I Almost Have Teeth! - Jun 24

Chloe's front two teeth have been taking their sweet time to make a reappearance. Not having front teeth has not hindered Chloe even a little bit. She doesn't talk funny, she eats literally everything she wants. The weirdest thing I'm sure is going to be how she looks when they are in. Looking back at older photos, I feel like her face has grown up a lot in the last 6 or so months since she has not had those front teeth. I can't imagine how her friend Olivia is going to look once she gets her teeth in and I say that because she hasn't had front teeth since she was like 4. Apparently she took a fall and knocked both of em out so she's literally been waiting like 2.5 years!

Busy summer week around here. Last weekend was my dad's birthday as well as Father's day. We had a swim day this week with a few friends and more of that on deck for the coming days and weeks, I'm sure. Looking forward to whatever is in store..including Chloe's teeth!

Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

Surprise Eggs! - Jun 17

The YouTube Generation.

I don't fully understand it, but we are currently living in a world where kids are absolutely obsessed with watching weird YouTube videos of people literally opening toys. Like, the camera is zoomed in close and you can just watch things being opened. Weird, right?

Chloe doesn't get very much "screen time" as it's commonly referred to, but every so often she is allowed to watch a few random things on her little tablet. At one point it was simple "marble videos" where kids would race marbles on marble tracks. I don't even understand what would compel someone to make that type of video, but there are millions of views on them. Recently, Chloe happened upon a related video that played and it was basically someone unwrapping these things they called "surprise eggs". I've never even heard of these before but they are foil wrapped, chocolate covered, little plastic things that house some kind of surprise toy in the middle. A quick google search seems to say that these are not really readily available in US stores, but some grocery stores have been known to carry them. Of course, Chloe starts to ask me when she can get some surprise eggs to which I had to break her the news that we probably cannot buy them.

Then, while at a local grocery store getting my propane tank exchanged, I'm paying and I look right next to the ATM pin pad and there is a little box of these things. Chloe was with me, of course, but without saying anything I picked one up and paid for it. She was quiet, but you could tell she knew what it was and was excited. =)
I told her, she has been very good all week and this was her reward. Unbelievably, she waited until we got home for her to open it. One word. Anticlimactic. LOL.

She opened the foil and started to try some of the chocolate. After about 1.5 bites, she was tired of the chocolate and wanted the surprise. HA! So I had to take a fork and scrape off the chocolate. The rest, is history. Will we buy more of these things? No. Probably not. She'll be just fine watching someone else open these things. =)

Have a great weekend, folks.

-B

Goodbye Kindergarten, Hello Summer! - Jun 10

And just like that, Kindergarten is over!!

180 days of school and today marks day 1 of Chloe's official summer vacation. The school year has been, interesting. Very different (obviously) from preschool and pre-k but overall Chloe has excelled. She basically came into kindergarten being able to do most of the things academically they expected her to do by the end of kindergarten but she also learned a ton of stuff. I know when I was in kindergarten we were never expected to be able to do all the things kids today are expected to. I guess from generation to generation that statement could be basically applied to everything. =)

Summer plans are to find lots of things to do, play dates and swimming, etc but I guess not so much on the week after week "camps" that most kids seem to do. I believe Chloe will get to attend a gymnastics camp for a week in July but that's about it. The summer this year is quite short as the school year start and end dates have shifted. The school year starts earlier this year and ends earlier next year but because of that, the summer is really just about 2 months and some change. We will make do.

For Chloe last day of school this year, they had a laundry list of activities planned. Once again I was fortunate enough to respond to an email quickly enough to be one of 3 parents on site to help monitor all the kids in the various activites. Bowling, bikes, jump ropes, bead necklaces, coloring, shoe kicking contest, cherry pit spitting, candy grabbing...fun. The kids said their goodbyes as I tried not to cry. LOL. It was a very confusing group of goodbyes as the kids finally realized that they would not be seeing each other tomorrow. Next year it will be interesting to see who ends up in Chloe's class because while she certainly made some friends this year, essentially none of them have made the jump to being able to have a playdate with them outside of school. Not for lack of trying, it just seemed difficult this year for some reason so I guess which could also be a disconnect in the parents just as much as the kids. The preschool was much better in that respect and ironically the 2 friends Chloe seems to see the most outside of school are from her preschool.

Just a few pics from Chloe's last day, and a look back/comparison of the first day to the last.
Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

Memorial Day - Jun 3

Well, after 6.5 years of doing this blog thing, I might have an issue that may cause me to stop doing this. The photo site that I use to upload the link the images from (flickr) currently underwent some kind of update and they will not allow me to "embed" or "share" images that are marked as "private" when I upload them. I'm not a huge privacy weirdo, but Flickr is a photo sharing "community" and people can share, and comment and whatever your photos that are public and from the get go, I have made a point to keep the Chloe blog photos marked as "private" within the Flickr community. This blog, while available on the world wide web, is not publicly searchable meaning you would not likely be able to google search for text or words that I have included such as names etc or if someone searched for "tilden park" my post and photos about that should not come up on google searches. That being said, I guess I will have to wait a bit to see if they(flickr) are able to correct this new updated garbage. Once It's sorted, I will update. =(

We spent Monday (memorial day) at my parents house where my brother and his family came by for a few hours as well as my cousin and her family. It was super hot and the kids swam for..hours. Chloe looked a little sunburn and her cheeks were all red from the goggles stuck to her face for so long. LOL. It was fun to see everyone and the kids certainly had a blast together.

That's it for now! I'll report back. Have a great weekend, folks!

-B
*Edit* Fixed!

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