Laguna – June 2015

Back in April after our short trip to Laguna, Cari and I picked out the week of June 15th as a good time for a longer return trip. (Four days, two of which are full-day driving days, is just not enough time!) We planned that the boys and I would come down on Monday and Bruce would fly down Friday night, knowing he’d never be able to take any time off work. As we got closer to the date, and Bruce’s work schedule got crazier and crazier, we realized he may not be able to come at all, but we remained hopeful. At any rate, after returning on Sunday the 14th from Big Basin, I hurriedly did a bunch of laundry and packed up the three of us so we could leave bright and early Monday morning on our long journey. As usual, there was a traffic snafu — repaving on the 5, but it didn’t cost us too much time.

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We were happy to arrive while it was still light out and everyone was still awake! The next day, we got started with beach time. It was cloudy but no one cared.

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Ezra buried himself for the first of many times.

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So did Chapin.

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Finn and Ruby outlasted Ezra and Chapin by a couple of hours, spending the whole afternoon in the water.

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When we finally did get everyone back up to the house, we had a nice dinner and three of the four kids crashed quickly. Ezra, the lone holdout, finally found his happy place … with Chester.

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The next morning (Wednesday) we had a visit from Jamma who was coincidentally in SoCal for some paperwork issues. The boys (and I) had a grand time catching up with her, and playing Life.

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In the afternoon, everyone but Ezra wanted to go kayaking. So, Ezra and I headed off to Jiffy Lube and Target to take care of some pressing matters, and everyone else kayaked in Dana Point for several hours. I think they got the better end of the deal, but for the life of me I couldn’t talk Ezra into going. It turned out OK — a little mother/son bonding time over errands. When we were done I took him down to the beach and caught this lovely shot of him running along the shoreline.

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On Thursday we went to Discovery Cube and learned about science for a few hours. Here are the kids on the Dino Quest, which unfortunately turned out to be a bust when no one could find anything on the scavenger hunt-like list. And it was HOT!

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Well, Finn and Chapin found one thing on their list.

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We headed back inside for wind tunnels, hockey displays (sadly, Ducks only), and much more.

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Once we were done with the museum, we drove up to Altadena for a barbecue that Jerri had thrown together so we could visit with some of our besties. The kids swam forever and jumped on the trampoline, while the adults chatted and enjoyed great food and drink. I had such a good time that I have only one photo — Finn and Lucy in the pool.

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We left Altadena pretty late and had an emergency stop in Pomona at 10:00 for Finn to use the bathroom. By this time, my ankle, which I had twisted the previous day, was pretty swollen and painful and I was just looking forward to getting back home to Laguna. We eventually did.

On Friday we took our traditional trip to Balboa for lunch, arcade and bike riding, but this time we had the bonus of taking the ferry over. My kids, who’d never done this before, thought it was the coolest thing ever.

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After lunch and the arcade, we rode bikes to The Wedge and the kids made up a skit about s’mores.

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It involved lots of jumping.

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Here’s a video.

In the evening we were joined for dinner and craziness by the Bondsmith clan. Ezra and Jenner were very happy to see each other. We were also joined by Rob and Cari’s friend Mike and his two girls.

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And they wanted to be alone for their bonding so they didn’t sit with the rest of the kids for dinner.

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During the week it had become abundantly clear that Bruce was not going to be able to join us, so Cari made version 2 of Paperplate Bruce. His arms were a little higher than the version 1, and since he was preparing for a field test, she nicknamed him Optimistic Paperplate Bruce (OPB).

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We also did a little stargazing from the deck, and thanks to Jerri the night before, we knew that Venus and Jupiter were very close. Here’s a shot showing from top to bottom, Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon.

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On Saturday morning, Mike took the kids down to the beach and sent up these two photos.

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The kids had breakfast and then served the adults, restaurant style, while I monitored my phone for the play-by-play from Bruce about this field test. When we learned it was successful, we took this shot with newly-renamed Celebratory Paperplate Bruce (CPB).

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Later we managed to squeeze in a trip to the candy store before Cari and I took Ruby and Ezra to Pasadena. Ruby went to play rehearsal and I dropped Ezra off at Jack’s for a play date. Cari and I had our own play date — over ham and butter sandwiches at Little Flower — before picking up the kids and heading back to Laguna.

