May 2017

All-Around Annika
—School talent show: Once again, Annika decided she wanted to be in the Los Alamitos talent show, and this time, she recruited her friend Jasmine to dance to a Justin Timberlake song. They spent an afternoon choreographing at our house, then practiced every recess and break they had — and in the end, it was such a cute performance, with both girls in white sundresses and black ballet shoes and a version of the song edited to just under two minutes. Bravo!
—SF zoo field trip: The third grade went on buses to the San Francisco Zoo, which she hadn’t been to since she was not quite three years old. They weren’t there for long (due to the length of the trip) so everyone planned in advance what exhibits they wanted to see and grouped up based on that. She loved it, and now keeps asking to go back! 

Lukas Life
— Mother's Day Tea: Lukas’s class had a special Mother’s Day tea, to which they invited all the moms and gave us presents and performed a couple of songs — it was so sweet, and the kids were SO excited! Really fun for me and for him.
—Lukas open house: The TK/kinder/1st grade open house was separate from the older grades this year. Lukas was psyched to show us all the work he’d done, and lead us around to all the stations to tell us what they do in each one, and we met some of next year’s TK kids and of course told them all about how awesome Ms. Bingham’s class is.
—TK/Kinder musical performance: The big show of the year! They had a half dozen songs, done on the risers outside on the blacktop. Lukas did great and had a good time.

School Days
—Karate: So at the Multicultural Fair at school, Lukas “won” four free classes at Victory Martial Arts, and this month he started to use them. He loved it right away, and Annika — who had not planned on that, at all — decided she might like to try it — so she did. The regimented, belt-earning part appealed to her (Lukas liked the outfits as well, heh), and they both liked getting to punch and kick without getting in trouble, so we have signed up for a seven-month term; they’ll go twice a week, and are in the same class, which is nice for the logistics. Fun, fitness, and kicking ass …
—School art show: Both kids had two pieces in the year-end art show. This year, we palled around with the TK gang and made an event of it, with dinner out after — high-energy and kind of exhausting, but a good time nonetheless. 

Family Fun
—Mother’s Day: Annika was fully in charge of the holiday this year: She planned and helped make breakfast in bed (“eggs on the go” — scrambled eggs with spinach and feta, in a pita), got me flowers, and made lunch. In the afternoon, I took the kids on what actually turned out to be a thoroughly disastrous hike in Quicksilver (they bitched and moaned the whole time, were afraid of wild animals — of which we saw precisely zero, and both fell at least twice … [sigh]), but while we were gone, R. made me his awesome spaghetti sauce with the little savory breadcrumb pancakes for dinner; also they got me a heart cake, and made a poster for the door). I think Mother’s Day gets better every year …
—Daddy’s birthday: It’s hard to do a lot when your birthday is on a Wednesday, but we made a good time of it — the kids and I baked the chocolate-raspberry cake, wrapped presents, and made dinner for R. :-)
—Lendlers visit: The first pool weekend of the year, we had the Lendlers over and enjoyed some of R.’s margaritas while the kids swam and played. Beautiful weather (though not too hot) and a really nice day with friends.
—Memorial Day weekend: It was a big holiday weekend for us. First, my friend Amanda from high school came out to California with her family (husband Drew, daughter Audrey); they stayed the night with us before continuing on their road trip (and our kids fought for Audrey’s attention, of course) — awesome to see all three of them. Then, more or less per tradition, the Carneys came and we grilled out and swam and had another chill good afternoon. 

Quotable:
—“I'm not afraid of spiders. I'll kill it with my Maui hook! We've never had a spider in our house before. They crawl in our water pipes, like the itsy-bitsy spider!" (Lukas tackling the big issues)
—“Hetched it means wenched it, and wenched it means ... got it.” (Lukas explaining his unique terminology)