Pumpkins….

 

Friends

There are THREE postings this evening, and in earlier posts (which, ironically, you’ll probably read AFTER you read this one), I promise to provide a general update on activities over the last couple of weeks. 

And then I discover that I can’t find the other camera.  And what to do?  I can either break my promise to post an update, wake someone up and ask where the camera is, or force you to suffer through a no-picture blog posting. 

The choice is easy… But I’ll try to make it up to you with this video of Daniel and Rachel describing their pumpkin masterpieces. 

For Daniel, it’s all about what’s happening at school, and things have been going really well, both socially and academically.  He’s making friends, and seems to be one of the more popular kids.  Playing “Star Wars” in the playground unites all of the boys, and recently we’ve started to hear that “girls are stinky”. 

He’s had his first set of assessments, and is doing well across the board, but is extremely strong in reading – as his teacher Mr. M says –> he can read anything, but doesn’t always comprehend what he’s read. That’s apparently normal, though, so we’re asking questions along the way to encourage him to think about it.

We’re back in swim lessons, and so far, it’s like something just ‘clicked’, because he’s been extremely focused and strong.  I’ll have to get some video, because words alone don’t do it justice.

Halloween is coming. Daniel will be “Captain Rex” from Star Wars.  Rachel – well, Rachel deserves a post all onto her own, but I’m going to write it when I’m less sleepy, and hopefully find some pictures.  Until then.  

Love, ADRE.  

It was the summer of the bicycles around here

Friends

In earlier posts, I’ve mentioned how much the kids have enjoyed their bikes this summer, and bragged about the 10-mile bike ride we took. 

The quality of this little video isn’t the highest, but I think it does a good job of capturing the fun that both Daniel and Rachel have when they’re out riding. 

Daniel has been into “Stunts” for a while now, and so you get to see him ride around with his feet on the steering wheel, etc.  Rachel’s tricks are less elaborate, but she’s having a great time being “Lightening McQueen” and racing around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you might imagine, it’s also been the summer of scrapes and bruises.

Bikes are ridden to school, to the store, to the playground.  We need to get or build some ramps for next summer, but I think the season is just about over now.

Oh, and that 10-mile ride?  Completely obliterated by our 17.2-mile trip to downtown Denver on Sunday.  It’s mostly flat, with a gentle downhill slope -losing 470 feet of total elevation going from here to Confluence park, and a fairly easy ride along good paths.  Daniel got a flat tire about 0.7 miles from REI, but was able to get there, and we had them fix him up with a thorn-resistant innertube while we ate lunch. Great attitude and listening, and a fun outing for all.  We took the light rail back home, though.

That’ll have to do for the bike update.  Now for a more general “what’s new around here” posting.

 

Love, ADRE.

Can you tell what’s changed?

Friends:

OK, take a quick glance at the two pictures below and see if you can figure out what’s different between them.

If you said: “Daniel seems to have lost his shirt!” then you are the master of the obvious. Congratulations.

Yes, we lost our first tooth last night, and we’re VERY excited about this. It had been loose for a little over a week, and was gradually getting wiggled looser and looser until, finally, it came out after dinner last night.

Under the pillow it went, and this morning, Daniel came into our room with a disappointed look: “The tooth fairy didn’t come…” which was more than a little surprising to the tooth fairy. So we convinced him to go back and look, and sure enough, he returned with the $1 coin held high.

There’s apparently some bragging rights at Kindergarten associated with losing your first tooth. It’s a status thing of sorts.

By dinner tonight, he was scheming to see if he could trick the tooth fairy into giving him more money by putting pictures of teeth under his pillow. His cleverness was admired, but he was cautioned that the tooth fairy might not be amused by being tricked… Ultimately, he decided it wasn’t worth risking the next $19 in semi-guaranteed funds on a get-rich-quick scheme.

The first photo, by the way, is Daniel’s official kindergarten picture. We got extras to share. The original has nicer colors than this scan, and if you’re reading this, you’re most likely going to be getting a copy in the mail anyway, so I wouldn’t bother trying to print it.

It’s another evening of multiple blog postings. Next up – a set of video that I’ve really been wanting to share.

Love, ADRE.

The “Other” Camera…

Come to find out, we do have pictures of Rachel’s first days at school.  Here she is exploring her new preschool room at Open House:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here she’s on her way to the first full day:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and there were pictures of our family trip to Elitch Gardens (the local amusement park):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun in the fall

Friends

We’ve had a couple of fun weeks, just settling into the fall routine. 

Rachel started her pre-school (sorry, no pictures of that), and is loving her new teachers.  She goes twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays, and then on Tuesdays she’s been taking nastics (that would be gymnastics) and going to the library for story time.   We regularly have 20+ library books at home, and both kids have their own library cards, so that’s a good thing.

 

The picture is from a little backyard BBQ we had on Labor Day.  Nothing too fancy, just Harrison, Carly and Eli bringing their parents over for the afternoon.  This was also our first attempt at a pure “kids table” and it worked out pretty well.  We also went over to Grandma Babe’s place on Labor Day weekend for one last dip before they closed the pool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “Big” update since last time has got to be that we flew down to Texas the Friday after labor day to return to the Hyatt at Lost Pines.  You may remember that we had so much fun there in April with the Pasta family that we decided then and there to return for another visit with them.  

The resort really caters to families, with a nice kids-depth pool and beach, a water slide and a lazy river that you can float around in a tube.  Bikes to borrow, Disney movies outside at night and of course – S’mores every evening at their firepits.  We spent a lot of time in and around the pools. 

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel mastered snorkeling on this trip – a skill that we think he’ll really enjoy when we return to Thailand later this year.  He was zooming all over the pool with his head submerged.  Rachel is getting pretty close to swimming unassisted – she was bouncing off the bottom of the pool and occasionally planing out.  

Of course Sean (and his parents) was there as well, and it was fun to see them picking up the playing effortlessly.  We went into Austin on a couple of occasions for dinner, and also in an attempt to see the bats (world’s largest urban colony), but the yahoos at the “bat hotline” had listed the wrong bat time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All in all – just a great little vacation. Not so far away that you use up the weekend getting there and a great time with good friends once you’re there.

Daniel's still having  a good time at school.  He took class photos, did a couple of show-and-tells and has gotten into a good routine.  We’ve has our first encounter with the “fad” of the year – silly bandz.  Suddenly Daniel “had to have some” and was willing to spend his own money to get a few, so he’s part of the in-crowd again…

Swim lessons started today, and both kids had GREAT first lessons.  None of the hesitation or fear of a new teacher we’ve seen before.  The practice throughout the summer has really helped, and Daniel even got moved to a private class when it was clear he was outswimming the other kid.

And finally – we went to Miller farms yesterday and picked potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, beans, beets, basil, dill, kohlrabi, leeks, celery, pumpkins and probably a couple of other things.  Probably about 100 lbs of produce we have to do something with. Kids had fun picking for a while, but it was probably a little too much, so they enjoyed getting to play a little after.  In previous years, we’ve gone in October to pick pumpkins and only the root vegetables were any good, so this was a nice change.  I might have a picture on my cellphone, but that’ll have to wait. 

Until next time.

Love, ADRE.

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