Getting Better all the time

Friends

So the last update had Daniel decorating the hallways at school pink on Wednesday, the first day of school.  He stayed home in the afternoon, and so he missed the actual Kindergarten.  On Thursday morning, he complained that his stomach hurt again, so we kept him out of Ms. K’s (that’s her and her assistants in the picture) KEP class, and sent him to Kindergarten. 

He didn’t want to go, but afterwards, was pretty happy about what had happened and excited to tell about the day.  So we figured we might be in decent shape for Friday.

That’s NOT how the day started.  Again he didn’t want to go to school.  He wouldn’t ride his bike, had to be driven in a stroller and threw a fit over going into KEP.  Luckily, he settled down quickly, and 10 minutes after being dropped off, they called to let us know he was doing fine.   Again, at the end of the day he was smiling and excited about the day. 

And here we are, after day 4. He still expressed that he’d rather hang out at home and play with Mama, but he went, had a good day, and I think we’re going to be on a good trend.  It’s been a larger adjustment than expected, but he’ll be fine.

Little Ms. fabulous went off and got a haircut, and decided to show off her goofy side.  She has an amazing sense of humor, and really likes the slapstick humor. 

Rachel has a really good vocabulary, and if you go back to the posts when we were amazed at Daniel’s language skills at 3 and a half, she’s right there with him.  Sure, she has some letters that she enunciates a little less clearly, but her logic and reasoning skills are amazing.  The other day, she said “I have a big brain” and pointed at her tummy, and we came to realize that we’d never told her where the brain was…

Oh, and it may curse the whole deal, but just in the last week or so, we are ready to declare an end to pull-up diapers at night.  This is huge – she’s been out of the daytime ones for months, but this would be a complete success.

 

Over the weekend, we went hiking out at Golden Gate Canyon.  A moderate out-and-back 4 mile hike, with about 800 feet elevation gain.  The first 1.1 miles took 90 minutes, but it got faster once it leveled off.  Daniel and Rachel got to take turns taking pictures when we stopped.

Rachel hiked the whole thing without needing any help, and earns the “super-hiker” award.  Daniel neglected to hydrate properly, and had to ride on shoulders for about half a mile.  Still –> it was a nice day out, and good fun.

 

And that’ll have to do for now.

Love, ADRE.

Kindergarten starts

Friends

Today was the big day

[Queue dramatic music]

The first day of KINDERGARTEN…..

And we were ready. Daniel had been somewhat nervous about kindergarten throughout the summer. Partially from the unknown, we think, but also partially because some kid scared him about it.

But, over the course of the last couple of weeks, D was starting to get excited. He got to visit the school and see the classrooms, library and music rooms. He got to meet his new teacher Mr. M, and discovered that some of his playschool friends will be in his class and KEP (kindergarten enrichment program – kindergarten is otherwise just half-days). And during the 1-on-1 assessment, he had a great time, impressed the teacher with his reading skills, and generally aced it.

So we were ready.

And then Daniel woke up this morning and didn’t want to get out of bed. Said he had a tummy-ache and didn’t want to go to school. We figured the nerves were back.

But, no worries, we know how to get him refocused on having fun. So breakfast was turned into pink waffles and pink milk. This, in preparation for the lobster tail that was going to be for his celebration dinner (it’s pink, the food is pink, there’s a theme here – bear with us). Still a little bit of a tummy ache, which we wrote off as ""butterflies in your tummy” – a c0ncept he and Rachel thought was just weird.

Off we went, and since school is just a block-and-a –half from our house, we biked. Given the traffic with parents dropping kids off, it’s much faster, anyway. And we were pretty excited the whole way there, and amazed at the number of kids playing on OUR playground when we got there.

We barely had time to get a name tag and get in line for KEP before everyone marched into the school. Some kids were crying, but most were fine. Daniel had a slightly anxious look on his face, but walked on in. Anida didn’t cry…

And so we went home and to work.

About 80 minutes later, we got a call that Daniel had vomited, and was at the Nurse’s office. Given what he had for breakfast, it was quite a sight, I’m sure.

