All the News...

There's been so much going on lately. Now that the dust is beginning to settle I can start to catch up on my blog again. Holiday has ended her school year as a kindergartner and now declares everywhere she goes that she's a first grader. She has also had her dance recital, which turned out to be fantastic. A whole lot of work to get to that end of the year moment. The theme was summer blockbuster so everything was a song or scoring from a summer movie. Her songs were a tap number to Chim-Chim-e-nee from Mary Poppins and her ballet number was from scoring from the Harry Potter movies, called Hedwig's theme. I really enjoyed the other numbers as well. The cow girls from Footloose, the two tappers from Happy, the hip-hop class's 'stanky leg', the glow-in-dark tappers (that was really awesome), the 9-to-5 girls, the Pink Panthers, the Great Gatsby's flapper girls and on and on. Now Holiday is going to summer camp with her same Kids Co group. So she's been enjoying the sprinkler days and bring your bike days. The field trips start this week. She's so tired by the time we get home. My office moved to Ballard last week. Not all our systems are up and running yet and the building is not even close to being finished either. The interiors are done we just have to wait till they get the phones and internet up and running. It'll be great when they finish the bathroom on our floor too. I'm thinking in the next month a lot of that stuff will get finished up. I have all sorts of places to check out on my walks now and have real amenities in the area that I haven't had in years. Johnny's daycare is two blocks from work so David drops Johnny and me off at the same time and I just meet him there after work, so that works out pretty good. It will take me about 20 minutes to walk to Holiday's school, so that works out pretty good too. Johnny has been working on potty training and we had a breakthrough over the weekend. There was a couple times yesterday morning when he was in just undies that he peed a little, stopped, told me that he had an accident and then I put him on the potty to finish. He would say he can't over and over, so I left him there to try while I got a clean pair of undies. About 15 seconds later I'd hear him yell that he did it and sure enough he did. So I told David that when he got home and we've been just getting him on the potty and leave for a minute and he'll do it. So apparently he likes privacy (which is not a bad thing). I told his daycare that today so we'll see how he does. He really wants to go to Holiday's summer camp but he has to be potty trained in order to do so. So we're using that as motivation. We tried pull-ups for a while but he would just pee in them and not say anything so we use undies at home now. We'll extend the use of undies as he improves. I've also got loads of pictures to post so I will get to that when I can.

Odds and Ends

We're definitely getting to the end of the school year stuff now. We already did pictures for dance class. The kids and I rode the bus there and back. They don't get to do that very often so they're usually really good when it does happen. But since everyone was on time we got the pictures done before our time slot was up so we got home fairly timely. We had the annual carnival at Holiday's school. They got to hold little bunnies at the petting farm section. Holiday had a baby bunny (that she named Fluffy) and Johnny had a much larger and hairier bunny. They enjoyed the free popcorn. Holiday won cupcakes during the cake walk. The young lady assisting that activity was all business, telling everyone where to stand, stamping hands and making sure the winner got their winnings. I'd guess about age 8-9. Holiday's art club has come to a close and she's bringing all sorts of completed school work home so I need to sort all that out. She's had her combination dance class with some of the younger classes so they can get used to the idea of taking turns on stage and being quiet while watching another class. I swear both of them are taller. They both play so hard that they wear out their shoes on a regular basis, but I'm okay with that. Johnny can recognize letters pretty well now and at least can count 1-12 but then gets lost in the teens but still ends with 20. He's getting there. Holiday has learned so much this year.  They both like educational activity books so we'll probably keep going with that during the summer. We'll keep going to the library and focus back on reading as much as we can. Once dance class comes to a close swim lessons will start up which will be a nice change of pace. We will also need to focus on getting Johnny potty trained too. He's starting to tell us when he needs to go, but only does that half the time. Most of the time when we set him on the potty nothing happens. Every kid is different and Holiday was not like that. I think Johnny will be more of a challenge. David's work has been pretty busy but has been able to break out the skateboard a little now that it's warmed up. He still goes golfing every weekend provided that The First Tee isn't impeding his round. I've been working on fitness lately and have managed to drop around 5 pounds. I've also been working in the garden a lot and man alive...I'm going to have grapes. I'll have to look through my recipe books for stuff, maybe grape leaves too. I spent 15 minutes last night just weaving the vines back into the arbor so they aren't blocking the sun for the peppers and David can mow around it now. I just transplanted the pumpkins and Johnny helped. He helped with leveling the new soil, making little mounds, digging little holes, and then planting the pumpkins. Holiday and Johnny helped with all the new flowers we planted. They both like helping with the watering too. It's seems every year something different does remarkably well (like the grapes) and then other things slack off. We'll see how the pumpkins and zucchini do, they seemed to be late starters this year. The basil and romaine are good. The peppers are kind of "iffy" too.