After another wonderful dinner (including CPB) …

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… the last bit of excitement for the day was “stackers” for dessert — creations of brownies, ice cream, fruit, and other delectables, smushed into shapes, rendering them magical to kids and adults.

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Ezra went a little crazy with the whipped cream. Who can blame him?

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Sunday was Father’s Day, so the dads got breakfast and CPB got a crown.

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And then we had to say our goodbyes. I was a little worried about the drive home and wanted to get an early start to beat some of the traffic. The plan worked, but it’s still a good eight hours from start to finish, which is painful, but as always, well worth it.

Big Basin Camping 2015

A couple of months ago we were invited to join a group camping trip to Big Basin the weekend after school ended. It was mostly families from our school, although we only knew the one family who invited us. Bruce ended up having to work all weekend, so I took the boys by myself. Thank goodness we had a tent cabin and it was only one night. I am a reluctant camper, especially without Bruce there to do all the hard stuff. In a weird coincidence, we ended up in the same exact campsite we had when we stayed there last year. It was still beautiful.

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I didn’t take a ton of pictures, because it was a short time and the boys were pretty much roaming around with a pack of wild kids most of the time. Ezra was thrilled to have so much time with his best friend, Henry.

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Here they are in a rare quiet moment building Minecraft LEGOs at our campsite.

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Here are Henry and Finn with the centipede they found.

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Extreme closeup:

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Ezra built a fire and we had dinner (hotdogs roasted on the fire and fruit) at our campsite, and then later we had s’mores at Henry’s.

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The next morning, the boys built another fire to warm us up while we had breakfast. Finn danced.

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Ezra, as always, enjoyed the fire.

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Before we left, Ezra took my phone to take some pictures of the fort they had discovered. They called it Fake Fake because they were going to use it as a fake fort but then realized it was actually better than the fort they’d previously chosen. It was this very cool partially hollowed out tree.

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When he was done with the documentation of Fake Fake, he left with Henry and his dad, Chris, on a 12 mile (!) hike from the campsite to the ocean. Chris sent me a bunch of pictures from the hike; here are a few.

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In the meantime, Finn and I headed back home. Poor carsick-stricken Finn was dreading the drive after being super miserable the previous day, but I took an easier-on-the-stomach route back and let him sit in the front seat. Luckily he was fine.

The rest of my photos are here.

National Doughnut Day 2015

The first day of summer vacation coincided with National Doughnut Day. The boys were thrilled when I suggested we get doughnuts for breakfast, of course. The first place we went (Donut Basket) was clearly unprepared for the “holiday” and had been almost completely cleaned out. We passed on the sad fritter and maple bar they had left, and went over to Krispy Kreme. The boys were in awe of the doughnut making machine.

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I had told them they could choose two each, which they did. And then the woman informed me we all could have a free one. Free doughnuts! Everyone was happy.

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Field Day 2015

The last week of school is an amalgam of parties, recess, and classroom cleanup. Most of the actual learning ceased as soon as the standardized tests occurred in May so the last few weeks have mostly felt like a formality. Sigh.

Wednesday was Field Day, and I volunteered to help wrangle students so I was on campus for a while. The first two hours were for the K-2 students and the second were for 3-5. I manned the scooter race for both sessions. At first, though, I didn’t know where I was supposed to go so I watched Finn play something they called hockey.

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Once I found the list of assignments tucked behind a hoard of people having coffee and pastries, I high-tailed it over to the scooter area to help the teacher who was in charge. It was not the most exciting volunteer activity I’ve ever had, but it was fun to see the different students come by and try their hand at scootering. I wasn’t fast enough with my phone to get a picture of Finn when he was there, but I got Ezra.

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And Henry.

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Speaking of Ezra and Henry, they had a play date the day before and at Ezra’s request we went to Five Guys for dinner. They wrote notes for their bulletin board and I took their picture.

