Some days are just stay-at-home, enjoy the house kind of days. I kinda like these a whole lot.
There is no doubt that Cameron loves her little sister! Chloe was being grumpy, so Cameron wanted to draw a picture of her to cheer her up….
I love this guy. His pants are now waaaaaay too short, but great, he’s growing!
All 3 kids participated in the SuperKid Tri this year! Initially, Dylan refused on the grounds that he would be too cold once he got out of the pool (as a fellow chilly-willy, I actually feel this is a fair complaint–although, I did also share with him that I’m uncomfortable at the start of the vast majority of my running events for the very same reason…). He ended up changing his mind when we moved his medals from his old room to his new room and he hung them up so very proudly right above his desk! He took a special pride in last year’s medal because we had it engraved (yay mom and dad!) and he decided he wanted to earn another one and get the new one engraved as well.
As it turned out, the engravers weren’t there, so we’ll see if this year was Dylan’s final. There’s no doubt that the course is getting more challenging with every year! He did a phenomenal job, but he was cold during the bike leg and he swam a 2-lap warm-up before swimming 4 laps (the width of the pool) and he lost some time when he lost track of where his bike was between swim and bike transition! He had a fantastic run and came in a few minutes earlier than we had expected!!
So here are some photo highlights of Dylan’s event…
Chloe was up next. This was her first time doing it and I think she did ok! She has been lukewarm about actually riding her balance bike (although she always expresses great interest in wanting to ride it!), but after the event, she rode all the way back to the car! Also, she has a pretty limited items of clothing that she is willing to wear, so she finished in her dress! At least she wore practical shoes!
She’s been asking why she couldn’t swim ever since packet pick-up (a phrase, by the way, just cracked her up!)…the day before! So, as you can see, she was pretty happy to be in the pool.
She was a little less sure of herself on her balance bike given that she hasn’t really developed a knack for really riding it yet. It was a sloooow haul, but adorable nonetheless!
And, here she is finishing up! I actually think she would have run much faster if she weren’t holding hands with Tom, but then again, she felt happy and secure, so it’s all good!
She likes her medal, but she gets a bit reserved around enthusiastic strangers!!!
Cameron was the last to race. She was enthusiastic and ready!
We saw some old pre-school buddies, Owen and Mattias…
…and we saw some classmates from last year’s class (actually, Enzo and Cameron still have the same teacher)….
Jenny and Kaden were there, too! Julie also came, but she opted out of participating this year….
The kids were super sweet and came to the pool to cheer Cameron and Chloe on…!
This girl never ceases to amaze us. After the event, she told us that she was scared to be in the pool by herself…she only mentioned this afterwards! And, we did ask her beforehand if she wanted to swim alone or with Tom…and she opted to swim alone, but with kickboard. I’m so proud of her courage!
She was also a little cautious on her bike for the first 2/3 of the course (and, apparently, she got in a short tussle with Tom during transition over whether she should wear socks or not!!). She finally found her courage to speed up on the final 1/3.
Her best leg was the run. Such a strong runner!!!
I loved watching all of the kids cross that finish line with smiles!
We got some “professional” photos from the Little Mermaid. We weren’t allowed to take photographs during the show, so these photos of the kids on stage were a nice treat! This first one is from Cameron’s little solo part.
This one is Dylan in his under the sea “jellyfish” costume, but I don’t know which song this is…
Here’s Dylan as a party guest in the dinner with Eric scene
I love how Dylan looks like he’s having so much fun!
We all still have such fond memories of this production…Little Mermaid has bumped Anna and Elsa from the top of the list. The girls are now more eager to wear Little Mermaid stuff than Frozen!!!
Cameron’s friend Gigi invited us to their block party. These are parties that the city encourages–they’ll block off the street for you and the fire truck comes and, sometimes, even the mayor stops by! I felt a little like a party crasher, in amongst the neighbors wearing nametags indicating which street they lived on, but the kids had a blast. Cameron was a very special guest.
One of the neighbors must be a real estate agent because the shave ice people were there “courtesy of” some such realtors (too bad I couldn’t remember their name!).
The girls also spent a significant amount of time in the bounce house–but, there were some boys in there who were extremely rowdy, so they occasionally had to step outside for a break.
Pretty awesome block party. We knew a few other folks who also had block parties on their street, but this block party sounded like the best one of all!
We finally got a chance to see all of the whales that so many of our fellow residents had been videotaping and snapping pictures of! The waters are apparently pretty warm, so there is an abundance of anchovies in the ocean right now, which is why the whales are out there putting on a good show for all of us….
It was a gorgeous warm day…a perfect day to take a walk along the coast and enjoy the cool breeze blowing off the ocean.
This is our beautiful view…and way back there, there’s a tiny black spot and that is a whale!!
After watching the amazing whale show — we spent some of the kids summer reading dollars at the Penny Ice Creamery. Chocolate sorbet for all!
And, finally, here’s a brief video clip of the whales. They were very close to shore and the video doesn’t do justice to just how cool it was to see them! But, it’s all I’ve got!
Sweet face painting from the new pre-school teacher, MaryLou! Chloe liked it so much, she didn’t want to wash it off…!
We are now 3 weeks into school(!)! Cameron just started getting homework, Dylan had his first band meeting (this afternoon), I’ve started volunteering in Cameron’s class, and Back-to-School night already passed (just this past Thursday)!
In Cameron’s class, there are 23 students, 12 from her class last year and 11 from the other class. She shares a table with 4 other students, 3 of whom were in her class last year.
She is more comfortable with the language and with her peers this year, and it shows!
