Month: May 2010

Mother’s Day

We had a lovely mellow Mother’s Day this year. I got to sleep in and was greeted by Ezra at about 7:30 who told me he’d made breakfast for me. He got my slippers for me and ushered me into the kitchen where I found  pancakes, orange slices, and coffee. I had heard some arguing before Ezra had come in, and later Bruce told me that the boys were fighting over how many orange slices to put on the plate (Ezra wanted two, Finn wanted one — Ezra won). It looks like my little foodies are already worried about presentation.

They also cut a giant bouquet of roses from the backyard:

In the afternoon I took the boys for a walk over to Polkatots Cupcakes to pick up a treat. They waited patiently for our turn in line:

After that, Bruce took them to the Arroyo and I got the most coveted two-plus hours of home-alone time. I read, napped, and relaxed. Heaven.

Kidspace

A couple of friends and I took our kids to Kidspace last week for what turned out to be a fairly disjointed play date. Immediately upon entry, all three families took off in different directions. While it wasn’t as much fun for the moms, the kids all had a good time exploring different parts of the museum. My guys spent some time with the building blocks, the water drum area, and the rope spider web.

And Finn searched for squirrels in the bushes:

A Contrast

This morning, while I was making the living room look like this:

… the boys were making their room look like this:

Finn and Ezra's morning project 1

Finn and Ezra's morning project 2

They were pretending (or as Finn says “pretemming”) to be trash men (thus the “work boots”), and took all of their toys to the dump (aka the area behind Ezra’s bed). I knew they were doing this and despite the fact that it makes me CRAZY, I let it go. Ezra promised they would clean it up. We’ll see how that goes.

Warner Springs

On the second weekend of Jokke and Merja’s visit to California, we went to Warner Springs Ranch for Friday and Saturday night. We had a big group potluck dinner (cooking on camping stoves) and the kids basically all went crazy. Finn really enjoyed his first s’more.

The next morning, we attempted a hike (Hellhole Canyon, I believe), which started out pleasant enough — Ezra and Jokke started off walking together and later bonded over a walking stick; Finn was content in the carrier.

But, it turned out the route was way too ambitious for Ezra, Finn and Thomas. We got about 100 yards in when all the little ones started to melt down a bit. It was already kind of warm, and little guys are not all that concerned with the delayed gratification that would come had we made it in to where the water was. Oh well. Vanessa and I headed back to the trailhead with the kids, while Bruce and Bob went on with Jokke and Merja. The boys were much happier to just play in the cars for a while before we headed back to the Ranch. Finn and Ezra found a rope and played pirates and fisherman in the back of our car (“Man overboard!!!”).

Back at the ranch, we took the boys for pony rides which were thoroughly enjoyed.

Finn looks a little worried here as the guide adjusts the stirrups for the ride, but he settled in and had a good time.

After some time in the hot pool (for the grownups) and cold pool (for the kids), we had dinner at the Mexican buffet, which was surprisingly not terrible. The entertainment was a young Mariachi group and the kids loved it. Finn was basically sleep-walking through the evening since he’d had a big day with about 15 minutes of nap time. We gave the boys a group bath, which was pretty cute.

After that, the boys and I passed out (Finn went from, “I not tired!” to sound asleep in less than a minute), while Bruce visited sleepily with Jokke, Merja, Bob and Vanessa. I think the whole lot of us was asleep by 9:30 — the sign of a good day.

Eeny, Meeny …

Finn’s been working on learning the words to eeny, meeny, miny, moe for about six months now, and today he spent the entire day singing it. As we were all together all day — coming back from a trip to Warner Springs — I’m pretty sure we all have it stuck in our heads now. After I shot a video of him singing it tonight, I went searching for a video I took of him a while back when he first learned the words. Here are both renditions (10/29/09 and 5/2/10, respectively).