Fun Zoo Weekend

On Friday evening, we headed back up to Ventura to spend a bit of time with Uncle Bill and Aunt Patty. They're home from their trip to Seattle, but since they're moving back north next month, we wanted to see them again.

It was Friday night pizza night - seriously, they could go into business selling their amazing creations. Another friend and her daughter came over, too, and Cora and Violet loved playing with her.

On Saturday, we went to the Santa Barbara Zoo together, where Uncle Bill got up close and personal with a VERY large snake.

It was a glorious day - really, what day in Santa Barbara isn't?

Cora kept a close hand on Twix (the giant Owletta in her arms) so she didn't become lion food.

We decided to take the plunge and feed the giraffe! Aunt Patty and I shared a helping of lettuce with a very tall new friend of ours.

Gotta love baby giraffes...

...and young, playful meerkats!

We went down the street to a fabulous Mexican restaurant Aunt Patty found by using Yelp on her phone. I think we now have an after-zoo pit stop for our every trip from now on!










So yummy, and such big portions - we took home plenty of food for another meal for the four of us.

When we got back to Ventura, we relaxed for a bit, and then Stace, Cora and I walked to the beach. It was cool enough for jeans and sweatshirts, but still enjoyable.

Fabulous Friday

On Friday morning, it was Stace's turn to be serenaded by adorable kindergartners at the annual "Donuts with Dad" event.

The songs were actually the same as the ones sang for the moms, with *slightly* different wording.

The kids and dads had donuts and made a paper craft. Mrs. Hawthorne had prepared paper helicopters for the dads and kids to cut out and fold. They then went to the playground to fly them.

Stace said he loved his morning with his littlest girl.

I, meanwhile, had some of my mama friends over for a LuLaRoe clothing party. It was kind of like a Pampered Chef thing, except that you could try on the comfy and cute skirts, tops and dresses, and buy what was on hand from the consultant. It's an interesting business model, in which the items are only available from the consultants, rather than being available in stores or by mail order.

I found the brand at a similar party held by a friend last month, and am very happy with my purchases.

After school, we went to a birthday party for our friend Charlie. Patrice, Geoff, Emily, Charlie and Tommy have moved to a new house, and we loved seeing it and checking out their beautiful pool.

Day In The Life

With the school year quickly drawing to a close, I'd better sneak in a Day in the Life post, from the year I had a third-grader and kindergartner (or, a 9- and 6-year-old).

6:00 My alarm goes off and I wake up by listening to the news for 10 minutes, before getting up and sitting down with my coffee and devotional.
6:45 - I wake up Cora, who ignored her alarm when it went off 10 minutes earlier.
7 - I get showered and dressed, and Cora gets dressed and makes her bed. When I emerge at 7:20, she's having cereal she got out for herself. I get Violet up and bring her to the bathroom, and encourage her to wake up and get dressed.

7:40 a.m. - Cora brushes her teeth and both girls get their shoes on.
7:47 - We head off to school, both girls on their scooters.
7:55 a.m. - With a kiss at the gate, Cora rushes off to join her line. I put Cora's scooter and helmet in Christina's car, and she and I leave for our exercise walk with the kindergartners.

In the photo, they're watching squirrels run past on the oak branches. That is the joy of having littles with you on your walk - you take more notice of the birds, reptiles and rodents you're passing.

9 a.m. - Christina drives us all to our house, and I keep Melanie. We switch off with the girls once or twice a week, and since Wednesday is my volunteer day, it makes sense for me to have them both and then take them to school.

After Violet makes her bed and changes for school, the girls play and make themselves lemonade to drink from the big canister of powder. Meanwhile, I get ready and clean up from the morning rush.

10: 20 - I learned on Facebook that Chick-Fil-A is offering free breakfasts on Wednesdays in June. Melanie wasn't interested in her free chicken biscuit - bingo! Lunch for Cora!
10:42 a.m. - Time to head to kindergarten.

11:15 a.m. - I'm settled in to my familiar spot in Mrs. Hawthorne's class, the back table. Here I take the children's folders and stuff them with the paperwork that is going home, including the day's paper penny. The children earn a penny a day for good behavior; taking away the penny is one of the main disciplinary actions in kindergarten. When the kids collect 10, they bring them in and get to go to the treasure chest.