San Juan Island Vacation

We're all still pretty busy here in the Anderson house. Holiday just got her costume for her dance recital coming up. It's very flashy, black and gold with lots of gold glitter. The photo shoot for her dance class is this weekend. Her after school art club program will be wrapping up soon for the year and the last day of school is June 16th. So she has a couple of field trips, school carnival, class picnic, and field day to look forward to before school's out. May and June are simply busy months for us, especially when birthdays start up in April. I've signed both the kids up for swim lessons this summer at our local community center so that will be a good change for them. We just did a short family vacation over Memorial Day weekend on San Juan island. We stayed in a little cabin that's privately owned so we were basically by ourselves with beach access and everything. The kids slept in built-in bunk beds which was exciting for them. Holiday referred to her bunk as her bedroom. It had a stocked kitchen (except for food of course), towels, linens, books, dvds and games.  We fired up the wood stove the first night, it was pretty cloudy that day. The next day was way nice. We did lots of tidepooling and driving around. We had several meals in the city part of Friday Harbor which were all really good. Naturally we checked out both toy stores in town and the used book store. We saw the lavender farm, the alpaca farm and spent quite a bit of time at the sculpture park. I would be remiss if I did not mention we got ice cream down by the ferry terminal. The kids liked that part a lot. They really enjoyed the ferry ride too. Although the next time we go to the San Juans we getting reservations, because...yikes! That was a long wait to go home. Not a hardship though since there was plenty to do in town. Since we were there on Memorial Day we got to see the local parade which is not much of a parade but more of a ceremony. All the vets were dressed up. The Auxiliary was represented as well as the local boy scout troop. They had a group of 8 eight men (various ages) dressed up as union soldiers. Old guys, young guys and in between. That was pretty cool. Then bringing up the rear was a middle-aged women in black period dress carrying an American flag folded up. I have to guess she was depicting Betsey Ross. There was the usual singing of the Star Spangled Banner, lots of bag pipes, an address from the military rep and the auxiliary rep, reading of names of local vets, fallen and widows, poems, prayers, boy scout troops setting flowers in the harbor, singing of God Bless America, 21 gun salute (that made Holiday jump), taps and a single cannon blast. They had warned us about the cannon blast before things got going. Holiday was really worried about that. David and Johnny had left before it started to stay with the car in case we got on an earlier ferry. In hind sight, that was the best decision because there would have been no way Johnny would have been able to stick that out. But it was an educational experience for Holiday, she asked a lot of questions about what was going on.

So...whew! That was a busy but fun weekend that I'm trying to catch up on while we're gearing up for all the other stuff coming up soon.

Pictures - Science Fair - Johnny's Birthday sooooo busy lately

This is from Holiday's last field trip to the Seattle Asian Art Museum that David got to go chaperoning with.

They get to do all sorts of fun things at her school...even flying.

There's some rainbow action in the background there.

Another near hole-in-one for David.

Here's Holiday's scientific illustration work.

Holiday at a friend's birthday party.  Love the unicorn headband.

The many funny faces of Holiday Rose.

On our back deck.

More funny faces.

They both really like playing in the sand box.

  

Johnny's birthday party at the bowling alley at the HUB at UW.

He had a blast and it was the nicest bowling facility I have ever seen. Hopefully no one becomes a bowling snob after this.  But the bowling shoes practically gleamed. Bowling shoes never gleam they're usually gross.

Dexter and Johnny (with Audrey in the background) waiting for impact.

And there it is (you can tell from my expression as well).

Holiday sportin' some bowling shoes.

Cake close up. Those are jelly bean rocks. Too cool.

I had to make sure Johnny didn't fall into his cake when he blow out the candles.

  

Johnny's proud face when everyone is singing Happy Birthday.

Now Holiday is up...

She was the only kid to get a strike.

Aunt Toni with Johnny and his cousin Ayden (who won the kids round).

