Birthday Cake

Made it myself!

I had to order the witch cake pan on-line as it was discontinued by Wilton ages ago. Anthony was SO excited when it arrived. He is completely infatuated with the Wizard of Oz.

This was my first experience doing a Wilton character cake. I think it turned out pretty well, and really wasn't as time consuming as I had expected. The top looks pretty darn amazing, if I do say so myself. The sides, not so much.

B is for Banana

Letter of the week at preschool is "B". We spent a LONG time listing all the things that begin with B. Despite some other good ones (book, Bonanza, biplane) Anthony decided he wanted to take a banana to preschool. Alas, he wouldn't take a plastic banana, he wanted a REAL one.

That poor banana was loved to death. He came home at the end of the day looking forward to eating it. He was a bit disappointed to learn that it was more suitable for banana bread than eating.

Afraid of the Dark

Anthony's fear of the dark is getting worse and worse. He sleeps with his light turned on fairly high. No real problem there, but it was a bit of a drag sharing a hotel room with him.

Then he woke in the night a few nights ago complaing about "the dark out there". Referring, of course, to the hallway. I turned that light on and went back to bed. Bob doesn't like the hallway light reflecting in his eyes, so fortunately that's not a common occurrence.

"Who is going to sleep with me?" is often a code for, "I need another stuff animal." Its hard to remember that in the night. Sometimes a parent end up in his bed when another teddy would do. (Notice he is also sleeping with his parrot umbrella.)

Birthday Party #2

Our 2nd birthday party of the weekend was at the park. It was a great time!



Our birthday party schedule may seem ridiculous, but its temporary! Anthony is one of five four year olds at day care. There are 3 three-year-olds. Eight kids total in his peer group. Five of them have birthdays in a 2 1/2 week time period. How's that for crazy stats? Of course, Robert's birthday is at the end of October!

BIG Day

We had a BIG day today. We started off with a bike ride to the firestation for the firefighter's annual pancake breakfast. Anthony watched the rescue demonstrations, (sort-of) put out a fire with a fire extinguisher and got to spray a real fire hose. I liked the "safety house" where he learned to dial 911 and crawled through a smoke-filled room and out the window with the assistance of a firefighter. His analysis of the morning, "But I thought I was going to have breakfast with a fireman!" Serving us breakfast (in t-shirts) evidently wasn't good enough.

After lunch we saw Lion King in the theater. Anthony got a bit restless, but enjoyed the movie. Of course, now we're having a lot of discussions about WHY Mufasa died and EXACTLY what happened. At least they didn't off the mother in this one, unlike all the other Disney movies.

Our day ended with Austin's birthday party, the first of five in five weeks. He bounced up a storm and had a great time.

Let's just say Anthony went to bed pretty easily!

Fun with the Family

One of the nicest parts of a family wedding (besides watching them get hitched) is getting to visit with family we seldom get to see. The top picture is Bob and his cousin Travis swinging Anthony. (Travis and his siblings were Bob's closert cousins growing up.) The bottom picture is Anthony and Joshua blowing raspberries at Travis' wife Shelly. Lovely.

(Considering how much we hauled around the camera, we didn't get THAT many good pictures.)

Fun with Joshua

We took a few days off last weekend to head to Colorado for Bob's cousins wedding. Of course, we made plenty of time to visit with Grandma and Joshua, too.

Saturday morning we headed off to a Jefferson County festival. Anthony worked up the courage to hand a post-card to the bomb squad robot. He was pretty freaked out by it at first. He and Joshua had a great time playing on all the bounce house inflatables. Then we watched the Sheriffs' dogs go through their paces. Those puppies were VISCIOUS.

Saturday afternoon we headed down to Ft. Collins. We swam with Grandma, various Aunts and his new cousin Emerson (age 2). Then we had a dance party in Grandma's room, an early dinner and off to bed.

It was a great day! I loved the stair-step cousins. Anthony is exactly a year older that Joshua and two years older than Emerson. He took great care of Emerson--every time she dropped her lovey bear, he made sure she got it right back.

Lindsey's Wedding

I was a bit nervous taking Anthony to Lindsey's wedding. I vividly remember his last family wedding--we left out the side aisle while the bride walked down the center aisle.