12:09 p.m. - It's Violet's turn to be in a reading group with Mrs. Hawthorne. This activity is one of five options during what the teachers call "Daily Five" time. Other options include "read to self" with books from their book box; "word work" activities that involve letters; "work on writing" using their journals; and Dreambox or Raz-Kids on the laptops/tablets.

I sneaked out of the class to visit Cora at her lunchtime. She was thrilled with her lunch surprise, and even gave me an appreciative hug.

I then watched her play soccer for a couple of minutes. She plays soccer every day at recess and lunch, and often tells of hard slide tackles that leave holes and grass stains on her knees. Cora goes after everything full-force.

1:15 - When the kindergartners go to recess, I take my leave. Every other week I go help in Mrs. Breneman's class, but this wasn't my week to do that. I go to CVS to get a prescription and stop into Ralphs for some fruit and milk. I get home in time to get everything put away and head back to school.

2:30 - Violet and the line of kinders comes walking to the back gate, while Cora and the third-graders have their PE time. It's nice that if we're standing at the back gate waiting, we can at least be watching our kids play.

2:40 - The big kids get out of school, and we load up in the car with a couple of extras. Sophia and Riley are coming home with us for a swimming play date Cora organized.

This idea started a few weeks ago when Cora was grousing about me directing her to do something. What could she be in charge of, she wanted to know. I suggested she plan a pool party, and she jumped on it, with invitations and snack ideas.

The afternoon was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed chatting with the moms who came and stayed. Well done, Cora, in planning a fun after-school activity!

6:30 p.m. - Our friends have gone home and Cora continued on her winning streak. She jumped into the shower, got dressed and insisted on making our dinner. We enjoyed teriyaki chicken bites, brown rice and carrots.

7 p.m. - The girls play, and Violet does a homework activity. Cora decides to skip her homework and use a homework pass, since she has several left and this is the final week of homework for the school year.

8 p.m. - The girls have their dessert while working on the "God Time cards" they get each week from church. The sheets have four devotional activities, and when they turn them in, they get a prize.

8:15 - The girls get their teeth brushed and head toward bed for some reading time.

8:40 - Stace and I take turns saying goodnight to each girl, and with all that swimming they did, they both were asleep by 9. That hasn't been the norm lately, so it was a nice change. After a bit of final tidying and reading, Stace and I go to bed too, around 10:15.

A Lazy Ride

We enjoyed a calm and peaceful Memorial Day on Monday; it's always lovely to have a three-day holiday weekend together.

Stace finished up our latest DIY energy-saving project, solar screens for the east-facing playroom windows and sliding door. He also has made one for Cora's room, which bakes during our summer afternoons.

When he finished up, we got the bikes out and rode to the mall for dinner. It was a gorgeous evening - actually, the SClarita weather was beautiful all weekend.

Some photos from dinner - can you believe how grownup Cora looks? My goodness, she's beautiful!

And Violet, sweet girl, looking less and less baby-faced.

A cycling selfie - nice smile, Violet.















Here is Stace's screening result - three solar screens for the windows, and a curtain of the screening material, which is meant to block out 90% of the sun's heat.

Yes, you can see through them from the inside, though from the outside it works as a privacy screen, too. We're hopeful this project will be helpful this summer, along with the whole house fan, in limiting our use of our central A/C.

Memorial Day Weekend

We were lucky enough to spend one more Memorial Day weekend in our Ventura beach house, while Uncle Bill and Aunt Patty were in Washington for a long weekend trip.

We "house-sat" for them Friday through Sunday, and on Friday evening we walked down to the beach and caught this glorious scene.

On Saturday, Colleen and Rigo came up to spend some time with us, and we all took a long bike ride down to the pier for lunch.

We went down the beach, where it was a bit cool for frolicking in the waves. The children needed a warm, sandy blanket.












Rigo's birthday was Sunday, so we celebrated Saturday with a barbecue and cake. It was such a blessing to enjoy Bill and Patty's beautiful home with great friends!

Week in Review

For the second time in three weeks, Stace and I had a weekend conference and my parents had the girls. This time, they all went to visit Uncle Bill and Aunt Patty on Saturday and played at the beach.

Meanwhile, we had a conference at church on a new material we'll be going through called "Rooted."

All our church's Life Groups will go through this 10-week course, with daily readings and homework, in the fall. Because I'm a Life Group leader, I was asked to attend the retreat to get familiar with the course, which goes through the basics of the Christian faith. We enjoyed getting to know the people at our table during the retreat, and the free meals.

