Basically, there are three problems. 1) There’s not enough room for all the incoming teeth, 2) he’s got a pretty big overbite, and 3) he’s got that wayward yet-to-come-in tooth on the bottom that is heading in the wrong direction. The hope is that the braces will correct the overbite and open up the current teeth to make room for the new ones to come in.
Ezra was not happy about getting braces at all. In fact, at first he didn’t want any one to know and he planned to not open his mouth at school so no one would find out. But, it’s been a month now and he’s adjusted well. I think his teeth are already straighter.
As mentioned in my last post, Finn turned 8 on April 12th, and we did a little more celebrating once we got home. Much to his delight, he had presents waiting for him — art supplies and soccer paraphernalia from the Becks and a “blow torch” from us. (He really wanted a blow torch for his birthday, and being Fun Dad, Bruce said yes. Thankfully, Fun Dad is also Reasonable Dad and he picked out the kitchen type blow torch. Finn loves it and I’m happy because now he can make me creme brulee.)
I had also promised him a cake and because he loved the cake Cari made at the beach, I made the same one only in a different shape — chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate.
In lieu of a birthday party, he has opted for a bicycle tour with Bruce and plans are underway.
While Bruce toiled away on Project Loon, the boys and I spent the last half of Spring Break week in lovely Laguna Beach with the Bannings. My plan was to leave early-ish on Thursday so that we would arrive by evening. As always, we didn’t get moving fast enough and while we made good time most of the way, we hit a traffic standstill as soon as we got to the 210 freeway. I was pretty depressed when I checked Google Maps only to find out that it was going to take another four hours to get to Laguna. So, we improvised and we stopped in Altadena and had a visit with the Heffernans. Or at least some of them — Jerri was at work and couldn’t get out of it, as valiantly as she tried. The kids had a great time on the trampoline …
… and the three youngest crazies went in the pool. After that we went to Yang Chow for dinner and had some fun with chopsticks.
We finally hit the road again a little after 8:00 and we still hit traffic. We did finally make it though and after a good night’s sleep all four of the kids were raring to go on Friday and we spent some great time at the beach.
Later we enjoyed a ridiculously beautiful sunset on the deck.
On Saturday we ventured to Newport Beach and had our traditional visit to the pier and lunch at Ruby’s Diner.
Then a visit to the arcade.
Then we rode bikes to The Wedge.
There was, of course, another beautiful sunset.
And a birthday dinner for Finn who turned eight the next day.
(That’s Paper Plate Bruce in the picture — Cari’s solution to Bruce not being able to be there in reality.)
On Sunday, we packed up and everyone took a little time to hang out with Chester, the world’s most patient dog.
Then we took a trip to the candy store for road trip supplies. Finn got to have his first legal drive without a booster seat.
We left around noon and stopped in Pasadena at Zankou Chicken for lunch. Oh, how we’ve missed Zankou. I told Bruce we may have to move back for Zankou alone.
We hit tons of traffic on the way home too, including a brush fire on the 5 which caused quite a delay. We arrived home a little after 9:00, totally exhausted. But, as always, the time with friends is well worth the hours on the road.
The first week of April (and spring break) brought us a three-day visit from Bob, Vanessa and Thomas, as well as a Saturday with the Detterich clan. We had a great time with everyone! The boys couldn’t wait to see their cousin and hijinks ensued quickly. Upon their arrival, there was an immediate nerf gun war that lasted a couple of hours. After a break for dinner, we walked to Rick’s for ice cream where we tried to get a picture of the three boys. They weren’t particularly cooperative.
On Saturday we met the Detterichs at the kite flying area of Shoreline park. It was a perfect day.
After kite flying, we went over to Google where the kids tried not to fall into the water …
… played video games …
… tried out some Google snacks …
… and explored all of the crazy Google stuff.
The adults played around a little, too.
Later, the kids bonded over computer games.
And then we had dinner at the local ramen place before the Detterichs left.
The next day was Easter, so we had an Easter egg hunt in the back yard.
After an enormous amount of sugar was consumed, we decided to try the Canada Road bike ride again. We were a little worried they might not close the road on Easter Sunday, and the weather was threatening rain, but we set out anyway. What could go wrong?
Things looked good at first as the signs said the road was closed, and the weather app said it wouldn’t rain. Alas, just as we reached the beginning of the closure the rangers were out opening the road up again. We don’t know why they opened it early but it was a bummer to have the cars whizzing by. And then, just to make sure there was icing on top, just before we got to the furthest point along the route, almost ready to turn around and head back, the skies opened up and it poured. It rained so hard it was actually comical. We were all soaked by the time we got back to the cars, but some time in the warm cars and snacks solved all the kids’ woes.
The next day we Wunderlich County Park for a hike.
A fellow hiker took a group shot for us.
I have lots of pictures from the day (here), mostly thanks to Finn who commandeered my camera.
