April 2018

School Days and Other Craziness
—Kindergarten Spring Tea: Lukas’s class held a fancy-dress Spring Tea, which was mostly for them but the parents were welcome, so I stopped by to eat a cupcake and get cute pics of Lukas and his friends out at the outdoor picnic tables. They were all so psyched at the treats and the break in the routine, and it was sweet to see them in their dressy clothes.
—Various Panics: Two moments of genuine alarm this month. The first, and showier one, was our ER visit for a sliced finger — Lukas, of course. He’s been watching a lot of ninja warrior type animated shows, which maybe is where he got the idea to take one of my sharpest carving knives out of the block while I was in the dining room and, I later learned, “find out if it was sharp.” It was. He tried to hide it by going upstairs and getting a band-aid, but quickly realized a band-aid was no match for the blood and came back downstairs to show me. Gaaaaah! We ran it under water, wrapped it in paper towels, dropped Annika off at her sleepover (at Raina’s), and went to urgent care, where they eventually just glued it closed. This KID, I swear. The other incident was the full-on lice panic; the day after we got home from our trip to Carmel (see below), Fiona called to say that both her kids were riddled with lice and we’d better check ourselves. I went straight to nuclear mode, piling the kids in the car and heading to a professional lice removal clinic in Sunnyvale … where they found not a single bug or nit, despite the fact that the kids had slept in the same beds as their friends and sat with their heads literally together while watching movies on an iPad. It was a miracle, and not a small one …
—Spring things: 1) Lukas had his spring school pictures taken with a fresh layer green hair dye, which of course was ridiculously cute on this little turkey-leg of a kid. 2) We enjoyed the multicultural faire again, but we weren’t official representatives of anything; we just subbed in for the actual Finns while they went to watch their older daughter’s dance performance on stage, and of course made the rounds ourselves to eat around the world and see the dancers we knew (Raina’s group was our favorite). 3) Raina's birthday party was a sleepover, again one of the absolute highlights of her social year.
—Annika’s band concert: The Friday before spring break, Annika’s school band had a short concert. She was SO! EXCITED! for it, but of course nervous; what a thrill to see her up there performing, and doing so well! She even agreed that it would be a fun thing to do again, so we may find a teacher for flute lessons so she’ll be even better next time. 

Spring Break
The break started with a bang this time — we took a screen break one afternoon, went out for a nature walk in the park at the end of our street, and ended up with some great, up-close sightings: a white crane just chilling in the road on the way there; a red-tailed hawk way down low, then perched on a rock just ten feet away; and a coyote, who got within 20 feet of us and didn’t seem at all afraid. Epic nature day.
—Spontaneous trip to Carmel with the Marshalls: Niamh and Lawson’s paternal grandparents own three (3) beach houses in Carmel, so Fiona invited us down to stay midweek (the invitation was for 2 nights, but we had to get back for a sleepover that was already planned). The weather was fabulous, the beach houses were insaaaaaaane (we had our own, right next to theirs), the kids wore themselves out running on the beach with the Marshalls’ dogs, and we even got a visit from Mr. Dinh, Molly, and Maisie!
—Gilroy Gardens: R. took a day off work to go with the fam to Gilroy Gardens, and we took Raina with us as a guest with our memberships. Then, we hadn’t been there for ten minutes until we ran into Ami, who was there soloing with Manir and Amira! So the ragtag bunch of us combed the place every direction, not missing a thing and having a great time. 

Easter & Aunt Lesley’s visit
Aunt Lesley showed up the day before Easter (on a flight that got rather dramatically late and sent me to the airport at 1:30 in the a.m., lol). We dyed 18 eggs; Sunday morning, the Easter Bunny had made his or her visit and the egg hunt lasted quite a long time. That week, did a condo picnic: we took sandwiches out to the grandparents’ new condo for R., who was prepping, priming and painting, and all ate out on the deck. We also had a movie night (“Sing!”, which we all really really liked) and did various other fun stuff.

Quotable
— “I’m not a doctor in training! I’ve been doing this for ... twelve years!” (Lukas, re: animal care at Annika’s self-purchased American Girl doll veterinary clinic)