It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas...

... thanks to wonderful Christmas programs! Here's Drake's:

I love the twirling! And the little bow at the end!

Gracie's Christmas Recital

Gracie was absolutely thrilled when she learned how to play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." And it was the first song she picked to play in her Christmas recital. She was less thrilled when her piano teacher mentioned that she could bow after she finished playing. In fact, this completely unglued her. It was as if *this* were the thing that finally made her realize that, hey, maybe she'll get this thing called Stage Fright. She completely fell apart. She wasn't going - AT ALL.

After we talked her down (and I maybe pushed her a little bit towards the piano), she did fine.

UC Davis

I often wonder how to explain political ideas to Gracie. Do I show her the injustice in the world? How will she react? Will I be sorry I showed her that the world is not all wonderful?

I was cruising Facebook when she wandered over. So we watched this video about the protest at UC Davis together, and though I paused it about 5 times to explain, she really seemed to get it. Her confused response after seeing the campus police spray tear gas on the protesters: "But... I thought we were allowed to do that in America?" I explained to her that even police make mistakes. How else to explain it? That people in power sometimes abuse that power?

It certainly makes one think.

What to do at night, instead of sleeping...

Last night I was checking on the kids and I found this:

Hmm, a secret message, I thought. I wonder if Gracie was reading a story about codes? So I looked through the book she'd been reading. Nope, no secret codes. So I asked her about it the next morning.

"Oh. You found that?" she replied, a bit uneasily. No doubt worried she was going to get in trouble for not going to sleep.

"Yeah, what is it?"
"It's a secret message. Hippo taught it to me." Hippo is her beloved stuffed animal.

"What?" This was getting more and more interesting.
"Hippo taught me how to write in her language, and I wrote her a note."

So last night, instead of going to sleep, Gracie created her very own cipher (and quite a good one, I might add), and then used it to write an entire letter.

Ross made a quick attempt to decode the letter. "Ah, I can see that that is a T!" Without even looking at her key, she says "Daddy! That's not a T! That's an N!" So not only did she create the code, she memorized it - in one night.

She never ceases to amaze us...

PS - If you want to figure it out, you may find this helpful. Hint: there are some misspellings, which, if you think about it, are just clever ways to make your code even more encrypted!

Halloween

The Most Interesting Man in the World and a Black Cat, to go with...

A witch and Buzz Lightyear (or, as he used to call him: Bud Light Beer. HAHAHA!)
Pop Quiz: Can you guess who's costume was the most expensive? Hint: It looks *so* real! :-)

Creativity...

....is not what it's cracked up to be.

"Drakey, what's that blue on your legs?" "We painted!" Oh no...

The kids are really good at keeping themselves entertained. Granted, the results may not be expected and/or desired. Example: while I was at church this am (kids still sleeping!) and Ross was still in bed, they woke up and decided to play finger paints. Thankfully, they decided to do this in the bathtub, which I was very excited about. "What a good decision!" Hey, maybe this won't be too bad!

Then I went into the bathroom to check it out.

1) It was an effing DISASTER; paint was everywhere.

2) This was not finger paint. It was tempura paint. Much harder to scrub off.

So I armed them with scrubbies and baking soda and told them to get busy. And I armed myself against the complaints, which were predictably numerous. This is what I get for encouraging creativity.

I thought about taking a picture, but didn't want to appear to be enjoying their misery. So instead, here's a picture of their other activity for the morning: getting their own breakfast. They were in the middle of this when I got back from church. Note their angelic expressions. This was before I knew about the painting. Note also the little pile of raisins to the side. Apparently, they don't like raisins in their Raisin Bran.

Stoogents

I admit it: this is a reenactment of actual events. The morning of the kids' first day of school was rainy and and rather dismal. Very un-San Diego. So I couldn't be bothered to take the mandatory first-day-of-school photo. By the afternoon, it had cleared up and was beautiful. So I made the kids get their school stuff, and even their rain boots to pose on the front lawn.

Thanks for humoring mama, kids!

After I took the picture, I took some video , and I was trying to prompt Drake to say something, "Drakey! Show me what a student would look like!" I love how you can see his confusion between his response and Gracie's response to take out her school supplies.

Stoogents: such a wonderful portmanteau for these guys!

More Camping!

