Open House! - May 27

Last night(Thursday) was Chloe's kindergarten "open house". It's not something that even occurred to me all year long that they would have such a thing but after going I do remember going to my own "open house's" back in the day. We probably won the award for "bringing the most people" to the classroom as all of Chloe's grandparents were in attendance. This allowed Chloe to show off all her hard work from the year all over the room. I was fortunate enough to be able to be a classroom volunteer this year and spent some time helping them do some of these projects but honestly the vast majority of the stuff they did I had not seen either. Chloe's teacher is really great and despite a few differences of opinion throughout the year(meaning Chloe, not me!), I think she was a great match for Chloe. How she is able to deal with 23 or 24 kids at a time every day is quite literally beyond me. =)

Just a few random pics from the open house. I knew it was happening Thursday so I brought my camera to see what I could get(not much). LOL.

Have a great weekend, folks.

~B

Flip, Flop, FIFTY! - May 20

Well, it's that time of year again although in order for that statement to be true we need to roll back the clock 2 full years. This year is the gym's 50th anniversary year and the return of the Flip, Flop, Follies. Chloe has performed in this show 2 times before and while this show probably won't be the last time Chloe gets to be in the show, it will be the last year that my mom participates as a teacher. In just about 3 weeks, my mom will retire from Diablo Gymnastics after like, uh, I'm not sure how many years she has worked there but it has to be close to 30 years. If she worked anywhere else when I was a kid, I cannot remember it. I have been going to this gym basically all my life (although I never took classes there). I'm sure my mom wished either myself or my brother would have taken to Gymnastics but lucky for her all she had to do was wait 30 years for me to have a kid and then another 2.5 years for said kid to be old enough to enroll. LOL.

The good news is, Chloe really loves the gym and she loves her teacher Miss Patty. On occasion, my Mom has been Chloe's teacher and I'm sure it's been just as fun for her to see Chloe advance week after week as it has been for Chloe to learn new things and get to see her Grandma in the process. =)

With a couple of rehearsals, a new special outfit, and a hairdo(courtesy of Heather), the kids were off to the races. Now with most of the kids being 5-6 years old there was much less running in every direction and chaos and much more organized rolling, jumping, and cartwheeling. There were a couple of kids in Chloe's show that she has been in Gymnastics with for several years and others she actually went to preschool with. Overall, the kids did great and they all had a ton of fun.

Here are just a few pics from the event. Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

Fun Run! - May 13

Last week at Chloe's school she participated in what they decided to call the "Fun Run". Well, they call it the Fun Run but I called it another random fundraiser for the school because they asked the parents to solicit people they know to pledge money for each kid(who can participate either way) but then the class that has the most pledges and the most money wins a party, or I don't know. Something. Anyway, I volunteered to help corral the kids and generally do whatever was asked of me but mostly I wanted to be there to take some pictures(go figure). The kids had to run laps around the baseball diamond for like 20 or 30 minutes and each time they made a lap, they received a little rubber bracelet. In the end, that's how they tally how many laps each kid did. I can't actually remember how many laps Chloe did but she certainly ran some, and walked a lot. lol. It seemed like the kids all had a good time although I'm sure they had no real clue what they were in for. Certainly Chloe had no idea what SHE was in for. Here are some pics from the event. Have a great weekend, folks. =)

-B

The Little Farm! - May 6

Last Friday Chloe's class had their 3rd and final field trip of the school year. Let me think, Children's Fairyland, Pumpkin Patch, and now Tilden Park. I guess there are a few different areas of Tilden park but for the field trip they chose to visit the farm! Once again I spent the extra energy it took to get approved to be a driver/chaperon for this field trip although unfortunately(or fortunately, I guess) I could only take Chloe and one other kid in my car. No 7 passenger minivan here, folks. Lucky for Chloe, the teacher paired her up with her friend, Loghan who she seems to like to play with at school. They seem to be fairly opposite personalities as far as I can tell, but it kind of works out.

I thought I was going to have to facilitate conversation or keep them entertained in the car but I literally did not say two words all the way there and all the way back(about 40 min each way). They played little weird games and kept each other going the whole time. When we arrived at the park, all the kids ate a snack and then we were off to the races. We were basically on our own just the three of us for the next hour and a half to wander. We visited the farm animals and fed them lettuce (which we brought with us). The kids grew bored of that so we explored a little museum they had on site and then we walked what seemed like forever (.2 miles according to the sign) to see a small lake. The lake was, a lake. The kids were not impressed. LOL. Actually, I found a fallen tree which protruded into the lake that had a dozen or so turtles sunbathing on it. We checked that out for a minute then started our .2 mile trek back.

It all ended with a class picture and then the drive home. With just about a month left of Kindergarten, I cannot believe it's almost over! Anyway, here are a few pics from the trip!

Have a great weekend~
-B

Pickin' Cherries! - Apr 30

For months it seems Chloe has been waiting to be able to climb her favorite tree and retrieve the "cherries". I think we determined that they might actually be plums but it doesn't matter, Chloe calls them Cherries. They look like cherries but they taste exactly like plums. Weird. After waiting and waiting, the trees have finally started to show some fruit but I have been making Chloe wait to pick things until they grew more. I think birds and squirrels end up eating most of the fruit before they grow large enough to resemble a plum so for now, we pick "cherries"(or whatever it is) and Chloe is happy. It's a fun little thing we get to do every day as we walk the dog so I guess we'll just enjoy it while it lasts. =) Have a great weekend, folks.