A few weeks ago we caused the boys a bit of trauma by contemplating putting in an offer on a house in Redwood City and then deciding against it. The house was a kid’s dream (or at least our kids’ dream) with a half-acre lot and a stream running through the property. Alas, it was on a very busy street and we just couldn’t get past the noise so we nixed the idea. Ezra, in particular, was devastated so in an attempt to cheer him up, Bruce invited the boys to come play video games at Google. And cheer him up it did. Here are some pictures from our mini-arcade adventure.
I liked this sign left on a broken Lord of the Rings game.
We had wanted to celebrate Pi Day by having Bruce’s work group over, but a few key members were going to be out of town so we postponed it. Last weekend it happened — a pie potluck and a cornhole tournament. I didn’t take many pictures but we had a nice group of people with a variety of pies: shepherd’s pie, pizza pie, pumpkin pie, berry pie, chocolate pie, and some Russian “pies” (Bruce disputed that these were actually pies, but really only to give Baris a hard time).
I reprised the deep dish apple pie from Pi Day.
And I made a chicken pot pie.
The cornhole tournament was super fun, with Bruce’s colleague, Devin, and I going head to head for the championship. He won.
Here he is celebrating with his two year old, Kingston.
I’m glad Bruce works with such a nice group of people.
After being told countless times that we should visit Half Moon Bay, we finally got over there a couple of weeks ago. Our plan was to take our bikes and cycle along the Coastside Trail, grab some lunch, and let the boys play in the sand for a while. Finn was ready.
The trail is paved and the landscape beautiful. We did have a bit of a detour because a bridge on the trail is out of service, but although it added mileage it wasn’t a bad ride. I have very few pictures because it’s hard to ride and shoot at the same time, but here’s one from my handlebar cam (AKA my iPhone on its bike mount).
After lunch, we headed back the same way we came and stopped off for a little beach play. Here are some shots of the scenery.
We then decided to ride back to where our car was parked to put the bikes away and let the boys play some more there. The boys were definitely in their happy place.
Holes were dug.
Naps were taken. Finn wrote out some Do Not Disturb signs for Bruce and me.
At Fairmeadow, the entire fourth grade goes to Sacramento every year. I decided to chaperone the trip, and I have to say I was dreading it a bit. It was going to be a long day — we had to be at school at 6:00 am (!) and we wouldn’t return until after 5:00 pm. The drive alone is over two hours, usually longer on the way home. But, it turned out to be a pretty great day. I knew a few of the other moms who were chaperoning and the school rented very comfortable buses for us instead of school buses. Best of all, they allowed the kids to use screens on the drive, so it was pretty much the quietest field trip I’ve ever been on.
Ezra and I were grouped together with his best friend Henry (and Henry’s mom, Christina) along with four other kids. Here are the silly boys before we embarked on the trip — it was still dark outside.
We had some nice views of the sunrise from the bus, and even though my photo doesn’t do it justice (I wasn’t near a window), I’ll share it here.
Our first stop was the Capitol building.
While we waited for our official tour to start, we spent some time looking around the rotunda and the offices they have set up showing what they looked like historically.
Here are the kids in our group in front of Governor Brown’s office.
When our tour started (unfortunately with the worst tour guide ever!) we visited the museum-like offices first and then went upstairs to the Senate and Assembly chambers.
My favorite room was the office of the treasury, which included the coolest old safe.
After the tour we had a little down time outside where there was a great climbing tree (until one of the other moms deemed it unsafe and made all the kids get down).
Our next stop was Sutter’s Fort where we took a group shot of the whole class.
And then after a quick lunch, we toured the fort.
The last stop was the Railroad Museum where we saw lots of historic trains and railroad items.
These two goofballs seemed to have a pretty good time.
My favorite part was a recreation of the dining car on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line.
They had displays of all of the dishes they used on each line.
The boys really liked the enormous model train display.
And then we were done. One last shot of Ezra and Henry outside the museum before boarding the buses and heading home.
March 14, 2015 was Pi Day of the Century (3.1415 …) and we had to celebrate properly. We’d seen a recipe for Deep Dish Apple Pie on America’s Test Kitchen and it was too good to pass up. It was a family affair — Ezra helped me with the filling and Bruce and Finn rolled out the dough.
It’s a fairly fussy recipe, but worth the work. It was beautiful.
When I got to school for pickup one day a couple of weeks ago, Finn couldn’t wait to show me something in his classroom. They’d been working on projects about historical figures. They’d chosen someone they were interested in, read about them and then made a construction paper rendition. As I looked around the room, I saw many Helen Kellers and, if I remember correctly, at least one Abe Lincoln. My boy chose John Lennon. Complete with guitar and amp.
