February 2018

Family Fun
—The Super Bowl: Per longstanding tradition, we had the Carneys over for the Super Bowl, during which I managed to not know which teams were playing until the game started, and a good time was had by all.
—The Winter Olympics: We watched SO! MUCH! Olympics! It was awesome. The kids are finally old enough to watch for more than a few minutes at a time, and to marvel at the various kinds of sporting excellence (even if they didn’t quite have the stamina that we had. Lukas was in fine form with his interpretations of country names, sport words, etc. (e.g. “Slovenia” became, in his parlance, “Snowbabya”), and Annika asked some really insightful questions. We all loved figure skating and the killer downhill sports, and rooted for Finland in the sports where no Americans were important. 
—Spring Break Tahoe trip: Per another tradition, we went to Tahoe with the Carneys for a few days. Got a new house this time, as the other one we’ve used is now off the rental market, and this one was good — we had fresh snow and decent weather, good food and relaxing times with friends, and didn’t bother with organized snow sports. One of these days I’m gonna do cross-country skiing, but not this trip!

Lukas, Annika, and Friends
—Lukas engaged x2: A little girl named Mia, from another Kindergarten class, has become enamored of Lukas, despite the fact that he’s already promised to marry his classmate Kylie. We’ll let them figure it out later, heh.
—Lukas, the star of the week: This month, Lukas finally got to be Star of the Week, and spent a decent amount of time on his “all about me” poster, which he did 100% by himself (there are a fair amount of kids whose parents clearly do the poster for them, which seems unsportsmanlike to me but whatever). He loved getting to be line leader, and do his sharing, and all the other SotW perks.
—Annika & daddy dinner out: Rather than crowd into the Daddy-Daughter Dance, R. and Annika went out to dinner at her favorite place, the Fish Market, and she tried Linguini with Clams for the first time — which is now her favorite dish!
—Grace sleepover bday party: Grace is usually the only girl at Annika’s parties who’s not a Los Alamitos kid, and Annika had a chance to be the only one from another school at Grace’s party. She had a great time, and as always, wanted to stay longer.
—Annika’s class field trip to San Juan Bautista Mission: Fourth grade is the California history year, and her class went to the mission at San Juan Bautista. She loved it, and came back full of facts and whatnot, but before the trip, when he heard it described, Lukas asked: ”You’re going on a real mission? Do you get to wear spy gear and stuff?"

Quotable
— "Today is Valentine's 1st" (as opposed to Feb. 1, according to Lukas)
— Lukas on pirates: “No, you don’t wanna be on an island with pirates! They’ll slice you and dice you!”
—“portal potty” (aka port-a-potty)
— Kids arguing over whether cats have 9 lives. Lukas: “Boys and girls have one extra life: Boys become ghosts and girls become angels. Have you ever heard of a ghost cat? No, because they have 9 lives.”