Archives for 2010

Moving On…

It’s been a busy June. We finally moved to our new abode, which involved moving vans, storage runs and such. Thankfully, we’re all set. We just need to sell our previous house, and we’re good to go. We’re still putting things away a little at a time, figuring out everything’s new home.

Allison is excited to go to kindergarten at her new school next year. We went to the New Family event yesterday. Allison and Katherine promptly headed for the playgrounds. We peeled them off for a trip to the classrooms, the snack table and for a presentation in the auditorium. Allison was surprisingly quiet with the kindergarten teachers, saying a brief hello. She finally opened up when a teacher asked if she liked to read Magic Tree House. Allison promptly answered that Yes! she loves the series, and even has the first half of books at home!

These days her book selection is more varied. She’s migrated to Katherine’s old collection of Rainbow Magic Fairy books. And, Katherine has moved on to the Bailey School House kids, occasionally still reading through her A-Z Mystery Series. Thankfully, we get the library summer reading list later this week. And, the girls are excited to sign up for the library reading program, which awards a new laptop to the Grand Prize Winner.

Making Money

Katherine loves trips to Office Depot. I’m not sure I understand the appeal. But, she loves to stand in the writing utensil aisle, count her allowance money and see what she can purchase. I’ve told the kids they can earn extra money if they help around the house. So, both kids mopped and dried the laundry room floor and vacuumed their rooms and got an extra dollar. Allison also mopped the downstairs bath and vacuumed the entire downstairs…very fastidious and careful in the process. Allison told me the other day, “Mom – thank you for buying this new house. I will help you clean it since you can’t do it by yourself.” Gotta love that!

Our Spring Break

We tagged along with Steve down to Palo Alto on his recruiting trip, turning a one day commitment into a family vacation. Our goal for this vacation was to visit places we hadn’t been before (or the kids didn’t remember visiting):

1) Day 1: Drive from Palo Alto to Monterey Bay Aquarium in Bay Area traffic. We have tons of amazing pictures of the fish, and the kids took pledges to eat one less burger a week to save the world. Whew!  You may/not remember the blue shell, where we took a picture of the girls when they were 4 and 1. This picture turned out just as interesting. 🙂

2) Day 2: Stay in Palo Alto. The kids were SO excited to visit the pool, which was frigid. So, you can see pictures of them wrapped up in towels basking in the sun. If nothing else, we got lots of vitamin D – and less swimming than expected during the trip.  Dad made good on his promise to jump in but quickly jumped back out due to the cold water.

3) Day 3: Go to Exploratorium, San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf, then the Disney Family Museum in the Presidio. We met KJ at this very new museum which we ended up exploring more fully on our last day. Without kids, we could have easily spent 2-3 hours reading the exhibits, but with the kids it was a much shorter trip. Allison enjoyed watching the old Disney cartoons.

4) Day 4: Go to San Jose and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. Wow! The outdoors were amazing. Allison and I played almost a full game of Senet, before Steve and Katherine pulled us away for an In-and-Out Burger run. The inside was fascinating. Again, it was a speedy trip thru the exhibits as Allison’s main preoccupation was….mummies. There are four mummies, and she looked at all of them. We also walked thru the mockup of an Egyptian tomb. We later hung out with an old friend and his family while Steve recruited at Stanford. The kids loved running around the Palo Alto park and playing with their buddies.

5) Day 5: Check out, go to San Franciso for some last sight seeing which included the museum, Embarcadero and Coit Tower.

House Stuff

Our home is finally (well…within a couple hours) of being on the market. Funny enough, to me and Steve, this means having a sign in front of our house. To Katherine, this means having a home on the Windemere or Redfin web site.

The last couple of months, she and Steve have been surfing the Windemere web site for homes. Ironically, all the things that she thinks are cool are the things on my “do not buy” list, including hot tubs, pools, elevators… Allison is aware but less focused on the home selling/buying process thankfully. Her only concern is making sure she gets a decent room in the new house! 

For the time being, Bisco has been relocated to his new condo in the garage, e.g. a roomy wire crate with a nice pad. He goes in during the day when we’re cleaning or when we might have realtors/prospective buyers visiting. Then, he comes out at dinner time to hang out and socialize during family time and the evening. He’s also getting brushed with his new furminator brush, which seems to be cutting down on shedding significantly.

What are we up to these days?

Simply, we’ve finished the kindergarten application process for Allison, and we’ve been clearing out our house of clutter and such. Old school papers, books, bank statements have been recycled or shredded. We’ve dragged things out of the garage to go to the dump (sadly not usable anymore), and donated numerous car loads of “stuff” to Goodwill. Many boxes of books have gone to Half Priced Books, so they can be re-read by anyone interested in Plato, Galileo, or say even Dante. (Confidently, I can say that we have no intention of re-reading the Inferno or the Manifesto…)

The girls are reading up a storm. As part of the cleaning and purging process, I finally found a box of my old childhood books. They include wonderful stories like Flat Stanley, Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Rats of NIMH…Katherine pulled out Mary Poppins from the stack of books. She read it cover to cover in two days and then went to the library to check-out Mary Poppins Comes Back. Allison has now claimed the Mary Poppins book by putting her bookmark in it and has started the first several chapters.

