Other than running a couple of errands, we spent the majority of the day working on our yard today.  Stuart and I had purchased a crepe myrtle, some star jasmine, a dwarf apple tree and a couple of hydrangea few days ago, and the plan was to get them all planted.  While I focused on digging out some old plants and planting the new ones, Stuart also worked on building the barrier around the air condition system.  It was like a big puzzle that Stuart had to measure, cut and build, and it was not easy.  Other than just some final touches, the structure is up and I am thrilled with that.  At the end of the day, most of the plants are where they should be now, and we hope they will continue to grow.  One more thing we also did was mulched up the area where the wooden stairs were.  The old broken stairs used to lie on the slope in the yard and we always felt that it was an unsafe area to walk around, so Stuart removed it a week ago.  We definitely like the new look without the stairs. 

      Logan’s school had an Open House on Tuesday, so we all came home and had dinner early, then we headed to his school.  We were one of the first families to arrive at Logan’s classroom.  We said hello to his teacher, took a picture of Logan and her, then we looked around the classroom at Logan’s and the kids’ work on the walls and on their desks.  My Art Vista poster was displaying quite nicely in the room.  While Stuart and I were admiring all the activities the students had done throughout the year, the boys were more into actually drawing after asking the teacher for a paper.  Afterward, we collected Logan’s portfolios from his desk.  There was a binder of book reports with drawings that the class had read during the year; Logan has a very nice penmanship.  There were also the Art Vista portfolio I made with his artwork, and a cute collection of his classmates’ writing and drawing of “Why Logan is a Star”.  The class was obviously given suggestions as many of them wrote “Logan is a star because he receives many Gold Slips” or “Logan stands quietly in line” or “Logan is good in Hula Tag”, but each classmate made their own “one of a kind” drawings.  The boys and I went through the booklet slowly that evening and some drawings were excellent and funny.  This booklet must have taken a long time in making and we love it!

    After visiting Logan’s classroom, we also walked through two kindergarten classrooms and three second-grade classrooms.  We said hello to the teachers and just scanned around the rooms for the work the students had done.  Connor ran into several of his current classmates who would be attending the school in the upcoming year too, so Connor had fun chatting with them.  At the end, we also walked through the library and the computer room before we ended our first Open House visit.

    Connor had a busy day today as he had two birthday parties to attend; they both were for his current classmates.  Connor was very excited about these parties; other than writing birthday cards to them, he even made some drawings.  This morning we started with Dylan’s party at Golfland.  Connor happily said goodbye to daddy and Logan as we left the house.  We were the first guest to arrive, and Connor followed Dylan and his bigger brother Anthony to get a club and onto the course.  Dylan was not interested to play; he just wanted to watch us and carry the present we gave him.  Anthony started the first hole and Connor followed behind.  He listened to all my verbal advice, and patiently made his attempts to hit the ball.  He took his time hitting gently and had some good contacts.  Later more friends arrived and it became slightly more chaotic.  Connor chatted with his classmates, but he continued following Anthony to go through each hole.  He even did as well as Anthony and got a Hole in One with the tower one.  Half way through, Connor needed to use the bathroom, but when we returned, he insisted to return to the next hole.  Fortunately the course was not busy, so we could cut right back in.  He enjoyed hitting off at each tee and occasionally picked up after a few tries at the end of the hole, but he finished all the way to 18 and insisted putting the ball into the final basket.  We then joined the group for pizza and cake.  Before we left, Connor borrowed a club and a ball, and hit a couple more holes before we said our thank you and goodbye.

    After a break, we were onto the second party.  This classmate Audrey has a brother Jake who is in Logan’s class, therefore, the mom invited Logan to attend too.  Both kids said goodbye to Daddy as I drove them off to a nearby racquet and swim club where the party was held.  Unfortunately today was cool and cloudy, therefore going into the water seemed quite chilly.  Logan immediately told me that he was not interested while Connor seemed tempted.  As soon as Connor saw his classmates, he did not mind joining them in the water.  Logan saw some water guns and became more motivated.  They both were standing on the steps in the shallow end of the pool happily shooting water.  Before long, Logan got wet by other kids shooting at him, he got too cold and wanted out.  I was not going to force him, so I did not mind cuddling him with a towel and enjoying snack while we chatted with a mom.  Connor was totally having a good time in either the big pool or in the Jacuzzi along with his friends.  Later the host planned to do a water gun fight; Logan, as well as Connor, were more than happy to join in.  All the kids had a blast running around and shooting water at each other on the lawn.  When the game was over, all the kids returned to the pools and Logan joined Jake to play ping pong.  They had fun playing for a long time until it was time for cake.  Before then, Connor had enough of being in water, so I changed his top as well.  We sang to Audrey and Connor enjoyed a second birthday cake of the day.  While the kids were eating, I then realized that Logan and Jake were building forts on the lawn using aerobic risers.  I took Connor to check on them, and he got in the game too.  They had fun pretending being in a fort and in a tank, and throwing a ball at each other.  Afterward they returned to ping pong until I finally was tired and got all our belongings to take the boys home.

