May 2019

Social & School Stuff
Spring is always a busy busy time, and this one was more so than most. One weekend, Annika had two birthday parties (Friday night sleepover at Alana’s, while we stayed home and watched Rogue One with Lukas, and a Saturday afternoon movie trip for Raina). There was the Art Vista show, where each kid had two pieces in the gallery; the K-1st Open House, where proud tour guide Lukas showed us his work (and also the butterflies that were days from being ready to fly away!); the fifth grade musical performance on a baking-hot morning on the blacktop (where I got a little verklempt, ok, shut up); Lukas’s class field trip to Happy Hollow (I was a chaperone … never again …); the fifth grade had Colonial Day (in which Annika wore another gorgeous dress from Etsy after a month of absolute AGONY over it being too much, standing out too much, attracting too much attention, yada yada yada oh em Geeeee and of course no one noticed or said anything, but anyway it was fun and I helped in the candle-making station for three hours); Lukas had his first after-school play date with Reid; the game of two-square absolutely took over in terms of obsession in the social arena; we all developed a thing for the Netflix anti-cooking-competition show Nailed It! and watched hours upon hours of it together (e.g. during the rainy, 59-degree days of Memorial Day weekend …); and we had our first taste of online friend drama, in which one of Annika’s friends, given the Roblox password of another one, used that password to do a whole bunch of things in the game that were, ahhh … not authorized by the original user. It was a teachable moment — this is WHY we don’t share our login info, even with friends — but caused a lot of heartache for awhile, and is certainly the first of many such flareups .. … yaaaay. 

Awards Season
Both of these kids did some good stuff this month: Lukas got Principal’s Pride (an honor where kids are nominated by their teacher, because they have exemplified one or more of the PRIDE values), and Annika’s drawing of Maryland was chosen as the image used for one of the Colonial Day placards (which the kids wore on lanyards to mark down which stations they’d visited). 

Mother's Day
Another highlight of spring …  the kids and R. surprised me with breakfast in bed (waffles!!!) and the New York Times, which I thoroughly enjoyed before I had to get up and start hustling; this year I volunteered to host a brunch for us, the grandparents, and Amy & family, which would also serve as the family celebration of Amy’s 50th birthday. I commissioned a cake for her, and the rest of the day was just all of us hanging out on the deck in absolutely perfect weather, eating all the stuff I made and having not as many mimosas as you would expect. Grandma later said it was her best MD ever, so I guess we did something right! 

Birthday roundup
Amy's birthday weekend — because it was her 50th — was the headliner this May. We were but four of several dozen of her far-flung guests in attendance at the weekend-long soiree at a retreat camp in Sonoma. The accommodations were pretty basic, but the kids managed without strong wifi and we did get to hang out with some of our faves of her friends … but the drive up was on R’s actual birthday, and there was not a whole lot of opportunity to make a fuss over him, considering the logistics  — so we had a dinner and cake and presents the following weekend.  

Quotable
—On seeing a limo: “Is there candy in there?” (Lukas, inspired by Descendants)
—“I eat eight thousand calometers a day!” (Lukas, inspired by … uh, who knows)
—“Because they married each other, DUHHH!” (his response to some kid asking another kid how come the second kid has two moms)

April 2019

Tahoe Redux
Our traditional February trip to Tahoe having been snowed out, we had the chance to try again in April — so we did! This time, we were in a different house in the neighborhood that had good sledding, and that’s mostly what we did — we didn’t even attempt going to a ski resort, just got out in the yard and down the street at the sledding hill. We had snow battles — a late spring snowfall had put plenty on the ground — Annika and Grace cooked a dinner all by themselves, and though we were only there two nights this time, it was great to get there at all.

Spring Fling at Disneyland
Soooo … Tahoe wasn’t the only place we went during spring break: We did a crazy one-off trip to Disneyland! We wanted to see how it looked when it wasn’t all decorated up for Halloween (Cars Land, Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain), and get in one more visit before Star Wars Land opened and changed everything. We “only” had three days in the park, and due to the late date of the booking (barely two weeks before the trip), we couldn’t get a room in the Grand Californian, so this time we were at the Disneyland Hotel — which turned out to be pretty great! It was a slightly longer walk, but not by much, and it had some really great features (e.g. our room was lots larger, room service was a few bucks cheaper, and there was this amazing headboard spanning both beds that was a wooden carving of Disneyland with a lighting effect that looked like fireworks + it played a music-box version “When You Wish Upon A Star” when first activated — so cool!). Everyone rode the newly-reopened Matterhorn, crowds were very light so we were able to ride up to 29 rides in a day, the weather was cool but not cold, we tried the River Belle Terrace restaurant, we were FIRST! in line to ride Peter Pan one morning, Annika rode Guardians of the Galaxy like 14 times (which Lukas bravely agreed to try once more and again decided was too scary but then in the gift shop he got a little Groot that wrapped around e.g. the wrist, then the next day got another Groot that would sit on his shoulder thanks to a magnet placed inside his shirt [they were all over the place, it was the toy to have]), and we got to see Fantasmic! on our last night. Perfect.  

Easter
One of the things about having Grandma & Grandpa living here is that we can share random holidays with them — for example, Easter! We figured it out too late to make something really big happen, but we did manage to come up with the plan of having them come over after Grandma went to church; the kids did their Easter egg hunt in the morning, then ate candy until the grandparents showed up to go with us to lunch at the Fish Market. 

Random Happenings
—We had a random spell of hot weather for a week this month, so one afternoon after school we did a spontaneous swimming playdate over at the Marshalls’.
—Another, less happy afternoon, we were all sort of hanging around after school, and Lukas threw a stick at Niamh, which missed her and hit Annika; it busted her lip (lots of blood, big bruise & swelling, she was freaking out that her tooth was broken — it wasn’t, there was just bark and dirt from the stick in her mouth). Lukas was yelled at, dragged out of there, bathed and sent to bed at 5:00, and lost screens till Annika had completely recovered.
—Annika and her peers had to send in a form declaring their elective choice for the coming school year. She was dead set on art, and although we reeeeeeally wanted her to do orchestra or at least band, after a lot of discussion and research on our part, we let her have her #1 pick. We think she’ll be happy with it, but we still want her to try at least one sport and learn an instrument in her non-school time. 

Quotable
“Peanut butter is healthy, because peanut butter is made of peanuts, and peanuts are made of potatoes.” Lukas, explaining it all.