Each Monday (and possibly everyday, though I’m only there on Monday mornings), the students pass around a stone and whoever is currently holding it shares something about their weekend. The first time I witnessed this very sweet ritual, was during the beginning of the 3rd week of school (the second Monday of the year); I was so delighted to hear Cameron not only speaking confidently, but also in Spanish! This was notable as most of the other native English students still choose to share in English.
Just this past week, she has also shared stories of the “running club” she has organized during recess where, of course(!), everyone is invited. She tells us she’s trying to get more people involved…as many people involved as possible, but some kids just drop out! I imagine that she did not have the confidence to do this last year and, if she had, and kids turned her down, she would have probably been very emotional about it. This year, however, she seems to be displaying a remarkable resilience and good-nature about it all.
She is in a classroom with 2 very nice teachers who job-share–Maestra Jennifer is there from M-Thursday and Maestra Nancy comes on Friday. Both teachers have third graders in the program at the school (and other kids, too!).
As far as I can tell, Cameron is currently in the top-level Walk-to-Read group and she is clearly doing very, very well in math (based on my volunteer experience today where I had the opportunity to work with most of the students in class).
We’re off to a good start! And, while we are very pleased with her academics, we still feel that the effort and joy of learning is far more important than being Number One and we hope that she will value the process over overall status as well.
Dylan also has an amazing class! He starts 10 mins. earlier than he did last year and, initially, we were told that his teacher didn’t need parent volunteers, so up until Back-to-School night, we had very little contact with Ms. Butler. She has 2 sons at the school, though, one of whom is in Dylan’s grade (they were classmates in Teacher Laurie’s class!) and she recently was recognized for having served 20 years on the Sheriff’s Search and Rescue team!
On Back-to-School night, we learned all about the various interactive activities the kids would engage in — Run for CA (where they run laps at school, tot up their mileage, measure it out on CA map and talk about the historical places they pass along the way), Thursday cross-fit (woot!), Flat Stanley, Itidarods (they’ll “get” mushers later on in the year), and they’ll learn how to do rescues (she is very safety-minded!). I loved it all! They might even do some geocaching on one of their field trips (to Little Basin, no less)…!
Dylan is super excited about band, too, and has chosen to learn the clarinet.
With the start of the school year, Dylan also started Boys Ballet and Cameron started piano lessons and a Tap/Jazz combo class.
Nutcracker auditions were last week and both kids are in — this year, Cameron will be in 2 acts!
Am I worried that this might be too much? Well, yeah. But, so far, they are enjoying all of it…
We did one last trip to the Boardwalk before school started. Dylan and Cameron spent much of the beginning of the trip arguing over who would get to ride with Chloe (that lucky little girl!). It was enough to make me regret taking them!! Tom was back at home painting Dylan’s room (at long last!!!), so it was just me and my three little things!
Since Tom wasn’t there and I couldn’t leave Chloe alone while I chaperoned the big kids on bigger kid rides, the big kids couldn’t ride the Log Ride or the Dragon rollercoaster, or even the new RipTide ride! They were super good sports about riding Chloe-size rides (except for the arguing part)!
Chloe is a sensitive soul, though, so when she was informed (by me) that Dylan was feeling a bit sad that she chose to ride with Cameron, she turned to Dylan and told him she wanted to ride with him next!
Unfortunately, Dylan was too worked up to accept, so we moved on to the next ride — where more Dylan feelings were hurt because Chloe, once again when asked, said she wanted to ride with Cameron.
Dylan refused to ride Bulgy, but after that, he and Chloe rode together and I rode with Cameron (who was now grumpy that Chloe chose to ride with Dylan instead of her!).
Well, after that ride, they wanted to ride the boats, but Chloe really wanted to be in Boat #3 because that’s “her number!”. The big kids also turned the tables on the poor thing and both gleefully jumped into the first row — right…where Chloe wanted to sit! –leaving the back of the boat to Chloe.
There goes our little Crabster! Dylan tried to appease her by telling her that boat #3 was exactly the same colors as their boat, Boat #6! Didn’t work, though….
Next go-round on the same ride, we managed to get the freakin’ #3 boat but, as you can see, Chloe is not really willing to be all immediately gleeful about it!
Next up (after the big kids took themselves on Ghostblasters), was Freefall! There happens to be a Frozen-themed Candy Crush-type game that Chloe knows about and, even though, she could see the people bouncing up and down on that thing, she still was so excited to try it out!
What luck for me! The big kids were considered big enough to chaperone her AND there just weren’t enough seats to accommodate motion-sick-me! Still, I was a bit concerned about Chloe going on there for the first time with just the big sibs. Dylan was a sweetheart and held her hand, but still, about half-way through the ride, I heard her little screams!! I felt so bad!
Clearly, the big kids were not bothered at all by this ride!
Well, by this time, I’d gotten several text messages from Tom asking where the heck we were! I decided to try to get back home, but they kids just had to ride “one more ride” on the way out!
There happened to be a cute little classic-car kid ride that Chloe really liked! It was right next to Rock and Roll which, it turns out, Dylan and Cameron could ride by themselves!
Of course, when we passed Speedway, Chloe wanted to ride … again! By this time, Dylan had worked through his resentment from not being Chloe’s chosen riding partner earlier and he took his turn chaperoning her!
Well, after that, we really did make it out of the Boardwalk! Our last ride was the trolley back to the parking garage downtown! Dylan and Cameron helped Chloe up the steps, they paid our fare (a quarter per person) and I hauled the stroller in!
When we got home, we all marveled at the fantastic painting job Tom did in Dylan’s room!