     We had a free day on Saturday, so we spent the morning checking out the annual street fair at Campbell.  The weather was perfect and we arrived early before the big crowd did.  We walked around looking through different art and craft booths, and there were many of them.  The boys were drawn to all the spinning wheels and they were happy to get the little prizes afterward.  They checked out the one from the fire department and the water district, and they had to answer a question before earning the prize.  Afterward, they were able to hop onto a fire truck for an experience as well.  We listened to a guitar player singing while an old couple decided to go out and do a square dance; the boys were fascinated by them.  Later we bought some chicken skewers and fries, and settled ourselves in front of an accordion band to enjoy our lunch.  At the end we passed by a Home Depot booth and the boys spent the next 20-30 minutes there.  Without any hesitation both boys began to draw on a tile, and Connor wrote down “Happy” and asked me to spell “Father’s” for him.  Both of them were quite patient and colored in the entire tile.  At last, Logan had some empty space on top and he put down “Happy Father’s Day” as well.  They both were proud of their work, and Connor kept reminding me to hide it from daddy.  This was an unexpected nice and relaxing outing.

   I spent three and half hours at school yesterday to prepare for the open house.  Other than the portfolios I had to make for the children, it turned out that I had to make a poster to display the kids’ Art Vistas pieces in the classroom as well.  One night last week, I sorted through each piece of the artwork I collected from the six lessons, and picked out the best work to represent the lesson and from each child.  There were some really nice work the children made, and the final selections were not easy to pick out.  Then yesterday I met up with another mom after dropping off Logan to start our work.  I put her in charge of sorting through all the art pieces while I worked on the posters.  She stayed as long as she could until she sorted through and made 28 stacks (one for each kid).  My 4 ft x 12 ft poster was coming along quite well then too.  A mom from the other class walked by after her volunteering work and decided to stay to help me finished up.  I finished labeling the poster with the kids’ names while she helped me punching hole and tying the ribbon.  So total of three hours later, our work was done and I am very happy with how everything turned out.  The teacher had passed by a couple of times and thanked me for the hard work.  Now I am looking forward to the open house next week.

This was a panoramic picture of my poster.

    We went over to the Kaos to swim on Sunday, but the weather was cooler than we had hoped for.  The boys fell asleep during the drive over, and when they finally came into the house, they were happy to go wake Marcus up from his nap.  We then went out to the backyard to play for a bit.  When Mckayla came home, we all changed to go into the pool.  Logan was only interested to play with the water gun, but I basically put him into the water with me before he got too chilled on the edge being wet.  However Logan did not feel comfortable in the water.  Connor on the other end was excited to get in and happy to play while hugging me or Stuart.  We tried to remind Logan that he could put his head in the water the last summer, but he was very hesitant.  He finally did it one time and ended up drinking some water, and since then he just refused to try it again.  He had a little bit of fun playing with the water gun and with the camera that Michelle shared, but mostly Logan was not too thrilled and he was cold.  After about 30 mins Stuart finally took Logan out to shower.  Connor was still having lots of fun in water and with Mckayla and Marcus.  But we eventually had to get everyone out before it got too cold.  After we all had a warm shower, the kids snacked a bit then returned inside the house to play.  Logan and Marcus dressed up as Jango Jett and Boba Fett while Mckayla helped Connor to dress as a fairy.  Connor was so excited to wear the wings and have the wand in his hand; he kept the costume on the rest of the evening.  Since the kids had snacks, we started on our own first eating the chicken and steaks Ted barbequed, garlic rice Michelle made and the vegetables we brought.  Later the four kids slowly joined us at dinner.  The kids had so much fun being silly and laughing loudly while they sat at the kids table to eat.  They also took turns coming to us to tattletale on each other.  Finally they finished eating and they were off to play in the backyard, and we had some peace and quiet to chat again.  Later Ted brought them back to have ice cream and to try their homemade one for Michelle’s Mother day treat.  The kids went back inside the house to play for a bit, and we heard piano music and lots of drum noise.  Finally, after 7pm, it was time to round up the kids to say thanks and goodnight to the Kaos for having us again.