We’re still not sure if it was nerves, or whether that tummy-ache had been a symptom of a bug all along. He’s been home and resting ever since, with minimal appetite and still some claims of tummy aches.

So we’ll try again tomorrow.

Love, ADRE

We LOVE San Diego

  Friends

So we’ve just gotten back from a week in San Diego, and we had a great time once again.  Not that anyone needs an excuse to go there, but the official reason was to celebrate Jan Robert’s 40th birthday, so we were also joined by Oystein, Kia and Zoe, Oystein and Jan Robert’s fathers and Kia’s mother. 

All of us had purchased the “Go San Diego” cards, which provided unlimited visits to all of the tourist attractions in the area, and there sure are a lot – and they’re well-suited to children of Daniel and Rachel’s age. 

First up was Legoland.  Now, Legoland is just a great time.  It’s designed for kids from 3-12, so none of the rides are really too big or too scary.  Daniel has crossed the 42” mark height-wise, so he could ride everything (adults required occasionally), while Rachel was 40'” tall for most of the day and could ride most things.  At the end of the day, she forgot to tip-toe, or maybe she shrank, because she ended the day at 39” tall and disqualified from some rides.

Oh, and to top it all off, it happened to be “Star Wars day” at Legoland, so the park was filled with stormtroopers and jedis. Very popular with one little Jedi –> unimportant for the other one.

 

This year, Rachel was old enough to drive, and ride all of the major rides, so it was a real upgrade for her from last year, when she was barely 2. 

She was even tall enough to ride the “Dragon” roller coaster, while Daniel got to ride the slightly larger “Technic” one, and both declared that roller coasters were great.

The cars and helicopters were popular again, but like last time, it was driving the pirate ship (and spraying water on others) that was voted the best ride of all.

 

 

 

Seawold was a first for all of us, and it was another great day.  The kids started off by feeding and petting the Dolphins, then saw the Shamu show.  OK, it' was a little cheesy, but still fun for everyone.  Daniel rode the ride that gets you soaked, which Rachel unfortunately wasn’t tall enough for.  She is a GREAT sport about it though – she was a little sad about the few things she couldn’t do, but didn’t throw a fit, not even once.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rachel LOVES penguins, so that was a natural next stop.  Daniel and Rachel were both told that they could select TWO (and only two, and no complaining, and no going back) souvenirs from the trip. 

Daniel chose a sword (naturally) from Legoland and a fighter jet from the Air and Space Museum. Rachel chose a Penguin from Seaworld (“Tenguin the Penguin”) and a flamingo (Sally, we think) from Wild Animal Kingdom.

 

 

 

Zoe is a few months younger than Daniel, and a lot of fun to be around.  All three kids had a great time playing together at the parks and at the hotel swimming pool. 

 

We went back to Seaworld on the last evening our passes were good, to see the “Shamu Rocks” evening show.  It’s better than the daytime show, but unfortunately, Rachel fell asleep at 9:29pm, one minute before the show started, and so she missed that and the fireworks. 

 

We’d been to the Wild Animal Kingdom park last year, but the kids were exhausted, and didn’t enjoy it much.  It was different this year.  By the way – the casual reader of this blog might remember that we all went to San Diego last April – but do you remember Daniel’s first trip there?   I bring this up because we have pictures of that very same airplane tug in all three postings.  Yes, the USS Midway is fun, but somehow, driving that tug is the thing that we keep coming back to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, but that’s not all we did.  Oh no.  We also went to the Zoo, the Art Museum, the Automotive Museum, the Air and Space Museum (All in Balboa Park, which is awesome). 

We took a harbor cruise, went to the beach, went to the children’s museum, swam at the hotel pool…..

 

 

And so it’s not really surprising that everyone slept really, really well every night.

 

We had a GREAT vacation

 

Daniel starts Kindergarten in less than 10 days.  That’ll probably be the next major post. 

 

Until then.

 

Love, ADRE

The funnest summer EVER

Friends

 

It’s been a really, really fun summer around here, and we wanted to share a couple of pictures from what we’ve been doing in July. 