What a difference two years makes. Before the ceremony I explained to Anthony EXACTLY what was going to happen and exactly what I expected of him. He rose to the occasion. The only faux pas--as the bride's father sat down directly in front of him, Anthony shrieked (in his best three-year old shriek), "I CAN'T SEE!!" Bob shifted, Grant shifted, problem solved. (Fortunately he decided that the bagpiper was NOT a pirate and was not scary.)

He had a great time at the reception. The kids ran around on the dance floor while the adults ate. (You can see him learning to slide from the bigger kids.) He danced with the bride, he had cake. Really, what wasn't there to like.

Eight Years

Art and Wine Festival

Today we went downtown to Mountain View's annual arts and wine festival. As usual the ratio of junk to good stuff was pretty high, and Anthony generally doesn't enjoy shopping so we headed over to the kids' area.

I bought a handful of bounce house tickets, but Anthony was fascinated by the climbing wall. He wasn't quite old enough (you had to be four), but the guy let him climb anyway. The guy actually did a good job with Anthony; he taught him how to climb and helped him with some of the handholds. Anthony made it about 2/3 the way up the wall when he decided it was too high.

Palo Alto Airport Day

Today we headed up to the Palo Alto Airport for their annual airport day. We had a nice surprise in store for us. Bob took me over to meet his friend Paul, from the Beech Boys. They were just getting ready to take off for their big formation flight over the airport and he invited us to ride along in the lead plane. It was pretty neat. (Anthony was unimpressed. We'd just started talking about lunch and he didn't understand why he was riding the coolest Young Eagle flight EVER instead of eating a hotdog with mustard.)

In addition to planes to watch, they had volunteers from the Junior Museum showing off animals. I liked the hedgehog the best. They even had pony rides. The pony rides was by far Anthony's favorite part, we even let him ride twice--the pony once and the big horse once.

About lunch... After our airpline ride I got Anthony his hot dog with mustard. I ate off the MoGo truck. It was AMAZING. It was my first experience with gourmet catering truck food and I was impressed. The menu looked a bit strange, but I followed Bob's advice and took a leap of faith. It was worth it!

Long Awaited Day

Yesterday was a day that Anthony had been waiting for a LONG time. The first day of preschool. I hadn't realized how much he loved his time at Children's Center until he didn't have it all summer.

Bob went to "Meet the Teachers" last week, I was stuck at work. This year sounds a lot more academic. Each week there will be a letter of the week and on Wednesday they bring in ONE thing that starts with that letter. There will be a wood-working project that each child will get to do, and then show off to the class. Meanwhile, everyone else get to practice anticipation.

We're definitely working on sharing. Specifically, the "A" on the circle time rug. Last year Anthony sat on the A every single day, and the one time he didn't get it, he was a bit bent out of shape. (A is for ME!) Well, there are 3 other kids who start with A in his class. Today he sat on "G", but he didn't seem too upset about it.

A Jolly Holiday

Labor day felt more like the holiday weekend that I'd been anticipating. We invited the Donahues and took our kayak out to Shoreline Lake for a paddle and a picnic. It was perfect, we took turns paddling and those that weren't in the boat were picnicking on the shore or playing on the playground.

We need to take the boat out to Shoreline more often. Anyone want to come play with us?

(Elkhorn Slough is next! Any takers?)

When we got in the car, the first thing Anthony asked was how long the drive was and whether it would make his tummy throw up. He is just not a car riding kid.

Watsonville Airshow

Alas, it was NOT the weekend we had planned.

The plan was brilliant: fly into the Watsonville Airshow (in formation with the Beech Boys) Friday evening. Then we'd do the spaghetti dinner, the evening airshow and camp overnight next to the airplane. In the morning we'd watch Daddy fly the airshow, enjoy the rest of the show and drive home. This was an event Bob had wanted to do for YEARS.

How it happened: Anthony got Grayson's cold. We decided that Bob would fly Friday (he was already committed) and camp overnight. Then Anthony and I would drive up Saturday morning so we could still watch Daddy fly. Then, Anthony developed an ear infection overnight Friday. No airshow, just a trip to the pediatrician to get antibiotics. A bit of a bummer.