April 2022

This felt like a very busy month, but I didn’t make a lot of notes; the only thing besides the Disneyland Do-Over that I wrote down was that Annika decided to do a fairly dramatic haircut, chopping her hair to shoulder length — and of course it looked SUPER CUTE!!!! :-)  

As for Disneyland: As much as we love the Mouse’s House the normal way, traveling with the Patels was even more fun! We took the same flight and took up a whole van together, so even the ride from the airport was a good time. Things were a lot different with Genie+ — it still is worse than the old MaxPass, and there was no Early Entry, but between the two families, we were better able to game the lines and systems. The first day, we failed to get on Haunted Mansion (long lines and breakdowns), and Pirates of the Caribbean was closed for the duration, but lucked into getting on Luigi's Rollickin’ Roadsters the day before a refurb shutdown. We were first on RSR + and had fun racing the Patels. Monday night, the long day + stress + HM failure led to a stereophonic meltdown as we were looking for dinner — both kids lost their shit ENTIRELY, and the only reason R. and I didn’t lose ours was that we didn’t want to be recorded on people’s phones and sent all over the god damned internet — we were close to cancelling everything and going home. BUT — eventually everyone rallied, we got to see Cars Land at sunset (my favorite thing!). We finally rode the sailing ship Columbia, which was really neat, and we all did the around-the-park train ride. The eight of us got chosen to open DCA on Wednesday, and ended up closing DL & DCA on Thursday — nobody in the park but us, it was glorious! Going back to school after that break was quite a slog, but we had had a marvelous time.

March 2022

Family Fun

—With field trips not yet resumed officially, some of the 4th grade parents came up with the idea of a weekend meetup at the Mission of San Juan Bautista to replace the traditional school-led trip. All four of us went, and it was really cool & interesting; they do a lot of living-history stuff, and we got a tour led by a volunteer (whose distinctive pronunciation of “CHILdrun” we and the Patels will probably be repeating till the end of time). Annika was particularly interested in the blacksmith’s demonstration, while Lukas seemed to be more into the saloon card-playing bit. We learned at one point that we were standing directly astride the actual San Andreas Fault, which was uhhh … pretty wild, lol. 

—On the theory that the kids needed to get out more and get off screens, I randomly found a place for the kids to do archery — a three-session Saturday morning introduction about a 15-minute drive away — so they and Alana signed up, and they all three really liked it. So of course when I asked if they wanted to do it more regularly after the trial period ended, they were all like, “Nah.”
—Disneyland ahoy: We all wanted a do-over after the October trip, so the Patels decided to come with us to Disneyland in April — which of course required an evening at their place to make plans, for several hours, with much food and drink. 

Lukas Life
Lukas finally got to be captain of the week this month, which involved making an “All About Me” poster (lots of anime title logos, pics of friends, favorite foods and places he likes, etc.), and presentations of things like his TIE fighter helmet and holocron, wearing his Naruto headband on crazy hat day, a screening of his drumming video, etc.. He and Manir decided to do Science-O-Rama, meaning they hung out a lot and eventually got a trifold poster thing made about their chosen topic. Skateboarding resumed, in another wave of enthusiasm for the sport for him (who knows why he wouldn’t do the “winter” session, but he was all over the spring one). Minor note: Lukas told us he didn’t want to wear purple masks at school because it (in combination with the long hair) makes people use the wrong pronouns for him, so we traded the Patels our purple ones for Amira to use, and got their orange and blue ones.  

Annika’s Scene
—The dreaded swim unit at school finally came Annika’s way — covid cancelled it for her in both 6th and 7th grade, which might’ve been for the best, because by this time, she was ready — and she crushed it! She outswam everybody except the 6’1”  guy who swims competitively (her elementary school friend Ezra). And like a lot of things, the logistics of the whole thing (changing, showering, etc.) wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been built up to be.
—The first real concert: Annika and I went with Anne and Grace to see Billie Eilish at the Chase Center in San Francisco! The only problem with that was, it set the bar so incredibly high for shows in the future — Billie was AMAZING, with such love and respect for her audience; the production was spare but impactful; she was a real presence on stage and in excellent voice. (Plus, the CC is a great venue — brand new since covid, and finally a stadium that has figured out the right ratio of women’s to men’s bathrooms, lol.) Anne and I kept telling the girls how lucky they were to see such a fantastic show, and how sometimes even bands you love will turn in a rote or subpar performance, blah blah blah but the main mood was just ecstatic. Total win all around! While we were gone, R. and Lukas had a 2Dudes night (and went to the Science-O-Rama, which was apparently pretty hilarious).
—High school news: With 9th grade looming, Annika and her friends had to make their elective choice rankings. We watched student-produced videos on each one (everything from Film/Video Production to “Leadership”), and finally she decided to pick Sculpture as her first choice (reasoning that she’d already done drawing/painting for three years in middle school, so might as well try something new), Woodworking as her second, and Art third. Now, we wait…

Quotable
—“Why is there a donut hole, just chillin?”  (Lukas, observing the countertop, bare except for the aforementioned donut hole)