afternoon was had by all.To see more fun pictures and download larger versions of each shot go to  http://picasaweb.google.com/mclellan.kate/20100528RioSFieldDay#

Thursday night was Raine’s 6th grade Open House at Dana Middle School. She’s been on Honor Roll ever semester since she started there 2yrs ago. (A vast improvement over her elementary school grades. We’re so proud of all her hard work and determination!!)This is in her math class. They had to build a city using geometric shapes (cones, squares, pyramids, etc). Cool project!This is a copy of a paper she did with what appears to be either cat poop or a squished caterpillar on it. Not sure which, but it’s pretty gross looking either way.  Update: it’s mud that Rio spilled on the paper. Good to know!!During the Open House, the music director had the orchestra perform in the lunch courtyard. Raine gets to sit next to her best-friend, Ashley. They’re part of the back-row crowd.http://picasaweb.google.com/mclellan.kate/20100527RaineSOpenHouse#

I got to drive a group of 4 kids for Rio’s class field trip to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. It’s a 4th grade tradition as part of their science program for the year, so I was here 2 yrs ago with Raine’s class, too.The kids in my group were Sophie, Matthew, Sierra, and, of course, RIO!!The aquarium had lots of cool tanks of fish from all along the California and Baja coast.Being the “cool parent”, I let each of the kids get a stamped penny as a souvenir. I’m a push over, I know. The highlight of the trip was seeing their HUGE tank with kelp, sharks, and lots of types of fish. They have a show where a scuba diver goes in and feeds the fish. He’s got a microphone in his mask, so the kids can ask questions and he can talk to the kids. There was a hungry leopard shark that sure wanted more than his fair share of fish. He even tried to swim off with the bucket of chum!After seeing the tank, the kids had a classroom activity where they talked more about kelp and its habitat, and did 3 different activities to help them learn more about kelp. (That was the theme of the trip, if you couldn’t tell already!)They added powdered kelp to oil and water, shook it, and had the kids draw what happened. (Hint: it thickened.)Then, there were 4 containers with different animals that the kids could touch, draw, and tell how they interacted with the kelp (ate it, helped it grow, etc).The last station had a bunch of different foods with kelp (or a form of it) as an ingredient. The kids had to find the kelp in the ingredient list. It was quite informative to learn that things like toothpaste, ice cream, cookies, salad dressing, cereal bars, etc have kelp.Outside they have some great tide pools for the kids to touch/bother more animals.That’s all folks!To see more fun pictures and download larger versions of each shot go to  http://picasaweb.google.com/mclellan.kate/20100525BirchAquariumWRio#

Raine found an inch worm at Rio’s school in her class garden which means only one thing … new pet for Raine!! We put it in a bug holder, shoved some random sticks and leaves inside, and watched as it spun a cocoon-thingy.  A few weeks later it hatched into a beautiful moth and was quickly released into the great outdoors.Be free little one!!

The biggest news has been about “the house”.  Over the last summer we realized that we needed to get into a home of our own. (The house we’re currently in is actually owned by Jeff’s ex-wife’s family, so you can understand my desire to MOVE!) The neighborhood we’re in is quiet, but old and over-priced. We drive the girls 20 minutes away to better schools in Point Loma, but that area is even more expensive. We also want to get into a ward with a bigger youth program. Right now there are anywhere from 4-10 kids in the primary on any given week. The Young Women’s program is even worse off with only one less active girl on their roster. There are two boys in the YM’s program, so the dating life would be pretty bleak when the time comes. Our ward is full of apartments and high-rise condos so there are only a few families.

We started looking in family neighborhoods close to where we are now so we could keep the girls at their current schools, but alas, our search was in vain. Most of San Diego county is out of our price range even with our combined incomes. The point of moving is also to afford a mortgage where my income isn’t part of the budget, so I can stay home with the kids. Our search led us to Murrieta for a myriad of reasons. 1) Jeff’s family is there so the kids would have their grandparents, aunt & uncle, and 2 cousins of the same age close by.  2) Jeff can work from home there since the commute would be over an hour and unreasonable. So the kids could come home from school every day and have 2 parents there to help with homework, music lessons, chores, etc.  3) The wards and youth programs are HUGE there. The neighborhoods in the area have homes rather than apartment complexes, so there are lots of kids their age in the neighborhood and ward. They’d actually get to have friends from church at school and vice versa. Imagine! 4) The schools are just as good, if not better, than the school they are currently at. In fact, the school Raine is slated to attend next year is quite sub-par, so any change in schools for her would be an improvement. The high school their schools would feed into in Murrieta is rated an 8 out of 10. Nice!!

