We went and had lunch with Lola, Grandpa Mike and Auntie Christina…after Tom and the kids made a lovely breakfast of pancakes and berries. I got spoiled with all sorts of hand-made kid goodies. I’m a very lucky mom (and a very lucky daughter)!
We wish Grandma Sharon were here to celebrate with as well!
We long ago stopped taking Chloe to Studio Sprout on Tuesdays as I was thinking I’d take her to explore some of the local parks and playgrounds. On Cinco de Mayo, we headed to Harbor Beach for a soy hot cocoa and coffee plus some beach time! We were dismayed to discover the Kind Grind is gone(!) BUT, in its place, there will be a Java Junction (hoorah!! They offer more vegan goodies and better coffee)!
But, alas, poor Chloe and I were left without our warm drinks!
She still had fun pouring sand and stuff.
You see? All is good when you live in a beautiful place and you’ve got some pretty good sand toys!
I wish I had the words to really describe just how funny and clever this little monkey is! She is an absolute joy to be around. She’s persuasive and adorable — if she wants to eat something that you tell her she can have later, she’ll listen, but she’ll also offer to carry it around or put it here or there so that she still has it with her. She also has such a fun sense of humor. She changes up song lyrics and loves knock knock jokes (her’s are completely nonsensical). She’s also a very loving and caring little thing. When Cameron is sad, she’ll go over and ask her what’s wrong, if someone is hurt, she’ll come over and give a hug and a kiss. She gives the best hugs and I love the spontaneous affectionate kisses she gives!
These past few Tuesdays, I’ve had to make up time at the office and summer is going to be a whirlwind, but I’m hoping I can make a few dates with each of the kids individually….I love me that one-on-one time.
It’s amazing that I haven’t even done a post about Easter! This year, Christina hosted it at her place. Now that Jason and Tyler have outgrown the egg-hunt, though, only our 3 little ones participated! Of course, before heading over to the other side of the hill for the traditional brunch and family gathering, the kids got to find their Easter Bunny goodies here at home.
It was actually cold this past Easter! But, the kids still poked their heads out the back door to see if EB hid anything back there. I don’t think Chloe was all that tuned into what was happening yet!
Dylan turned out to be the master sleuth. I think he found all of them! Sadly (well, not thaaaat sad), he found his last!
Nope. This basket was not his either!
This one isn’t his either!!!
Chloe was delighted to find out it was for her!! Yes, our kids like Pringles…a bit too much, I’d say. It’s also my fault.
Cameron put Chloe’s hair up in a bun.
Tom had made some delicious, “easy-bake” sugar cookies for Cameron the previous Friday, so he made another batch for the kids to decorate. They were yummmmmmy!
And, happily, the bigger boys joined in to decorate a few!
Shortly after cookie-decorating, the kids did their egg hunt. This year, Christina’s neighbors occupied the park behind their backyard, so we just did the hunt in her little yard.
For a class assignment at school, Cameron reported seeing 100 eggs! But, poor Chloe only got like 6 or 7!
Now that Dylan is the biggest kid in the egg hunt, he is now the master egg finder!
Meanwhile, the big boys watched on….
And, seeing as Chloe was not nearly as fast in her egg finding scramble, Cameron very kindly shared (at least) one of her finds with her.
Despite her relatively empty basket (!), Chloe was pleased as punch!
Afterwards, it was time to tot up the goodies. Oddly, the coins were the least popular!! But, as the kids get older, I’ll bet the money will take priority over the candy!
With three kids, there’s always something shakin’…Chloe was invited to her buddy Finley’s 4th bday party at Junebug’s.
I don’t remember what Tom did with Cameron and Dylan, but we have since given up on forcing all of the kids to attend the same parties since their age spread and interests are now divergent enough to warrant that! So, I did party duty and Tom did big kid duty!
This one is really good at the bell swing. In general, she’s got pretty good upper body strength even though she is still so little for her age! Oh, and gosh and golly, she is now completely out of pull-ups and wakes up 99% of the time dry. BIG HURRAH!
We went on so many field trips these past few weeks! This picture was taken at Zmudowski Beach where the class had lunch on the way home from a field trip to MIRA in Monterey (located on part of the old Army base). We are so lucky to live near such beauty!
I love going on field trips. I loved chilling out with Dylan on the beach and I love that he chose to eat lunch with me instead of leaving me in the dust for buddies (he just wanted it to be the 2 of us).
The field trip to MIRA, itself, was a bit of a letdown. The guy who did a whole lot of talking was clearly not very good with kids–he was shutting down their questions left and right (“that’s not the answer I was looking for” and flat out, “wrong”)–so not very encouraging at all. Then, the looking through the telescope part was a bit anti-climactic. Sure we saw the sun (which filled the entire view of the telescope), but some kids didn’t even realize they were looking at the sun and nobody actually told us anything interesting about that particular view of the sun. Teacher Wendy’s opinion was that the field trip was a bust (it was the first time she’d taken her class there), but I was just happy to hang with the 3rd grader for a bit!
