The first day of school

Summer has flown by and Xander started first grade today. Yesterday he went over to the school and found out who his teacher was going to be (Ms. Goff) and met her. He's in a kindergarten/first grade mixed class with 13 first graders and 8 kindergartners. Unfortunately none of his friends from last year are in the same class, though the few behavior problems he had last year mostly involved those friends so things are probably set up for the best. He still gets to see them at recess and at his after school program. The mixed class should also work out well since the kindergartners go home about an hour and a half earlier than the first graders so the class size drops by almost half for that last hour. He's been tight-lipped about what went on today but he seemed to enjoy it. Some pictures from this morning are over at Flickr.

SLO Kids

We hit the San Luis Obispo kids museum a few weeks ago. It was a nice little day outing, the kids had fun and came home exhausted. Pictures are over at Flickr as usual.

UPDATE: I just added some videos to the gallery.

The Graduate

Pictures from Xander's kindergarten graduation are now posted over at the usual place. They had the ceremony at the start of the school day on Friday. Each class sang a song, Xander's class sang "What a Wonderful World". One of the other parents got a video of the singing but I haven't been able to get a hold of it yet. After the ceremony we spent some time collecting all the schoolwork that Xander still had in the classroom including the "pancake nest" (they made ceramic bird nests but Xander wasn't happy with how his was turning out so he smashed it and dubbed the result "pancake nest").

Student of the Month

So a few days ago Xander was awarded student of the month for "doing a great job in math" (I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree). I think every kid in the class got recognized for something at some point in the year and this time it was Xander's turn (a couple of other kids got awards also). I just posted the pictures over at Flickr.

Also last week they had a sidewalk chalk festival at school. Here's Xander's rendition of a fish for the festival:

Xander 5.0

On Saturday we hit the beach for Xander's birthday party. My beach day started a bit earlier than expected; we headed over to Goleta beach around nine to scout out spots and seeing that one prime spot was already taken I decided to stay behind and guard a table. I only had to sit there for an hour and a half without much to do, but it was worth it as another table camper showed up about 20 minutes later and was bummed that I was holding the table that I was. Had I not stayed we would not have had the nice shady table that we ended up with.

We ended up with about 13 kids, two "big kids" (as Xander refers to them, otherwise known as Kent and Rudy), and around 25 adults. Having so many adults there definitely made watching the kids much easier; as you can probably imagine, there were kids running every which way between the playground, bird chasing, the beach itself, and the party favors (bubbles). And once the presents were open there were plenty of new toys to test out as well. The cake -- another Lisa "Ace of Cakes" Oglesby show-piece -- and pinata booty helped to fuel the festivities. By the time four o'clock rolled around we were all exhausted and there was a very happy birthday boy.

As usual there are lots of pictures over at Flickr.

Birthday King Visits the Pizza Guru

For Xander's birthday he wanted to go to Pizza Guru for dinner so we had a little family celebration down there. The crown was part of his haul from the birthday celebration at school; though I don't think the meaning of a crown soaked in very well as he was only as demanding as usual, not more demanding as one might expect from a king. And when we were done eating Xander insisted on clearing the table, very un-regal type behavior. While eating pizza and cup-cakes are hard to top I'd say the highlight of the dinner for Xander was doing graffiti in the bathroom.

As usual there are more pictures at Flickr.

It didn't quite go swimmingly

Xander had his first swimming lesson today over at the recreation center on campus. He was excited to be there until he actually got into the water; after about ten seconds he was screaming his head off and despite the teacher's, lesson coordinator's, and my best efforts we couldn't get him back in the water again. Maybe we needed a fourth person like they needed the last time he got shots at the doctor's office. The most he was willing to do was sit on the side and dip his toes in. He has promised that next Sunday he will get in the water and I have a few ideas on how to make things go smoother so hopefully he'll spend more time in the pool next weekend.

What happens at kindergarten stays at kindergarten

So it seems like Xander's first day of kindergarten went smooth. So far the only details that we've been able to get out of him are that the teacher read them a book called the "kissing hand" and that his teacher, Ms. Campbell, is nice. At least he wasn't kicking and screaming like one of the kids. If you look closely at the pictures -- click the picture above to go to the gallery -- you'll see that one of his classmates has a rather interesting hairdo. Lisa only lost it a little bit as we were leaving and I have to admit that all day I was wondering how he was doing in the back of my mind. Hopefully we'll get some more details out of him in the coming days.

Camping PIcs

I finally got around to posting my pictures from the El Capitan camping trip. They're at the usual place.

