Spring Sing, Maker Faire

It has been RAINING this month. Not a whole lot, but we all know that part of the mortgage is going toward predictably warm and sunny weather in May and I, for one, am a little resentful. Johnny's school held their annual Spring Sing outside despite the rain (it was almost cancelled because there were no contingency plans in place because as I mentioned, it's not supposed to rain in May). Kids wore their winter gear and sang under a little tent.

Last weekend, we went to the Maker Faire in San Mateo, where it was also cold. Lots of cool stuff to see and do:

Climbing up a work of art

that you can pedal.

Pretty awesome. 

Same booth, different stuff to try out.

Next to the Halo costume maker booth

Johnny is tired.

Flat Stanley's Visit

An old friend of mine from Chicago brought his family out to SF for spring break, and we spent a little time with them. Their youngest son, who's Dan's age, enjoyed himself enough that we became the recipients of Flat Stanley.

(As you may or may not know, Flat Stanley is the protagonist of a series about a boy who is flattened by bulletin board and takes advantage of his new shape to mail himself places, get into and out of things ordinary people can't, etc. It has become a common 2nd grade project to mail a Flat Stanley to some faraway place and ask for photos and information to be mailed back with him.)

Well. We couldn't let AC down. So we took Flat Stanley out and showed him a good time. What a great excuse to get out and do something fun!

First the Monterey Bay Aquarium (well, we do that one fairly often, considering the distance):

Dan and Flat Stanley looking out over Monterey Bay. We often see sea otters playing by the rocks.

Johnny is tired.

The next weekend, we all went to SF, rode the cable car, visited the Maritime Museum in Marine Park, and hit the ice cream shop in Ghiradelli Square:

In line for the cable cars

At the Maritime Museum

It was kind of windy.

Golden Gate Bridge in the background!

And there's Alcatraz Island.

Rowing

Hot fudge sundae at Ghiradelli Square. Johnny had a tantrum when this arrived at the table because he had actually asked for a scoop of chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone, NOT a sundae. It took him a few minutes, but he got over it.

Breezy and a little chilly, too.

Other photos from March/April

The week before Dan's birthday party, it rained buckets. In fact, it rained 20 out of 31 days in March.

Dan's specially requested birthday dinner. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child...

 Chicken strips from KFC, for crying out loud

And for dessert: Dirt cups, please: Jell-O Instant Chocolate Pudding, gummy worms, Oreos

Honestly. Why do I spend time and money making real meals out of real food? 

Johnny. Notice Doggy tucked into his breastplate.

"I want to listen to my brain," he said.

Jedi Partay Redux, continued

Part II: Location, location, location
Stanford E-Quad. Perfect. Grand porticos, long, wide paths, spacious lawns, grassy knolls, ancient tree in an arena.


Part III: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
5:00 p.m. Kids arrive; free time
5:15 p.m: Kids assemble sandwiches to eat later.
5: 30 p.m. Treasure Hunt
5:50 p.m. Eat sandwiches, unveil and eat cake
6: 15 Light saber combat instruction
7:15 Free time
7:30 The End

Part IV: Gang aft agley
Which is to say, "Often go awry"--I'm quoting Scottish poet Robert Burns, from whose poem "To a Mouse" the line comes: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/ Gang aft agley". (Brainy, but I can't take credit. I remembered Robert Burns and his poem thanks to its appearance in a wonderful book called The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Hidden Gallery. It's the second in what I think will be a three-part series, Part III of which I am eagerly awaiting. If I get a spare hour (hah!) I'll write about it.)

But I digress. So. Gang aft agley:

Jedi Partay Redux: Tai's 8th birthday

Part I: The Cake

This year, I got to bake and frost a cake from scratch, instead of having to order a dreadful, (and dreadfully) overpriced Baskin Robbins ice cream cake featuring a Star Wars theme. All the um, wisdom literature warns us not to attach our happiness to ridiculous stuff like cakes, but there it is. In my still unenlightened mind, homemade cakes expresss All That is Good (love, mostly) and franchise store-bought cakes topped with licensed mini-figures are evil incarnate.

Which is not to say that our Good Cake was not topped with licensed minifigures. Oh, no. License upon license upon license, actually. Dan arranged several of his LEGO Star Wars/Clone Wars guys and a small LEGO military vehicle in a tiny battle scene. The First Battle of Geonosis (the Arena Battle), to be specific.

However, this flurry of licensing atop my devil's food cake with buttercream frosting (original recipe from Grandma J, who baked this cake for her children) was mitigated by the following:

• Dan doesn't own most of the minifigures represented in the actual battle. So he improvised, figuring correctly that his friends probably didn't even know what the First Battle of Geonosis was and therefore wouldn't notice or care about the missing figures.
• The battleship was of Dan's own design.
• Dan arranged the figures himself at the party.

We watched a clip of the battle on YouTube

to get the frosting just right—a sort of terra cotta/sandstone color. The end result was dangerously close to pink, but since the guys on top were fighting a battle to the death, it didn't matter.

