Student of the week

Today is the day Kiira has been waiting for the ENTIRE school year. She is student of the week. What does this mean you ask? Well, day one - she has a poster that she has filled out and will share with the class. On it are her favorite things to eat (broccoli), what she wishes she could do (play with a fairy), what she is good at (riding horses) and what she wants to be when she grows up (a ballerina). These are all answers that she has done herself. I chuckled at a few of them and scratched my head at some - not knowing that she truly felt she was GOOD at riding horses. That of course warmed my heart. She has also put a few pictures on her poster. One of the family and one of her riding Robin Hood. Although you hope your child holds some of the things that are important to you, also important to them, she couldn't have hit the nail on the head any closer. My two greatest pleasures in life are my family and my horses.

Quality time

This weekend Kiira and I went to see the San Francisco Symphony. We have tickets in a series that is geared towards kids. We carpooled with our friend June and her dad Gideon. I thought it was spectacular although the topic of each of the pieces centered around death. Specifically, "The Composer is Dead" based on a book by Lemony Snickett. The last piece was actually narrated by the author himself. He was quite animated if I may say so! We ended the day with a family meal at Askew with the Bernsteins - kids eat free through April! Yahoo! Considering we had more kids than adults at this meal.....

Back in the saddle

Alan and Evan came out to root us on!



Kiira and "Kisses"



Heidi and Rhett

Not that we ever left the saddle....but we had a horse show at our barn this past weekend. For living in California, I have to say, I expect a certain amount of warmness. I will say however - I DID NOT FIND IT THIS WEEKEND. I felt like I was on the flippin east coast! Good lord.

Weather aside - we all did well. Kiira did a leadline class on "Kisses" this time. The judge couldn't decide who did the best and all 6 kids got ribbons. Kiira was thrilled. Alan and Evan came to root us on. We put Kiira's warm vest on Evan it was so cold - he looked like a little pink puffball with all his coats.

Rhett and I had two of our best jumping rounds yet and won both classes. We did one hunter class (judged on Rhett) and one equitation class (judged on me). Both ever fences. It is such a feeling of accomplishment to come out of the class and feel like your hard work has paid off and you just nailed it. That's how I felt for our second class. Man, he's an AWESOME horse. I say over and over, I am so lucky!

Facebook

I finally made the plunge to facebook not long ago and hit the ground running. I reconnected with a good portion of my high school class. It has been a blast reminiscing and looking at photos of us in our hay day.

One of my friends from high school, Susie Angerer, was out in San Francisco this past weekend and Jenny and I got together with her while she was here. I can't believe it's been 20 years. Well, there ya go. We had alot of fun laughing and catching up. Here's to the next reunion class of '87! I'll make it this time.

That boy

Just when we think we are over the hurdle health wise.....Evan got the bad cold and he seems to have woken up with pink eye today. Conjunctiv-itis what's your function? (sung to the tune of "conjuction, junction what's your function?" (You 60's/70's babies out there will remember this.)

Gotta a 'gina?

Yes, this is Evan's favorite chant recently. He thinks he has one and it bugs Kiira to no end that he thinks that. She says adamantly over and over, "No, Evan you have a PENIS! I have a 'gina." This just fuels him up more and he says, "No, I have a 'gina". Repeat cycle ad nauseum.

You are HOT, HOT, HOT!

Just when I thought we were done with the sickness, Evan woke up with Kiira's cold yesterday. Or so I thought it was a cold. Turns out by evening he had a full blown fever. My mom asked me what temp. I said, "'bout hot as it gets on the back of my hand."

There are two schools of thought on medicine. Give it or not. I'm a believer in 'given but Evan was not a believer in 'gettin. If I force it he just throws up (my girlfriend told me today that there are suppositories for this purpose). So last night the poor guy suffers through high fevers, and hallucinations. At one point he was deathly afraid of his hand. He wouldn't sleep in any of the beds because he thought that was where the scary hand came from. Needless to say, we spend some sleepless sweaty hours on the couch. All in all I'd say about 3 hrs sleep.

Flash forward 24 hrs, 1/2 a refrigerator emptied out and a motor mouth 2 yr old. He's back. Man they bounce back quickly. Let's just hope no one else gets it. I really feel we have all paid our dues this year.

Expanding

While my goal is not to expand girth wise, I am trying to expand professionally. My latest and greatest addition to the SAGE design portfolio is home staging. This is a home I did in Mill Valley. The owners are great and I think the space came out spectacular. So...if anyone knows of a home being sold, put a good word in for SAGE design to do some staging.....

Here are my unprofessional photos . Enjoy!

Sight words

In kindergarden you start to learn how to write, to spell, and to read. Who knew? Certainly not me. I thought they did some abc's, number's, color's etc. Nope. They get down and dirty academic. Including knowing "sight" words. These are words they see in many of the stories that they read and just need to memorize (like, said, has, have, can, into etc). Apparently there are 45 of them they should know right now.

