Pumpkin Bust

Posted By Bonnie Comments Off on Pumpkin Bust

image     Friday evening was Pumpkin Bust which was an annual school event.  The kids had been looking forward to it and we had purchased tickets and T shirts ahead of time.  On Friday morning, Connor was saying that he wished he could skip the day to go straight to Pumpkin Bust.  He also had planned to wear his Kylo Ren costume to the event.  In the late afternoon, I got out of work early and on time, and we walked over shortly after the event was in full swing.  Logan tried many of the carnival games, but Connor was not interested.  Connor wanted to walk around to see if he could run into his teacher.  Later both Logan and Connor looked through the book sale and bought a few books.  Then we took a break to eat; the food truck line was too long, so we all had some pizza from the snack shack.  While we were eating, Connor saw the Star Wars costume actors arrive and he wanted to take pictures with them.  He was so careful putting on his mask and holding his lightsaber to stand in front of the big guys.  Next Connor saw his friend Neil who he was expecting to be in the same costume, so the two of them played together for a bit.  When we walked around so more, Connor changed his mind and wanted to decorate a pumpkin, so he and I worked on one while Logan with Stuart continued playing other games. 

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     I had signed up to help out at the snack shack for an hour.  I had been sick for a few days, and fortunately I was feeling better and up for the job.  The snack shack was busy with kids/parents coming for drinks and snacks.  I was expecting that Stuart would take the boys home at some point since they were winding down, but periodically the boys still showed up to see me.  Logan actually wanted to go home as his legs were tired, but Connor wanted to stay.  Every now and then, Logan and Connor would come in to help me, and Connor was devoted to really help.  He was happy to stock up the drinks and help get tickets from clients.  During that hour, apparently both Logan and Connor’s names got called up from the raffle drawing and they both won a chocolate bar necklace.  Later they both came to me to buy a hot cocoa to drink.  Few minutes short before 8pm, when my duty was coming to the end, the sale was slowing down since the popcorn and cotton candy machines were taken away.  We all then walked home.  It was a fun evening for the kids.

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Logan’s First Art Vista Lesson

Posted By Bonnie Comments Off on Logan’s First Art Vista Lesson

    I had asked for the day off on Tuesday to have Logan’s art lesson.  One new volunteering mom and I are the docents for his class.  Last week I felt more nervous for Logan’s lesson than Connor’s as I wondered how it would be to teach older kids and I felt the need to lead since the other mom was new to this task.  Before the class, the mom and I had decided on the part we would be responsible for and I recruited two more moms to be there to help with the hands-on project.  We had to go in early on Tuesday since there were still lots of prep work needed to be done.  That mom and I had a chance to chat to get to know each other before the lesson began.  The teacher then brought the class in to the cafeteria and they sat down quietly.  I followed the same format as I always do with Art Vista.  The kids were very engaged and interactive while I showed them two paintings to discuss the terms they had learned throughout the years of Art Vistas.  The kids gave good answers; Logan had raised his hand too and I had called on him as well.  Next the other mom showed them how to make a wire sculpture.  The topic of the lesson was “action”, so the kids were encouraged to make their figures doing any motion they liked.  Most kids did well and jumped right in to make the figures; some needed help to get started.  Using a pencil to make the coils was a bit tricky for some; Logan needed my help to work on that.  All the moms went around helping out as needed.  At the end, there were many nice figures; I saw some sport figures and a boy asked me to help attach a lightsaber to the hands.  When I returned to Logan, I discovered that he had added cool hair and glasses to this guy; it was very cute.

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Wedding and Long Playdate

Posted By Bonnie Comments Off on Wedding and Long Playdate

     Stuart and I were invited to Thu’s (my cousin) wedding at San Ramon on Sunday. Rohan’s family graciously accepted to take the boys in for the evening so that we could attend the event.  We dropped the kids off at 3:30pm at their house and we were on our way to the golf course.  We arrived at the wedding, talked to some relatives of mine, then it was time for the wedding.  It was touching seeing the bride walk down the aisle with her son.  The rest of the wedding was nice and sweet.  We then enjoyed a drink with hors d’oeuvres before we entered the dining room for the reception.  The evening we were entertained by speeches and dancing while we enjoyed the dinner and drinks.  By 8:30pm, we had to sneak out after saying a quick bye to a few people as we still had a long drive to pick up the boys. 

