Here’s Chloe at her bday circle at school with her super sweet teacher, Yesenia.
She’s all ready to be grown up, but I’m not!
Chloe needed help with the candles! It turns out they were trick candles that kept relighting. Whoops!
It’s hard to believe Chloe is 3!!! We had a 3-part celebration for her–bday circle at school and a dinner out at Thai House on her actual bday, then bday party celebratin’ at the new children’s museum here in Santa Cruz.
Poor thing was an oozing, goopy mess on her actual bday, but by the next day, as you can see in this picture, she was pretty ok.
It is hard to capture just how vibrant and dynamic this little thing is! And, just like that (like Dylan), she has decided to be potty-trained. She wakes up dry every morning and she’s now even using the potty at school (she’s been using the potty at home pretty reliably for quite some time now, but she wasn’t really using the potty at school–finally, last week, I brought her pink potty in and she hasn’t looked back!).
She is a singer and dancer and comedian; a good-humored but somewhat bossy little thing (but I suppose, as Number 3, you must make your needs known somehow!).
We decided to try out a bday party at the new museum in town. It was awesome. At first, I was a bit afraid that nobody would socialize much together because everyone would be in separate areas of the museum, but the museum is not terribly huge, so kids and parents were able to interact plenty around the exhibits.
After about an hour of museum play time, we all convened in the party room for bday singing and cupcakes.
I chaperoned Dylan’s class to the Museum of Art and History this past week. We’d been there on a field trip last year so I was curious to see how this trip would differ from the previous one.
This time, they had the kids separate into 2 groups and within their group, they split off into sub-groups to do collaborative work. In the first group, Dylan was highly sought after by Denisha and Kiara…they had tule as their topic. They were to do their research and then present their findings to the rest of the larger group.
I was very impressed with how much Dylan recalled from their Ohlone unit! And, I could see why the girls wanted him in their group. He was a pretty good presenter!
The second part of the field trip involved getting into sub-groups again, but this time, the little groups had to discover the name, hobbies, gender, and occupation of a Mystery Person via the exploration of historical artifacts–journals, work and school bags, toys, pictures, letters, etc. It was a pretty fun activity! We discovered the Mystery Person was named Edward Prince. He started working at a very young age (14) as a delivery person for a local pharmacy. He later became a pharmacist. He was saving money to buy a Delmar camera and seemed to like to photograph people. He had this cool stereopticon, marbles and roller skates…. His father worked for a lumber mill.
Edward Prince was not a famous guy, but his granddaughter happened to donate his belongings to the museum so folks could learn about how “ordinary” Santa Cruz county folks lived back in the early 1900’s.
The Ohlone made houses, toys, hunting baskets and all sorts of things from tulle. They had to burn down the houses every season because the tulle bred lots of bugs. On the upside, it was waterproof and pretty durable and there was no shortage of it around!
I love these field trips!
Chocolate sorbet from Penny Ice Creamery after a couple of hours of painting at Petroglyph. Fun Sunday!
Here’s Cameron painting a bday present for her good buddy, Jada.
Nah, I’m not at all biased! I love how she just naturally starts counting in Spanish instead of English! She was so pleased with the V-day goodies!
Chloe started ballet class last Thursday! It was a bit of a rush to get her there on time as her class begins at 3:30pm. I will have to rush out of work to get her from daycare, get her dressed and then rush over to H’s house to get Cameron whose class starts at 4pm. This first class, I lucked out since Tom was in town and I got a late start getting out of the office! I had no time to get Cameron, so he was able to pick her up and drop her off at the dance studio! Phew. New routines are always a tough transition!
Anyway, Chloe loved it. She initially clung to my neck, but then I finally moved out of the room to officially register her. To my delight, she didn’t follow me out (as she did on my first 2 attempts to leave!).
Also, she has the same teacher as Cameron, so the teacher, Miss B., invited Cameron in to “help” Chloe feel at ease!
Well, this smile doesn’t lie! Even though she didn’t do much dancing (she told Cathy at the preschool that she didn’t dance, she just waited to run with Cameron!), she had a big smile on her face the whole time! We’ll see how it goes next weekend!
The day after Valentine’s Day, we vowed not to keep the kids cooped up inside! Plus, it was still gorgeous outside! This time, instead of just dragging them on errands, we took them to the newly paved paths in nearby Arana Gulch.
Arana Gulch is a pretty big swath of land adjacent to the harbor. Jenny and I have cut through there on some of our distance runs and Dylan and I did a biking day there last summer.
It apparently used to be a dairy farm!
Well, there are now 2 bridges, one on each side of the gulch, allowing for bikes to easily go back and forth between harbor sides. The bridges are unequivocally awesome…the paved paths I am more conflicted on, but when we think about people in wheelchairs, parents with young kids in strollers, young and new bicyclists, I realize it is overall a good thing to have these paved paths.
Dylan’s initial reaction was, “I liked the dirt better.” But, I think maybe he changed his tune after he biked the paths with T. and K. this past weekend!
Anyway, we took the kidlets through the gulch, past the boats in the harbor and down to the beach (at least a good mile and a half of walking!). We stopped for lunch at Cafe Palomar (a beachside fave!) and then made our way back.
We were so proud of all of the kids. They all ran/hiked/skipped the entire way! And the loved it!
On Monday, since there was no school, H. and I took the kids back to Arana Gulch (she’d never been there before) and the big kids rode their bikes while the littler ones chased after.
This time, instead of heading left towards Harbor Beach, we broke right and crossed the other bridge and headed towards the park.
We used to take Dylan to this park all of the time when he was Chloe’s age!!! This was maybe the first time that Chloe has been here, though. The little playground has been redone–although, this little ride-on-thingy is a holdover from the Dylan days!
