Finn and Charlie have become quite fond of each other. Today at Cottage, they played together nearly the whole day. They got Iron Man armor from Teacher Art (yeah, it kind of looks like man-bags to me, too).
They did some serious sewing with the lacing cards.
They rode the skitters together.
They had snack together, too, but it was much too chaotic for me to take any pictures. I’m not sure they could be any cuter.
Ezra and Bruce (along with Bob, Vanessa and Thomas) took a backpacking trip over the weekend. It’s not Ezra’s first (we took one before Finn was born) but it’s the first he’ll remember. They drove to Palm Springs and took the tram up to Mount San Jacinto State Park and Wilderness. They hiked a little over two miles before they set up camp.
Ezra had been really sick the day before and was pretty tired on the hike, but Bruce says he was quite a trooper. They’d attempted to take a stroller (anticipating that it would be helpful to carry either extra stuff or Ezra if he got tired) but found out there are no wheels allowed in the wilderness and had to leave it at the tram station.
After a brief rest once reaching camp, Ezra was back to almost normal speed and was climbing rocks and playing with Thomas.
They had dinner and got ready to hit the hay.
All in all, I think it was a good introduction to backpacking. Ezra said it was “too much walking” but he also said he had a good time. I definitely breathed a sigh of relief when they arrived home safely.
Right here on the couch.
After having a bout of nausea in the middle of the night and waking up this morning with no energy and a slight fever, Ezra had his first sick day home from Kindergarten. Good thing, as the nausea returned at about 11:00. He has literally spent all but about 15 minutes of the day on the couch and took a good two-hour nap. Poor little guy; I hope he’s better tomorrow.
At least Batman’s here to help.
Finn’s teacher Ana took a couple of videos on her iPhone this week. They’re pretty cute!
Finn made a series of phone calls the other day during his play date with Charlie. Luckily, Jerri caught one of them on film.
We took the boys to the Octoberfest in Montrose this afternoon/evening and a good time was had by all. Bruce took the boys on a couple of spinning rides — Ezra wasn’t always sure it was fun, but Finn laughed all the way through.
Ezra played a horse-racing game. He came in second both races. So close!
Finn got a big hammer.
We all had ice cream.
And we finished out the day with a few songs from the brass band.
Here’s the boys reaction.
Bruce pulled out the art box this morning for a glue/glitter/paint extravaganza and many projects were made and destroyed. My favorite was Ezra’s painting:
He said it was a blueprint, which he then described as a “picture of how to build a house.”
Later, Finn saw the box of magnetic gears in the closet and built this:
He managed to get all the gears connected and moving, and was very proud to have built it all by himself.
Sometimes these Moision boys can be so sweet. This week at school, Ezra made a painting that was all orange. When he was showing it to us this morning, he said he knew that orange was Finn’s favorite color and he wanted to give the painting to Finn. So, he cut off the part of the painting where he had written Ezra and wrote Finn instead. We hung it up on the wall by Finn’s bed. Finn was thrilled.
Finn’s in the Oak Tree class at Cottage this year and Thursday was my first day working in his class. It was a pretty nutty day — lots of sand and water play, and a ton of conflict resolution. My hat’s off to Teacher Ana and Teacher Art for keeping their cool amidst the craziness.
Here’s Finn telling one of his friends something very important.
And here’s a bunch of the very busy boys in the class. The girls, smartly, had made themselves scarce rather than get in the middle of this mess.
We headed out to the Science Center this morning (at Ezra’s request) only to find it completely packed with families. We initially thought people were just trying beat the 100+ degree temperatures, but realized they were there for Sid the Science Kid Day. Oops. So we walked over to the Natural History Museum instead.
We saw some fossils and then had lunch.
After that we went to the Dinosaur Encounters show, where they have a paleontologist discussing dinosaurs and a giant T-Rex puppet that’s a little too life-like if you’re three years old. There was too large a crowd for me to make our way out, so Finn just squirmed on my lap and covered his eyes. Poor little guy.
But we managed to survive the trauma and went out to the newly retooled Butterfly Pavilion — now the Spider Pavilion.
Finn wasn’t so crazy about that either.
Neither was I.
There’s an Aveson family who, instead of driving a car the three miles from their house to school every morning, rides this:
It’s called a Ped E Cab. I can totally see Bruce riding Ezra and Finn up to school on one of these in the future!
Week 3 at Aveson went swimmingly — Ezra showed no signs of stress (nightmares, accidents, sleepwalking, etc.) like he had in Week 2 and he reported that he had a super day at each pickup. He’s starting to talk about other kids he’s meeting and loves his teachers. There was a dining night out fundraiser on Wednesday night which was well attended, and it was fun to walk through the restaurant and hear a couple of kids say, “Hey, that’s Ezra!” He’s a little clueless, but was very happy to see everyone. And he ran right up to his teachers and told them all about the paper airplane he and Bruce had made earlier in the day.
After school today he asked if we could go get ice cream because it was so hot (95 degrees according to the thermometer in my car). I thought it was a great idea so we went to the Baskin Robbins in Hastings Ranch. The boys got clown cones and had a messy, grand time.
I got a kick out of my mail today — five pieces of junk mail. The great thing was that only one of them was addressed to someone who actually lives here.
And two were for people who aren’t living anywhere. I think the health insurance flyers are a little late.
I asked our friend Colleen to do a post for Finn’s preschool fundraiser on her super website Hometown Pasadena. She graciously obliged and every time I see it I smile, so I thought I’d post a link.
Update: I decided to include a screen shot because I’m sure the link won’t last forever.
We had a pretty laid back, enjoyable Saturday yesterday — did some shopping and some backyard demo and then had an impromptu barbecue with the Heffernans. First, here’s the demo. Finn’s not too sure about the whole thing, despite the ear mops.
I didn’t take many pictures because I was too busy relaxing as the kids played together without incident. They got pretty muddy and had baths before dinner. Then they sat on the stoop and had some hotdogs.
Charlie wasn’t interested in dinner, but he was happy to play a game on the iPad while everyone else ate.
After dinner all the kids watched their latest obsession — Roadrunner cartoons. I don’t know what it is about that show, but all four kids think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen and beg me all the time to watch. We gave in to their demands, turned on the iPad in the house, and enjoyed a quiet, relaxing adults-only dinner out back. It was great.