1st Day of Preschool

Today was Dylan's first day of preschool. He has visited a lot when we have gone to pick up Andrew but that is not the same as staying all day long. We have been talking about it for several weeks and we visited the classroom three weeks ago. As we walked in, he started to demand to be carried. I had my arms full of the stuff he needed for the day so he had to walk, fussing as we walked along. Once we got to the door, he didn't want to go in so I carried him in and showed him around a bit. I finally had to leave him crying with one of the teachers (a teacher who had Gina as an infant and preschooler and Andrew when he started preschool). I knew he would be fine but it is always hard to leave them crying.

I picked him up in the late afternoon. They were playing in the garden and when he saw me, he bounded over with a big smile on his face. Apparently he had a fine day though he sounded grumpy when he described how only one boy got to paint. I think he will be just fine.

Letterboxing

Since we were going on vacation in Montana for a week, I wanted to come up with some different things to do with the kids. My dad lives south of Missoula, about 5 hours from Glacier NP and 5 hours from Yellowstone. It is a very pretty area called the Bitterroot Valley but unless you love to fish, it isn't obvious where to take kids for fun. Several friends have tried letterboxing where you get clues to track down a box containing a stamp that is used to record that you found the box. I got directions for two letterboxes before we left.

The first letterbox was in River Park in Hamilton, about 20 miles north of Darby where we were staying. It looked like a nice park on the outskirts of town. The park is also a moose habitat so there were also signs with information about the local moose and warnings about what to do if you encounter one. The directions took us along the river with a lot of "walk 120 paces toward the river". It worked most of the way but at the end we couldn't find the willow tree in the clues. It was a very pretty area to explore though and the kids had fun throwing rocks into the river. I'm sure they were making enough noise to keep any moose from coming in our direction.


The part the kids loved best though was playing on the swings after the long walk.

The second letterbox was along Lake Como, closer to Darby. We had already walked along the trail on a hike several nights before so we just followed the same path. Dylan was fascinated by all the motorboats on the water. We found the rock slide area, and then the tree with four trunks, 9 paces to a broken rock, a short climb up the rocks and voila, there was the box. However, I had managed to forget to bring a stamp pad or any kind of writing instrument to record our visit. So we settled for a picture of Gina holding the "Gone Canoeing" stamp that was in the box.

Theater Camp

For the past two weeks, Gina has been going to theater camp and she has been really enjoying it. I wasn't sure how she would like it since she didn't know anyone else, but every day when I would pick her up she would say it was fun. Each day they start out with classes on improvisation and other games and then in the afternoon, they work on their lines for the play, make the sets and props and work on their costumes. The play for this camp was Thumbelina and Gina got the part of Dora the Dragonfly, one of Thumbelina's friends. At the end of the two weeks, the kids put on the performance at a local park. Some of the kids were very enthusiastic about their parts. Gina knew all her lines though she sounded a little wooden. When she would practice at home, she would only say the lines without much expression or she would be very goofy about it. She loved singing the song at the end though and showed a lot of expression. In the end, she excited about doing it again next summer.

Good bye Preschool

Today was Andrew's last day of preschool. He has been looking forward to this day for weeks, mainly because as he told me: You don't take naps in Kindergarten. He will miss his best friend Colin though. They both light up when they see each other. It is really cute. His teacher made him a crown too for the last day since he won't be in preschool to celebrate his 5th birthday.

Three weeks ago was the preschool graduation ceremony. It is a very low key event. The kids sing a few songs, the director says a few words and then they hand out the certificates to the kids and flowers to the teachers and staff. Half of the kids have been together since they started in the Infant I room.

And in two weeks, we start all over again when Dylan begins preschool. He can't wait.

Off to Grandmothers House...

This past week Andrew got to go to Sacramento and spend three days with Nana. Gina has done it the last two years, but now since Andrew is almost five, it was his turn. He was very excited and asked about it for days before hand. Part of the anticipation was the promise of going shopping for new legos but I think he was also excited about doing something that so far only Gina had been able to do. He enjoyed the trip. He told us all about going to Vic's ice cream parlor, playing fetch with the cats and watching a Star Wars movie. On the third day, he was ready to come home. I guess he missed Gina and Dylan because he started pestering them almost immediately.

Last Day of School

Yesterday was the last day of school for Gina. The last day of the school year is always a little sad but this year, it was also the last day for one of her two teachers. Here she is with Jennifer who is leaving. For their end of the year gift, Gina made each of her teachers a bracelet with beads that she especially picked out. Jennifer's was a large blue bead with flowers surrounded by smaller blue beads while Marile's was three beads made from abalone shell surrounded by small silvery beads since they studied the ocean at the end of the year.