We saw some friends there — one of T.’s and Dylan’s Mandarin classmates and another Dos Alas kindergartner….
It was so sweet to see all of them enjoying the play structure and the bike paths!
Without even knowing it, Cameron became a master of the monkey bars! I’d actually spied her on the bars at school easily making her way across–but I was surprised when I saw her! I had no idea she could do this!
We stayed for a good long time before we decided we should head back before the kids got too tuckered out to make it back home! It was a great way to end the long weekend!
We got a good couple of inches of rain, but as soon as this bright little thing stepped out, ready to stomp in some puddles, it stopped!
Tom’s first conference of the year was booked at Tenaya Lodge! So, we took the kids out of school for Thursday and Friday (toted their homework with us, of course) and enjoyed 4 lovely days in the area.
On our first day there, Tom had his full conference day, so the kids and I explored the lodge together and decided to try out the indoor pool.
We swam for a good amount of time, but once we got into the hot tub, it was really hard to get back into the big pool–especially for me! So, after going back and forth several times, we finally decided to wrap it up, shower up, and have some lunch.
On our second day there, Tom had a half day, so rather than tackle anything ambitious, we took it easy and explored more of the area outside the lodge, got some info on a couple of very short hikes starting just outside the lobby doors, and laid low until Tom got off work.
He got off work just at noon, so we had a lunch snack and then geared up for a hike! As you can see, the weather was pretty pleasant–low 60s, which is pretty high for winter at 5200ft up!
There was very little snow–just some icy patches that were a little tricky to traverse. I thought the kids would be lethargic, but they were energetic and super psyched to be outside and around icy patches!
We got about half-way around the nature trail loop before we lost the trail! Still, all told, it was a 1mile+ hike! And, we swam that day as well! But, seeing as it was Friday, the crowds at the pool had picked up and Dylan didn’t like that at all! So, the next day, while the girls did another swim session with Tom, he and I stayed in the room and played a few games of Robot Turtle!
Dylan got a new camera for the holidays (he’s been wanting one) so he was out taking pictures on all of our hikes!
This one usually doesn’t like to wear jackets! But, it was cold enough for both girls to want to wear something!
On our third day, we headed to the Lewis Creek Trail for a short half-mile hike to Corlieu Falls. Another falls — Red Rock Falls — were also along that trail, but we thought they were one after the other (instead of one forked to the left of the trailhead and the other to the right), so we ended up walking another half-mile or so past Corlieu in search of the other falls.
The kids loved being outside. They were bounding along the trails like puppies! It was all downhill heading past the Falls, but when we discovered from other hikers that there were no other falls beyond, we decided to take a snack break and head back and that was all uphill!
The pictures of the falls don’t really give you a very good sense of how pretty they were! The kids were super stoked to see them, though.
On our final day, we hiked the Lewis Creek Trail in the other direction(!) to see Red Rock Falls.
There was no bridge over the very shallow creek, so we had to balance along the logs and tree stumps to get across! I’m happy to say we all made it without falling in!
This picture pretty much captures the mood out on the trail! The kids pretty much ran the entire 1.5 miles to the top of the falls! This trail was flatter than the one to Corlieu Falls, but still, it was uphill!
At the top of the falls, there was a pretty slippery slab of granite! We were warned by the family that arrived there moments before us to stay back from it, so we did. But, while we were snacking, another family arrived and the man in the group, slid on the rocks! I didn’t see it happen, but the next thing I knew, I saw Tom out there … slipping! But, luckily, he caught himself and managed to shove the guy back up to the top of the rock where the guy who’d warned us about the rock extended his hand to pull them both up from the top!
It wouldn’t have been a far drop, but the water would have been cold and there are rocks down there! Also, there were a couple of pools up at the top of the falls where the water was not rushing very quickly, so had anyone actually slipped, probably cold and wet (and embarrassed) would have probably been the worst of it!
Chloe was too tired to hike back (after running 1.5 miles uphill!), so I carried her in the Mei Tai on my chest, next to my heart, I told her. After hearing that, she hunkered down and fell asleep! It was such a sweet thing to feel her asleep on my chest again! She is getting so big now that this may well be the last year I can hike with her in a mei tai!
Overall, it was such a wonderful family weekend. On Monday (MLK day was a work day for me), I was missing them already!
One of Cameron’s homework assignments was to make some masa and play with it! Well, since I got the tortilla press I’d asked for (from Madison–Jeff’s niece), we decided to go one step further and just make some tortillas for our dinner!
Dylan is practically a pro since he’s made tortillas on 2 field trips this year (the UCSC farm and the Mission) so he was on tortilla-pressing duty by his own choice!
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I think they turned out fantastic!!! We served them with seitan, avocado, and a cauliflower/potato/spinach filling simmered in a mole sauce.
We got Dixit for Christmas so we played that. Great fun with the kids! Then, we played Enchanted Forest (Cameron’s new game) and then we gambled using Sequence Num6ers as a “roulette” board. We bet on numbers (each person started out with $5 in chips–this year’s game was sponsored by mom and dad…who knows, next year, we may make them pony up their own cash! Heh heh!) and then made Dylan solve the math problems to get the random “roulette” number! I think everyone ended up losing money, but we still had fun!
Oh, yeah. This one didn’t make it! But, it took no time at all for her to decide that she wanted to go upstairs and fall asleep! After Chloe was down, I went back down to play games with the big kids and Tom!
Cameron wanted to head to bed at 11:46pm. I managed to persuade her to stay awake for another few minutes! Dylan, on the other hand, wanted to continue to gamble !! Well, we were all in bed by 12:30am, I think! Hard to believe another year is behind us!