The Evil Doctor Pork-chop

Xander went to his first movie yesterday. If you've been around him in the past few months then you can probably already guess which one he went to see -- Toy Story 3. He made it through OK, there were only a couple of spots where Lisa had to convince him that they should stay through the whole movie. Me and Quinn were hanging out at home I was half expecting to get a call at any moment from Lisa saying that he had gotten scared and they were on they're way home. But he held his ground -- from Lisa's lap -- and got through the whole movie.

As you can probably guess, he liked it a lot. So much so that when they were walking home Xander told Lisa that we wanted to go see it the next day with me. He then declared it again this morning and, since he agreed to be good all day, I took him. Kent also wanted to see it so he tagged along. He was brave -- talking about Xander now. not Kent -- and though he watched all but the first ten minutes of the movie from my lap he didn't once say that he wanted to leave. I'm just wondering how many more times he's going to try to get people to take him while the movie is in the theaters. And in case you're wondering, the movie is great; even without a four year old sitting in your lap.

SLO Kids Museum

On Saturday we took the kids to the SLO children's museum. Note SLO here means San Luis Obispo, not that we took them to a museum for slow children.



Xander dug for saber tooth tiger bones, among other things. But his favorite part was taking all the packages from the postal truck and loading them on the back of the fire truck. Then he jumped in the cab of the fire truck and drove around delivering them to the kids who were playing in the other exhibits. This went on for about 45 minutes. At one point a texted Lisa, who was with Quinn in another part of the museum, that Xander was going postal.



Quinn really liked the museum too. She was a bit below the museum's target age group but, as we all know, that wasn't going to stop her. Above she is making a mad dash for the museum's farmer's market. Mad dashes are her new thing, she does a baby sprint until she can't remain upright (which is surprisingly far. So far she's only crash landed on carpet.

My favorite part was the human sized bubble exhibit. Below is a video of Xander almost getting the bubble above his head. In my classic fashion I forgot that I can't rotate the camera when shotting videos so you'll have to rotate your head instead. When I tried it I couldn't get bubble much past my waist.



There are some more pictures from the trip posted at Flickr.

His Own Room

I'm about a week posting this but Xander moved into his own room last Saturday. We got his bed moved along with the art museum. So far he sleeps in there until early in the morning when he goes to the potty, then he jumps in the big bed. He keeps asking for these wake up calls for when breakfast is ready though, so I think he might be thinking that he's moved to some sort of resort or something. Plus, at least on the weekends, he never sleeps later than the rest of us so no one will ever be up early enough to give him his wake-up call.

Bike

I'm really late posting this one, but a few weeks ago we got Xander his first bike. It's a Toy Story bike of course. Right now everything we buy for Xander elicits an I want a Toy Story version request. He's been having a blast riding the bike with only a couple of spills so far.

Maybe we should have named him Bam-Bam

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Xander is really liking this game:

3am

I think I need to use the potty
-Xander, 3am in the morning after having been asleep for quite a while with no prompting from us.

Gingerbread

Saturday night a few friends came over and we built a gingerbread house. There's more pictures over at flickr. Also, at one point Xander was dancing the Funky Oven (he cam e up with name on his own). Here's video:


At this point I'm asking for limits on the Christmas cookies that are made since I've already got a tummy ache from the gingerbread and there's still a week and a half to go to Christmas.

Holiday Parade

Last night we took the kids to the holiday parade downtown. We had planned on getting dinner after the parade which was a mistake since the parade was a two hours long -- not the thirty minutes we had expected -- so dinner ended up being at 8:30 instead of 7. And that was after we cut thing short by walking three blocks up State street so that Xander could see Santa at the end of the parade. Xander had a good time; he claims that his favorite part was the giant gingerbread man balloon but based on he's been making us parade around the house as he plays his candy-cane balloon as a horn this morning I'd say that he liked the marching bands better. At least he hasn't asked me to float around the house like a giant gingerbread man balloon yet.

Memorial Day in Temecula

Just a few highlights from our Memorial Day trip to Temecula.

Xander did some trike riding and if you watch the video long enough you can see him pedal all by himself for about 10 seconds.


Tera also rode the trike with entertaining results:


I headed up to Hurkey Creek, which is in the San Jacinto mountains near Idyllwild, on saturday to do some mountain biking. I had been hearing great things about the trails up there and they lived up to their reputation. It was about an hour's drive but totally worth it.



We also had dinner with Hank and Donna on Sunday night which was nice. Other than that we just hung out. Xander's movie for this tip was WallE which he watched five times.