Cameron also went on a field trip (the very next day!). I apparently forgot to specify that I was going to drive (partly because the entire field trip form was in Spanish and I didn’t really understand everything I was reading), but I got to ride with the parent who drove Cameron.
Unfortunately, Thing 2 developed a fever that day! I knew something was wrong because instead of just being grumpy (she’s awakened way too early that morning!) and stand-offish with me, she actually sought out my company.
You can see, in her eyes, that she is tired. Poor thing.
Also, because the classroom they were in was so small, the number of parents allowed in was restricted. I lucked out and was able to go in because one of the other parents wanted to head back home and rescue her child from her mother-in-law instead of staying with our class, so she offered me her spot inside; however, I was assigned to a group that Cameron wasn’t in! Still, I was in the group right next to her, so I was able to get a few pictures of her as well!
After we got back to the school, I decided to just take Cameron back home with me where she promptly sacked out! Luckily, her recovery was fairly quick and she had all weekend to recover!
We left Tahoe in time to make it to one of the free Jelly Belly tours at the factory in Fairfield. Chloe was especially excited!
Never a dull moment with these kids!
Cameron taught Chloe (kind of) how to play scissors, paper, rock. It was pretty cute.
We all had to wear these hats while “on the floor.”
The tour was kind of fun, but we came close to the end of the day, so we didn’t see much in the way of millions of jelly bellies tumbling out of machinery. Still, the kids thought it was fun…and we did get to taste some decent-tasting cantaloupe-flavored beans! We also got to see a lot of Reagan crap. Apparently, he popularized the treat after he ordered a bunch for his inauguration–we learned that a new blueberry flavor was created as part of the red/white/blue mix. Jelly Belly had so many orders after that, they fell 6-months behind in production. I can’t recall the exact figure that they produce in any given day, but I do recall thinking that falling 6 months behind was mind-boggling given the volume they do produce!
Anyway, it really was too bad we missed a lot of production action given that we’re unlikely to return anytime soon!
Spring break was now several weeks ago, but it took some time for me to finally upload the pictures and to get around to actually posting them!
We spent the first half of Spring Break on a lovely 4-day vaca to Lake Tahoe. As expected, given the extreme lack of rain, there was no snow, but Tahoe is always stunningly gorgeous!
We found a lovely rental located in a cul-de-sac and adjacent to some trails! The house had a spacious backyard with a perfect Chloe-sized bench!
She loved sharing it with K., Dylan and Cameron!!
Cameron also found a little bird house there.
The kids loved spending time together. We played Clue, Minecraft (of course!), rode bikes (Cameron learned how to ride her pedal bike!!!), watched “Mary Poppins” (that was my first time ever seeing it!) and just generally had great hang out time.
It was so great to be in a cul-de-sac and, at this time of the year with no snow, there was hardly anyone around! The kids could safely play outside…and the situation totally emboldened Cameron to try her bike (sheeeeer awesome!).
I love this picture!
Tom was stellar in helping her out.
Before we encouraged her to keep pedaling, we just had her coast down a slightly sloped driveway just so she could get the feel of balancing. She loved going down!
We didn’t even really need to encourage her to pedal. Once she felt ready, she just did it!
It was pretty awesome! She worked so hard to master it and, by the end of this short biking session, she had already mastered starting on her own and, the following day, she managed to make 52 loops without stopping (practicing her turns)!
And, while Cameron was practicing biking, here was Chloe, checking out the neighbor’s easter eggs!
…and Dylan was zipping around!
Since we were so close to some trails, A. actually took the kids on a little bike ride that involved a short stretch of trail riding. H., her mom, Chloe and I had walked part of the trail on our first day at the house and I had thought it would be manageable for the big kids to ride…A. was nervous, but Dylan apparently flew down the trail with no fear (and no issues!).
Now to get Chloe going!!
One of the highlights of the trip was a really nice hike we took in Sugar Pine Point State Park. H’s parents had printed out an amazing Scavenger hunt list. We broke up into 2 teams and went about finding stuff on the list! We had to photograph the evidence.
Once we got to the lake, we stayed for quite a while to enjoy the beauty. This girl is so deep and so pensive. We sat together on a rock and appreciated the beauty of the lake together. I loved that moment.
Cameron is also pretty adventurous and fearless. I love her curiousity and her enthusiasm.
This one is on a rock lamenting our lack of sand toys!
Here’s my son. I didn’t get many pictures of him on this excursion because he was on the opposite team and he kept running away!
On our way home, we hit the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield. All in all, this was a great way to start spring break!