~B

Shooting Hoops! - Apr 22

For a little while now, Chloe has been on a Basketball kick. She got her own (medium) kid sized ball for Easter from my mom and this week we have spent some time out front where she literally is just dribbling and trying to twirl the ball on her finger. It's not the greatest place for these things (not to mention we don't have a hoop within 3 miles to shoot on) so earlier in the week I took Chloe to a nearby park and shot some hoops with her for a little while. I have to tell you, it was a regular size hoop and this kid was not slowed by that fact for one second. It was fun but it was pretty hot so our game was somewhat short lived. There is a court at the school by my parents house that has a lower hoop for kids so I'll have to see if maybe Chloe's school has the same thing. Not much else exciting around here this week, so just a few pics of Chloe, being Chloe. =)

Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

On Two Wheels! - Apr 15

Some kids, at least from what I have seen, learn how to ride a bike at a very young age. They make these little "balance bike" things that are basically bikes without pedals so kids can learn how to balance the bike, and there are little tiny bicycles which I don't remember ever existing in the past. 2 and 3 year old kids might be rolling around on 2 wheel bikes these days but Chloe, wanted nothing to do with it. We had tricycles and she didn't really even use those to often so back in June of 2014(thankfully, I can look at my own blog to confirm) I purchased Chloe a big girl bike. She was super excited to try it out but unfortunately where we live the hill of the street made it difficult for her to go very far so she lost interest. The bike was bigger and heavier than her little self could propel so on the wall it went.

Fast forward to a few months back when I posted that Chloe really started to take to the little Razor scooter which she takes every day when we walk the dog. I knew that she was good enough and understood how to balance so it seemed like it might be a good time to see if she was big enough and strong enough to ride her bike. All I figured was she could at least propel it around with the training wheels and even possibly move them up a little to see if she could balance somewhat on her own. After some hesitation, Chloe decided she would again try her bike which had been hanging on the wall for so long.

She rode around a little bit in front of the house and almost immediately asked me to "take off the extra wheels, Daddy" which I knew would only lead to crying and frustration. The compromise was as I figured, loosen the bolts and move the training wheels up out of the way. We tried that and it resulted in Chloe telling me "she can do it, just take them off". I never figured she would ride off, so I took them off. This would prove to be a mistake in parenthood judgement because after just a few tries and me hanging on to Chloe by the shirt, she was doing it by herself. Very slow at first(and still pretty slow, actually) but after just a few times of me pushing her off, she was getting up and going by herself. I was not prepared, I had no video camera around, no regular camera, and worst of all, Heather wasn't even home. So at 6 years old, Chloe learned how to ride a bike. This was a couple weeks back this all happened, so finally I grabbed a few photos and here we go.

Have a great weekend, folks~

B

Rollickin' Road Trip! - Apr 8

Opps, we did it again. While I myself can hardly believe it, yes we made another trip to Disneyland. Last Friday was my birthday and this week was Chloe's spring break from school so somewhat last minute Heather was able to get a few days off and a room at our "regular" hotel and away we went. Our annual passes expire sometime next month and it's somewhat unlikely that we will spend the money again to renew as it has gotten more expensive each year and as Chloe gets further along in school it's going to be much more difficult to take these frequent trips. Who knows. Being Spring break, it was quite busy and we were worried that we might not be able to get to our typical favorite attractions. Turns out, we had a different problem as Chloe started coming down with a cold or something the day we drove down. It basically developed into a weird frequent cough that didn't dampen her spirits but you could just tell her body was not 100% up for the task.

We ended up meeting up with a friend of mine that has a 4 year old Daughter and spend most of Monday with them. It was fun for Chloe to have a little friend that she could mess around with and go on rides with and stuff. They were fast friends, it was cute. The park was very crowded but the lines for the rides were very acceptable. We have a theory that basically during busy times they operate all the rides at full capacity and when its off season they run them at not quite full capacity so wait times are always about the same. Certain rides always warrant a 1-2 hour standby line and those are the rides that we make certain to get fast passes for. We definitely have a typical pattern we follow that gets us on to everything we want to do and the most irritating part of it being that busy is just getting from place to place. "Cars Land" being probably my favorite place to just be for no reason converted one of their original rides over from this floating on air, bumper boats type thing to a neat synchronized little car ride. It's sort of hard to explain but it wasn't open on our last trip and it just became available a few weeks ago actually so it was neat to get to try it out.

Despite Chloe's slight sickness we managed to just take it slow and get through the crowds for a few days and ultimately had a nice trip. I didn't take a ton of photos and Chloe kept saying because she was sick she didn't want to wait to see any of the characters so they wouldn't get sick either. LOL. The one exception was we finally found Princess "Tianna" from "The Princess and the Frog" and the alligator from that movie as well so Chloe perked up and got signatures from them. Until next time! =)

Have a great weekend, folks~

-B