On hot days, the kids like to run around the back yard and spray water.  I like this picture because it captured the spray in midair.

 

Our little city hosted its annual summer party again, and it was a good time.  The kids rode carnival rides, made art projects and Daniel got to paddle a kayak.  You might remember he did this last year too.  Unlike last year, the fireworks didn’t get rained out, and we went over to Declan’s house to watch them from their front yard.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been hot here this summer.  Not as bad as earlier years, but many days in the mid-90s (that’s 35 celsius for you metric-folk), and so escaping to the mountains can be a great idea.  One weekend in July, we headed up to Idaho Springs to visit the Phoenix gold mine.  Daniel was gung-ho about the idea, but not so excited once we got there.  I think he really wanted to ride a cart or train, and instead it was a walking tour.  We also got to borrow washpans and pan for gold –> and I’m not sure how old you have to be to have the attention span for this, but it’s" “More than 5”.  So they fed the chipmunks instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Texas cousins came to visit, in two separate batches.  Brayden and Kayla went hiking with the kids, went to dinosaur ridge and did some general tourism-stuff while visiting.  Chloe joined the fun in the back yard with the slip-and-slide.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And just to round it all out, we went camping.  We’d originally planned to go to Turquoise Lake over the July 4th weekend, but then we got the tickets to Norway that overlapped with that. So we were able to go a couple of weeks later.  And it was a lot of fun.  The kids got fishing poles and enjoyed trying to catch something (albeit with no real bait to speak of).  We went for a little hike, roasted marshmallows, got dirty and in general had a great time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only downside was that we’d booked ourselves into a campground that allowed RVs, so we had a lot of mechanical noises, generators, etc – not the escape to nature that some of our other trips have been –> so we’ll avoid that mistake in the future, but it was still a great place, and we’ll probably go back there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’ll have to do for the general summer fun posting.  Next up, San Diego!

Norway and Sweden, Summer of 2010

Friends

It’s going to be another one of those multiple-posts-in-one-day dealies.  The Norwegians have a word for it, it’s called “Skippertak”, which basically just means –> buckle down and get it done.   Today’s theme is summer, and some of the really, really fun things we’ve done. 

 

At the end of June, and for 10 days thereafter, we went to Norway, but spent most of the time at “Stugan” or the family cottage on the Swedish coast.   It’s always a very pleasant time. 

Due to how we booked the tickets, Eric flew with Rachel and Daniel, while Anida had a more direct set of connections.  It wasn’t bad going there, but the return trip routed Oslo-Copenhagen-Manchester-Newark-Charlotte-Denver for a total of 5 flights and 26 hours.  The kids are travel champs though, so no biggie there.

Grandpa and Farmor are building a garage where Farmor’s flower garden used to be, so Daniel got to help dig up some of the plants for relocation to Sara’s garden.

In the day before going down to Stugan, we headed out to the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, on the theory that Daniel would enjoy that.  I think it’s safe to say that he was a little underwhelmed by the real thing. 

Life at Stugan falls into a fairly predicable pattern. The boys fish for crabs at the dock and play on the beach.  We take a trip or two around the area and go fishing in Grandpa’s boat.  The boys caught some mackerel this time, and enjoyed eating that.   This year, Daniel was strong enough to climb the cliffs on the North side of the cottage.  There are pictures, but not on our cameras, since Anida couldn’t watch, and Eric was busy making sure he didn’t fall.

  

This year, Rachel was able to participate in the crab fishing, and was pretty good at it, though much less obsessed than the boys.  The water was a little bit cold at the beginning of the week, but warmed up significantly.  Rachel’s the only one of the kids that spent any real time in the water. 

So it was a mellow week.  We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary with strawberries and a nice champagne, then went back to Oslo for a few days.  As always it was nice to spend time with Jacob and Leo, and remarkable how well the kids play together despite the distance.  Daniel picked up a Norwegian accent the way he usually does, and that lasted for a few weeks.

    

And that’s really the news from Norway this time around.  We flew back on the 4th of July and watched the fireworks from above – though truthfully the kids slept for most of that.

Up next – random other summer activities.

 

Love, ADRE.