Halloween 2010

So we hit the streets for some trick-or-treating on Sunday night. Xander had a ball while Quinn didn't really know what was going on -- but seemed OK with it. Quinn's only real problem was keeping her hat on; though really it was more my problem as I had to keep bending down to pick it up. Xander's had a great time but the "what a cute cowgirl" remarks that his "Woody from Toy Story" costume elicited at almost half the houses we went to started getting to him. He was getting quite snarky with his responses before long. Lisa and I pulled our batman and batgirl costumes out of storage and after seven or eight years they still fit for the most part. In the end Xander pulled in quite a haul; now the hard part is keeping him from putting himself in a coma by eating all of it at once. There's some pictures over at Flickr as usual.

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.

Hank's 88th

I'll spare you guys the detailed write-up of this weekend since anyone reading this blog was probably there and lived it. I've posted the pictures from this weekend over at Flickr. They're behind the friends and family wall so to see them you'll have to log into Flickr and I have to have marked you as a friend. If you need help let me know.

[Paul: I copied the pictures onto your computer before we left but some of them needed some post-processing, especially the shot of the whole group, so you might want to check them out and download some replacements]

Pre 4th of July trip to PH

I finally got around to posting my pictures of our latest trip to Pleasant Hill over on Flickr.

Colorado

A couple of weeks ago (I lagged quite a bit on getting pictures posted, sorry) we headed to Colorado Springs to visit Lisa's cousins. Some highlights of the trip:



Quinn does a pretty good job on the plane, especially when you have a row to yourself and she can just go crazy in an empty seat. She didn't really complain until we were descending and then she fell asleep.



There can be a lot of thunder storms in Colorado during the summer. Every day we were there we got a deluge in the afternoon.



Emily's kids are really good at wearing Xander out.



When you drive a large SUV with one man, two women and a bunch of kids around town in Colorado you will have to constantly explain that you are not polygamists.



The Colorado Springs zoo is nice, but you will be walking uphill most of the way.



The Falcon trail around the air force academy is fun, but it is strange to have your DI checked and the car searched on the way to a trail. But then the guy at the shop where I rented a bike asked if I had anything strange in my trunk before sending me to that trail. Also I rented a 29'er and didn't really see what the big deal is about. (Julie and Dugan will probably be the only ones to understand that last bit.



Beware rental car upgrades. We upgraded to a dodge charger because the person at the counter though we would have trouble fitting the car seats into a ford focus. Lisa then proceeded to get a speeding ticket 10 miles from the airport on the way home. Oops. At least speeding tickets in Colorado are much cheaper than in California.

As usual I've post pictures over at Flickr. Though I have changed a few things, I've ponied up for the "Pro" account so full size images are now available to grab to make prints form or you can order prints through Flickr. Also I've set the photos so that they can only be viewed by "friends and family". This means that you will have to create an account on Flickr (free) and add me as a contact, at which point I will mark you as family and you can get to the pictures. The Colorado pictures are here. If you view the slide-show be sure to turn on the captions using the "Show info" link at the upper right of the slide-show page.

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.

Mother's Day

The pictures (just a few) that I took on our mother's day camping trip at El Capitan are now up at Flickr.

One small step...

I always forget that I can't turn the camera on its side when taking videos so you'll just have to turn your head sideways when watching it.

Here comes peter cotton-tail

As usual Xander ate too much chocolate Easter morning and was bouncing off the walls more than usual all day. There's picture available at Flickr. Here's another video as well:

Garage Sailing

Here's Xander relaxing in the chair that he decided to spend his proceeds from the garage sale on, completely without any prompting from anyone. Lisa offered to get him some foam swords but he really wanted the chair. Of course he's now decided that he wants the swords too, but now he needs to wait for his night-time dry chart to fill up again. The garage sale was a great success with everything that we thought would sell selling. There was still some stuff to haul off to the thrift store after the sale was over, but not nearly as much as we would have been hauling had we skipped the sale.

I've also updated Flickr with a few new photos.

Maybe we should have named him Bam-Bam

Quinn Does Some Exploring

Just a quick video of Quinn on the move. She kept going into the bedroom to peek at Xander while he was doing his nebulizer treatment. I think she kind of missed him today at Shawn's house.

First Day of Preschool

So Xander really enjoyed his first day at preschool. When Lisa dropped him off it took about two minutes before he had jumped into the sandbox and started playing with some other boys. They sent home a nice collage of pictures from his first day that I've scanned below (click on it for a larger view).



There's some more pre-preshool pictures from this morning over at Flickr.

Sorta Crawling

I've been meaning to post this all week. I'm trying to get a better video of here doing the crawling thing; I'll post it when I get a chance. There's also new photos posted over at Flickr.

Snowcation

So we survived our Snowcation up at Big Bear. Xander really enjoyed himself playing in the snow, sledding on inner tubes and wreaking havoc in the cabin. More pictures available at Flickr.

Quinn is starting to crawl (sort of).

In the lats couple days, little Q has been doing her best to move around on all fours. So far, she can just sort of scoot and go backwards. But her tummy is up off the ground when she is on all fours and she has a very determined look in her eye. She grunts and squeals, and gets frustrated quickly, as she tries to get it in gear and move. Any day now she will be crawling — and it is pretty amazing to watch her development towards this big milestone. If and when we can catch something on camera we'll have a new post.

Who's Been Complaining About No Posts?

More pictures available at Flickr. I've been posting photos over there on a regular basis but haven't been sending out any notifications. I'll try and post something here when I get new pictures posted over there in the future.