Flash-Back-Friday! - Oct 2

Flash. Back. Friday.

If you are of a certain age you may have heard of "Throwback Thursday" #TBT which is a day of the week when you might post an old photo on social media and remind everyone how old you really are(or remind people in general how fast time really does fly). It's a strange phenomenon of which I occasionally will partake(I did this week, lol). Anyway, best I can tell "flash back Friday" was created in a similar fashion and perhaps it is for people who were just not cool enough to remember to post something on Thursday, I don't really know(and I refuse to google it to see if there really is an explanation). So For me, every Friday is a flash back of sorts as I remember what the heck we did the week prior and share some pictures about it. This last week(end) Heather and her Cousin made a plan to take the kids to a beach one last time before the summer draws to a close and the destination would be "Stinson Beach". It's only 60 miles away but it takes almost 2 hours to drive there because you have to go the last 20 miles on slow, steep, super windy roads and suddenly you pop out at the bottom and you are at the beach! It was a decent day if not a little colder than expected but that didn't keep the kids out of the water, no sir. It did, however, keep ME out of the water. LOL. It was a good day trip and neat to see yet another part of California you might never know existed without looking for it. =)

Now, the true "Flash Back" for this post, Heather's mom pulled out an old dress that Heather wore in her SECOND GRADE school picture and as you might imagine they immediately tried it on Chloe to see how it fit. It fits Chloe NOW more or less how it fit Heather back then which is crazy. Who wore it better!? That's for you to decide. LOL. Have a great weekend, folks.

-B

Something's Different! - Sept 25

Hey would you look at that! I almost forgot with so much else going on that Chloe finally lost another tooth bringing her grand total to..three! The matching one on the other side is loose and her top middle teeth are loose but in no danger of coming out any time soon. The tooth fairy came and Chloe will tell you very excitedly that she left her 4 special quarters and some kind of "nail stickers" that I don't know anything about. LOL.

Well, that's not the only thing that's different this week, not by a long shot. =) Last week Chloe and I both had our eye exams and wouldn't you know it, my vision is still bad! The new revelation would be that Chloe has in fact(unfortunately) inherited my eyes and for the 2nd year in a row shows that she has a very slight prescription. The eye doc basically told us she did not necessarily NEED glasses or at least if she had them would not need to wear them all day long to function(as I do) but it certainly would help improve her distance vision. Chloe had been complaining about sitting in the back of the class and when I asked the teacher she told us basically that she was an older/more mature student and the kids sitting closest to her needed the most supervision. That made sense to me and in fact I just figured Chloe was complaining because she always wants to be in the front of everything. Front of the line, right next to the teacher, first one in first one out, EVERYWHERE WE GO. LOL.

Anyway, thankfully for Chloe as I have been saying for a while kids glasses are actually nice looking now and don't make you look like a freak show(like mine were when i was a kid). Chloe was and in genuinely excited to have glasses and has worn them way more than I figured she would because she says it really helps her see better so that's good. The frames are a little to large for her face but she picked them out so we are rolling with it. I'll get better pictures of her in them at some point but I wanted to share a few. Have a great weekend, folks!

-B

Field Trip! - Sept 18

After just a few weeks Chloe's Kindergarten class had their first off campus excursion and yours truly decided it would be a good idea to volunteer as a chaperon. As such, I was given 2 children and a stack of papers with their emergency contact information and was told "try not to lose them." LOL Just kidding, I was given FIVE children. =)

We loaded up all of the kindergarten classes on 2 LARGE school buses and headed out for about a 30 minute trip to "Children's Fairyland" in Oakland. My mom tells me I have been there before when I was a kid but I absolutely do not remember it. It's a weird place but it's perfect for kids of this age. Basically it reminds me of a miniature golf course because there are lots of little areas to explore with all sorts of characters. There are little rides here and there and puppet shows, little buildings and even some petting zoo sized animals. I was actually pretty stressed out about keeping track of these 5 kids(one being Chloe) however I was pleasantly surprised that most of them listened to me very well. Most of them. HA! Well you probably think I mean Chloe but actually it was this other little boy who was described to me as "likely to run and has a tendency to push other kids". I'm here to tell you, that was true.

Despite all of that, the kids had a great time. The probably all spent the most time sliding down the side of a small (fake)grass hill on pieces of cardboard. Chloe got to spend some time with her little friend from school, Emmie. They sort of found each other at some of the school playdates prior to school starting and happened to land in the same class. They have snack together every day and generally seem to enjoy each other so that's nice that they are getting along. Just some pics from the day..it was somewhat difficult to get photos because I really needed all my senses to make sure I put 5 kids back on the bus at the end. Have a great weekend. =)

-B

I'm Growing A Pumpkin! - Sept 11

We tried something new this year. Heather got it in her mind that she wanted to start a garden and grow...things. We have had varying degrees of success as you can imagine but for the most part we were able to successfully grown tomatoes, and pumpkins. On a much less successful level, we did have a few strawberries and raspberries that were mostly stolen by birds or squirrels. It's definitley a first for us and Chloe has enjoyed it. We were all very excited to see when our first pumpkin actually started to bud but had no idea how long it would take to actually grow(or if it would be ready by Halloween). Much to our surprise, it grew quickly and it was a nice large basketball size when we had to cut it off and throw it away.