    The boys had a fun long play date with Rohan, and they did not really want to leave when we arrived.  They played a lot of games, and only took some breaks to play outside, play Pokemon cards and to eat.  We were told that all of them played well together without any argument.  We finally drove home and ended a very late Sunday night.

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Connor’s Art Vista Lesson 1

Posted By Bonnie Comments Off on Connor’s Art Vista Lesson 1

     This year, I have volunteered to do the art lessons for both of the boys’ classes.  I took Friday morning off to be at Connor’s classroom for their first lesson.  Two moms and I are the art docents this year, and one of the moms was my partner last year.  On top of that, I had led the same lesson in Logan’s class two years ago, so I did not need to spend as much time preparing for it.  Our lesson started as soon as the school day began.  I did our introduction.  Then I reviewed the different “lines” and showed a famous painting for discussion  The other mom demonstrated the hands-on project.  The class listened well and was very engaged.  They followed instruction very well and kept the project going smoothly.  There was no hesitation, and everyone drew beautiful Halloween theme pictures on a Styrofoam square.  Later the kids came up to roll paint on their Styrofoam and make a print onto paper.  The teacher, the moms and I kept the kids coming up to the paint table slowly and the flow went smoothly.  The art work came out beautifully.  We, including the teacher, were very proud of how well the kids behaved and we certainly really enjoyed our first lesson.

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Our Anniversary

Posted By Bonnie Comments Off on Our Anniversary

     I sign us up to walk the American heart and stroke walk the morning of our anniversary.  We arrived at the event, and chatted with some of my coworkers.  We then went to check out the kid zone.  Logan was interested to try different kid games, but Connor only cared to watch.  Both of them were excited for the freebies that were being given away at different booths.  They also waited to get a balloon sword made.  Then it was time for the walk.  The boys had fun walking while playing with their swords.  They periodically asked how far we had to go and how many steps we made, but they did not really complain much.  We finished the 5K walk in just about an hour; Stuart timed us and our time was 59 mins 55 seconds. For the record that time involves a lengthy kids bathroom break due to a long line, half-way through the course.   Afterwards, we picked up a light lunch, then we headed home for a break.

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     At home we had a bit of video/tablet time then headed out for dinner.  We decided to walk around Santana Row first, and we sat down listening to a musician singing and playing guitar for awhile.  He was good and the boys enjoyed it.  I asked Logan to go up and give him a tip, and surprisingly, Logan did not mind at all to walk up.  Then we had a good dinner at a pizza restaurant.  Stuart really enjoyed a strong beer they had there and he ended up getting a second.  After dinner, we walked around the area again and the boys wanted to play with the chess set.  There were some kids playing with the pieces, so instead the boys eventually watched some locals playing timed chess instead.  It was funny that Logan just walked up and stool right next to the man to watch them.  We were all amazed how well they played.  At the end, we shopped at Target before going home for a late night. 

    This was a nice day and we enjoyed our 11th anniversary!

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Stuck at the Mall

Posted By Bonnie Comments Off on Stuck at the Mall

     Other than catching up with some house chores on Saturday, we went to the mall for some shopping.  It had been awhile since our last visit there; we walked one round of the mall and bought a few things.  At the end, we made our final shopping at Target before heading up to the top floor of the parking structure for our car.  As soon as we were there, we realized that there was a line of cars waiting to get out, and the back up was due to remodeling of the parking structure.  Since we did not have other plans, we decided to drop imageoff our purchases and returned to the mall for a snack.  The boys played YuGiOh cards while we enjoyed some food.  Maybe 30 minutes later, we were curious and headed back out to check on the situation.  The line of cars was then longer and the people were telling us that they had been waiting for 45 minutes without moving.  We did not want to sit in the car, so we returned to the food court once again while Stuart went quickly to investigate the situation.  Later I ended up doing some more shopping, and we finally headed back to the car.  This time around the line was slowly moving.  It took us 20 minutes to get out of the structure which was a lot better than what we had been told.  They had finally gotten a proper traffic warden to stop conflicting traffic at the key areas.  This visit turned out to be one of the longest ones we had there as a family, and fortunately we did not have any other plans that evening.

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