We went to Game Night for lower elementary kids last night at school. We took Allison along, telling her that she had to play by the rules. Allison listened carefully to the rules and loved the experiece of playing new games like Castle Keep, Feed the Fish and Rattlesnake. Katherine did too, although Operation Shrek was a big hit. 🙂

Jack and Annie

Allison loves her Magic Tree House books. She is now the proud owner of four hard-bound books, specifically the later Merlin Mission editions. She knocks the hard-bound cover and says, “These can’t get hurt.”

Today Allison acquired the Sea Serpent adventure. She read aloud several chapters this morning, while I attempted a crossword puzzle (half-listening to her). So, before bedtime, she and I sat down to really read the book–which uses surprisingly complex words and is fairly suspenseful for a children’s book.

For instance, when Jack and Annie met the “Spider Queen,” Allison just stopped and pushed the book to me. She sidled away from the book, covered her eyes and listened as her heroes escaped from the queen’s cave. Several chapters later, Katherine crept in. Ostensibly reading her Rainbow Magic Fairy books in the other room, she had been listening to our reading. Allison and I then alternated pages and chapters until we finished the adventure.

At several points, the suspense grew, and we just had to laugh. For instance, Jack says to the Sea Serpent, “Don’t come any closer. I have the sword.” Next sentence intones, “The sea serpent moved closer.” Or, after Jack sees the Spider Queen with eight red beady eyes and eight hairy legs which is as big as him, Jack says, “Whatever you do, Annie, don’t look up!” Annie then looks up and screams, “AHHHH.”

Needless to say, Allison and I are a little hoarse. I think we must have read for over an hour. 🙂 

We might also convert Katherine to Magic Tree House from Rainbow Fairies. She has managed to collect all but one of the Special Edition books; Allison has the one book that she doesn’t own. Katherine says she likes the Special Editions because they are really three books in one. She is also reading her Encyclopedia Brown books and A to Z Mysteries.

Tired…Cold

The kids really needed some exercise today, and Allison in particular. Due to rain on Friday, her classroom had indoor recess, and she’s been a bit antsy all weekend. Early this afternoon, while it was sunny, Allison looked out hopefully and asked if she could go outside. She then enlisted Katherine to roller-skate and us to accompany them around the neighborhood.

Katherine can really skate. She zipped around the neighborhood with no issues. Rollerskating with Allison is a bit more exciting. She did the wild arm wave thing and landed on her bottom several times. She also tried to accelerate going downhill, while Katherine was perfectly happy to just roll down the hills. Allison is a bit hampered by her clamp on rollerskates, unlike Katherine who has full-on leather skates with nice brakes. However, Allison is at least a couple shoe sizes too small for real rollerskates.

After rollerskating, we then biked to a coffee shop several miles away for kids hot cocoa. The weather turned colder and more windy. Five minutes into the ride home, Allison simply stopped. She sadly said, “Tired….Cold” With a bit of encouragement, she stood up and started pedaling again.  

It’s the Economy…

Katherine is an amazingly observant child. A couple days ago, she had been playing “Katherine’s Sweet Shop” in the playroom. This involved providing one of several handwritten and typed menus to guests, serving them food, billing them and providing change from her plastic cash register. She even had donned an apron, with notepad and pen to take orders in her apron pocket. After both Steve and I had “breakfast,” Katherine announced a few times that “Katherine’s sweet shop is open….” No one came. Then, we heard massive activity, followed by a glum silence. Katherine had taken down her handwritten sign to the playroom. She replaced it with another stating, “Katherine’s Sweet Shop – Closed – for Lease” and “If you want your last meal, you should come today.” Apparently, not only did she not have a line of customers out the door, but she also looked in the cash register and had only $1 left. 

She said that she had seen the “Closed For Lease” sign in many empty storefronts here and in Boston.

The sign has been taken down, as Katherine has decided to re-open and try her business again.

One of our New Years traditions is to crack open a bottle of Martinellis, sit in front of a fire and discuss what we’re grateful for. As always, its an interesting discussion. Perhaps the most fitting for 2009 was Allison’s comment: “I’m glad Dad didn’t get laid off.”  That said, she followed it with, “If Dad did get laid off, then he’d spend more time with his kids.” (Admittedly, we’ve tried to explain that lots of people lost jobs and $ thru investments this year. But, seriously, where does this stuff come from?!)

Boston

I’ll have to go thru and find pictures to post. But, here’s a quick rundown of highlights from the trip:

• Lots of ice cream – Toscaninis and Rancs
• Dim sum
• Legal Seafood
• State Street House & Museum (Tea from Boston Tea Party!)
• Children’s Museum