Ta-daa:

So for those of you keeping score at home, it looks like this in my book:

Star Wars franchise..…..........................................................+10 Dark Side

Battle of Geonosis (from Episode II: The Clone Wars)..….....+5 DS

With LEGOs..…......................................................................+5 DS

But LEGO's cuten up violence....................................................................+3 Light Side

And were improvised.................................................................................. +5 LS

Dan-designed starship..................................................................................+5 LS

decades-old cake recipe..............................................................................+10 LS

homemade frosting.....................................................................................+10 LS

the exact color of the dust on Geonosis....................................+ 5 DS........+5 LS for effort

Dan did all the decorating............................................................................+5 LS

So that's Dark Side 25, Light Side 43.

Up Next: Location and Letting Go 

  

Rat-a-tat-tat late at night wit my gat

Probably Dan's second-favorite Christmas present after the Wii was a pair of Dart Tag Fury Fire Nerf guns (they're sold in pairs). I settled on these for three reasons:

1) With a pair of guns you can play with a friend (or a little brother),
2) they're not as big, badass, or scary-looking as some of the other Nerf guns out there, and
3) thank the Lord for small mercies, they were the ones that Dan wanted.

What convinced him that he wanted the Fury Fire set was this ridiculous commercial, which he happened to click on when I was surfing the Nerf website way back in November or maybe even October. His jaw dropped and he launched his Fury Fire for Christmas campaign right then and there. Luckily, he didn't see any other commercials.

So I got him the guns and looked forward to watching him open the present at Christmas. It went just as I had hoped it would:

Present distributor: Dan, this one's for you.
DAN: I think I know what this is! (ripripriprip) Yes! Awe-some! Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad! Johnny! Johnny, look! Fury Fire guns!

He didn't mind sharing the second gun with Johnny; in fact, he was happy to let Johnny take one.  Six-year-old cousin W got a Nerf gun (different model) from his parents too, so as not to be left out. All three little boys were pleased, cute, and eminently photo-worthy.

But the kicker was this: the big boy cousins (ages 17 and 23), were, um, a teeny bit jealous. Or maybe just nostalgic, who knows. So on a Wal-Mart run the next day, some kind aunties and uncles bought three more guns (Nerf, of course--not real guns, which were also available for purchase). And all seven cousins, ages 3 to 23, had a lovely Nerf gun war in the lofts at Aunt 'T's house.

Who knew? And yet, really. Is anyone surprised? I don't think so.

Beach evening in San Diego (July)

Early evening at the beach.

TZ is the kind of beach-lover who runs constantly:

KO is a different sort of beach lover altogether:

Sand in the mouth.

Eventually, the T's convinced KO to come down to the water.

father and son

Finally: Our Visit To Redlands, CA

A month ago, we drove down to Southern California to visit some very good friends and to go to Legoland. I posted a moment from the Legoland trip last week. As much as the "BUY LEGOS" message bothered me, I did like the park itself a lot. Clean, low-key, and totally manageable for both boys.

Before going to Legoland, though, we stayed for a day and two nights with my wonderful friend W and her two children, who live in Redlands. She was single-momming it that week, as her husband A was on the other side of the Pacific for work. I love being with her and her family because they are all so...so...nice. Kind and generous and all that is good. Her children are polite and kind and helpful and well-behaved--we never once heard them quarrel or talk back or whine. TZ totally stepped up. If he ever gets too awful, I'm sending him to live with them.

The Quarry

While in Redlands, we went to what's called "the quarry" by the locals--I guess it used to be a quarry, but it was all cemented up and filled with water, and they built a locker room, installed a slide and a raft, hired a lifeguard, and opened a pool. As W said, it's a total throwback--it's like stepping into the fifties or something. The people in charge fill it in the beginning of the summer, and drain and refill it periodically--I assume this means that there's no filtration system. But they must chlorinate the water, or the pool would be filled with algae after a while...right? Lucky for us, it had just been refilled when we visited, which meant the water was nice and cool and clean. Which was good because the temperature in Redlands hovers around 100 degrees in July. The sides are sloped, as you can see, so it's easy to hurt your feet if you misjudge the angle/depth, and I'm sure the depth markings were inaccurate--the longer the time since re-filling, the more inaccurate they get, I'll bet. One--that's right, one--lifeguard in the corner by the locker rooms with limited visibility of the pool--no way she could have seen around the big raft in the middle of the deepest part of the pool. No real rules--want to go down the slide and  try to land on a boogie board and surf your way across the pool? Go for it. How about playing tag on the raft--which has a two-foot lip/step on two sides? Sure! It was great. TZ kicked/pushed KO all around the pool on one of those foam raft things, they jumped off the big raft, they played on boogie boards with pool noodles...what a great afternoon. Thanks, W!

Waldorf Day

TZ spent Sunday night in the bathroom "upchucking" (new vocab courtesy of his 2nd grade friends), so Monday was a recovery day. I've been feeling a little disgruntled with the school system lately and fantasizing about sending the boys to the Waldorf school down the street, or homeschooling them, so we had a quasi-Waldorf-inspired-homeschool day: a little watercolor painting, a little gardening (domestic and renegade--relevant post to come soon), a little baking. TZ read the cookie recipe and did some measuring math (how many half cups in 2-1/2 cups of flour?), and we took a few cookies to school yesterday for his "real" teacher.