Marile (above) doesn't usually come on the last day (she gets too teary eyed) but she did this year for Jennifer. Marile loves playing the piano and taught the kids numerous songs throughout the year. So the last part of the morning was spent singing all the songs they had learned. One mom who was in the classroom was very sad as her daughter had spent two years in the class and now her son was finishing up his two years. The class is a 1st grade/2nd grade combo class so Gina will be in the same class next year as a 2nd grader and 10 new 1st graders. Gina enjoyed the year and it will be fun to see her in the same class as a second grader, showing the new first graders all the ropes.




What Rainbow Fish Learned

A big part of the end of the year was the class play. The kids told the story of Rainbow Fish but then interspersed the play with the facts that they learned about their ocean animal. Gina was a sea otter and was pleased that she learned the scientific name, Enhydra lutris kenyoni. The kids made their costumes and most of the scenery. It was a lot of work for the parents too. I saw one of their practices three days before the performance and they were still pretty rough. Even the morning of the performance, they did a quick run through with a lot of misses. But for the actual performance, they rose to the occasion and did a great job. It was really impressive and the kids were so proud of themselves.
.

Soccer Season

Last weekend was the last game for the spring soccer season. Gina's team was the Blue Jays and she had a lot of fun. Her team started out the season on a roll but kind of fizzled at the end. I think Gina may have scored one goal during the season but she improved on dribbling the ball up the side. All of the girls were still learning to spread out and pass the ball so most of the time there were two or three blue shirts surrounding the ball with no one to pass to. Gina definitely enjoys the game and is already asking about the fall.

Rainbows

Gina was so excited about her birthday today. She got up early and got dressed and then put up streamers in the doorway to decorate. She wasn't as happy about helping to clean up and get ready for her party but she tried. I was really tired today after running around yesterday to 5 different stores to get stuff for her party. She had invited the other 7 girls in her class and she had big plans for the event. Originally, the plan was to play in the sprinklers in the front but the cool, cloudy weather changed those plans (2 weeks ago it would have been perfect). Instead, the plan was to play soccer in the front and then make bead bracelets and finger knit. The soccer idea was fine for awhile but with 8 girls, some of them got bored fairly quickly. They had fun making the bead bracelets but it didn't consume a lot of time. So they started making up their own game of pretend. I only had to intervene once or twice to keep the decibel level within reason. Overall it went pretty well.

And then there was the cake. A friend had made a rainbow cake for her daughter's birthday and it looked really cool. And then I came across another rainbow cake on a baking blog and I decided to make it for Gina's birthday. Gina liked the idea but in the last few days she started asking for sea otters playing soccer to be on her cake (she is researching sea otters in school). I didn't think I could do that exactly but then I came up with the idea that she could make a sea otter out of marzipan to put on the cake. She was excited about that though she didn't like the taste of the marzipan. I colored some brown with cocoa and then colored some more with different colors so that she and Andrew could make different sea creatures. They got into it and made squid, sea stars, fish and jelly fish. So in the end, I frosted the cake blue, decorated the top with a rainbow and clouds and then created an ocean with a sea otter in the middle holding a starfish. Each layer of the cake is a different color and is supposed to be a different flavor. Yellow is lemon, orange is orange, green is lime, blue is blueberry, red is raspberry and purple is blackberry. But the flavors ended up being very subtle once the cake was baked and assembled so I don't think it tasted any better than the original white cake mix. (The blue layer reminded me of my one of my roommates in grad school, Jeramiah who would make cakes with electric blue frosting.)

Big Boy Bed

About a week ago Dylan decided that he did not want to sleep in his crib. The first night he insisted on sleeping on the carpet and the next night I convinced him to sleep on a sleeping bag on the floor. The crib though was out. So a friend is lending us the toddler bed that her husband made. It has been used by three kids so far and now it is Dylan's turn. One drawback is that it doesn't have a rail so now I have to check on him every so often to see if he is close to falling out of the bed. I put a lot of padding underneath the bed but I think it is still a rude awakening when he falls off. Despite all the falls, he loves his new bed.

Picnic Day

Last Saturday was Picnic Day at UC Davis. I used to go every year when I lived in Davis but I hadn't gone since I moved back to the Bay Area. As much as I enjoyed going to Picnic Day, Vic did not, so he stayed home. I had originally planned to just take Gina but she had a soccer game that she didn't want to miss so it was me and the boys. I got them up early and we were on the road by 7am and driving onto campus by 9am (First time I've driven that far with the kids and no stops along the way). Of course the campus has changed a lot in the last 10 years but with only one slight misdirection I found the parking lot.