In the evening, the girls were still out in Ventura, so Stace and I walked to Granary to rent movies.





While I helped in the church nursery
Sunday morning, Stace took the girls to the Queen's English British classic car show in the San Fernando Valley. Here are the girls in front of a Morris Minor, the car that closely resembles the Calico Critters "cherry cruiser" Cora recently bought.

It would be nice to say that Stace and his girls enjoyed their trip equally, but, in all honesty, the girls weren't as enthusiastic about checking out the cars as Stace had hoped. Oh, well...

On Monday, we met up with our Life Group at our church's homeless ministry at the Newhall campus.

Every Monday, church volunteers meet to serve a meal to the homeless and offer donated clothing. Every other week, a shower truck and hairstylists are on hand to assist with that type of hygiene.

Cora was a bit nervous about the idea, but when she found that she could be helpful bagging donated bagels to hand out, she jumped right in. It was a great experience.

Violet had her six-year well check this week, and she is very healthy.

She is now just over 40 pounds, putting her in the 22nd percentile. Height-wise, she is now 41 1/4 inches tall, a solid three inches taller than one year ago. She has moved up the charts from 1st percentile last year to 2nd percentile this year. Progress, right?!

The students had a half-day on Thursday so the teachers could finish getting ready for Open House.

We invited Sam and Riley over for lunch and playtime, and the launched right into cookie-baking. They did an excellent job making chocolate chip cookies, on their own, and did a decent job cleaning up, too. I guess there are some benefits to having big kids!

On Friday, the children had a flagpole ceremony, and "twins day." Violet was a little bummed about not having twins day plans, but I encouraged her to just wear her kindergarten t-shirt, since it was a Friday anyway. (While Cora contentedly wore her Kinder shirt every Friday, Violet doesn't love wearing hers.)

She was very excited after school to tell me that she had TWO twins at school, who also wore black leggings with their class shirts. Here she is with one of her classmates, Krista.

Cora, meanwhile, had a true twin in Sophia, since Sue asked if she could pick up matching t-shirts for these two cat-lovers. For just a few dollars, this is a shirt Cora will get a lot of use out of!

Open House

How can it be this time of year already? Open House? That means the school year is almost over!

But, first things first. We all enjoyed oohing and aaahing at the girls' classrooms Thursday night during their school's Open House.

Here's Violet and Mrs. Hawthorne; we've very much enjoyed having her as Violet's kindergarten teacher! The whole class has grown and learned so much this year.

In Cora's class, we were able to see a Power Point presentation she created about herself.

Cora has loved having Mrs. Breneman for a teacher, and she also has learned so much this year - multiplication, division, cursive writing, and more.

Speaking of writing, I was amazed to find this gem in Cora's homework folder. The task was to compare the weather in Seattle and San Diego, and then write about which climate you would prefer.

Cora didn't answer with a simple couple of sentences. No, she crafted a three-stanza poem:

"I would like to live in San Diego,
Where it never snows or pours.
The grass is always leafy green, 
and you can dive to the ocean floors.

"I would like to live in Seattle,
Where the snow is a beautiful sight.
It may go to your ankles,
But it glistens through the night.

"I would like to live in both places
The beaches to wade
Or the snowy, frozen ponds.
But then, I'm here, and I like it here today."

On a related note, we recently learned that Cora passed the test admitting her into her district's Gifted and Talented Education program, known as GATE.

One of just four third-graders in her school to pass - out of about 75 - she gained entry based on her verbal (writing) ability. We're proud of this girl! We had an after-school ice cream when she came home with the letter.

Cherry Picking

While listening to the farm talk at Underwood last week, I remembered cherry picking in Leona Valley, and specifically how I hadn't taken the girls in several years.

I researched online to see if any of the handful of family orchards up there were open, and found that two would be open on Friday. It was a free Friday after school, and Christina was also available to come along, so we made plans.















The first orchard we visited was just perfect!

There were loads of sweet, juicy, ripe cherries everywhere we looked. It was a challenge to not fill the buckets - at $5 a pound, two full buckets would have been a pretty penny.

But they were so delicious!

All these photos are from the first orchard - the second place wasn't really remarkable, and the cherries weren't nearly as sweet.
But it did have some children's play equipment, and all told, it was a fun activity for an afternoon out with friends.