Ezra wanted to build something for his party this year. After several ideas and a few prototypes (the mini-crossbows were cute, but a little difficult to make and not very robust), we decided on a woodworking project. We needed a fairly simple project since we assumed most of the boys didn’t have any woodworking experience, and we settled on making a chalkboard based on one of Rob’s successful woodworking classes last year.
In addition to the project, Ezra requested a homemade papier mache piñata, so Bruce got to work on that early in the week. Here are the boys getting ready to paint it — like a globe since it was round.
And because Bruce is Bruce, we also had a second piñata, this one made of ice. Bruce used duct tape, rope and a wooden spoon to sink Hershey bars into our largest pot, and then added more water with our turkey baster.
We weren’t really sure how either of these things was going to work out, but we hoped one would be successful for the party.
There were six guests, all boys from Ezra’s class, plus Ezra and Finn. Bruce set up the backyard with stations for each step of the project, and did one of his famous instructional posters.
Bruce went through the project and showed them how to do each step, and then they were off and running with, not surprisingly, varying degrees of interest and accuracy.
This is Ezra’s best friend, Henry. He’s a very nice boy and Ezra adores him, so I allow him to come over despite the Sharks t-shirt he seems to be perpetually wearing.
A few more pictures of the action:
Once the chalkboards were built, their frames painted, and the boys had devoured some snacks, it was time for the ice piñata, which turned out to be a huge hit, I think both for the novelty of it and that they got to hit it with a hammer. And wear safety goggles. Oh, and the king size Hershey bars didn’t hurt either.
After the ice piñata came the final round of painting, the boards themselves. Everyone was surprised — and some were dismayed — that there was no regular black chalkboard paint. Oh well.
And then we did the world piñata. The boys enjoyed calling out where on the earth they were going to hit.
And they made quite a few dents and finally Bruce took over to bust it wide open. I don’t have video of the mad rush because I was consoling Finn who was too scared to join the craziness and thought he would totally miss out on candy. We managed to get him a few pieces.
At last there were cupcakes.
And singing. Ten year old boy style.
The boys spent the remaining time running around like crazies and trading the candy and gum from the piñata. I think it was a pretty successful, if stressful, party. Bruce and I capped it off with a pitcher of margaritas.
Ezra’s birthday celebration got started very early … for me at least. He wanted to bring donuts to school so I was at Krispy Kreme at the crack of dawn buying them. Of course, I brought home some extras so we could start the day off right with the breakfast of champions. Thankfully, Bruce also made them eggs so they wouldn’t be hungry and cranky five minutes after getting to school.
Jamma called to wish Ezra a happy birthday, so we all got to have a chat.
Then it was off to school. I stopped Ezra on the way out for a proper 10th Birthday Photo.
School seemed to go well; I’m pretty sure Ezra ate the three or so extra donuts I’d bought so he was happy. When we got home he had a Skype date with his friend Jack, who turned ten two days before Ezra. Here’s Ezra showing Jack a website he likes.
After that the boys had much needed and long overdue dentist appointments. I think I earned the Mother of the Year award for booking a dentist appointment on his birthday, but he didn’t really seem to mind.
For his birthday dinner, he chose his favorite burger joint, Five Guys. We picked up Bruce from the offices of Skybox where he was doing a meet and greet since Google recently acquired the company. Across the street we spied a robot (!) and went over to check it out.
And there was a whole slew of them inside!
After dinner he opened presents — lots of LEGO, exactly what he wanted.
And, of course, there were cupcakes.
His party was planned for the coming weekend, so I did a little test of the kind of cupcakes he wanted, namely, chocolate cake with a chunk of chocolate in the middle. I wasn’t sure how that was going to turn out, so I did some with and some without. I also tried two kinds of frosting — vanilla buttercream and chocolate ganache. Oh, and of course, chocolate mini figures on top.
He lit his own candle, we sang, and four cupcakes were history in about a minute.
A few weeks ago I finally made it to another one of my friend Sonya’s hikes. This one was to Windy Hill Open Space Preserve in Portola Valley. It looked like the weather wasn’t going to cooperate as the skies opened up with pouring rain as we got out of the car at the trail head. Luckily it only lasted about ten minutes, and the rest of the time, although it was foggy, we got away with no more rain.
It’s a beautiful hike and a pretty good workout at 7.6 miles according to my Nike+ App. Everything is very green and mossy right now. We saw five newts crossing the trail at different points, a little bit of water in a stream, and several different kinds of wildflowers emerging for Spring.
And windy is right! It was gusty and cold at the top but the view was spectacular. Here’s a slideshow of my photos.
On Sunday we took a lovely afternoon stroll through Arastradero Preserve. There are several trails, and we’ve been there before for biking, but this time we just wanted an easy loop to minimize complaining from smallest Moisions.
I’m still marveling at how close and easily accessible such spectacular open space is. It’s still “crowded” insofar as there are always other people on the trails, but being out in the open is good for the soul. Here are some pictures from our afternoon.
