May Adventures

The days are getting longer and warmer.  And it feels like summer is just around the corner.  A lot of the kid's activities are wrapping up but life still feels very busy!  Here are some pictures of our May adventures.  The kids have been playing outside a lot.  Sometimes I just sit out front and watch them.  They enjoy playing out front with the other neighborhood kids.  Grant stole my glasses.  He always thinks that's funny.

Emma got a hold of Grant's giant water gun.  Look out.

Anna dressed up as a scientist for "When I Grow Up Day"

Love, love, love.

Grant was a spy and I forgot to get a picture.

John and soccer have had a love hate relationship this year.  Some days he loves it, some days he hates it.  Grant has had a good time in soccer (he and John are on the same team) and scored many goals this year.  John has had days where he lays on the sideline and refuses to play.  So maybe he wasn't quite ready for organized sports.  John has had many doctor appointments regarding his school readiness and motor delays.  One of the doctors recommended he pursue swimming - supposedly that can be good therapy for kids with low muscle tone.  But first he needs to learn to swim.  :)  

Emma shows off the toy washing machines many features to Scott one afternoon.

Mother's Day.  Two crying kids at once.  That's real motherhood, right there.  Emma stopped crying when the camera came out.

John falling asleep with his fidget spinner.

Anna and her friends drew a large sidewalk chalk mural for Mother's Day.  Here is part of it.

Mother's Day weekend.

I think Scott was exhausted from doing mom and dad duty.

Everyone was tired.

Current favorite bedtime (and daytime) story for John and Emma:

Pinkalicious

I think they almost have it memorized.

The Tale of Little Peter

Little Peter came into being one night when I dressed a pillow up in pajamas. Sometimes I pretend to be the "Dress Up Robot" to help the three younger kids get ready for bed.  One night I was pretending to malfunction by dressing up pillows instead of kids and John adopted one of the dressed up pillows as his snuggly friend.  We named him Little Peter because at the time we had been reading Pinkalicious a lot and Peter is the name of the little brother in that book who John really likes.   John takes Little Peter in the car with him, tucks him in for bed and gives him lots of loves and snuggles.  Sometimes the big kids steal or hide Little Peter to tease John (for which they get punished).  John is very attached to Little Peter.  It's a boring story, but that is how a pillow wearing pajamas came to be such a big part of our lives these days.

John and Little Peter

Buddies

One night after soccer we stopped to run through the sprinklers at our complex on the way home.

Grant, as usual, got the wettest.

John had a chocolate milk fail. 

But he was quite proud of all his dribbles.

Guess which of my girls (in the background) was having a bad day.

At Matthew's back to school night.

You can see half of Matthew's teacher, Mr. H, on the right in a blue Hawaiian print shirt.

Matthew loves his class.

Grant and his crocodile diorama.

Up close.

He worked hard with some mom help.

Celebrating the last soccer game with some ice cream

The kids had a great season.

A neighbor friend of ours (who has a daughter Anna's age) braided Anna's hair.  I need to learn some cool hairdos now that Anna has more hair.

Anna had her soccer pizza party at Chuck E. Cheese this week.

They had a great season and a great coach.  For 20 minutes or so at the end of each soccer practice he lets the parents scrimmage the girls.  So I've been very excited to get to play soccer a couple times a week.  And we parents do take it easy on the girls, despite what they think.  There are a few other dads who come to play too.  It has been fun.  Anna's coach said what a great job she did as goalie this year.  Way to go Anna.

John got a prize for being potty trained.  He's been potty trained for a few months but he could never decide on a toy reward.  Finally he chose this car set and played with it for hours.  The next morning however, he had buyers remorse and wished he had gotten a different toy.  But later that afternoon he played with it for several more hours.  So I guess its ok.  Good job, Johnny!!

Bay to Breakers

Scott and I ran the Bay to Breakers race last weekend in San Francisco.  It's 12kilometers (7.45 miles) from the bay side of San Francisco (Embarcadero area) to the ocean side (near Ocean Beach - see map below).  It's a very old race, started in 1912 to improve city morale during post earthquake rebuilding years. This year there were between 40,000 and 50,000 registered runners and 200,000 spectators, many of whom tried to jump in and run illicitly.   Only about 27,000 racers finished.  This "race" is not really a runners race as we learned.  It's more of a big party.  I knew it was kind of like that but thought we would still be able to run and it sounded cool to run across San Francisco with all the streets closed just for us.  It was very crowded and we ended up with thousands of walkers in front of us to dodge and weave through.  At many points we were forced to stop and walk because we couldn't get through the walkers and a few times we came to a complete stop, often near porta potties where lines stretched across the race course.  There is certain runner etiquette that is observed in most road races that was totally out the window here.  So it was a little tricky but still fun. Here we are at the finish line area.

This is a map from my GPS watch app.  My GPS was a little off.  The distance should have only been 7.45 miles.  White circle is the start, black circle the finish line.

We drove into San Francisco early and parked on the ocean side about a mile from the finish line.  Then we took an Uber across town to the start.  That was my first time taking an Uber but Scott is a seasoned pro having lived in San Francisco most of last year.  It was so convenient.  Before we knew it we were at the start on the bay side.