Here are the kids on the last day of school before Spring Break. Dylan chose Paul Klee as his subject for his Wax Museum project. I have not been terribly good at keeping up with the calendar and I’d only discovered that he needed a costume for the next day right before the kids went to sleep!! Luckily, we were able to scrape together a cute little outfit (tie and shirt from Lola). We drew a beard and mustache on him, too, but he hated it–such a shame, too, because he looked so cute! Anyway, we managed to get out of the house just a couple of minutes late (after dealing with facial hair crisis) and I took a picture as the kids were still “fresh”!
You might recall that Cameron took scissors to her bangs a while back…I think her bangs are growing back in nicely. She did a pretty good job cutting straight across!
That morning, I was also scheduled to help out another mom with taking yearbook photos for Cameron’s class. Raquel and I had the kids just pose on the play structure. I always love seeing my girl during her school day!
During photo session time with Cameron’s class, I discovered I forgot to bake vegan sugar cookies for their Easter cookie-decorating project that they would start after brunch/recess (10am-ish, we were told) and Raquel had left her cookies at home, so once photo session ended, we looked at our watched and exclaimed, “We have 45 minutes!” and we both took off. I called Tom on the way home to discuss options (sugar cookies are pretty difficult to find even in our local grocery stores which are usually pretty good about carrying vegan options), but as soon as we both got home (he had just finished dropping Chloe off at school), he found a quick, no-refrigeration cookie recipe and whipped it up! I was impressed. I rushed the cookies back to school and realized I had an hour before Dylan’s Wax Museum. I’m so happy we live so close to the school!
I got a bonus Cameron sighting while at Dylan’s class–her class meandered in to take a look at the exhibit. It’s so cute! Having the classes come see their work is a really big deal for the 3rd graders! Dylan loved seeing Cameron. He told me later that it was really hard not to smile and he just wanted to go and hug her!
I barely had time to take pictures in Dylan’s class before it was time to pick up Cameron (minimum day). There she is with her cookies! Those sugar cookies were a big, big hit with the big kids! The recipe is a keeper!
After getting the big kids, Tom and I finished up our packing, got Chloe around 2pm and headed out of town.
It has been an very full several weeks (since the last post)! But, I suppose that goes without saying. I chaperoned on one of Cameron’s field trips and last weekend, Cameron went to 3 birthday parties–two on the same day and with overlapping times, and another the following day. Chloe and Dylan started their swim lessons while Cameron was at one of her bday celebrations (there were 7(!!!!) birthdays in her class this month!). Dylan had his biography project due, culminating in a class “Wax Museum” where the students all dressed up as their person and presented their posterboards. Cameron got to tour Dylan’s class and Dylan claims that was the highlight of his experience!!!
Now, after a mad dash Friday (another mom and I took individual photos for the yearbook of all of the kids in Cameron’s class–and while there, she discovered she left the cookies she made for the class back at her home and I realized I forgot to make some! Tom whipped up a batch in less than an hour and they were GOOD! And then it was rushing to deliver the cookies in time for the class decorating project, getting back to the house to do more packing for the trip and rushing back to school to get pictures of Dylan’s wax museum and, before his day was done, picking up Cameron from her class) we are finally in Tahoe to kick off Spring Break. We left the house about an hour or so after our target time and sat in lots of traffic, only arriving at about 10pm (that’s about 7 hours in the car!)! But we’re here and it’s gorgeous. While everyone but K. is sleeping, I’m watching the sunrise over the lake and listening to the birds sing their morning songs.
I’ll post some pictures once I get them uploaded. The internet connection here is not so good.
Chloe and I are taking a break from Studio Sprout to explore other things around town. Week 1 was a big success. We stopped by Emily’s Bakery to get some bread for the week…and, of course, Chloe wanted some chocolate loaf. Since it was Date Day with Chloe, I obliged!
Afterwards, we went to Neary Lagoon. She enthusiastically hopped on the balance bike, but also did a fair amount of running free.
This picture was taken just as we got to the first sight of ducks! She is demonstrating the “airplane arms” the ducks use to fly around.
It was so awesome to see her enthusiasm for being here. I am reminded of just how wonderful it is to have little people around–they see the world through fresh eyes; what I thought might be boring was sheer fun!
I knew she’d love the walkway that goes right over the water. We were so close to the ducks.
I was surprised we made it around the lagoon without me carrying her (except for when she fell on the path and needed some lovin’)! She is a phenomenal little athlete! She said she didn’t think she was going to make it across this wooden border without falling, but she proved herself wrong! The only downside to this day was having to drop her off at school. She knew it was going to end when we got to the car, so she asked to have her snack at the picnic table there and told me she wanted to ride her bike more. 🙁 She was unhappy on the way to school, but once she got there, she happily joined Yesenia’s circle where they were singing, “Buenos dias, buenos dias, como estas…”.
I can’t help but look forward to next week.
