Weekend

Weekend Updates:

We started the weekend with a date night, thanks to Tia and Hassan.  I had given Josh tickets to one of our favorite comedians Kathy Griffin for Father's Day, and thankfully Tia and Hassan were able to babysit.  The show was hilarious, and at a gorgeous venue called Montalvo down in Saratoga.  The pictures I received from Hassan showed that the kids were having a blast back at home with their Aunt and Uncle.  Many thanks again Tia and Hassan!

 

Saturday was Jake's first soccer game of the season, with Josh as an assistant coach.  They have a blue and yellow uniform this year, and the team named themselves the Earthquakes.  The team did great for their first game, with Jake scoring one of the Earthquakes 5 goals of the game.   It's the start to a long but fun season.

Sunday morning all the kids wanted to do was play their kitchen band music- Colbie and Addy switching off on the pan drums and the dancing, and Jake on the guitar.  Wow was that a loud morning!

Sunday afternoon was Tia and Hassan's baby shower up on the mountain!

 

First Day of Second Grade!

The day is here...Jake is headed to SECOND grade!   He was incredibly excited and eager to get back to school, which is just wonderful.   Mrs. Mencher, here we come.

Happy Birthday Nana!

Happy Happy Birthday to You, NANA!!!   We look forward to celebrating with you today.

For my Mom's birthday, she requested that we all go to this PACE Art teamLab that is temporarily on exhibit in Menlo Park.  The girls were in school, so I took Jake and met them all there.  teamLab is "an interdisciplinary group of ultra-technologists whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, technology, design and the natural world.  Rooted in the tradition of ancient Japanese Art and contemporary forms of anime, teamLab operates from a distinctly Japanese sense of spatial recognition, investigating human behavior in the information era and proposing innovative models for societal development. "   The teamLab portion was especially cool, because anyone is invited to color characters, then scan them, and they appear in scenes on wall size projected images around the room.   Jake was even able to draw something and then have it printed into a 3D design that he could cut out and paste together.      Afterwards we headed home for a quick cookie celebration (Erica made these beautiful cookies!) and open a few presents before they all headed off for dinner and movies.    

 Addy and Colbie were able to celebrate with Nana today while I manned the Welcome Coffee booths at school, recruiting new parents to volunteer for our school.  Then we took her to our favorite indoor playground for some serious obstacle course sliding....I gotta say, my Mom is making 73 look pretty amazing, keeping up with tons of kids at that place!

 

Academy of Sciences

Jake, Lee Lee and I went up to the Academy of Sciences today while the girls went back to preschool.  The Museum was not too crowded, so we were able to see nearly everything (although Jake does move through things quite quickly).   The highlights for me were the Planetarium show (the current show is about  how planets are formed, and how there is likely a ninth planet in our solar system and it isn't Pluto) as well as an amazing earthquake display.  They actually built an earthquake simulator, where a small group of people go into a room set up like a living room (with books on the walls, plates on display, pictures hanging on the walls) and it actually shakes at the same magnitude as the 1989 and 1906 earthquakes.  The 1906 quake was truly extraordinary in magnitude, with significant shaking for a huge 90 seconds straight.  It was so sad to be reminded that 500 city BLOCKS of San Francisco were destroyed in that quake!

 

 

Today was the girl's first day back in the Hummingbird room.   There are very few kids left from last year, as they all graduated to TK or kindergarten.  But, the girls were incredibly excited to go to school and be the "big girls" this year.  There were no tears, no 15 minute prolonged drop off.  I just kept thinking back to the first day last year, and sitting in my car for 30 minutes hearing them scream at the top of their lungs trying to escape the school play yard....thank heavens times have changed!!!   They wouldn't take a picture for me though today, but this welcome sign was just adorable!

Beaches and Babies

We had to hit the beach one last time before summer is totally over, so we headed over to HMB to our favorite spot.  It was chilly, but it didn't stop the kids from jumping around in the water at all.   We headed to a birthday party for the girl's classmate afterwards.  It was nice to be able to chat with so many of the parents as the girls actually ran off and played.    On Friday the kids and I got to play with baby Dominic for much of the day.  He is such a happy, sweet and mellow 1 year old.  I couldn't believe how good he was the entire time.  Dominic especially bonded with Jake, giggling non-stop when Jake was near him.   Tomorrow the girls will officially start their Pre-K last year before kindergarten!

Week Updates

Updates from this week:

Tuesday we went to visit Grandma Lee Lee and ate a yummy lunch at Bumble.  Afterwards the kids were incredibly excited to go next door to Area 151, which is a small arcade.  Great fun by all

 

 Wednesday we visited my folks to celebrate their anniversary:

Jake also lost tooth #4:

Today was a mellow day at home- if anything can be called mellow in my home these days!  The kids convinced Tia and Hassan to play Pie Face with real whipped cream- pretty funny!

 

Here is a slow-motion video of Tia Erica playing: