|
Current Mood:  chipper Current Music: I'm Beginning To See The Light (The Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald) |
|
Ploot
|
Dec. 12th, 2009 @ 01:09 pm
|
|---|
|
Sean drew me this monster earlier today. He used Photoshop. He was inspired by the "Ploot" episode of Lilo & Stitch (second season). Current Mood: chipper Current Music: Pepper – Do Something |
|
Today Sean had a half day. The mini golf course in Castro Valley has been decorated for Halloween. It's so cute! I knew Sean would have a really fun time seeing the decorations and playing a round of golf.
After school I gave him a chance to change out of his costume. Then we hopped back into the car and went golfing!
As an extra bonus (beyond the great decorations) all children ages 11 and younger who played a round could pick a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch they'd set up behind the 19th hole (decked out with a pirate skeleton).Current Mood: chipper Current Music: Silver Darlings (The Browne Sisters And George Cavanaugh) |
|
Sean's been fighting a cold all week. He hasn't been so sick that he can't go to school (no fever) but he has enjoyed lazing around the house this weekend.
We are spending our time playing video games, doing homework and reading books. Sean bought Spore Hero with the money he's been saving up. It is a very addicting game. We've all taken turns at it, but Sean has played it the most. We are also playing Wii Sports Resort, a game I am totally addicted to.
This morning I've woken up with his cold. So Ian is making us a huge pot of chicken soup. Meanwhile the kids and I are making chocolate chip cupcakes.
We are expecting our first big rain of the season tomorrow afternoon or evening. Tuesday it is supposed to pour.
I finished an excellent middle grade book today: So B. It by Sarah Weeks. I will write a proper review of it on my main blog but I just wanted to share now in my post book bliss.Current Mood:  coldy Current Music: Various Artists – Debussy - Arabesque No. 1 in E Major |
|
Sean has been wanting to play Spore since it first came out on the PC. We haven't had a machine powerful enough to play it. Sean has a friend whose mother works for EA. So he was introduced to the game early on at his friend's house. Ever since then he's been saving up his money either for a system upgrade for one of our computers, or a new computer or some other solution.
Thankfully EA has made a Wii version, Spore Hero. It came out on Tuesday and today I took Sean out to buy it with his hard earned money. We have all had fun playing it tonight. Of course it's all the sweeter knowing how much work Sean put into getting it.Current Mood: chipper Current Music: 30 Seconds To Mars – From Yesterday |
|
Just after publishing my review of Coraline by Neil Gaiman, my son has discovered the book. He's reading it with Ian and is completely, utterly, 100% sucked in.Current Mood: chipper Current Music: Ecstasy (New Order) |
|
Last week the kids went back to school. Sean's now in second grade. His teacher is a little tougher but he's really happy with the challenge. He's in a mixed first and second grade class. That's how his school has compromised with the need to increase class sizes (due to budget constraints) while keeping the numbers as small as possible. Instead of having 34 students, his class has 26. Twenty are second graders (most of the same group as last year) and six are first graders.
The six first graders are native Mandarin speakers. I think the logic is that they will find it easier to keep up with the English half of the class. On his first week of homework the teacher hasn't sent home any Chinese work but I don't think last year's teacher did either this early in the year.
With the start of September Harriet was graduated from the "Tiny Tots" class to the "Busy Bees" class. These are the 3 and 4-year-olds in her preschool. She's now back with her best buds who were graduated earlier. She's very excited about being a Busy Bee. The only thing... after two days in the new class she figures she's ready for kindergarten. Current Mood: chipper Current Music: Amon Tobin – Northstar |
|
Friday I got the bad news; after a year of struggling to pay bills with reduced pay, I'd have to do with even less. I was laid off. The client cut the remaining piece of the contract in half and I was the half that was let go.
Friday night Ian's parents arrived to help celebrate an early birthday for Sean because of the impending birth of a cousin who shares his old due date. We went out for dinner. So with lots of designated drivers, I drowned my sorrows in a strawberry daiquiri. Actually I only got through half of it but hey!
Saturday we had Sean's party. We'd had about half RSVP saying they were coming. Most of those who responded didn't show. Only Sean's core group of friends showed up. But Sean and they had fun. Harriet had fun with the younger siblings. We ended up with tons of leftovers which we are still slowly working through.
I also have photos from the party to go through.
Sunday I was completely useless, having not slept more than 30 minutes. I did manage to finish The Thirteenth Tale during my insomnia but that was it.
Monday: I had expected to take the day off; read and feel sorry for myself before starting to look for work. Instead, I had a new client drop in my lap and an old client resurface. Wow. If this keeps up, I can make a go at freelancing.
Besides the uptick in work, my sister in law gave birth. It's a good thing we had the party as early as we did because now my in laws are frantically planning to fly up to Canada to see the new baby. I won't go into the details of the birth as it's really not my place to post them. Baby is fine. The new Mom and Dad are in complete shock. I haven't seen pictures of her yet.Current Mood:  confused Current Music: Sister Hazel – Happy |
|
We're having a heatwave. It's July; it's to be expected. What's unusual is the humidity. We're stuck between a low over the Pacific and a high over Colorado. The competing fronts have managed to raise the humidity and the temperature. Last weekend we had rain and I had hoped we would again this weekend. No luck. Just lots and lots of hot sticky weather.
We live in a split level. With the heat we've been hiding in our bedrooms. On Friday Sean's laptop stopped working. It's a hand me down and probably can be fixed (if we had the money). My old lap top works except for the screen. So we've set up my old computer down in the kids' bedroom. It's hooked up to an old monitor and the kids are pleased as punch. My old machine is a little faster than Sean's is. We now have two mini chairs set up in front of the desk for Harriet and Sean to play on the computer together.
The heat also took its toll on Harriet's chair at the dining table. It's an Ikea chair and the glue on one of the joints where the back connects to a leg snapped. Fortunately the wood didn't splinter. A little new glue and the chair looks good as new.
The garden isn't exactly happy with the heat either. The exceptions are the aloe vera (which I've been grateful for because of a sunburn), Sean's cactus (a plant he's had since we first moved here) and my grandmother's old Christmas cactus. Sean's cactus and the Christmas cactus are in bloom. The aloe is going through a growth spurt. I should also add that the basil out front and the rosemary are happy.Current Mood:  hot Current Music: Jose Gonzalez – Hand On Your Heart |
|
This weekend has been completely consumed by Sean's social calendar.
Yesterday we were invited as a family to A's birthday party. She was having a swim party in the community pool. Since Harriet can't swim yet I got her a Dalmatian floaty which she adores. It fortunately also managed to keep her afloat.
Before the swimming though we had lunch in the club house. It was a combination of fried chicken (something I haven't had in almost a decade), pizza and Filipino food. In other words, delicious!
Then before I could get sunscreen on the kids they were in the pool. Thankfully Harriet had remembered her floaty (and I had shown her how to use it). Boom, they were in the pool so boom, so was I!
The pool is like my parents' pool. It's shallow all the way through with a slightly deeper in the middle. At the deepest the pool is 4 1/2 feet. That meant I could easily walk around the pool if I had to keep track of the kids. Sean for the most part didn't need supervision and Harriet was happy to float along side me as I swam around.
About an hour and a half into swimming we saw a spectacular rainbow over Garin Regional Park. Then towards Fremont we the sky had grown dark and menacing. Clearly it was going to rain but the rain was far enough away that we could finish swimming and have cake without seeing a drop.
The cake was a delicious mint chip ice cream cake. After the cake it was time to go home and we were exhausted.
As you can imagine we all ended up sunburned. Except for Harriet who ended up with a great tan.
We ended up having a barbecue at home and after we were done cooking the skies opened up and it poured for about an hour. We even had some thunder (but no lightning).
Today was party number two. It was later in the day and just a home affair. The party was closer to Sean's school and therefore easy to find. Since they're all school chums, we saw many of the same kids and parents today as yesterday.
Since this one didn't involve swimming and since the kids were feeling all grown up (as second graders) we parents were sent home. A few parent's stayed from Sean's report but most of us gleefully ran for the hills.
I had about two hours of quiet time at home. Ian and Harriet were out running errands on the peninsula. Then I met up with them at Bodi's before Harriet and I went to get Sean.Current Music: Bring it on Back (Jet) |
| » Sunset at Rockaway Beach |
|---|
On Thursday I ordered a new Fastrak transponder for our "new" car. I'm going to be using it on Monday to pick up Ian's parents from the airport. To my surprise the transponder arrived today. To test it out and to beat the heat we drove across the bay to Pacifica.
We took the scenic route through Half Moon Bay and up along the coast. While we drove with the AC on (the only AC we have access to is in the car) Harriet got a well needed nap.
We had dinner at Rockin Rob's at Rockaway Beach. We haven't been there since Sean was about 18 months old. He has no memories of eating there. The kid who used to run around in the thick Pacifica fog in shorts complained about how cold it was (when it was probably 70° F). We splurged and got a scoop of ice cream for dessert.
Afterwards we walked down to the sea wall by the Lighthouse hotel. We stayed to watch the sunset. As we watched we also saw pelicans diving for fish, a small pod of dolphins swimming where the waves were braking and farther out near the horizon we saw a small pod of gray whales coming up for air every so often.
Sean and Harriet loved watching the sunset and all the wildlife. As Sean and I were sitting together on the anchor statue he told me that this was his first sunset.
By the time we got home it was ten o'clock, an hour and half past the kids' normal bedtime but it was so worth keeping them up late to see what we saw.
Jun. 27th, 2009 @ 10:46 pm
|
| » First day of summer vacation |
|---|
School ended yesterday for Sean. He came home with bags of stuff he had done over he year and a huge packet of review work for the summer. There's a lot of Chinese work which is great. He'll need to keep practicing for it to be fresh in his head in August.
He also brought home is last report card. He earned the equivalent of As and Bs. At the bottom was the most important bit: "class assigned, 2nd grade"!
Today he's lounging around in his jammies watching videos and playing video games. We're also baking a sourdough loaf (or two). Then on Monday he starts summer camp which is being run by his old preschool. They have expanded to include grades 1-3.
Jun. 12th, 2009 @ 10:12 am
|
| » Busy Day! |
|---|
|
Sean has so many drawings now that he has started a scrap book to keep them together. Today we bought him the scrap book along with some goodies to decorate the pages. Meanwhile Harriet is old enough for her own "treasure box" to match her brothers. So we got her a balsa wood box just like his for her to decorate and put her treasures.
Then it was off to Target for summer jammies. They've grown so much they don't fit into any of their light weight jammies from last year.
Home for a quick lunch before heading out to Castro Valley for an open house. Sean's preschool has expanded to a second site. The new site is for grades 1 - 3 and is starting as a summer school program. It will then be an after school program in the fall. Sean and Harriet had so much fun testing out the new school's playground that we stayed an hour!
Then home for scrap-booking and decorating of the treasure box. Once Harriet had her box decorated she did her own scrap book page but decided to hang it on her wall.
Before dinner I collapsed for an hour nap while Ian cooked homemade spaghetti sauce from the local farmers' market.
Jun. 6th, 2009 @ 11:34 pm
|
| » Video Killed the Radio Star |
|---|
|
This song is causing a bit of trouble in my family. My son HATES it with a fiery passion. My daughter LOVES it with a similar passion. It's the first track in the CD changer in my car. When my son is in the car, I am NOT to play it. When my daughter is in the car it's the first thing she requests. When they are both in the car I have to mediate between the two loudly shouting at me.
I have also learned that the song takes exactly the amount of time to go from my daughter's preschool to our parking spot in the carport.
Jun. 3rd, 2009 @ 06:03 pm
|
| » First tooth lost |
|---|
|
Apologies for the blurry photo. Sean lost his first tooth tonight at dinner. He's had that tooth since he was 4 months old and now he's working on his first adult tooth.
May. 23rd, 2009 @ 08:51 pm
|
| » My bookshelves at their worst |
|---|
The photo taken by my son is three years old. I was pregnant with Harriet at the time!
May. 2nd, 2009 @ 10:35 am
|
| » A few photos from Sunday's party |
|---|
|
Sunday we spent a lovely day at our local park to celebrate our neighbor's second birthday. Sean and his older brother are school mates so it was extra fun this year.
The kids playing ball. There were actually 2x as many kids playing but it was hard to get them all in frame at the same time.
That's the birthday boy's oldest brother (and Sean's school chum) on the right in the green shirt). Harriet's on the left and I don't remember the other boy's name.
The birthday boy is right behind Harriet on the ladder.
Apr. 28th, 2009 @ 09:01 am
|
| » Open House |
|---|
|
Wednesday was open house at Sean's school. He's doing great in his Mandarin immersion. He has two writing journals now: one in English and one in Mandarin. Here are some photographic highlights of the night.
Sean shows Ian his Chinese journal.
A close up of the journal
Sean teaches Harriet and Ian some words.
Harriet takes a turn at an activity.
Apr. 3rd, 2009 @ 10:45 pm
|
| » Collage art |
|---|
|
The kids and I spent a fun hour and a half tonight making collages. While they worked on their pieces I made two postcards to use in the future with Postcrossing.
Apr. 3rd, 2009 @ 09:46 pm
|
| » Back from the Oakland Zoo |
|---|
I took Sean and Harriet to the zoo today after lunch. I love having a membership because I don't feel like we have to spend all day there. Typically after about ninety minutes they are ready to head home. If we go after lunch there is usually ample parking right near the gates.
Before we did anything both kids bought a stuffed snake with some money they got for Valentine's day. They got matching Coral snakes. Since we had a lot of walking to do, I stuffed them into my purse and they kept trying to burst out the rest of the day. It was very silly!
Today we saw the meerkats, lions, some snakes and lizards, and the African elephants. My favorite part today was seeing the elephants. Or rather, the guests to their enclosure... a flock of wild turkeys.
The gaps in the gates are high enough that the turkeys can walk right in. They didn't seem at all put off by the giant elephants. Likewise, the pachyderms didn't seem to notice the birds.
On our way back to the car we finally had a chance to do something we've wanted to do since we became members: ride the train. The train depot is actually outside of the zoo with a bunch of carnival rides. Since we're still newish members I'm still trying to figure out how everything works. We were the last ones on the train and had the extra fun of riding backwards in the caboose. It was a blast!
All along the tracks they have statues of wild animals. There are also beautiful plants and flowers and one spectacular view of the San Francisco Bay. We were sitting behind a foursome of Japanese tourists who were as enthusiastic about the ride as we were. We were probably the noisiest group on the train.
Mar. 8th, 2009 @ 04:15 pm
|
| » Rainy day collages |
|---|
Today Sean and I made collages to pass time while it pours outside. Sean did a large collage involving robots, volcanoes and other mayhem. He plans to take it to school tomorrow for show and tell.
Meanwhile I made three postcards. If you are on Postcrossing and like homemade cards, you might get one of them.
Here's what I made:
Mar. 1st, 2009 @ 03:50 pm
|
| » 100 miles = 1 busy day |
|---|
|
Let me start of with this: I love my job. But sometimes it can be exhausting. Today was one of those days.
My day begins at 7:30 when I log in to my client's computer system and start to make the updates for the daily publish of their intranet site. As it's for employees only, it's behind a large number of firewalls. To make things more complicated this morning, we had a power outage just minutes before I was supposed to log on for the day. Fortunately it was over by 7:30. Unfortunately it had confused our router and Ian had to take half an hour to get it reconfigured.
I telecommute. I'm in the East Bay. The company I work for is in San Carlos. The client we work for (my boss and I on different projects but for the same company) is based in the Silicon Valley, Texas and other parts of the world.
What makes the job tricky is the security protocols the client has for accessing their machines. We have managed for 5 years to access their servers and files as needed with our company machines and their software but that's changing this year. They are turning off their current VPN and modem bank and moving to a system that can only be accessed by their company machines.
This final change in protocol has forced the client to give us two of their machines to use for our contract. Since we are formally working out of their main building down in the Silicon Valley we were told to pick up our new machines down there (no couriering possible). We went down on different shifts and then met back at the home office in San Carlos.
I won't go into the details except to say that the machines aren't set up and ready to go. That will require another trip down to a different building to get software installed and our passwords activated on the machines.
In the meantime my password to their servers had been deactivated and put into a "new employee" status due to a misunderstanding with the help desk when we wanted to see if there was a way to log into the machines remotely without having them first set up at the physical location of the site. That wasted another couple hours of my work day with trying to get a working password again.
In that time I had just enough time to eat a banana for lunch.
All the while, I had a urgent thing to update to their intranet site and there wasn't a darn thing I could do about it. Sometime in the near future we will have to schlep back to the client to get the machines fully activated and whatnot. That will be another huge time sink and another near 100 mile round trip.
So then after getting the post finally posted and some work done for tomorrow's update I had to dash to get my son from school. Then home again to help him with his homework before taking a call for a freelance gig I'm doing.
By 4:!5 when I was at last done I told Sean I needed some fresh air. We took about 1/2 or 3/4 mile hike in our local canyon. We saw a doe and her child and numerous wild animal tracks.
Jan. 26th, 2009 @ 06:21 pm
|
| » Where the wild things aren't |
|---|
|
Every Thursday Sean brings home a book from his school library and it's due on Wednesday the next week. Last week he picked out Where the Wild Things Are. We kept it downstairs where we do our nightly reading and that's where it stayed until yesterday morning.
The last I had seen the book was Sean grabbing it and running up stairs. Unfortunately I had a horrible migraine so my memory of the morning wasn't as sharp as it normally is. When I picked Sean up after school he said he couldn't turn in the book because it wasn't in his backpack.
Still feeling crap from the migraine I lost my temper. I made Sean spend most of yesterday looking for the book in the house. We tore the place apart. I didn't let him play any video games. His choices were: homework or look for the book.
All Sean could remember was the book getting too heavy in his hand and having to put it down. The book has all of 64 pages. It's not that heavy.
I also emailed his teacher asking what we should do about the lost book. I had told Sean that he would have to pay for a replacement out of his computer fund. He was sad but understood.
Then this morning (the absolute last day to turn in the book) I got a reply to my email telling me that Sean had turned in the book to the library book box in his classroom first thing in the morning yesterday. See, the book had gotten heavy because he had carried it all the way to his class (not just upstairs to his backpack).
GROAN.
Jan. 22nd, 2009 @ 09:43 am
|
| » Short Story update and other stuff |
|---|
I'm just shy of 600 words in my short story. I haven't been making the time to write. I originally had planned to write over the week before New Year's Eve but ended up with a stomach bug. Now I'm home with the kids while Ian has been on a trip. Of course I have time during the day and after they go to bed but I just haven't been motivated.
Somehow writing for Nanowrimo where the word count is king is easier than just writing for fun. Part of my not writing time I've been using for research but that's still not a valid reason for not having more done.
In other news, Ian is flying home today. He has two flights to hop across the country. His first flight got a late start by 20 minutes but he has enough time in his layover that the delay shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully the fog at SFO will be cleared by the time his second flight takes off so we don't get a fog delay.
Assuming the second flight stays more or less on schedule, the plan is for Sean and me to pick up Harriet 45 minutes early from school and make the drive to SFO. I don't want to be parked longer than I have to because parking is expensive and the kids get squirrelly. Then we'll pick up Ian and take him to Chevy's since he won't be buying meals on the planes.
Then home again and kids to bed.
Speaking of bed, Harriet and Sean now prefer to have bed time stories read together in the master bedroom. They'll tuck themselves into our bed and I'll read from the pile of books they've picked out. Then if Sean still needs a bath, he'll give himself one while I put Harriet to bed. If he doesn't, then both will go to bed at the same time.
Jan. 9th, 2009 @ 10:41 am
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
pussreboots's journal