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Avalanche Soccer

A few months ago Finn joined the Stanford Soccer Club U9 division and was placed with the other newbies on the Avalanche team. (The club isn’t associated with Stanford University, by the way.) When we signed up I had been told this was a noncompetitive development team. Unfortunately, there was so little interest from other families in a noncompetitive club that they rolled Finn into the competitive side of things. Big surprise.

Eventually we got used to the idea and decided to let him play despite our weekly wincing at the “cheering” from the sidelines of his games. Our team is fairly mellow as it turns out, but we played some other teams with lots of yellers.

The season ended last weekend and he wanted to sign up to play again in the Fall. Oy. Here are some pictures from this season.

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Finn Soccer 5/2/15

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In his last game, he played goalie for the second half and did well!

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Root Beer Tasting

Ever since we did our chocolate tasting a few months ago, we’ve been looking for another subject to taste test. Last week we found one when Bruce and Ezra discovered that OSH, of all places, carries a tremendous assortment of root beer! After properly chilling the bottles and setting up our score sheets, we got started.

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Finn did the pouring.

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It was all very official, with aroma, taste, and bottle design being scored.

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Here’s the aftermath.

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The overall winner was Hank’s (Ezra and my favorite), with Virgil’s (Bruce’s favorite) taking second place. Finn liked Frostie’s Vanilla Root Beer the best, but the rest of us weren’t so keen on it. The overall worst was Bundaberg, which we thought had a cool looking bottle but didn’t taste anything like root beer.

Here’s our list and all of our score sheets.

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Gold Rush Day 2015

A culminating experience for the fourth graders, who study California history all year long, is Gold Rush Day. The teachers and staff build a gold rush town at school (“Tiger Eye Canyon”) and the students spend most of the day as miners, panning and searching for gold, heading to the assay office and the bank to turn it in, buying provisions at the stores, hanging out in the saloon, and more. It’s really quite a production, with most kids and adults in costume and a miner’s lunch of chili, ribs, bread and desserts provided by the parents.

I volunteered to help and was asked to take pictures — a perfect fit for me. The day started with a speech from the Sheriff, who laid out some rules while the fidgety kids tried to spy the gold nuggets in the adjacent “field.”

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Soon enough they were off and running, finding lots of gold in them thar hills.

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There were also a couple of spots to pan for gold. However, after an hour or so, most kids figured out that the gold nuggets weighed a lot more and therefore were worth a lot more in exchange, and the panning became less popular.

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Once they had some gold, they went to the assay’s office where it was weighed and they were given a certificate to take to the bank.

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Each student was scheduled for a shift at one of the stations — assay’s office, bank, saloon, photo booth, schoolhouse, etc. Here are Ezra and Henry, who took at early shift at the bank.

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The saloon was a popular destination, with two blackjack tables and a bar selling root beer shots.

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There was old timey music, too.

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Here are a few more pictures of Ezra from throughout the day.

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Here he is at the newspaper office. I’m not sure what he was writing or how he could see but I thought it was super cute.

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And here he is after a search for nuggets in the gold field.

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Since I was one of the designated photographers, I have a ton of photos here. It really was a great day!

Twin Day

The last spirit day of the year was Twin Day, which happened last week. Ezra and his best friend Henry dressed as they usually do — jeans and a t-shirt — but they each wore one of Ezra’s black hoodies. I neglected to get any photos, unfortunately.

Finn and two of his friends — Kyuhyun and Love — decided to wear their soccer practice uniforms.

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I also took one of just Love and Finn because they look so similar even without the matching clothes that Love’s mom and I have trouble telling them apart on the playground.

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Such cuties.

Finn’s Art 2015

We got Finn’s art on Friday, so here is his post. As always, he’s been much more verbose than Ezra when showing us his work, so I’ll add descriptions (for the ones I can remember …).

Chagall’s Fantasy:

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Frogs:

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His hand and his fifth grade buddy’s hand:

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Shoe:

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Sheep:

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Tree with shadowing on the trunk:

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“The guy on the left I call Ezra, because I think Ezra’s cool.”

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Landscape:

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Cityscape:

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In addition to the art from his Spectra Art class, he brought home a couple of things from his regular classroom. First is his butterfly life cycle. He really enjoyed this unit.

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And his drawing and photo from the beginning of the year.

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