We walked over to the parade with a short detour to the bathrooms and the Coffee House for smoothies (Because to get kids to use the bathroom you have to promise them more liquids). We ended up standing next to the grandstands where the parade starts and the Aggie Band-uh puts on a show before the parade starts. This was the first time I had seen the start of the parade up close. Other times I've watched it from downtown or other parts of the campus. It was fun seeing the Band play but it was sure loud. Andrew covered his ears the whole time. Once the parade started I found my friend Kristi who was there with her family. I had tried to find her before the festivities started but it was a little crazy with all the people. After watching most of the parade we went to the kids area where they had bubbles and craft stuff and most importantly for Andrew, candy.

Then we headed over to the animal exhibits. There were lots of goats and sheep and horses. Dylan got to hold a rat and they were both fascinated by a tub with baby sturgeon. In the Animal Science building I ran into my grad school mentor. She hadn't seen the kids before so it was fun to talk with her for a bit. Then the kids got to see baby chicks and baby quail as well as an incubator with newly hatched chicks.

Then it was off to the Arboretum to watch the Battle of the Bands. Andrew did a lot of walking and despite some complaining, he did a great job keeping up. We were a little late getting there so we ended up sitting in the sun. Can you tell it was a very sunny day? Dylan loved all the marching bands, that is what he talked about most. The crazy Stanford Band was there, along with the Humboldt State Lumberjacks, UCSD, and Berkeley. Andrew was fascinated by the Aggie cheerleaders standing on shoulders and hands. We only stayed long enough to hear a few songs. I would have loved to stay longer but I had wanted to meet my mom in town before we headed back and it was very HOT in the sun. Dylan was fast asleep in the stroller before we got to the car. He stayed asleep while Andrew and I visited with Nana. Once we got back to the car, he woke up and was very ticked off that he had missed the whole visit (we didn't mention the ice cream). Once on the road they both slept and we were home by dinner time. I can't wait for next year.

Treasure Chest

A few weeks ago, on a rainy weekend Gina asked about the wooden chest in our room. I got this chest from my grandmother and I don't think I have looked in it for about 10 years, since we moved into this house. So we decided to explore the treasure chest. Some of the things in the chest are table clothes and such, not so interesting to the kids. But we also found this blue silk cape which they both tried on. It is showing a lot of wear on the inside collar but the color is beautiful. There were also a variety of old undergarments, mostly slips and bloomer type underwear from the early 20th century.
Most of the things in the chest came from my grandmother's aunts who lived in Gilroy. There were six girls: Bessie, Evie, Mollie, Millie, George and Jo and one boy, Tom (George and Jo were twins). One item in the chest is a wedding dress. It is cream colored silk (probably darker from age) and it has a pleated panel that has come apart from the rest of the dress. It is fairly heavy but very fragile so I didn't let Gina try it on. However, the shoes that go with the dress were in the chest as well. Gina had fun trying those on. This dress was for Aunt Mollie (I think I got that right) but she never wore it. Her fiance was sick (consumption?) and her father didn't want another sick son-in-law. A very sad story but one I always loved hearing my grandmother tell. Going through the chest reminded me of all the things she used to talk about but were never written down. Hopefully I will remember a few more of her stories to pass down to Gina and the boys..

Easter Fun

Once again we hosted an Easter brunch for family and friends with lots of food and an egg hunt. The kids were very anxious to get started looking for eggs but they sat for the required photo op. Julian decided that screaming for the picture was the thing to do. The three 2 year olds were not sure what to make of that.

We let the three littlest ones go first for a few minutes before letting the big kids loose. It took a while to find all the eggs and there may still be a few left out there in the overgrown patches. Then they feasted on gold fish, cereal and chocolate eggs. Luckily it was a nice day for playing outside and they all seemed to have fun.

Sleepy Boy

This morning Vic needed to get into work a little early so I tried to get Andrew up a little earlier since Vic takes him to preschool some mornings. I talked to him about it the night before so he would have some warning. Come morning though, he was fast asleep and when he was some what awake he just didn't want to get up. I finally dragged him out of bed so that he would go use the bathroom but then he just returned to bed and rolled up in the covers. It was starting to get late so I pulled him out of bed, took off his night clothes and dressed him. During the whole time, he had his eyes closed. Even dressed, he still wouldn't get up on his own. Finally with the threat of being put in the car with only a bag of dry cereal for breakfast, he started moving on his own, had a bowl of cereal and then left with Vic. Some mornings just are not easy.