Adjusted Expectations

Holy moley! Who do I think I am - a freakin' novel writer?! I look at my previous posts and just shake my head. It's no wonder I didn't keep up with that! But then, it's really not surprising. I'm not known for, um, concise writing. I get to my point. Eventually.

So, let's reassess our expectations of what might actually be found here, shall we?

A picture. Or not.
A witty caption. Or not, if my brain has been overly taxed.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on...

Funny conversation at the dinner table tonight (Backstory: they just watched 'Tangled' a few days ago.):
Wahwoo: I want my hair to reach.... the yellow house across the canyon!
We all ooh and ahh. Wow! That's long!
Little Man is silent. Then, with a flourish of his hand: But, the coyotes will eat it!

And now, a picture from camping on Palomar Mountain for Father's Day weekend...

Before The Hike

We went on a "Treasure" hike, where two of the parents organized a hike and threw plastic jewels and snakes and lizards along the trail for the kids to find. You can imagine the bedlam. Meanwhile, our kids, the hangers back in wild activities like these, were intrigued, but not intrigued enough to actually run along. Fortunately, the organizers of the hike thought of this, and I'm convinced they had someone stationed halfway back charged with replenishing the "treasure." And the kids (with their parents' gentle reminders) were very good about just taking one or two and leaving the rest for the stragglers (babies, toddlers, and my two kids, LOL). So that was fun.

But then we got to the end of the organized part of the hike and everybody turned around. Ross and I were eager to keep going. It was a beautiful day and you never know what you're going to find next!

So after a few calls to Drake, he and I started along again. Gracie was having none of it. She was all about the herd mentality. "Everyone else is turning around!" Well, we want to keep going. "NO! HIKING IS BORING!" And... complete meltdown. Um, what the? This kid is The Hiker. In Hawaii, she was *all* about the hiking. She LOVES hiking. Maybe it was because everyone else was heading back, and she didn't want to possibly miss out on any fun that MIGHT happen? Sheesh... So she and Ross had a little "chilling" out time and then she begrudgingly followed along.

But of course, she is a true hiker and soon regained her cheerfulness. Especially after we came to The Magical Place - a beautiful little oak grove with massive oak trees perfect for climbing and The Totoro Listening Spot - a huge verticle rock that we all leaned against to hear the totoros speak to us. It was quite a nice moment. Then we hiked across a beautiful grassy meadow with green and red grasses and spied a little blue dragonfly. That's where Gracie learned that dragonflies are a good sign for freshwater. So off she went, in search of water. Sure enough, a little farther down the trail, we came across a little stream that we hopped across. And then we saw a valley (French Valley) that it fed into. There, we discovered a lovely little grotto with a babbling brook, a little waterfall and a small swimming hole. Gracie had a good time floating a leaf down the stream to see what would happen to it. Drake freaked out when he was trying to walk upstream and got part of his foot wet.

On the way back, Drake had the wonderful idea to lay down in the grass. As we peered up through the oak branches, we spotted mistletoe. We listened to the wind. As we walked back, the kids spotted acorns, which they collected, with the idea to have their own totoro trees. But boy, were they dragging by the time we got back. Afterwards, I asked Gracie what her favorite parts were. I was curious to see if the treasure part outweighed the rest of the hike. But no, her favorite parts were The Magical Place and "discovering" water. Now *that's* my little hiker! :-)

What turned out to be a truly memorable hike...

The trip was tons of fun - minus the horrible mosquito and horsefly bites on poor Wahwoo. One landed on Little Man's hand, and nature lover that he is, he says to me, all excited (or "decided" as he says) "Mommy! Look!" He would have reacted the same if a butterfly had landed on him, so awed was he. Before I could swat it off, it had done what horseflies are apt to do. "AAAUUUGGGHH!" Poor thing, you could just see the look of betrayal on his face. How could a "cweature" do this to him??

And because I'm feeling super-ambitious... A VIDEO!


AND! We get to camping NEXT month too! Yay! The kids are thrilled.

Cinco de Mayo

Our first foray into papier mache. It was surprisingly therapeutic....

Check back for the follow up to see how it turned out!

Happy Birthday Wahwoo!

We had a present for Gracie when we got back from our trip to Hawaii:

This is The Coolest Toy Ever! The kids and I have totally been having a fun time with this. We even made a doorbell that plays Happy Birthday!