Which leads us to the winner of our house hunt! I don’t have any pictures of the front of the house, but here’s what the rest of it looks like.The kitchen has granite countertops.The family room off the kitchen is HUGE and has 3 great picture windows that look out to the backyard.  The backyard is over 5,500 sq. ft. Not too shabby!  Jeff even gets a nice and shiney BBQ.  The back of the house is pretty boring, but I think we’re going to install a nice awning to block the sun in the summer. Upstairs is nice and bright. This is looking across the kids’ work stations to the bonus room. The doorway on the right goes into the master bedroom.The first bedroom is extra .This is Raine’s room. She and Rio share a Jack-and-Jill bathroom.Ta dah!Rio’s room This is going to be the baby’s room (assuming I get pregnant in the next 10yrs)And this is looking fom the bonus room onto the kids’ bedrooms. As of today, we don’t have a definitive move-in date yet. Escrow are still pending, but we’re optimistic.

Ok, so I haven’t updated this site in over a year. Bad. I know! So here’s a run-down of the good, the bad, and the never ugly. Raine- loving 6th grade at Dana Middle. She’s in the ordchestra again, and since it’s her 2nd year she gets to be in the Concert Orchestra which means they play harder songs, have more concerts, and get to go on a 2-day trip to Knott’s Berry Farm at the end of the year for a competition. She’s growing like a weed, and has already passed up Jeff’s mother in height. With how big her feet are and how much she eats, we think she’ll be around 5′7″ when/if she stops growing.Raine’s latest craze has been slugs and snails (no puppy dog tails yet). Honestly! She “collects” slugs and snails, puts them in her acrylic terrarium thingy, names them, and has kept them alive for quite some time now. Every week she takes the terrarium in the backyard, dumps out the dirt and old lettuce leaves, rinses it out, dries it, fills the bottom with fresh dirt from the garden, and adds lots of fresh lettuce leaves (again from the garden) for the little buggers to munch on. There are 4 snails and 3 slugs … I think.Rio- 9 going on 16. She’s in a G.A.T.E. class that’s a 3rd/4th grade split with 10 3rd graders and 14 other 4th graders. She enjoys the challenges of the fun projects and reports she gets to tackle, and this year the school district bought each student laptop computers so her teacher has incorporated fun multimedia lessons each day. For this last Christmas Rio decided she wanted a laptop of her own (the one from the school can only be used in class). Of course our budget per kid isn’t beg enough to buy a laptop, so we gave her the cash equivalent of what she would have received in presents. She even “sold” us some of the gift cards she got from other people. After all was said and done she was still $62 dollars short of getting the 10″ laptop she wanted, but finally after months of saving her money she was able to buy the laptop this past week. (We had bought it for her when it went on sale, so she didn’t have to pay more than was necessary.)Jeff is still working for Falconwood as the lead engineer on a big project with the Navy. He’s been busy with meetings, business trips, and more meetings. He enjoys the challenge and all the geeky stuff he gets to learn along the way. He also gets to see how the government works (or doesn’t). He’s been serving in the bishoprick. Because our ward is so small, for a while he was serving as both the Executive Secretary and the 2nd counselor. Finally, after 3 months he was released as the Exec. Sec. It’s been nice to get him back. We recently got a new bishop and he’s learned a lot from the new leader.I’ve been the Primary President for a while now and love getting to work with the kids. I’ve been in the primary in various calling since BEFORE I was in the ward. When Jeff and I were dating I was asked to teach the Sr. primary class.  I was working for a medical device company as their Clinical Research Manager until the company got bought and moved all the jobs to Seattle. Since then I have stayed busy doing research with Loma Linda Univ again, taking private pilates clients at our house and at a studio downtown, and volunteering at the girls’ schools. I’m working on a study with Wyeth for people with chronic low back pain, and it has been wonderful to get back into the research mode rather than the management role. It’s also been fun to teach pilates more often. I love teaching and now at a studio I get to work with some amazing instructors. With Raine in middle school I have few oppertunities to work at her school since it’s not “cool” to have your parents there anymore, so I spend time working in Rio classroom. I’m also the room “Garden Mom” which means I spend an hour twice a month with the kids teaching them about how to plant and take care of a garden. The school gives each class a 4′x6′ plot of dirt to use, but not all classes decided to garden each year, so we’ve been lucky enough to get two spots! More plants for us!

                                                                        We flew up to Park City with Alex Osborn, Preston & Jennie Minor and their kids Truman and Adilyn for a long weekend of skiing/snowboarding. If Jeff snowboards and i ski, I have time to get ALMOST to the bottom of the hill before he catches up to me. The minute or so it takes him to buckle his bindings when he gets off the chair lift lets me take off and try like heck to not let him catch me. He’s pretty fast, though.                                    The weather was PERFECT each day. Crystal clear skies and fresh powder from earlier in the week.                                     I think goggles make everyone look like a bug.                                    Cheese!                                    Outside the condo where we stayed (thanks again, Alex. You’re the best!) Truman found a snowbank that made for an awesome cave.                                    He dug so far into the snowbank that he had to crawl in and out. How fun for a kid!                                    Friday night we went to dinner at the lodge where Jennie told the waiter it wa my birthday. They put this huge sombrero on my and sang “Happy Birthday”. At least I got a free sundae!                                    This is a purple moose that was in someone’s front yard. We don’t know why they have a statue of a moose, let alone a purple one, but we thought it was pretty funny and took a picture.