Bunk beds

We bought bunk beds for Gina and Andrew about a month ago but they have been sitting in boxes in our dining room ever since. The kids have been sleeping on mattresses on the floor with Dylan in the crib in the meantime but that arrangement was getting pretty old.

This weekend Vic started to put the bed together. It also has three drawers underneath that had to be assembled so it took some time as the kids kept interrupting the process. Tonight the bed was finally in one piece and the kids were so excited. Dylan can easily climb to the top bunk which may pose a safety issue but for tonight they all had fun trying it out. When it was time for bed though, they had great difficulty settling down. I finally had to banish Andrew to our bed so that they would all go to sleep.

Playdate

Last month Gina and Andrew had the day off for Martin Luther Kings Birthday. Dylan's daycare was open. I arranged to have Andrew go to daycare as well so he could have a playdate with his friend Julian and I took his brother Gabriel to have a playdate with Gina. Andrew is not normally very excited to go to daycare since he is by far the oldest, but he was definitely excited about playing with Julian for the day. When Gina and Gabriel first got to our house, Gabriel spied a soccer ball and they started running around the yard with the ball. Except for a little friction about the specific rules, they had a lot of fun and got tired out. Once inside, they each started reading on the couch. They sat there for about 45 minutes before looking for something else to do. Then I remembered the Sorry board game that Gina had received for Christmas. The perfect solution for bored kids. I wish I had thought of it earlier since they really got into it and then we had to leave for lunch and skating before they finished the game.

After lunch we headed for the ice rink. Both Gina and Gabriel really like to skate though Gina had been skating since last summer. She started out hanging onto the sides a lot but gradually she got her confidence back. After awhile she was skating around the rink with ease. She could have kept on skating for a long time but Gabriel got tired first. We'll have to try again soon. Maybe next time I will give it a try too.

Airplanes

For Christmas, Andrew received a calendar that was also for making paper airplanes. Each day there are directions to use the paper from the previous day to make a paper airplane. I think there were about 30 different designs. Rather than actually using it as a calendar, Andrew started to make airplane, after airplane, after airplane. Sometimes he asked Vic or me to make a specific plane. Sometimes he followed the directions and other times he would just fold it how he wanted. Some were cut up in various shapes. After about a week the house was covered in paper airplanes. I would find them in every corner and behind things. I corralled most of them into two big paper bags (those that didn't end up in the recycling bin). He was disappointed when he finally ran out of calendar pages but now he is very good at making some cool paper airplanes.

Inauguration

I was really excited about watching Barack Obama being sworn in as president but I wasn't sure about the best place to watch it. We get two fuzzy channels on regular TV and my internet connection doesn't always connect. I had Andrew with me for the morning too. So as we dropped Gina off at her school I considered sticking around and watching it with her class. Hanging around the school with Andrew for a half hour didn't seem ideal though. So off we went back home to watch it on our TV. With a quick stop to get refreshments (and my breakfast) from Peets, we headed home. Of course in rushing to the house from the car Andrew tripped and fell and was crying as I rushed into the house with a promise of ice for his knee. We got home just in time for the swearing in ceremony. Andrew sat quietly with me through the ceremony and then the inauguration speech. Once it was over, it was time to take him to Tonya's. As we listened to the radio in the car, they replayed parts of the speech. Andrew responded with: We've already heard that! I guess he was listening.

Christmas Fun

Here is the tree all ready to go with presents under the tree and cookies and milk ready for Santa. Gina even made sure there was a table cloth on the little table for the milk and cookies.

It took a while to get the kids settled at night since they were so excited. But at least they didn't get up at the crack of dawn. Instead they let us sleep until 8:30am.

Gina got her roller skates which she has been talking about for months. Andrew got several lego kits, including one from Star Wars. Dylan got a Mr. Potato head and several other toys but his favorites were a bag of M&Ms and a pack of gum. He carried them all morning, and wouldn't open his other presents without help. The writing on the package of M&Ms was starting to disappear before he finally got to open it up and eat a few.



The kids enjoyed playing with their new toys all afternoon though Gina didn't get to try out her skates until the next day because we couldn't find her helmet.

After Dylan's nap it was off to my cousin Mollie's house for a delicious Christmas dinner of coq au vin.

The kids had fun playing with their cousin Declan's new toys and he was great with sharing.
The blue ukelele was his favorite present, he even took his nap with it. Eventually all the other kids got a turn with it as well and Declan didn't complain. Gina led them on a merry game of hide and seek and then chase through the little house.