Okay, so a lot has happened and all the while David and I have been really busy at work too. I think my ear has recovered from the rupture. At least the drainage stopped after 2 weeks. I can't tell if my hearing is any worse because it was bad in that ear to begin, so I don't think that's going to be a life changer at all. I messed up my back doing some weeding so I was really out of it for 2 weeks. I figured out it the low squat with bending at the waist action that did it. If I wear my dirt clothes and sit my butt on the ground that seems to circumvent it. So basically as low as I can get. I don't have a problem sitting on the ground. I just needed a way to be able to get the job done. Holiday had a science fair at her school which was pretty cool. Maybe next year she can do an individual project.  K-2 do class projects and hers was building castles out of paper towel and toilet paper tubes. They had a lot of other art work to see too. We got to see a little of the older grades as well. Many classrooms have classroom pets/critters. Holiday's had snails in a terrarium. Others had snakes, big beetles and tarantulas. It was pretty exciting. Johnny just turned 3 years old. His party at the bowling alley was a blast. He had a little celebration dance every time he knocked over a pin. We measured him and he's grown a whole inch since we checked at Christmas. He's gaining on Holiday. On Sunday David surprised me with Mother's Day brunch at a fancy hotel. It was pretty good. Although Holiday needs to take it easy on the fondue. She got chocolate everywhere. :) Yesterday was Johnny's check-up which he was fine and perfectly healthy. He just got nervous about it once he learned they were for him. I asked him about it afterwards and he seemed pretty bitter about having to go see the doctor. He kept saying, "Mommy, I'm NOT sick!" 

Things will be busy for us for a while. The Rainier Dance Center is starting to hone in on the recital next month so will have costume fittings, pictures and recital tickets to deal with. Then all the year end stuff at Holiday's school will happen. Holiday's summer camp will relocate for the summer and come back to Adams in the fall when school starts so that will be a big change. My office is permanently relocating to Ballard some time in the next month too. That will be a good change though since I'll be two blocks away from Johnny's daycare. I'll be more of a face at the kids' locations which is a good thing. So busy, busy but the good kind of busy. Looking forward to a summer of swimming lessons.

Happy 6th Birthday Holiday!

Holiday at school.

Johnny during the Easter egg hunt.

After the Easter egg hunt.

The box their new chair came in.

They enjoyed it while they could.

Bouncy house birthday party!

Birthday skate from Grandma. All geared up.

  

Awww...Johnny wants to help.

Holiday's Birthday party. Birthday girl has her hair in a bun drinking lemonade.

Holiday's friend Theo with Johnny. His sister Molly next to Johnny.

All the kids started doing this after Johnny got up there.

Pretty funny.

More Children's Museum.

Johnny playing with Anna.

Anderson and Preston family.

This is a blog-worthy picture.  David's near hole in one. You can see the path of travel from the dew on the green how close this was. He likes to golf early on Sunday mornings.

Holiday's party was a big success, almost 30 people. Family and lots of friends.  The kids had a blast playing in the different rooms.  Holiday played tea party with Anna quite a bit.  She played restaurant with Uncle Drew.  It was hard to get Johnny to play with other stuff besides the train set.  But I think he liked playing at the water pool, the construction area and cog city quite a bit too. I started getting sick the next day but ultimately did not see that end game coming.  My allergies were really bad last week and I caught a cold virus by Sunday.  Sunday night around 9 pm I noticed ear pain.  By 2 am Monday morning my eardrum had burst. It's scary, panicky pain and I hope no one else experiences this. It sounds like tearing inside your head. It starts feeling a little better after it does it because all the pressure is released. I knew what was happening though and it still freaked me out. It hasn't happened in 20 years, but I've gone through this a number of times. I just knew when I got everyone up in the morning I needed to go to the doctor so they can say, "Yup...eardrum rupture.  Here's your antibiotics." It took a couple days for the yucky stuff to drain and my eyes were both infected too. Monday I could think of bad words for how I felt. I'm feeling a lot better today. I just won't be able to hear much out of my right ear for a couple months or go swimming. Water on busted eardrum = bad.

Easter Pictures

Painting time!

Playing Easter Cowboy.

Finding eggs in the back yard.

Wearing boots...

...and pajamas.

Mommy! Look at the eggs!

Daddy playing with Holiday ribbon wand she got for Easter.

Silly Daddy!

They both had quite a haul.

We went to the Rainier Beach Community Center for a Easter Egg the day before and the kids had a blast. It was fantastic and it was a free event on top of that. One of Holiday's eggs had one of top tier prizes, a free swim pass at the pool there. So the bigger scale Easter egg hunts have their value as well. This last weekend we went to Keri's kids' birthday party, Clifton and Sable. It was bouncy house madness and the kids reveled in it. Johnny couldn't manage all of it though, he was just too little. It was funny to see him scream down the slides. He didn't want to leave the bouncy houses to have cupcakes. I thought for sure they'd sleep in the car on the way home but they were too amped.