True story.

Unfortunately, some bugs decided to start eating the bottom of the pumpkin where it came into contact with the ground. One day when Heather picked it up to check it out she discovered it..and it was so sad. It was super apparent there was no way to come back from it so now all our hope lies in the newest pumpkin to grow on the vine(which is about 1/4th the size). I'm keeping it on the patio to see if we can avoid the bugs in the dirt eating it. LOL.

The 3rd week of Kindergarten draws to a close and today(Friday) will be their first class field trip to "Fairyland" in Oakland. The class will be taking a bus and yours truly will be tagging along as a chaperon. Chloe has made it clear I will not be sitting next to her on the bus. Apparently, 5 years old is where that starts. I'll report back on how that goes. =)

Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

Leaf Me Alone! - Sept 4

Well we have completed our first official week of school and then some! It was a slow start with a large adjustment to make and Chloe didn't seem to want to even tell us about how things were going or what they were doing. This week she seems to have hit her stride and has finally figured out how to eat her snack in the allotted amount of time. LOL. Seriously, it's taken a week for her to go from bringing homer her entire snack(or eating it in the car on the way home) to bringing home an empty snack back because she actually ate it. She says with pride, "I just had to eat it really fast, daddy." She is a slow eater. LOL.

On Tuesday she had her "assessment" with her teacher which I was able to sit in the back of the room and witness. I know how smart Chloe is but it was interesting to see someone else basically testing her. It certainly gave me a really good "proud parent" feeling to see the teacher impressed with Chloe. I credit her brilliance to Heather but if they ever test her on how to take something apart or her ability to quote random stupid movies that nobody cares about anymore, THAT'S ALL ME.

We have been seeing some signs that my(most peoples?) favorite time of the year is upon us, FALL! I always enjoy photographing Chloe with the beautiful fall colors but Chloe found a small pile of leaves and immediately wanted to lay in them and throw them around as we have done in years past. It was cute so I grabbed my camera and snapped a few. Of course she is wearing the same thing she wore last week on her first day of school because she is freaking obsessed with this "Inside Out" thing. It appears as if she may be "Letting it go" with some of the Frozen stuff and moving on. It had a good run but she's growing up, I guess. *SNIFF*

Have a great weekend, folks!
-B

Kindergarten! - Aug 28

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later. Summer is over and school has started and as you may have guessed, Chloe started KINDERGARTEN. So weird.

If I'm being honest, I didn't really expect that we would still live here when Chloe was first born and didn't give a lot of thought as to what school she would attend. Then, I blinked my eyes like 6 times and the next thing I know we are filling out paperwork and registering Chloe for school. It doesn't seem real.
On Monday, we were able to find out who Chloe's teacher would be for the year and we had about a half an hour window to go to the school and meet her and see the classroom, etc. It turns out Chloe's teacher is new to the district and we don't know anything about her. LOL. What I mean is, our friend Ali's mom worked as a kindergarten teacher at Chloe's school (and recently retired) was telling us about the teachers that Chloe might have this year and it turns out it's none of the people she told us about. Whoops. It's okay, though because it's all new to us anyway and she seems nice and her classroom was very clean and organized so I'm sure it will be fine. There are so many things that are so dramatically different that Chloe's preschool. I know, DUH, but it certainly has taken a few days of going to get Chloe into the swing of things. It seems as if elementary school runs as if you have already been through the process so there is very little "hand holding" going on meaning they are certainly not providing you with a ton of information. That isn't to say that all the information you could ever want isn't available, but you certainly have to seek it out and they aren't going to spoon feed it to you.

Chloe's first day started quite early with us waking her up at 7am(which was a change from her typical 8-830 she has been doing during the summer) to be ready and out the door for school to START at 820am. It was a shock to Chloe but also to ME, lol. I guess I have been spoiled because I do stay up late to work and have not really had to get up that early in a long time. Now I am going to have to do that EVERY DAY. Anyway, Chloe's first day was a big adjustment for her as the ratio of time they will spend in the classroom to the amount of time they spend on the playground is very different. Chloe has to bring her own snack and they have some amount of time to actually eat their snack(10 minutes?) and that caught Chloe off guard because she's used to being able to cruise into the kitchen at her preschool and have snack at her leisure. She didn't eat much the first day and she was starving when we picked her up. Heather took the day off work so we could drop her off and pick her up together so we took her to lunch and then got some ice cream. It's been a busy first week but I think with each passing day she is figuring out that it is going to be very different going forward.

Today, Chloe told me "I like my classroom but I'm not sure if I like my teacher or not...it will take me a while to learn about her and see if I like her". LOL. That's Chloe. She has made a few new friends including a really nice little girl that we met at 2 of the summer play dates they held before school. Of course we had no idea they would be in the same class until we both showed up to the room on Monday so it was nice for them to at least have each other. Anyway, here are some photos of that first morning and I'm sure there will be more to know and see as the year goes along.

Have a great weekend and PS Happy(belated) Birthday to my mom, "Gramma Sue" who turned..another year older on Thursday! =)

-B