By the Oakland Bay Bridge

We finally found our starting corral.  There were so many people!!

Lots of costumes.  Maybe 50% (or more) of people there were in some kind of costume.  And lots of people actually ran without clothes or very little clothing.  This is not a race to take kids to and I was surprised so many spectators brought their kids.  Scott and I tried to avoid any of that craziness and run.  :)

Getting ready to start

There were so many people it took over an hour for everyone to start running (they started people by corrals every few minutes).  Here we are at the start.  I didn't take any pictures on the run because I just wanted to run but it was a cool course.  We started out by a lot of tall buildings (the financial district area?) and started running gradually up.  We went near the Haight-Ashbury and Panhandle neighborhoods.  It was warm and sunny on the bay side.  There was a pretty significant hill in that area that everyone called Hayes Street Hill.  It was about 2/3 of a mile and 11% grade for a lot of it.  The hill itself wasn't as painful as trying to dodge everyone walking up it.  And it was all down hill after that.  Literally.  We got to run through Golden Gate Park which was nice.  We passed a waterfall, which I didn't even know was there, some buffalo (also a surprise to me) and the windmills.  As we dropped down into the park it got more and more overcast and foggy.  Nice and cool on the ocean side with the May/June gloom.

Here we are midrace.  This was one of the race photos provided by the event.  See how majestic we look.   :)  I think this must have been in the last couple miles.

And here we are 7.45 miles later.  It was very cool to run across San Francisco.  I'm glad we got to do it.  Here are a few finish line pics.

We walked a mile back to our car along the ocean bike path.

It was good to stretch our legs before the 85 mile drive back home.

Scott's parents came down from Oregon to watch the kids while we ran.  All the kids were beyond excited.  As soon as John found out they were coming he started asking me when they would be here about 20 times a day (not exaggerating).   

And about 10 minutes after they left John starting asking me when we would be going to visit them in Oregon.  Although its still about two months away he continues to ask me about semi-hourly (also not exaggerating) when we will be going up there.  I tried to show him on a calendar but he doesn't quite understand.  Ma2 and Pa2, you are missed.  And thank you for coming to help us!!

No Small Parts

or Anna's School Play

Anna was recently in her school play.  The play was called Generations (Matthew did the same play at his school in the fall with the same director who does plays at two elementary schools in town).  She was very excited to be in the play.  She asked if she could be a prospector (because that's what Matthew was in his play) so she got to be a prospector - the only girl prospector as she liked to point out.  She told us sometimes it was difficult to deal with all those boy prospectors and was really grossed out one day when one of them sneezed in her hair.  :)  Here she is in the play, complete with a beard.  She worked really hard to learn her lines and was very animated and expressive in the play.  

I tried to get a video of her singing her solo line in the gold mining song.  Here it is.

She got to be in most of the other scenes too.  Here she is a fancy Englishwoman circa 1600.

And after the play with big brother

And little brothers

A lot of Anna's friends were in the play and she had a great time.

And a week or so after the play they had the cast party!

She was dressed up as Rey for Star Wars day.

Anna got a special award at the cast party - The Heart of the Theater Award (and this giant heart cookie made by the director).  Two kids got this award out of the hundred or so on the play and the other person who got it was one of the leads.  Anna was a little embarrassed to tell me about the award (she felt like it would be bragging) but said the director said she embodied the "pillars of character" (that the play was about and the school's core values they try to teach the kids - Respect, Responsibility, Caring, Fairness, Trustworthiness and Citizenship).  And she said the director gave an example of each pillar and something Anna did and talked about her for a long time.  So she was a little embarrassed by that too.  She shared her cookie with all of us at home.

One thing the director said is that Anna helps to clean up when other people make a mess or drop garbage even if it isn't her mess, and Anna said she does that because I make her clean up other people's messes at home too, which is true.  Poor girl.  

I used to do a lot of musical theater in elementary and middle school and our director would always tell us (after parts had been handed out), "there are no small parts, only small actors."  This piece of wisdom is applicable to life in general, not just theater.  And Anna really worked hard to be the best prospector she could and did a great job.  Way to go Anna!!

Pinewood Derby

Matthew had a fun time participating in the Pinewood Derby this year.  We realized this is the second and last pinewood derby for him.  Because of moving around (three different packs in three years for him) the timing of one derby was not in his favor.  He never got to derby as a Bear, but oh well.  And he's in Webelos now!  We were proud of ourselves too 'cause we made his car without power tools (coping saw and sandpaper).  Here he is ready to race.

His is the middle red car.

Here he is showing off his car.  He got the "Fast and Furious" award for his sleek design.

I was in charge of a few Pinewood Derby races back in Colorado.

I know its tough.  And we had some technical difficulties tonight, but it all worked out.

Middle red car again.

He got first and second place in his heats.  The only person he lost to got second place overall.  There was no timing system so we estimate he got about 4th overall based on his placement with the one car that beat him.  Anyway, it was lots of fun.  Way to go Matthew!!