Now, I suppose somewhere deep down I must have know this rigor because we chose to send Kiira to a Waldorf based pre-school which has no academic content. We did this on purpose. Kids are going to have so many years of schooling ahead of them, why not let them just be a kid for a couple years longer.

Kiira has emerged from pre-school a caring, empathetic, socially responsible, well balanced kid. We are proud. She is however behind the learning curve on the academic stuff the other kids did in pre-school. We are ok with that. We figure we can work a bit harder at home and she'll catch up in her own due time. Well, in a matter of a couple weeks she has gone from knowing 9 sight words to 29 sight words. Well done Kiira!

We celebrated with a special dinner and a cake of her choosing.

The moon. Or is it a baseball?

Evan is still obsessed with balls, bats, raquets, cricket sticks etc. If he could, he would hold them all at once and try to hit something. Anything. It just doesn't matter to him. Something flying through the air, haven't connected with his bat etc of choice is pure music to his ears.

When we woke up a few mornings ago (it still being dark out - yes, we DO wake up early!) we looked out the window to see the most incredible full moon. "Moon" is one of the first words Evan said and he is still fascinated with saying it when merited. On this morning he looked out the window and said in his cute 2 yr old voice, "Moon". But then added...."baseball?"

I think little league is in our future.

The flu

Well, I failed to mention that while we were in Tahoe, poor little Ginger got a touch of the flu. One time throw up and miraculous recovery. Then Nancy and Gideon's poor nanny Maria got sick. When Maria got it, we all were just crossing our fingers that it would bypass us. And it did. Until we got home. Got home on a Thursday around 4 pm and by 8 pm poor Kiira was throwing up. Evan never wants to be left out so he joined in by about midnight. Man, thank god Alan was in town because taking care of two puking kids at one time is NOT fun. Especially when one is young and shall we say, unpredictable. That lasted until 4 am. Yuck.

I guess it was inevitable. Alan and I went down at the same time on Monday. Both of us in bed. I had the fever, chills body ache variety while alan had, well, he had the variety that I described above. Our babysitter was here for a few hours that day (thank god!) but when she left (she had had the flu over the weekend) we did rochambeau to determine who would take the first shift. We decided an hour on with kids (who were fully recovered and back to their rambunctious selves) and then you could go back to bed and the other person would take an hour shift. Sounds good on paper right? Up until then Alan hadn't throw up and we were on equal ground. Well, just as he was about to take the first shift (as you've guessed, he lost the rochambeau tournament), sure enough, he ummm....indisposed shall we say. All I could say was "Damn! Throwing up always trumps the bodyache, fever, flu. Double damn." So, I took the rest of the night.

Man, sometimes it really sucks being a parent. Why won't those little people just accept I am taking a sick day?! :-)

Tahoe

Coach Daddy (and Kiira's only request, "No lessons - just Daddy!"



The snow was taller than Evan



You get an idea how much snow we had!



The red lump in the middle is Heidi. It was VERY blustery this day. Kiira was not sure she wanted to ski that day.



On the shuttle bus to Alpine from the parking lot. All lined up. I felt like the Sound of Music when all the kids were lined up!

I know, I know, I have fallen down on the job of blogger and of humorous, informative anecdotal writer. I apologize! I am back on it and will try to jump in where I left off.

Tahoe. Ahhhh blustery, cold, glittery snow filled wonderland. We traveled up over the kid's "ski week" (along with all the rest of Marin County). Which cracks me up that they even call it ski week. It's like they just assume people are going skiing. I know, in fact we DID go skiing, but still, the assumption kinda irks me.

Well, we drove up on a VERY rainy day. Rainy in San Francisco means snow in the mountains. It takes about 3 hrs (you can make it in 2 1/2 hrs without the snack breaks, potty stops and general delays a husband makes - oh just kidding - the kids, the kids!!! I just like to check to see if Alan reads this every now and then! :-) ) Even though we have four wheel drive, we still needed to put on chains over the pass. I will say though that having lived on the east coast the better part of my life - their requirements for chains is quite wussy. I am always thinking to myself, "Self, I have driven/fishtailed MUCH steeper hills than this without chains".

We rented a house with two other families right near Alpine. Alpine Meadows is a great place to take the kids. It is so family friendly. We had a total of 8 adults and 8 kids in the house and it was LOUD. The kids had a blast - the older ones got to sleep in a room together and the chatting into the night was contagious. They were tired but game for all the skiing, sledding, snowball fights and snowman creations. We adults each cooked a different night and did take out one night.

The first two days were blizzard conditions and while it made for GREAT snow, the kids didn't enjoy skiing in it as much. The second two days were sunny and incredible skiing with INCREDIBLE powder. I even got to ski a day (vs. stay at the house and watch Evan) thanks to our friend's nanny watching Evan one afternoon.

A great time had by all and consensus was that we'd all do it again next year!

You can check out more photos of the week here and here (sorry I had to do it in two parts).